Are leaders more likely to face militarized challenges earlier in their tenures? Existing studies posit contradictory hypotheses, as new leaders can both invite challengers to take advantage of their lack of preparedness, and deter challengers by their strong incentives to build a reputation for resolve that will stave off future problems. This paper reconciles these competing tendencies by developing a conditional explanation that centers on the direction of the new leader’s anticipated foreign policy preference shift in relation to the previous administration. From the challenger’s perspective, if the office in the target state is passed from an incumbent dovish leader to a hawkish successor, then a more pessimistic strategic environment arises where the new hawk can be less satisfied with the status quo and seeks to revise it. Under this scenario, the new hawkish leader’s inexperience and strong reputation concerns tend to amplify the challenger’s fear of suffering an immediate loss. The challenger, therefore, has incentives to initiate an early crisis to educate the more hawkish but also relatively less informed newcomer on the challenger’s position, resolve, and capability. Otherwise, the opportunity costs of an early challenge—disrupting a potentially beneficial and warmer relationship between two countries—tend to constrain the challenger from provoking an inexperienced new dove whose reputation concerns are high. Statistical analyses of leadership turnovers in all major powers during the post-WWII period (1945-2010) largely support this conditional hypothesis.

In a political climate in which immigrants are often told to “go back where you came from,” this paper explores the intersections of race, immigration, and belonging in North America. It juxtaposes my deep, ancestral connections to Black America and with a parallel but at times competing national affinity with the land to which many enslaved Black Americans once fled: Canada. Using the analytical insights of black political thought, I use personal narrative to explore the boundaries of racial belonging; to identify key facets of Canadian ideas about race and racism, including the intersection of racial formations and settler colonialism; to analyze the transnational nuances and contours of the African diaspora in North America; and ultimately, to think through what it means to be in a place, but not be of that place. Tethering territorial and temporal boundaries to our contemporary understandings of race, the paper seeks to both reconsider and recalibrate ideas of home, belonging, diaspora, and the meaning of democracy.

Debra Thompson is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. Her award-winning book, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is a study of the political development of racial classifications on the national censuses of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. She is currently writing two book projects: the first explores the transnational dynamics of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the second, co-authored with Keith Banting (Queen’s University) analyzes the puzzling persistence of racial inequality in Canada.

There is considerable variation in the extent to which citizens around the world trust their governments to uphold private property rights. At one extreme are countries like Venezuela under the Chavez and Maduro regimes, where the government expropriated hundreds of private enterprises across industries. At the other end are countries like the United States and those of Western Europe, where governments have maintained the trust of their citizens in preserving and honoring institutions that protect private assets, investments and income.

This paper analyzes how adverse shocks that align the interests of state and society shape a government’s ability to build the trust of its citizens. These shocks could arise from foreign threats, financial crises, and natural calamities. When shocks are frequent and severe, government can have the incentive to be trustworthy, since it requires cooperation from its citizens to avert these challenges. But if the shocks are not severe, increasing their frequency can reduce the scope for cooperation between state and society. 

In addition, we look at the case where the public cannot tell whether or not a shock has hit (the case of imperfect monitoring). In this case, the government’s challenge of building a reputation for being trustworthy is complicated by the fact that if it tries to raise revenue to avert a real crisis, citizens lose some trust in government as they suspect that it may have collected from them opportunistically. This happens despite the fact that the interests of state and society are aligned during these crises. We show here that the opportunity to build a reputation for trustworthiness can enhance the government’s payoff beyond what is achievable in the case where citizens know that the government is playing strategically.

White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, producing extensive debate as to who evangelicals are, what it means to be an evangelical in the United States today, and whether the electoral results are surprising or not. This paper offers empirical clarity to this protracted discussion by asking and answering a series of questions related to Trump’s victory in general and his support from white evangelicals in particular. In doing so, the analyses show that the term “evangelical” has not become a synonym for conservative politics and that white evangelical support for Trump would be higher if public opinion scholars used a belief-centered definition of evangelicalism rather than relying on the more common classification strategies based on self-identification or religious denomination. These findings go against claims that nominal evangelicals, those who call themselves evangelicals but are not religious, make up the core of Trump’s support base. Moreover, high levels of electoral support among devout evangelicals is not unique to the 2016 election but is rather part of a broader trend of evangelical electoral behavior, even when faced with non-traditional Republican candidates. Finally, the paper explores why white evangelicals might support a candidate like Trump. The paper presents evidence that negative partisanship helps explain why devout evangelicals–despite Trump’s background and behaviors being cause for concern–coalesced around his presidential bid. Together, the findings from this paper help make sense of both the 2016 presidential election and evangelical public opinion, both separately and together.

Quotas for women in government have swept the globe. Yet we know little about their capacity to upend entrenched social, political, and economic hierarchies. Women, Power, and Property explores this question within the context of India, the world’s largest democracy. Brulé employs a research design that maximizes causal inference alongside extensive field research to explain the relationship between political representation, backlash, and economic empowerment. Her findings show that women in government – gatekeepers – catalyze access to fundamental economic rights to property. Women in politics have the power to support constituent rights at critical junctures, such as marriage negotiations, when they can strike integrative solutions to intrahousehold bargaining. Yet there is a paradox: quotas are essential for enforcement of rights, but they generate backlash against women who gain rights without bargaining leverage. In this groundbreaking study, Brulé shows how well-designed quotas can operate as a crucial tool to foster equality and benefit the women they are meant to empower.