Research

Indigenous Representation and Governance

Land rights, forest governance, indigenous politics, and representation

Property, Power, and Participation: How Land and Political Rights Transform Forest Governance in Tribal India

Dissertation in Progress

Votes without Ideological Conversion: The Case of Hindu Nationalism and Indigenous Voters in India

Revise and Resubmit

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Religious nationalist parties answer to movements that seek ideological transformation alongside votes. I ask what happens to religious identity when such a party reaches a marginalized electorate through local networks, welfare access, and embedded leaders. I describe this route as leader-mediated expansion and argue that it produces mediated incorporation: the party's religious project travels through politicians who must remain credible to voters whose religious lives are plural. Voters may become more open to the movement's claims, while refusing the hierarchy of identities it seeks to impose. I test the argument in India, where the BJP won an indigenous reserved constituency held by its opposition for six decades, drawing on five months of fieldwork, 120 interviews, and a visual conjoint experiment with 678 indigenous Bhil respondents. I show that religious nationalist parties can win new electorates and broaden tolerance for their language without remaking the identities voters use to define themselves.

The Politics of Indigenous-Reserved Seat Vacancies in India's Village Councils

With Alyssa Heinze

Work in Progress

Democratic Resilience and Parties

Parties, workers, electoral collaboration, and local democracy

Formal Positions and the Intra-Party Organizational Hierarchy

With Feyaad Allie and Rahul Verma

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Party organizations create formal internal positions to manage work and outreach, and party workers use them to pursue advancement. Yet their consequences for hierarchy remain underexplored. We examine how party workers who hold formal positions differ from those who do not using two original surveys from India. In our first survey of 736 workers in one state, position holders are less supportive of intra-party democracy reforms, including internal primaries and the removal of nomination fees. Interviews suggest that position-holders value party organization control and centralization because their own advancement depended on it. In our national survey of 717 workers across 21 states and 17 parties, position holders report greater ambition, party attachment, and political satisfaction. Women and ethnic minorities are as likely as privileged groups to hold these positions, unlike in candidacy and elected office. Formal positions thus emerge as an underexplored threshold of loyalty and gatekeeping within party hierarchy.

Pressured from Above, Constrained from Within: Civil Society-Opposition Party Electoral Linkage

With Feyaad Allie

Under Review

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Across contexts, civil society organizations (CSOs) and opposition parties collaborate during elections when both confront entrenched incumbent governments. However, shared threats do not produce uniform partnerships on the ground. We argue that while restrictive environments encourage CSO-opposition party linkage, internal constituents constrain its local implementation. CSOs deepen collaboration when candidates align with their social mission, allowing leaders to protect organizational autonomy and reputation with members. Parties deepen collaboration when CSOs offer clear electoral value, making ties defensible to party cadres. We test this argument in India using 62 days of election campaign shadowing and original surveys of 730 CSO representatives and 736 party workers. Two survey experiments show variation in the scope, cohesion, and reciprocity expected by both actors during campaigns. This article unpacks the internal dynamics of CSO-opposition party linkage which constrain their shared response during restrictive environments, and reconceptualizes their relationship as negotiated rather than one-sided partisan brokerage.

Decentralizing Democratic Erosion: Local Election Suspensions in the World's Largest Democracy

With Alyssa Heinze

Under Review

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Democratic erosion is typically understood as unfolding at the national- and state-level. We call attention instead to local-level democratic erosion, a strategy that, we argue, consolidates elite political control while avoiding the public scrutiny that more visible forms of erosion invite. We examine this process through the recent, large-scale suspensions of local elections across India, where millions have gone years without local elected representatives. Drawing on five original surveys totaling over 8,000 respondents and 70 interviews, we substantiate an unawareness-based account of citizens' non-opposition to local-level democratic erosion, highlighting three main findings. First, most citizens are unaware that their own local government is suspended. Second, three preregistered vignette experiments show citizens are not apathetic: they perceive meaningful costs to local democratic erosion. Third, a final preregistered information experiment demonstrates that learning of one's local government's unelected status increases willingness to mobilize for democratic restoration.

Who Tolerates Dynastic Politicians? Political Ambition and Candidate Evaluation in India

With Rahul Verma

Working Paper

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Dynastic politicians remain central to electoral politics in many democracies, but we know less about which citizens tolerate them. This research note documents a previously unexamined correlate of tolerance: political ambition. Using a nationally representative survey of 1,988 Indian citizens, we show that respondents who say they would consider politics as a career evaluate dynastic politicians more favorably than otherwise similar respondents. Ambitious citizens are more likely to accept party nominations for politicians' children and to rate dynasts as more capable on nine of ten traits spanning influence, service delivery, and political skills. The associations are robust to demographic controls, state fixed effects, survey weights, and a measure of political engagement. Interviews with citizens and party workers provide suggestive evidence for a gatekeeper interpretation: aspirants often describe dynasts as unfair but unavoidable actors whose favor may matter for their own entry and advancement. The evidence is associational, but the pattern establishes that political ambition is linked to accommodation of dynastic power.

When Coalitions Overreach: Voter Limits on Coalition-Based Electoral Mobilization by Interest Organizations

With Feyaad Allie

Working Paper

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Coalition building is central to classic accounts of social movement success. We ask whether the logic carries into electoral mobilization when interest organizations seek to influence partisan politics under restrictive conditions. We argue that organizations carry coalition repertoires from movement politics into elections because coalition work expands reach beyond direct constituencies, helps coordinate groups with uneven capacities, separates partisan campaigning from organizational work, and builds on organizations' reputations as altruistic actors. However, voters evaluate these efforts through a different logic. They place greater weight on particularistic ties and local embeddedness, and become more skeptical of altruistic intent when outreach is conducted through broad coalition labels. We test this argument in India through interviews, campaign observations, and three survey experiments with organizational representatives and voters. We show that organizations adopt coalition based electoral mobilization, but voters impose an overlooked limit on coalition building by withholding trust from coalition outreach in elections.