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Graduate programs: spagrad@american.edu
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United States
Khaldoun AbouAssi, FOIA Administration during Trump Presidency
Khaldoun AbouAssi, Department of Public Administration and Policy
Description
This project investigates the administration of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United States federal government during the Trump. Specifically, using data from all federal government agencies from 2017 t0 2021, the purpose is to examine indicators of FOIA caseloads, including requests, exemptions, denials, appeals, and backlogs, and FOIA management capacity, including staff, financial burdens, and processing times. The main goal is to identify broad and general trends in the administration of FOIA during that presidential administration and compare it to the Obama administration that championed open government. The analyses should provide some insights on how the political environment shaped the administration of FOIA and on the ability of bureaucrats to use FOIA requests as a mean to wither political pressure.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The student will work on pulling the data on the different indicators of FOIA caseloads (requests, exemptions, denials, appeals, and backlogs, and FOIA management capacity, including staff, financial burdens, and processing times) for all federal agencies from 2016-2021. The data is available on FOIA.gov website and needs to be complied, cleaned, and organized. Depending on the progress of work, the student might then conduct some descriptive analyses (using Excel) to produce snapshots of the FOIA administration during Trump Administration.
Lynn Addington, Community Research to Guide Age Friendly Strategic Planning Goals
Lynn Addington, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
This project will focus on providing research support for a local community partner to identify DC resident views on age friendly policies and issues. The specific tasks will be finalized in the spring and may include conducting research to identify current issues around aging in place, assisting with survey question development, assisting with collecting survey data, assisting with focus group discussions, coding survey responses, or a combination of these tasks. Findings obtained from this project will be used by our community partner to develop future goals and inform its strategic planning regarding support ways to make DC an easier place to grow older.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
As noted in the project description, this project will provide an undergraduate research assistant with an opportunity to assist with work that has direct policy applications for our community partner. Tasks may include conducting necessary literature reviews, assisting with survey topic development and question wording, assisting with survey data collection, assisting with focus group discussions, and coding survey responses. Additional tasks may include helping to summarize the findings and to identify various avenues to present the findings obtained. Specific tasks will depend on timing and the needs of our community partner.
Julie Baldwin, Military Veteran Peer Mentors: Examining the Experience of VTC Mentors and Mentees
Julie Baldwin, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
The purpose of this study is to understand the experiences of offenders with a history of military service with the mentor component of veterans treatment court (VTC) programs, as well as the experience of the veteran peer mentors in these programs. Veteran peer mentor programs are intended to provide mentees with the support they need to not only graduate from these court programs but to become fully re-integrated into society and lead fulfilling and productive lives. In this study, we focus on the overlap or differentiation of military experience, criminal justice experience, deviant and criminal behavior, and mental health, as well as other factors, between the mentors and mentees. We will also examine the dynamics and impact of these mentor-mentee relationships and how these relationships or aspects of these relationships have affected both the veteran mentors’ and veteran mentees’ lives in areas such as physical, mental, and behavioral health, including substance use and misuse; transition from military to civilian society; social and familial relationships; and criminal justice contact. Additionally, we will examine the experiences of both the mentors and mentees in VTC programs. We seek to identify pivotal events and experiences and how those have affected these military veterans throughout the life course. This study utilizes primary data collected from interviews with justice-involved veterans and their mentors across several larger studies. Locations of these programs include Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
Undergraduate research assistants (URAs) are paramount to the success of this project. For this project, URAs will assist with qualitative analysis, reading portions of transcripts from one-on-one in-depth interviews these veterans treatment court mentees and peer mentors to identify themes within individual interviews and across interviews. The URAs will be able to note areas that they find interesting and have the opportunity work with Dr. Julie Baldwin on research publications. Benefits to the URAs who participate in this project include gaining qualitative research experience, expanding their research networks, and having the opportunity to co-author research publications and potentially work on future funded research.
Andrew Ballard, Understanding Negotiation in Congress
Andrew Ballard, Department of Government
Description
Negotiation is an integral part of all policymaking processes, yet scholars of Congress do not have an adequate understanding of the mechanisms that drive negotiations between individual members of Congress and between political parties. Part of the reason for this gap in our knowledge is that we do not have systematic data detailing the negotiation process, from when groups of members put out proposals to when policies are enacted into law and in between. In this project, we are helping to fill this gap by building a dataset of two-party policy negotiations from the 1980s to the present. We are in the process of identifying which policymaking efforts meet the criteria of being fully fledge efforts to negotiate policy on the parts of both parties and detailing each of those processes one by one. The result will be qualitative and quantitative datasets outlining the details of proposals made by both parties, which deals were made, and the outcomes. From this, we will be able to systematically analyze when parties and members get more or less of what they want in policy negotiations.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project
We are in the process of identifying all of the instances of two-party negotiations, using existing two existing datasets provided by other researchers. Students would aid in finishing this process, which involves looking at academic records and news reports of congressional policymaking back to the 1980s. Then, students would also help with the second part of the project, detailing the negotiations process for each of the instances we identify. This would also involve combing through archival data to determine the steps along the process of each negotiation.
TaLisa Carter, Colorblind Language & Racism
TaLisa Carter, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
Colorblind ideology poses that individuals who deny, downplay and/or avoid racism often engage in similar behaviors. These behaviors include how they rationalize and discuss issues related to race and racism. Bonilla-Silva states that these specific language styles allow White people to “talk nasty about minorities without sounding racist” and signal extreme discomfort with a topic such as stuttering, pauses, and other nonverbal cues. This project examines colorblind language and racism by analyzing 100 interviews with students across the United States. Qualitative analysis will allow for the empirical support, extension, and/or divergence from Bonilla Silva’s Colorblind framework.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
As a result of their work on this project, an undergraduate research assistant will build/strengthen a wide variety of research skills that can be applied within the criminal justice system and other social science disciplines. Duties of the research assistant include the following: Reviewing literature on relevant topics
• Training on how to analyze qualitative data using the statistical software program NVivo according to human-subject protocols.
• Analyze interviews for the verbal and nonverbal ways individuals communicate about race and racism to either credit, extend, or discredit Bonilla Silva’s theory.
• Working with the faculty member in preparing reports and presentations that are appropriate for a range of audiences including academics and the public. Depending on progress, the assistant may have the opportunity for authorship on a peer-reviewed publication.
Bill Davies, The First Decision of the European Court of Justice
Bill Davies, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
This project will result in a book manuscript detailing a historical analysis of the first decision issued by the European Court of Justice, the supreme court of the European Union. The case involved a French accusation of a misuse of powers from the European High Authority and ultimately ended with a victory for the defendant. While interesting in and of itself as a constitutional question, the real focus lies in how the Court went from an idea on treaty paper to an actual functioning courtroom. The decisions around procedures and orders, layouts and décor – even the color of judicial robes - all contributed to the theater of the spectacle and, ultimately, the legitimacy of this brand new international court. The project will collect and analyze archival material from a variety of European and national archives. Secondary sources will be used to contextualize the events, as well as describe the process through which newly established courts become reality. Comparative examples drawn will include the US Supreme Court, the International Criminal Court, and the German Constitutional Court.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The research assistant will participate in the collection and analysis of the archival materials. This will involve first learning how to process and scrutinize archival material generally, and then European Union archival material specifically. The student will engage with the EU Historical Archives in Florence, Italy online, process received archive documents, and then produce a written analysis of the findings from the collected materials.
Todd Eisenstadt, Insufficient Attention to Climate Adaptation Policy Frames in the Greater Caribbean
Todd Eisenstadt, Department of Government
Description
Abstract Describing the Overall Project, Time Frame and Budgetary Requirements: Is silence tantamount to “climate obstructionism”? While the lack of implementing language on loss and damage at the international level has been widely addressed by critics and considered as such, we ask here how domestic governments, those which must adapt to ensure the safety of their residents, address the expensive and existential issue of adaptation. Seeking answers in eight nations of the Greater Caribbean, one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world, we ask whether long-term planning for adaptation is sufficiently addressed in the Bahamas, Barbados, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Guatemala, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. Using discourse analysis, surveys of media, government officials, NGOs, and academic analysts, and open-ended process tracing interviews, we seek to understand whether and how vulnerable nation governments are addressing climate adaptation directly, or perhaps, failing to have “difficult” discussions of the problem, and thus avoiding making politically unpopular budgetary choices and facing an existential crisis. Arguing that avoidance of addressing the full scope of adaptation is tantamount to “climate obstruction” requires demonstrating that leaders had this intent, and we will not likely have sufficient evidence. More likely, we will find a range of leader and government strategies to address climate adaptation, ranging from courageous confrontation with the international donor community by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley, to the outright absence of government discourse on the matter in Guatemala. The project will combine discourse analysis with elite interviews, process tracing of adaptation policy development (or lack thereof) and QCA (qualitative comparative analysis) using all eight countries, to understand when nations choose silence, when they choose to open a climate adaptation dialogue, and the conditions under which such dialogues reach media and public discourse.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The undergraduate research assistant will help the author gather secondary research on responses of national executives to climate crises and identifying speeches of leaders during campaigns made on selected years. The student will help me identify whether and how executives reference climate adaptation as a source of national policy needs. The work will involve searching online for speeches and then analyzing and coding speeches and gathering information about the weather-related events referenced (when did a hurricane "hit"? how big were damages? how did the national government respond?). This project will give the student an opportunity to engage regularly with the faculty member and learn how faculty design research. I hope to find a student with international and/or comparative politics interest and knowledge of Spanish and or time spent in Caribbean nations.
Michelle Engert, Bob Dylan and the Civil Rights Movement 1963-1964
Michelle Engert, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
I am currently doing research on Bob Dylan (singer, songwriter, musician, Nobel laureate) and his participation and connection to the Civil rights movement between 1963-1964 and seeking to learn more about how that came to pass and to end and about the nature of the collaboration and the relationships that led to it. I am looking for assistance locating documents and/or stories regarding the circumstances of his performance at the March on Washington and generally on the nature of his brief involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Much of what we know has come from anecdotal sources around Bob Dylan, the fact of the relationship and what Bob Dylan himself has said or written. I am looking for possible new sources and documents from the movement itself to help piece together and better understand the nature of these relationships through what might be found in the King and SNCC collections and various Civil Rights archives and interviews. I am looking for a research assistant who would access digital archives (and possibly physical archives in Washington, DC) to uncover information about the connection between Bob Dylan and Civil Rights leaders and organizations. I would like my researcher to look through the interviews undertaken in the last ten years for The Civil Rights History Project Collection through the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Also to explore what can be found in Civil Rights Digital Library Archival Collections and Reference Resources, the King Center Archives and the The SNCC Legacy Project. The student researcher for this project will gain experience in digital archival research and learn about the Civil Rights Movement.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
I would like my researcher to look through the interviews undertaken in the last ten years for The Civil Rights History Project Collection through the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture. Also to explore what can be found in Civil Rights Digital Library Archival Collections and Reference Resources, the King Center Archives and the The SNCC Legacy Project. The student researcher for this project will gain experience in digital archival research and learn about the Civil Rights Movement.
Brian Hughes, Platform Affordance Education & Inoculation
Brian Hughes, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
As part of PERIL’s ongoing work in media literacy education, PAPL Research Assistants would work researching the technological affordances of key digital platforms responsible for spreading mis-, dis-, and malinformation and hate content. This research analyzes the ways that the underlying design and engineering of digital communication technologies—social media in particular—lend themselves to misleading, manipulative, and hateful discourse. We call this project Affordance Education, and it addresses the underlying emotional and cognitive effects of digital communication technology on users and society at large. Research shows that preventing extremism and building resilience to mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories works best when it is done preventatively. It is more effective to “inoculate” the public prior to their exposure to manipulative and harmful content. Research also shows that the more broadly we inoculate against manipulation, the more effective it is at scale. It is more effective to inoculate against specific narratives than more granular false facts, and more effective to inoculate against broad narrative tropes and rhetorical styles than specific narratives. The present project aims both for maximally early intervention and maximally broad education. We hypothesize that Affordance Education could produce resistance to manipulative media by inoculating against the form of manipulative media rather than the content as in the case of fact-checking or “prebunking.”
This project consists of performing “platform audits” to map user experience (UX) on relevant platforms. It includes the development and application of user profiles to determine platform use-cases. It then analyzes findings qualitatively to determine platform affordances (that is, which behavior a platform encourages and facilitates, and which it discourages or makes impossible). These findingsare then translated into short educational messages and tested to measure efficacy in building resistance of online manipulation.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
PAPL Research Assistants would be provided training in Platform Affordance Auditing to map user experience (UX) on relevant platforms. They would assist in the identification of relevant platforms and conduct independent, but supervised, audits of those platforms. PAPL Research Assistants would be trained in the development and application of user profiles for the purpose of testing user journeys through the platforms being studied. They would then conduct independent, but supervised, user journeys of those platforms. PAPL Research Assistants would be given training in intercoder reliability to synthesize their independent findings, along with PERIL staff’s. They would receive training in the basics of attitudinal inoculation messaging, its methods, procedures, and history. They would use this training to help develop Affordance Education messages based on the findings of their platform audits, user journeys, and subsequent synthesis. PAPL Research Assistants would be taught to the basics of study design, including working with IRB and building online surveys. They would assist in deploying the survey and in writing its subsequent report, specifically the literature review and findings sections.
Robert Johnson, Is a death sentence a bona fide death threat?
Robert Johnson, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
I am working with a death row inmate and an alum of our doctoral program (who also holds a law degree) to develop the argument that the death penalty is a bona fide death threat. Death threats are seen as one of the core elements of psychological torture; arguably, psychological torture is a violation of the Eight Amendment, making the death penalty unconstitutional. I plan to analyze death-row narratives (published online and in print) to see whether, and to what and to what extent, death row prisoners experience the death sentence as death threat, with attendant emotional and cognitive consequences.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
I am working with a death row inmate and an alum of our doctoral program (who also holds a law degree) to develop the argument that the death penalty is a bona fide death threat. Death threats are seen as one of the core elements of psychological torture; arguably, psychological torture is a violation of the Eight Amendment, making the death penalty unconstitutional. I plan to analyze death-row narratives (published online and in print) to see whether, and to what and to what extent, death row prisoners experience the death sentence as death threat, with attendant emotional and cognitive consequences.
Lallen Johnson, "You can't park there!": The impact of urban revitalization on parking enforcement
Lallen Johnson, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
Washington, DC has experienced substantial urban revitalization over the past two decades. And according to some scholars, it is the most gentrified city in the United States. An analysis of American Community Survey data from 2000 – 2016 supports these points. In the average census block group the percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree, employed in a postindustrial job, or that identify as non-Hispanic white increased by 16, 11, and 8 percentage points, respectively. Consequences of gentrification include conflicts over who qualifies as a legitimate user of public space and disagreement over the appropriate uses of public space. One way that the latter occurs is through the regulation of right-of-way (on street) parking. Rapidly shifting development patterns may motivate changes in parking regulations and enforcement across neighborhoods. And while those changes may be driven by safety and traffic flow concerns, they may also lead to financial consequences for motorists who violate new regulations. Considering this knowledge, two research questions frame this study. First, what is the geographic patterning of traffic citations in Washington, DC? And second, what is the effect of neighborhood gentrification on the issuance of parking violations? While existing research indicates that social structure is predictive of citation patterns, the impact of structural change remains unaddressed. The above questions will be addressed using three years of parking violation data at the incident level. These data represent a compilation of citations issued by the Metropolitan Police Department, as well as the District Department of Transportation. A geographic information system will be used to map occurrences of violations along with census measures to identify spatial patterns. Statistical effects of gentrification on violations will be estimated using count regression models.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The undergraduate research assistant (RA) working on this project will be mentored through five general study task areas. First, they will learn how to navigate the U.S. Census website to download multiple years of demographic data, which is an important skill in quantitative social science research. Second, using that data they will assist with the creation of key indices associated with gentrification. Third, the RA will learn to append multiple sources of data into one central dataset to estimate and interpret models of parking violations. Fourth, the RA will use geographic information systems (GIS) to create digital maps showing the distribution of traffic violations, social structure, and any spatial relationships. Lastly, throughout the project the RA will be required to read key pieces of literature to facilitate their understanding of the methods and concepts relevant to the study.
Silvia Kim, Documenting Variations in Ranked Choice Voting
Silvia Kim, Department of Government
Description
Do ballot designs affect election results under ranked-choice voting (RCV)? RCV is an electoral system where voters can vote by ranking multiple candidates. Recently, it has been alleged to solve multiple problems in American politics by making elections less polarized and giving voters more choices. Despite a growing number of studies on RCV, very little is known about internal variation in RCV implementations and its consequences on election administration and American democracy. Indeed, the lack of understanding of how ballot designs affect electoral outcomes within RCV elections has made it challenging for researchers to explain and predict when RCV produces more democratic outcomes than other systems. Our project investigates how ballot designs and election laws regulating how voters can vote shape electoral outcomes under RCV. We do so by collecting individual cast vote records and auxiliary information in RCV elections across the United States.
We seek to explain and predict (a) the distribution of observed voting patterns and (b) the proportions of top-1, top-2, and top-3 rankings by using multiple pieces of design-level and contextual information. Such information includes:
* The presence of additional information available for voters (e.g., party registration of candidates)
* The order of candidates presented in actual ballots
* The number of candidates running for office
* The number of candidates voters are allowed to rank
* The mode of voting (e.g., in-person paper ballot, in-person voting machine, and vote-by-mail)
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The research assistant will have an opportunity to have hands-on experience in starting, managing, and completing a high-quality academic project, working with Prof. Kim and Prof. Atsusaka (University of Houston). The contribution of the assistant will involve (1) collecting and managing original data, (2) analyzing and visualizing the relationships between the above variables, and (3) writing up an independent section that is consistent with the format used in flagship journals in political science. Depending on the interest, more advanced data analysis could be done during the project period.
Adrienne LeBas, Event Catalogue data and election violence in Kenya
Adrienne LeBas, Department of Government
Description
This is an on-going data collection project aimed at producing more precise data on the location and character of election-related violence in Kenya. The existing event catalogue consists of more than 4500 events reported in Kenyan newspapers from 1992 to 2017. This dataset allows us to answer several questions, such as how political violence changed over time in terms of perpetrators andvictims, intensity, and scale. It will also allow us to evaluate the effect of things like election competitiveness and changes in representation on election violence, protest, and criminality.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The RA would do some original data collection, but the focus of this fellowship would instead be the cleaning, coding, and analysis of the existing dataset. We would work to merge our event data with data from other sources, including data collected by past PAPL fellows. The RA would acquire skills in creating graphics and undertaking more advanced data analysis. Ideally, the student has an interest in African politics, some existing statistical skills or familiarity with Stata or R, and interest in learning GIS analysis. There would be an opportunity to co-publish with the faculty lead and/or to use this data for a larger student research project.
Jan Leighley, Voter Registration and Election Administration Data Project
Jan Leighley, Department of Government
Description
The study of state laws that govern voter registration and election administration in local, state and federal elections are the focus of social scientists, journalists and legislators interested in understanding the impact of such policies on citizens, election administration and democracy. The availability of accurate, relevant and timely data on these laws, however, is limited. The existing data sets available for a limited and varied set of years use inconsistent measures of key election policies, limiting the rigor and generalization of scholarly studies. As a consequence, the public impact of this work is limited.
With the invaluable research assistance of AU graduate and undergraduate students over the past several years, we have compiled a comprehensive data base on state election laws (beginning with 1972). An important next step is to evaluate the quality of our new data with existing, more limited, data bases on state election laws.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
Undergraduate research assistants would participate in one or more of the following tasks: o Comparing VREAD data/measures with those used in other online sources
o Collecting other existing data sets on election laws and examining for coding consistency
o Evaluating new variables by comparing them to older data sets used in published research
o Contribute to the framing, writing and analysis of a research paper that will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, with the possibility of co-authorship depending on the student’s interest and contributions. By working on this project, students will be introduced and trained in the use of data management systems, the acquisition, coding and statistical analysis of a variety of social science data sets, the R software package, and the basics of data visualization.
David Lublin, Inclusion by Design
David Lublin, Department of Government
Description
This is a broad comparative project that is attempt to estimate support for parties in government by different ethnic group as a first step towards better understanding of what sorts of democratic institutions better promote inclusion.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
I'm looking for a student to gather and to match election and ethnic data in as fine-grained a way as possible (e.g. municipality or other geographic units) to facilitate estimation of voting behavior by different ethnic groups. Skills in Excel basics necessary (or statistical packages like R very useful). Interested in people with language skills who might be able to help with either (1) a variety of Latin American countries (i.e. Spanish), (2) Israel (Hebrew), (3) Ukraine (Ukrainian/Russian), or (4) Nepal (Nepali).
Ali Valenzuela, Voting for Violence? The Group-Bases of Support for Political Violence in 2020
Ali Valenzuela, Department of Government
Description
During the 2020 presidential election, who supported violence against their political opponents? What roles did partisanship and ethno-racial identity play in these anti-democratic attitudes, and how did they shift from October before Election Day to the post-election periods in November and again after President Biden's inauguration? During this stretch of time, voters were exposed to both low (in the pre-election period) and high (in the post-election period, especially after the January 6th, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol) volumes of news coverage and political rhetoric from then-president Trump related to political violence. How was this changing salience of political violence related to the American public’s commitment to democratic principles and opposition to political violence, and how do these relationships vary across partisan and ethno-racial subgroups? In this project, we will analyze a novel three-wave panel survey that was fielded on national samples of Latino, Black, Asian, and White registered voters interviewed in October before the 2020 election, again in November and December after the election had been called for Joe Biden, and a third time starting at the end of January after President Biden's inauguration. In all three survey waves, we asked respondents the extent to which they "…feel that violence would be justified to stop what some have called the radical left (right)?" Using these items, we can trace support for anti-democratic violence over time and across subgroups within our survey. We also asked items capturing American, national origin, and ethno-racial identity strength, linked fate, and group biases in each wave of the survey, which will allow us to test whether political events between each survey wave primed these attachments and prejudices, resulting in shifts in support for anti-democratic violence. Better understanding support for political violence and anti-democratic behaviors in contemporary U.S. politics is more urgent than ever before.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
The undergraduate research assistant for this project would be asked to identify all other recently published and unpublished political science research on support for political violence (primarily research conducted in the U.S., but some research in cross-country contexts could be informative), on support for and reactions to the January 6th insurrection, and on related topics; they would briefly summarize the methods and findings in each research study that is identified; and they would identify and summarize related research (e.g., on affective polarization, partisan prejudice, and race and polarization in the U.S.). With prior quantitative training (in R or Stata), the research assistant would be asked to aid in coding variables from the survey waves, calculating summary statistics by party, race, and survey wave.
Andrea Vilán, Monitoring the Implementation of Human Rights Treaties
Andrea Vilán, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology
Description
Many human rights treaties establish committees of experts to monitor how states implement treaty obligations. These committees receive information on human rights practices from states and civil society organizations, and then offer recommendations to address implementation gaps. The conventional wisdom is that these committees are unable to improve compliance with human rights standards. Critics of the monitoring system point out that committees rely on the reports produced by member states, which are often late, of poor quality, and likely to underreport non-compliant behavior. Furthermore, the recommendations issued by the committees are not enforceable. Yet recent work has challenged the prevailing wisdom that monitoring is ineffective by showing that states that participate in the reporting process improve their human rights practices. How does monitoring improve human rights outcomes? In this project, I argue that when monitoring committees receive high quality information, they offer recommendations that are more precise. This higher precision, in turn, leads to improved compliance with human rights obligations. I test this argument by collecting data from the United Nations monitoring process, particularly for issued related to women and children’s rights. This project will shed light on the indirect effects that the ratification of human rights treaties can have on rights practices.
How could an undergraduate research assistant contribute to this project?
I have been collecting cross-national, time-series data on the recommendations issued by different United Nations committees that monitor compliance with children’s human rights. The undergraduate student will continue these data collection efforts during the summer 2023. The tasks include 1) reading state reports and civil society reports to the United Nations, 2) reading the recommendations issued by the monitoring committees, and 3) using the codebook I developed to enter key information into an Excel spreadsheet. I hope this project will show students how qualitative data can be codified systematically to compare variables across time and space, and that it will help as a springboard for their own independent projects. Students interested in international law, the United Nations system, and the rights of women and children are especially encouraged to apply.