"Peasants into Citizens: Suffrage Expansion and the Rise of Mass Politics" (with Anne Degrave and Arturas Rozenas) R&R at World Politics [Working Paper]
Abstract: The concurrent rise of mass politics and democratic institutions represents two major global political trends of the past two centuries. We examine the relationship between these historical developments by investigating how voting rights influenced mass political mobilization. Utilizing the discontinuous variation in suffrage levels in the French local elections during the July Monarchy (1830–1848), we find that more inclusive suffrage fostered the rise of pro-democratic mass politics by broadening engagement with national public affairs and intensifying both electoral and popular mobilization against anti-democratic reforms. The findings suggest a mechanism through which democratic institutions can be self-reinforcing: by facilitating pro-democratic mass politics, the expansion of voting rights raises the cost of authoritarian backsliding.
"Does Education Make Subjects or Citizens? Primary Schooling and Anti-Authoritarian Mobilization in 19th-Century France" Under Review [Working Paper]
Abstract: Does primary education make subjects or citizens? Although schools are often designed to instill obedience, they also provide basic skills and socialization that build the mobilizational capacities central to democratic politics. This paper examines this tension in the context of 19th-century France, where primary education was explicitly designed to promote social order. Exploiting a population cutoff that discontinuously increased primary school provision, I show that communes just above the threshold exhibited greater resistance to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1851 coup against the Second Republic, both on the streets and at the ballot box. These communes also consumed more newspapers and exchanged more letters. The results indicate that primary schooling can strengthen ties between local populations and national political networks, expanding the public's mass mobilization capacity.
"A Strategic Logic of Public Education Provision: Evidence from the Second French Empire" (with Kun Heo) Under Review [Working Paper]
Abstract: A large literature argues that states expand public education to promote industrialization, nation-building, and social order. Yet states do not operate in a vacuum: nonstate actors can also provide schooling, sometimes in ways that challenge state authority. We argue that, in such contexts, states may expand public education not for its intrinsic benefits, but to limit the influence of competing providers. We examine this strategic logic during the Second French Empire (1852–1870), when the rapid expansion of Catholic schools came to be perceived as a political threat. Using newly digitized archival data and exploiting a population-based cutoff, we show that state officials promoted the creation of secular schools for girls primarily to displace Catholic provision rather than to expand overall access to education. Our findings highlight the role of strategic competition in the expansion of public education and suggest that similar logics may shape other dimensions of state expansion.
"The Political Consequences of Trade Protection: The Méline Tariff and the Rise of Socialism in France" (with Simon Hix) Draft Available Upon Request
Abstract: From classical economics, we know that tariffs harm consumers by raising the prices of imported goods and their domestic substitutes, while protecting producers in import-competing sectors. But how do these distributional consequences shape electoral politics? We argue that tariffs can cause political re-alignments by enabling challenger parties to mobilize around distributional conflicts and activate latent cleavages. We test this in the case of the Méline tariff, France’s landmark protectionist reform of 1892. We measure the political effect of the tariff by combining product-level tariff changes, census data on sectoral employment composition, and election data. We find that socialist candidates gained more votes in places that were most negatively affected by the tariff, at the expense of the incumbent Republicans. These results highlight the conditions under which tariffs can reshape existing political conflicts, and point to the importance of trade politics in the emergence of Europe's class cleavage in the late 19th century.
"Waves of Fear: Propaganda and Violence in the Spanish Civil War" Draft Available Upon Request
Abstract: Demoralizing the enemy's supporters is a central goal of propaganda during conflicts, but we know relatively little about how it shapes war outcomes. This paper helps fill this gap by investigating how demoralization campaigns affect the perpetration of wartime violence. To do so, I focus on the case of Radio Sevilla, a prominent radio station that the Nationalists used to intimidate Republican supporters during the Spanish Civil War. Leveraging quasi-exogenous variation in radio availability, I show that access to the Nationalist broadcasts decreased both Republican violence and subsequent Nationalist retaliation. The broadcasts plausibly diminished civilian collaboration with Republican armed groups, thereby reducing the Republicans' ability to carry out violence as well as the Nationalists' need for repression. These findings show that armies can use propaganda to undermine their enemy's ability to neutralize potential threats while simultaneously reducing their own repression needs.
"Militants in Exile: Spanish Republicans and Political Mobilization in France" (with Elias Dinas and Pau Grau-Vilalta)
"The Old Regime and the Revolution of the Clergy" (with Carles Boix)