Dalston Ward

Research

Peer-Reviewed Publications

• "Can Political Speech Foster Tolerance of Immigrants?,'' (with Petra Schleiter and Margit Tavits). 2021. Political Science Reserach and Methods: 1–17.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information     Pre-Analysis Plan     Replication Materials    
  Politicians frequently use political speech to foster hostility toward immigrants, a strategy that shapes political preferences and behavior and feeds the success of the populist right. Whether political speech can be used to foster tolerance of immigrants, however, remains unexplored. We identify three mechanisms by which political speech could increase tolerance: (1) stressing in-group conceptions that highlight commonalities with immigrants; (2) emphasizing inclusiveness as an in- group norm; and (3) providing information that counters anti-immigrant stereotypes. Using quotes from US politicians in two survey experiments, we find that pro-immigrant speech that stresses inclusive norms or counters negative stereotypes about immigrants leads to more tolerant attitudes (but not behavior) toward immigrants. These effects are small and detectable only in large samples.

  

• "The effect of citizenship on the long-term earnings of marginalized immigrants: Quasi-experimental evidence from Switzerland,'' (with Jens Hainmueller and Dominik Hangartner). 2019. Science Advances 5(12): eaay1610.
      Abstract     Supplementary Materials     Replication Code
  We provide evidence that citizenship catalyzes the long-term economic integration of immigrants. Despite the relevance of citizenship policy to immigrant integration, we lack a reliable understanding of the economic consequences of acquiring citizenship. To overcome nonrandom selection into naturalization, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of citizenship in Swiss municipalities that held referendums to decide the outcome of individual naturalization applications. Our data combine individual-level referendum results with detailed social security records from the Swiss authorities. This approach allows us to compare the long-term earnings of otherwise similar immigrants who barely won or lost their referendum. We find that winning Swiss citizenship in the referendum increased annual earnings by an average of approximately 5000 U.S. dollars over the subsequent 15 years. This effect is concentrated among more marginalized immigrants.

  

• "Public Attitudes Toward Young Immigrant Men," 2019. American Political Science Review 113(1): 264–269.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information     Replication Materials
  Young men often make up a large share of newly arriving immigrant populations. How this impacts attitudes is unclear: young men have the potential to make substantial economic contributions, meaning attitudes towards them may be more favorable. However, young men may also pose security and cultural threats, exacerbating anti-immigrant attitudes. I conduct a conjoint experiment on a sample of 2,100 Germans, asking them to evaluate groups of immigrants with randomly varying shares of young men. The results show that groups of immigrants with a large share of young men receive substantially less support. Further tests reveal that respondents also perceive of these groups as likely to pose security and cultural threats; there is no evidence that young men are viewed as having high economic potential. These results have implications for the importance of economic, cultural, and security concerns in underpinning attitudes toward immigrants.

  

• "How partisan affect shapes citizens' perception of the political world," (with Margit Tavits). 2019. Electoral Studies 60: 102045.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information     Replication Materials
  We explore how partisan affect shapes citizens' views of party ideology and political competition. We argue that voters' affective ties to parties (both positive and negative) lead them to perceive the ideological positions of those parties as more extreme. Further, when voters are "affectively polarized," i.e., they strongly like some parties and dislike others, they are more likely to view politics as high stakes competition, where ideological polarization is rampant, participation is crucial, and electoral outcomes are highly consequential. Using cross-national survey data covering 43 elections in 34 countries, we show that partisan affect indeed impacts perceptions of party ideology and that affective polarization alters beliefs about the nature of political competition.

  

• "Judicial Review Timing and Legislative Posturing: Reconsidering the Moral Hazard Problem," (with Matthew Gabel). 2019. Journal of Politics 81(2): 681–685.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information
  The prospect of judicial review may cause legislators to adjust their behavior to anticipate the court's response. This can serve as a source of moral hazard for legislators. Legislators can pursue irresponsible policies that are potentially electorally valuable and then rely on the court to bail them out by overturning the policy before implementation. We examine this issue by extending a seminal model of judicial review (Fox and Stephenson 2011) to include review both before the implementation of policy—ex ante review—and after the implementation of policy—ex post review. Our analysis shows that the moral hazard concerns are reduced when review occurs after policy costs are realized because politicians self-discipline. However, the full welfare implications for voters are complex and each form of review has advantages.

• "Dynamic effects of electoral laws." 2019. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 29(3): 402–19.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information     Replication Materials
  A change in electoral laws is expected to substantially alter political outcomes as voters and elites adjust their behavior to new rules. However, testing the causal implications of this theory using electoral reforms has been difficult because election results before a reform are not the appropriate counterfactual for election results after a reform. This article leverages electoral reform in New Zealand and Norway and the synthetic control method to approximate the appropriate counterfactuals: election results in the period after reform, had the reform not occurred. In both countries I find evidence that electoral reform had a short-term effect on the size of the electoral party system, but no evidence of a lasting effect on the electoral party system.

  

• "How Economic Integration Affects Party Issue Emphases," (with Jeong-Hyun Kim, Matthew Graham and Margit Tavits). 2015. Comparative Political Studies 48(10): 1227–1259.
      Abstract     Preprint     Supporting Information     Replication Materials    
  The economic dimension has typically been considered the primary dimension of political party competition. However, parties often rally voters on the basis of non-economic issues. In this article, we argue that integration into global markets and into the European Union (EU) constrains parties' abilities to credibly differentiate themselves on economic issues. Given these constraints, and voters' awareness of them, parties activate other non-economic issues along which to compete. Using data across 49 countries between 1961 and 2010, this study shows that increased economic integration is associated with increased emphasis on non-economic issues during election campaigns. This effect persists over time and remains robust to a number of alternative explanations and modeling strategies. We also explore the proposed causal mechanisms and show that integration is indeed associated with convergence of party positions on economic issues and that all types of parties–not just new and niche parties–respond to integration by politicizing non-economic issues. Finally, we leverage the latest round of EU enlargement to causally identify the effect of integration on party strategies.

  

Working Papers

• "Diversity within an Immigrant Population Can Reduce Local Opposition and Foster Integration.''
      Abstract
  In some places, immigrants come from numerous origins. In others, their backgrounds heavily overlap. How does this variation, the diversity within an immigrant population, impact local opposition to immigration in the form of hostile attitudes and barriers to integration? I argue that higher diversity within an immigrant population reduces opposition to immigration by countering negative stereotypes that paint immigrants as homogenous. Evidence from Denmark and Germany supports my argument. An original conjoint experiment in Germany uncovers a preference for the settlement of diverse immigrant groups and analysis of subnational units in both countries shows that increases in intra-immigrant diversity correspond with improved integration. To confirm that this effect is causal, I leverage exogenous variation in intra-immigrant diversity produced by spatial dispersion of refugees in Denmark. These findings show how the composition of immigrant populations can affect anti-immigrant attitudes and integration.

  

• "Large-Scale Citizenship Campaigns Can Increase Naturalization Rates,'' (with Joëlle Pianzola and Dominik Hangartner). Under Review.
      Abstract
  Research shows that the acquisition of host-country citizenship can improve the economic, political, and social integration of immigrants. Despite these benefits, many eligible immigrants do not seek naturalization. We evaluate the impact of a governmental intervention that addressed two hurdles on the path to citizenship: a lack of information about eligibility requirements and a dearth of encouragement from the host community. In 2017, the City of Zurich sent letters to over 35,000 immigrants informing them that they met residency requirements for Swiss citizenship and inviting them to submit an application for naturalization. We use individual-level administrative data and employ a difference-in-differences design that compares the changes in application rates of immigrants in Zurich pre- and post-campaign to similar immigrants in neighboring municipalities. Our estimates show that the citizenship campaign doubled the naturalization application rate. Next, we use supervised machine learning to identify the characteristics of immigrants who responded most and least strongly to the campaign. This heterogeneity analysis suggests that while the campaign was particularly effective for immigrants facing information or encouragement deficits, it also had only minor effects for 20\% of immigrants. Together, the findings document the effectiveness of light-touch citizenship campaigns. They also inform the design of future policies and `nudging' interventions that seek to facilitate naturalization and integration.

  

• "COVID-19 Lockdown Policies Weaken Civic Attitudes in the United States and Europe,'' (with Moritz Marbach and Dominik Hangartner). Under Review.
      Abstract
  The spread of COVID-19 has prompted governments to implement a range of restric- tions to public life and the economy (broadly, “lockdown policies”). We evaluate the short- and medium-term impacts of lockdown policies on civic attitudes relevant for the health of democracy. Using survey data collected daily between March and May 2020 in the United States and four European countries from 27,317 respondents and a difference-in-differences design, we document that lockdown policies give rise to authoritarian values and, to a lesser degree, support for autocracy. We find little evidence that lockdown policies affect satisfaction with democracy and the government, out-group hostility, and generalized trust. Additional analyses reveal that the effects on authoritarianism and support for autocracy persist for at least seven weeks, that the lifting of lockdown policies does not have a countervailing effect away from authoritarianism and support for autocracy, and that economic support packages have limited ability to alleviate the negative consequences of lockdowns on civic attitudes. Together, these findings confirm the existence of lockdowns’ political repercussions, but show the need for a nuanced assessment of their scope. We discuss the implications of our findings for how governments might need to accompany lockdowns with measures that strengthen civic culture.

  

• "Which Political Activities Are Caused by Education? Evidence from School Entry Exams,'' (with Dominik Hangartner, Lukas Schmid and Stefan Boes). R&R.
      Abstract     Pre-Analysis Plan
  Research on education’s effect on participation is split between those who argue that education is a "universal solvent"" that causally increases participation and those who hold that education merely proxies for pre-adult differences, with no independent effects. We incorporate a calculus of participation into the education-participation nexus to predict education’s effects for political activities that vary in their costs and benefits. We test these predictions with quasi-random variation in education caused by entry exams into upper-level secondary schools in Switzerland and participation measures from an original survey of former students conducted 40 years later. Comparing former students who narrowly passed or failed their exam, we find that an additional year of education increases electoral and low-cost non-electoral participation. We find no effects on high-cost non-electoral participation, however. These findings suggest that, rather than being a universal solvent or a mere proxy, education’s effect depends on the characteristics of political activities.

  

• "Local Political Contexts and Immigrant Integration," (with Anna Piil Damm).
      Abstract    
  The integration of immigrants is one of the most important policy tasks facing politicians today. This is especially true for local politicians, whose decisions can directly impact integration. How do local political contexts impact integration? To credibly identify the effects of municipal party government we leverage micro data from the Danish statistical registers on refugees entering Denmark from 1985-1998 and Denmark's spatial dispersion policy. Denmark's policy served as a natural experiment, quasi-randomly assigning refugees to municipalities around Denmark and allowing for the identification of the effect of municipality characteristics. We find that assignment to a municipality governed by a left party increases integration, as measured by out-migration from Denmark. Further results show this effect is contingent upon the security of the left's majority in the local council.

Selected Work in Progress

• "Political Repercussions of Open Border Policies,'' (with Andreas Beerli and Dominik Hangartner).
      Abstract    
  Prominent explanations of anti-immigrant attitudes give centrality to the socio-cultural differences between immigrants and host communities and to the economic threats posed by newcomers. In this paper, we provide evidence of a backlash to immigration in a context where both socio-cultural and economic threats were minimal. We study Switzerland, which opened its borders and labor market to the rest of Europe in the 2000s. Using a difference- in-differences approach, we first show that the number immigrants living and working in Swiss border municipalities increased dramatically after the borders opened, with the vast majority of these immigrants coming from neighbouring France, Germany and Italy. In the same border municipalities, we find that support for the anti-immigrant parties increased by approximately five percentage points after borders were opened. These findings contribute to our theoretical understanding of anti-immigrant sentiment and have important implications for the political consequences of the European Union’s principle of free movement.

• "The Long-Term Effect of University Education on Political Attitudes,'' (with Dominik Hangartner, Lukas Schmid and Stefan Boes).
      Pre-Analysis Plan    

Teaching

ETH Zurich

• Methods II: Introduction to Quantitative Social Science (Instructor: Dominik Hangartner), Fall 2020, Graduate
  

• Methods III: Causal Inference (Instructor: Dominik Hangartner), Spring 2020, Graduate
  

• Methods IV: Causal Inference (Instructor: Dominik Hangartner), Spring 2018 & 2019, Graduate
      Teaching Evaluations (2019)
  

Washington University in St. Louis

• Introduction to Programming in R (short course), Fall 2015, Graduate
  

• Quantitative Political Methodology (Instructor: Jacob Montgomery), Fall 2016, Undergraduate
      Teaching Evaluations
  

• Measurement and Latent Trait Models (Instructor: Jacob Montgomery), Fall 2016, Graduate
      Teaching Evaluations
  

• Comparative European Politics (Instructor: Margit Tavits), Fall 2015, Undergraduate
     Teaching Evaluations

• Quantitative Political Methodology (Instructor: Betsy Sinclair), Spring 2015, Undergraduate
     Teaching Evaluations
  

• Writing About Civil Rights (Instructor: Gary Miller), Fall 2014, Undergraduate
     Teaching Evaluations

• The Politics of the European Union (Instructor: Matthew Gabel), Fall 2013, Undergraduate