Research Interests:
South Asia, Pakistan, gender, non-state governance, indigenous politics, political participation, dispute resolution
2025. Can Party Elites Shape the Rank and File? Evidence from a Recruitment Campaign in India - With Saad Gulzar (Notre Dame), Durgesh Pathak (Aam Aadmi Party), and Aliz Tóth (LSE). American Political Science Review 119 (2): 812–831.
Recruiting a large number of ground workers is crucial for running effective modern election campaigns. It is unclear if party leaders can influence the quality and quantity of the unpaid rank-and-file workforce as they can with prized nominations for candidates. We analyze a field experiment conducted by an Indian party that randomized recruitment messages reaching 1% of a 13-million-person electorate to join its rank and file. Contrary to concerns that parties can only attract a few poor-quality volunteers, we show that elite efforts can shape the rank and file. In fact, specific strategies can increase the size, enhance the gender and ethnic diversity, and broaden the education and political skills of recruits. Strategies that signal gender inclusiveness have a lasting impact on some dimensions up to 3 years later. Taken together, this article provides the first causal evidence that rank-and-file recruitment is an opportunity for elites to influence long-term party development.
State-building, Traditional Institutions, and Gender: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan (job market paper)
How do states consolidate control in weak areas, encouraging citizens to adopt their institutions instead of traditional alternatives? The Pakistani state recently undertook historic state expansion in its tribal areas, bringing key judicial institutions and standards to residents for the first time. I use a novel experiment with 2,100 respondents and a costly behavioral outcome to assess how state-building efforts like improving performance and appealing to minoritized groups impact the decision to comply. My results show evidence of a backlash effect, where upsetting existing power dynamics eclipses the overall benefits brought by a new formal institution. My findings suggest a dilemma for states as they attempt to consolidate control in areas of limited statehood, where the distributive consequences of state-building initiatives actually weaken state legitimacy.
State-evading Solutions to Violence: Organized Crime and Governance in Indigenous Mexico - With Kristóf Gosztonyi and Beatriz Magaloni (Stanford). R&R.
Reflection from ERIP 2022 (español)
The monopoly of violence in the hands of the state is conceived as the principal vehicle to generate order. A problem with this vision is that parts of the state and its law enforcement apparatus often become extensions of criminality rather than solutions to it. We argue that one solution to this dilemma is to "opt out from the state." Using a multi-method strategy combining extensive qualitative research, quasi-experimental statistical analyses, and survey data, the paper demonstrates that indigenous communities in Mexico are better able to escape predatory criminal rule when they are legally allowed to carve a space of autonomy from the state through the institution of "usos y costumbres." We demonstrate that these municipalities are more immune to violence than similar localities where regular police forces and local judiciaries are in charge of law enforcement and where mayors are elected through multiparty elections rather than customary practices.
The Gendered Calculus of Voting: Explaining Women's Turnout in Pakistan - With Natalya Adam-Rahman (Stanford). Under review.
Women’s turnout in Pakistan lags significantly behind men’s. We introduce mobility, the experience of traveling to and from voting, as an explanation for this gender gap in political participation. We do so by analyzing the impact of electoral administration—specifically polling station assignments that generate variation in travel patterns to vote—on turnout. Using data from the 2018 national election, we show that a third of the gender turnout gap is explained by women’s chance assignments to polling stations where they cannot coordinate travel within their household, risk harassment, and are unfamiliar with the route and destination. A survey experiment and qualitative evidence provide direct evidence for the mechanism of gender differences in mobility. Taken together, these results demonstrate not only the impact of mobility constraints on turnout in South Asia but also how the implementation of electoral policies can interact with a gender-specific voting calculus to suppress women’s political participation.
Machismo Undone? A Randomized Controlled Trial of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Activating Social Networks - With Madison Dalton (Stanford), Kim Juarez-Jensen (Stanford), and Beatriz Magaloni (Stanford)
Over 70 percent of women and girls in Mexico have experienced violence, with Mexico City holding the highest rates in the country. Prominent instances of femicide and intimate partner violence have led to mass protests, and demonstrate the urgency of combatting machista culture that enables gender-based violence (GBV). Social psychologists point out that perceived acceptability of violence amongst peers can be even more important than one's own attitudes in predicting violent behaviors. We evaluate an intervention that incorporates these insights and targets individuals at a formative age to understand how modifying individual attitudes and perceived community norms can reduce gender-based violence. Based in the larger metropolitan area of Mexico City, we conducted a field experiment among teenage students (n=982) that tested the influence of social referents and cognitive behavioral therapy on the incidence of gender-based violence. Our goal is to identify optimal conditions for shifting first and second-order beliefs about GBV and to trace the role of social networks in transmitting norms and producing attitudinal and behavioral changes.
A Field Experiment to Improve Women's Mobility in Pakistan
The ability to move about freely and safely is a prerequisite for individuals' participation in civic and economic life outside of the home. Yet many women in Pakistan face gendered street harassment, report pressure to conform to social norms against traveling alone or in unprotected vehicles, and lack the ability to drive vehicles or ride bicycles. Thus arises a negative feedback loop where women's immobility leads to lower skills, fewer opportunities for income generation, and smaller social networks, such that households continue to rely on men for income generation and claim-making and women's mobility is curtailed. I study the potential for interventions targeting women's transportation to achieve their immediate goal of improving mobility and also to have downstream consequences on women's agency, labor force participation, and political participation. More concretely, I randomize access to a motorcycle training institute and a motorcycle loan program for women in Karachi. After six months, I find that both the training as well as the in-kind loan improve women's mobility in terms of autonomous trips made outside of the home and in terms of free time. There is also suggestive evidence that the training intervention increases participation in local-level civic groups. Results on economic agency, intrinsic agency, and gender-equitable beliefs are null due to the small sample size. All in all, results from this experiment suggest that lighter touch skills interventions can impact actual mobility as well as costlier versions can, particularly those that expand women's social networks.
Dispute Resolution in Pakistan (book project)
When Tradition Travels: Customary Institutions in Pakistan's Largest City
How do traditional governance institutions adapt when transplanted from rural areas where they enjoy place-based legitimacy into faraway urban centers with higher state presence? In this project, I investigate the operation of Pashtun jirgas as a dispute resolution venue within Karachi, Pakistan. I plan to conduct qualitative interviews with tribal elders originally from the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs), those whose cases have been heard by urban jirgas, and individuals involved in the civil society provision of Alternative Dispute Resolution and legal services for marginalized community members. This project aims to provide novel and systematic evidence on how urban jirgas derive legitimacy, provide dispute resolution, and how they compare both with state institutions and NGO fora for dispute resolution. Additionally, it will lay the groundwork for subsequent and quantitative empirical exercises on the topic of the legitimacy of customary institutions in modern Pakistan.
Foreign Aid and Preferences for Formal Governance in Pakistan (with ShahBano Ijaz, Occidental)
Does exposure to foreign aid shape preferences for governance institutions? While foreign aid is often seen as a detriment to local politics, experience with aid organizations can have reputational spillovers for domestic government institutions. Individuals also seem to support programs that receive fiscal and technical support through foreign aid, especially when perceptions of domestic corruption and clientelistic practices are high. Conversely, popular perceptions of U.S. foreign aid in Pakistan have undermined the legitimacy of the domestic government, which many citizens feel has been “reduced from a sovereign state to an American colony" (Abbasi 2010). While it is clear that foreign aid can impact attitudes towards the domestic government, most studies focus on the comparison between foreign aid or foreign donors on the one hand, and domestic government on the other. Yet, many developing countries have alternative forms of governance that coexist with formal governance organizations. To explore whether foreign aid can change citizen attitudes toward domestic formal governance institutions in general, we look at the degree to which exposure to foreign aid might change preferences across traditional and formal legal institutions in Pakistan’s formerly Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In a survey of 2,100 respondents, we ask whether respondents who have higher exposure to aid are more likely to favor formal legal institutions. We explore this as a case of reduced reliance on traditional institutions, as well as third party legitimation, where experience with foreign aid and donor agencies can improve or decrease trust in formal governance institutions as opposed to traditional institutions. We measure exposure to foreign aid through self-reported experience with aid organizations and programs, and also through respondents’ distance from the nearest aid project as reported by the recently released Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD). Our research can help uncover an important unintended effect of foreign aid, by highlighting whether citizens benefiting from aid and the efficacy of aid agencies are more likely to prefer similar efficacy in domestic formal governance institutions.