Existing accounts of centralized candidate selection argue that party elites tend to ignore constituent preferences in favor of internal party concerns, leading to accountability deficits. Yet this claim has been largely assumed rather than demonstrated. We provide the first detailed empirical...

In this paper, we examine the extent to which political parties in a strong-party system hold individual politicians to account. Specifically, we consider the determinants of incumbent renominations and promotions in the context of South African local government elections. We find strong...

Objective To study the U.S. public’s attitudes toward surveillance measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19, particularly smartphone applications (apps) that supplement traditional contact tracing. Method We deployed a survey of approximately 2,000 American adults to measure support...

How does the recognition of collective self-governance rights for indigenous communities affect national unity and state consolidation? In recent decades, many states have recognized such rights, devolving de jure control over land and local governance to indigenous institutions. Prominent...

Governments across the Global South have begun introducing biometric IDs (eIDs) in an attempt to improve citizen-state legibility. While such initiatives can improve government efficiency, they also raise important questions about citizen privacy, especially for groups with a history of mistrust...

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19...

The rapid development of an effective COVID-19 vaccine provides hope that the pandemic might be brought to an end, but as societies roll out vaccines and begin to open up, policymakers face difficult questions about how to best verify individuals’ vaccine records. Building vaccine record...

Governments across the Global South have begun introducing biometric IDs (eIDs) in an attempt to improve citizen-state legibility. While such initiatives can improve government efficiency, they also raise important questions about citizen privacy, especially for groups with a history of mistrust...