Ahhh big congrats Alia!!!

Recipe please!

📢 Virtual IPES (VIPES) Spring/Summer 2026 CFP!

Great chance to workshop IPE/CPE papers in a small-group format with detailed discussant feedback.

🗓 Deadline: April 20, 2026
📄 Full papers (≤10k words)
🔗 forms.gle/KDnxua5L5DrX...

More info: www.internationalpoliticaleconomysociety.org/virtual-ipes

Very excited to see this paper out in the world! Across 3 rounds of interviews with white Minnesotans, I show that white id varies and responds dynamically to shifts in context. Many whites have low id but vary in how they interpret whiteness—as providing them dis/advantages. 1/7

Grateful for the support from RSF and @j-palna.bsky.social and excited to work on this project with @genbates.bsky.social!

We welcome your thoughts and comments on the article! Thanks for reading.

Together, we show many existing ideas about the effects of PR rules extend to developing democracies, but that the mechanisms undergirding those effects may be about candidate-vote vs. party-voter linkages rather than changes in programmatic politics, political competition, new party entry, etc.

This study would not be possible without the dedicated partnership of igr-sl.org and their commitment to voter civic education in Sierra Leone under the leadership of Andrew Lavali and Fredline MCormack-Hale, as well as the field and operations teams led by Justine Ganawah and Gilbert Fullah.

So many amazing people provided feedback on this paper, including @luciamotoliniac.bsky.social, @tinepaulsen.bsky.social, Amy Catalinac, Yael Shomer, @danpemstein.com, @profdansmith.bsky.social, @thaliagerzso.bsky.social, Leonie Huddie, Michael Wahman, Raduan van Velthem Meira, Paige Bollen.

In the follow-up survey experiment, voters shared concerns that party leaders would have too much closed-door control over representation. Closed-list PR had by then become the status quo instead of an alternative to it, unlike when we first ran the field experiment and saw positive effects on trust

Some studies have argued that proportional representation rules increase voter trust in elections, because those rules are less distortionary and winner-take-all and perhaps more transparent.

However, respondents in our study did not greet closed-list PR rules with clear increases in trust. Why?

We find that women are much more excited to vote for a party, because they perceive a party-centered system easier to navigate over one with more direct politician-voter linkages. That is also perhaps why both women and men report that PR is more likely to advance policies for women’s development.

In a follow-up survey experiment, also in this @apsrjournal.bsky.social piece, we find many male respondents react negatively to the switch from being able to vote for a candidate to being able to vote only for the party *because* they know and are comfortable with lobbying specific local candidates

Incredibly, we found these effects even in a context when elites themselves had not adjusted to the new rules. During fieldwork, we saw several campaign billboards that featured the MP candidate encouraging voters to elect that person, even though the ballot would only allow them to choose a party

Here, we find that voters become more skeptical of particularistic campaign promises when the new electoral rules switch voter choice from local candidates (as in the old system) to parties (under closed-list PR), even where a real switch to programmatic politics is unlikely.

As the map here shows, changes in electoral rules have been and are happening all over the world, but we’ve had fewer studies of their consequences in developing democracies where clientelism is prevalent (important exceptions! e.g., @luciamotoliniac.bsky.social) and information environments weaker.

Here, we worked within a context where the change in electoral rules was sudden and not widely known about or understood.
We randomized information (including through an app developed by IGR Sierra Leone) about the new PR rules at the individual-voter level and collected panel data on key outcomes.

A rich literature has looked at the effects of electoral rules on voting behavior, attitudes, and electoral outcomes (eg. by @teele.bsky.social, @profdansmith.bsky.social, etc.), but rarely have we estimated *individual-level* effects of rules within both the same polity and the same election.

We find that receiving information about closed-list PR rules:

- increased *women’s* commitment to voting , and
- decreased women’s and men’s support for particularistic campaign appeals,

But had ambiguous (and possibly) negative effects on trust in elections.

New #OpenAccess Paper Alert! 🚨

In @apsrjournal.bsky.social, @gmcclendon.bsky.social and I present results from a collaborative field experiment with the Institute for Governance Reform around a switch from plurality rules to closed-list PR rules in Sierra Leone’s 2023 parliamentary elections. A🧵:

The only surefire way to stop oligarchs buying up the things we love is to drop those things the moment oligarchs buy them & that requires changing habits and massive self-discipline.
It means going to alternatives that might not be quite as good or convenient.
It’s really hard. But there it is.

The UK Must Avoid Deadly Cuts to Health Aid in Sierra Leone The UK Government’s February announcement that aid will fall to 0.3 percent of gross national income by 2027 has led to a wave of concern as to which programs will be cut. The outlook is especially bl...

The UK’s plan to cut aid to 0.3% of GNI threatens Sierra Leone—including a £35m health program set to fall below £1m.

CGD experts argue Sierra Leone should stay a priority: needs are severe, alternatives scarce, & interventions cost-effective:
https://go.cgdev.org/4oKJJ0s

It’s not a great deal if you don’t need it. And especially this year, others really need support. So for all of us who have enough, let’s refuse to get sucked into the holiday shopping frenzy and share instead of shop. We don’t need more stuff, we need communities where all our neighbors are safe.

*external validity voice* actually it could just be that nairobi is fucking awesome

BJPolS abstract of a discussing the effectiveness of locally rooted human rights activism in reducing homophobia in Zimbabwe, focusing on strategies for challenging anti-LGBTQ sentiments and promoting LGBTQ rights in African contexts.

NEW -

Rooting Equality: Testing the Effectiveness of Activist Frames Combating Homophobia in Zimbabwe - https://cup.org/3XSzLPn

- @payoub.bsky.social & Adam S. Harris

#OpenAccess

Hundreds of thousands of people, dead because of a decision made by the world's richest man

Reducing the cost of remittances could replace large chunks of lost USAID funds for many countries - two-thirds for Nigeria!

www.cgdev.org/blog/after-a...