Technology, Democracy, and Violence.

Publications:

“Can Phones Build Relationships? A Case Study of a Kenyan Wildlife Conservancy's Community Development” (ACM SIGCAS, 2021) - with Matt Ziegler, James Long, Kurtis Heimerl and others

This article draws on research done at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy to assess how basic mobile phone services, such as SMS and USSD, can help conservancy personnel disseminate accurate and timely information, gather community feedback, address grievances, and improve accountability. Awards: Best Paper Award.

Forthcoming Projects:

"Does Democracy Die in Darkness? Electricity Outages & Electoral Accountability in South Africa” - Under Review

The ability of voters to respond to the performance of elected officials at the ballot box is critical to the theory of electoral accountability. Yet the relationship between performance and public support is poorly understood in states governed by dominant parties with substantial electoral advantages. To address this gap, I examine the occurrence of power outages across three South African municipalities to test whether incumbents are held accountable by voters in sub-national elections for service delivery failures linked to the national government. To answer this questions I rely on a randomized natural experimental design enabled by access to new data corresponding to randomized power outages, or “load shedding”, coordinated by South Africa’s public electricity monopoly. I find that even where there are limited opportunities to hold parties accountable at the national level, voters are able to punish incumbents from the nationally dominant party in local elections following visible service failures.

"Assessing How Shifts in Global Demand for Natural Vanilla Influenced Crime in Madagascar” - with Megan Erickson

Under what conditions do positive price shocks spark cycles of crime and violence? An expanding literature holds that shocks to labor-intensive industries in areas of low state capacity lead to a decrease in crime and violence; at the same time, however, incursions into such industries can also lead to communities organizing for extralegal justice, resulting in an increase of incidents of mob violence. We find that shocks to Western consumer markets have a negative effect on certain types of opportunistic crime and organized crime, though a positive effect on crime related to vanilla and mob violence.

"Paradise Stolen: Criminal Violence and Democratic Backsliding in Africa”

This project has allowed me to analyze how urban insecurity influences political participation and perceptions. Initial results suggest that rising rates of violence in sub-Saharan Africa risk undermining democratic consolidation efforts by marginalizing vulnerable populations and enhancing the perceived viability of alternative systems of governance.

“Violence, Public Security, and the State”

This project, currently in the pilot stage, will revolve around a field experiment incorporating the distribution of private security applications to assess whether ineffectual public security provision can induce a withdrawal from state services as well as social and political participation.

“The Politics of Non-Governmental Service Provision: Examining the Impact of Facility Ownership on Citizen Support” - with Rachel Castellano

Amidst an expansion of NGO activity, this paper utilizes geospatial data from several African countries as well as original survey data from Kenya to ask: What influence do non-governmental service providers have on patterns of political support and democratic engagement?