research
published papers, working papers, and work in progress
Published papers
2025
- PSRMFederalism and Ideologywith Anna M Wilke, and Michael M TingPolitical Science Research and Methods 2025
Classic arguments about federalist governance emphasize an informational or learning role for decentralizing policy authority, but in practice, ideological outcomes frequently motivate this choice. We examine the role of ideology in the allocation of policy-making power by modeling a two-period interaction between an elected central executive and two local governments. Decentralization reduces the executive’s ability to set policy and control externalities but potentially insures against future policy reversals. In this environment, partial decentralization is a common outcome. Complete decentralization arises when executives are unlikely to be re-elected, party polarization is high, and institutional hurdles to policy-making are big. These results help to clarify existing cross-national empirical findings on the determinants of centralization.
@article{syunyaev2022federalism, title = {Federalism and Ideology}, author = {Wilke, Anna M and Syunyaev, Georgiy and Ting, Michael M}, journal = {Political Science Research and Methods}, pages = {1--9}, year = {2025}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2025.13}, url = {https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/decentralization-and-ideology/1A81048F21CBF73FC24F862D89E1D913}, status = {published} }
2021
- NatMedCOVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Hesitancy in Low- and Middle-Income Countrieswith Julio S Solı́s Arce, Shana S Warren, Niccolò F Meriggi, Alexandra Scacco, Nina McMurry, Maarten Voors, Amyn Abdul Malik, Samya Aboutajdine, Opeyemi Adeojo, and 64 othersNature Medicine 2021
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 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs.
@article{solis2021covid, title = {COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Hesitancy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries}, author = {Sol{\'\i}s Arce, Julio S and Warren, Shana S and Meriggi, Niccol{\`o} F and Scacco, Alexandra and McMurry, Nina and Voors, Maarten and Syunyaev, Georgiy and Malik, Amyn Abdul and Aboutajdine, Samya and Adeojo, Opeyemi and others, 64}, journal = {Nature Medicine}, volume = {27}, number = {8}, pages = {1385--1394}, year = {2021}, publisher = {Nature Publishing Group}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01454-y}, url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01454-y}, media = {https://nature.altmetric.com/details/109629548}, status = {published} }
2015
- RJEHow (not) to Measure Russian Regional InstitutionsRussian Journal of Economics 2015
The paper explores various measures of institutional quality in Russian regions, and compares those measures to each other. Such analysis leads to the conclusion that Russian regional institutions are essentially multidimensional, and therefore comparisons of Russian regions in terms of their overall institutional quality could be problematic. New institutional indices are derived from Russian enterprise surveys held under the BEEPS project of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Such indices yield a typology of Russian regions in terms of efficacy of regional administrations’ control over economy and bureaucracy in their regions. Dynamics of regional institutional indices is investigated against the backdrop of Russia-wide institutional trends.
@article{baranov2015not, title = {How (not) to Measure Russian Regional Institutions}, author = {Baranov, Alexey and Malkov, Egor and Polishchuk, Leonid and Rochlitz, Michael and Syunyaev, Georgiy}, journal = {Russian Journal of Economics}, volume = {1}, number = {2}, pages = {154--181}, year = {2015}, publisher = {Elsevier}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ruje.2015.11.005}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405473915000227}, status = {published} } - PubChoiceRuling Elites’ Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rightswith Leonid PolishchukPublic Choice 2015
We provide a theory and empirical evidence indicating that the rotation of ruling elites in conjunction with elites’ asset ownership could improve property rights protection in non-democracies. The mechanism that upholds property rights is based on elites’ concern about the security of their own asset ownership in the event they lose power. Such incentives provide a solution to the credible commitment problem in maintaining secure property rights when institutional restrictions on expropriation are weak or absent.
@article{polishchuk2015ruling, title = {Ruling Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership: Implications for Property Rights}, author = {Polishchuk, Leonid and Syunyaev, Georgiy}, journal = {Public Choice}, volume = {162}, number = {1}, pages = {159--182}, year = {2015}, publisher = {Springer}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0210-2}, url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-014-0210-2}, status = {published} }
2014
- VoprEkoInvestment Climate and Government Turnover in Russian Regionswith Leonid PolishchukVoprosy Ekonomiki (In Russian) 2014
We study the impact of Russian regional governors’ rotation and their affiliation with private sector firms for the quality of investment climate in Russian regions. A theoretical model presented in the paper predicts that these factors taken together improve “endogenous” property rights under authoritarian regimes. This conclusion is confirmed empirically by using Russian regional data for 2002—2010; early in that period gubernatorial elections had been canceled and replaced by federal government’s appointments. This is an indication that under certain conditions government rotation is beneficial for economic development even when democracy is suppressed.
@article{syunyaev2014climate, title = {Investment Climate and Government Turnover in Russian Regions}, author = {Syunyaev, Georgiy and Polishchuk, Leonid}, journal = {Voprosy Ekonomiki (In Russian)}, number = {2}, pages = {88--117}, year = {2014}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.32609/0042-8736-2014-2-88-117}, url = {https://www.vopreco.ru/jour/article/view/616?locale=en_US}, status = {published} }
Book chapters
- PalgraveProperty Rights without Democracy: The Role of Elites’ Rotation and Asset Ownershipwith Leonid PolishchukIn Dahlström, Carland and Wängnerud, Lena (eds.) Elites, Institutions and the Quality of Government 2015
@inproceedings{polishchuk2015property, title = {Property Rights without Democracy: The Role of Elites' Rotation and Asset Ownership}, author = {Polishchuk, Leonid and Syunyaev, Georgiy}, booktitle = {Elites, Institutions and the Quality of Government}, editor = {Dahlstr{\"o}m, Carland and W{\"a}ngnerud, Lena}, pages = {167--186}, year = {2015}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan, London}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137556288_10}, url = {https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137556288_10}, status = {published} }
Working papers
- Is Propaganda Effective? Evidence on Framing of Responsibility by State-Owned Media in RussiaDraft
Many autocrats make use of state-owned media to shift blame or claim credit for policy outcomes (Guriev and Treisman, 2019). A particularly common strategy is to send messages that target citizens’ perceptions of whether central or local government is responsible for policy outcomes. But how effective is this strategy given that news outlets are known to be under government control? I report results from a survey experiment with over 4,000 respondents in Russia. The experiment randomly assigned respondents to watch news reports from popular Russia’s state-owned TV channel, Rossia-1. The reports emphasize the central government’s monitoring of road maintenance and natural disaster management – two policies that fall under the purview of local government. My findings suggest that even though the reports did not shift beliefs about the locus of policy responsibility, they did improve perceptions of policy performance and increase government support. I show that these patterns are consistent with a model of Bayesian learning in which citizens are already aware of the bias of news outlets and the locus of policy responsibility. The central intuition is that citizens are aware that the central government would only associate itself with local policies if the performance is high. As a result citizens update positively on policy performance and reward the government. The broader implication is that propaganda can be effective not in spite of but because citizens know that news outlets are government controlled, but its population level effects can be limited by selective exposure.
- Still Watching, Less Persuaded: Attention to News Reduces Authoritarian Propaganda Effectivenesswith Anton ShirikovOSF Pre-Print
State propaganda in autocracies often creates information bubbles, leaving citizens unwilling or unable to switch to alternative sources. This study shows that propaganda’s sway can be decreased even without escaping such bubbles. In a panel experiment with 1,176 Russian citizens, we randomly assigned participants to analyze the reporting patterns of (i) propagandistic state-owned TV content only or (ii) both state-owned and balanced non-governmental TV content over four weeks. Two weeks after the intervention, both treatments reduced support for the authoritarian regime but did not undermine trust in or exposure to state media. Exploiting the differences in news channel composition across treatments, we find support for two mechanisms explaining these effects: increased attention to familiar media content and increased consumption of news from non-government sources. Subgroup analyses show that these mechanisms operate primarily among citizens who already exhibit skepticism toward the regime and propaganda.
- Making, Updating, and Querying Causal Models using CausalQueriesConditionally Accepted at JSS
The R package CausalQueries can be used to make, update, and query causal models defined on binary nodes. Users provide a causal statement of the form ‘X -> M <- Y; M <-> Y‘ which is interpreted as a structural causal model over a collection of binary nodes. Then CausalQueries allows users to (1) identify the set of principal strata—causal types—required to characterize all possible causal relations between nodes that are consistent with the causal statement (2) determine a set of parameters needed to characterize distributions over these causal types (3) update beliefs over distributions of causal types, using a ‘stan‘ model plus data, and (4) pose a wide range of causal queries of the model, using either the prior distribution, the posterior distribution, or a user-specified candidate vector of parameters.
Work in Progress
- Political Debates and the Integration of Ukrainian Refugees in Germanywith Hanno Hilbig, and Florian SichartOSF Pre-Print
Refugee integration is a core policy concern. Expanding on prior research on domestic policies and elite cues, we explore whether host-country debates about military aid to refugees’ homeland shape perceived support, belonging, and return intentions. We implement a survey experiment with 2,631 Ukrainian refugees in Germany. Participants viewed authentic statements by German politicians with varying support for military aid. Average effects on integration outcomes are largely null. We then argue that this stems from moderation by the information environment. Using day-to-day variation in national news coverage, we show that without national Ukraine coverage, any experimental cue—supportive, ambivalent, or opposing—negatively affected perceived integration outcomes. On days with Ukraine coverage, our treatments had no effect. We propose that these patterns reflect a contestation mechanism: refugees treat the visibility of debate, rather than its valence, as evidence that support for Ukraine is contested and acceptance of Ukrainians in Germany is weaker.
- Meta-Analysis of Hard-to-Reach Population Studieswith Macartan HumphreysData Collection
This project uses meta-analysis tools to study the relative performance of sampling and estimation strategies to measure the prevalence of hard-to-reach populations. Using data from 8 field studies of human trafficking in developing countries, we estimate the relative performance of the most common measurement strategies. These include successive sampling and link-tracing methods based on respondent-driven sampling, network scale-up methods based on time-location, and proportional sampling. Scholars can use the framework we provide for diagnosing their study designs and rolling analysis of the relative performance of measurement strategies.
- The Effects of Internet Access on Political Opinions and BehaviorAnalysis
Internet access is expanding in low- and middle-income contexts, yet its political effects remain unclear and may depend on how people connect. We study a pre-registered field experiment in a low-income South African township, where the high cost of mobile data constrains use. Around the 2024 national election, we randomly provided households with 8–12 months of uncapped home internet and cross-randomized exposure to an online get-out-the-vote campaign. Combining household surveys, verified turnout, and behavioral traces, we find that home connections increase in-person local political engagement—attendance at ward/community meetings and complaints to ward/municipal officials—while leaving voter turnout and online political participation unchanged. We detect no systematic shifts in political knowledge, views, or broad news consumption patterns. Evidence is consistent with a behavioral channel in which home connectivity raises time spent at home and incidental exposure to local governance and offline networks, with suggestive stronger effects among men. The results show that expanding home internet—distinct from mobile data—can strengthen place-based participation without mobilizing online activism or turnout, underscoring that the mode of access conditions the political consequences of going online.
- Meta-Analysis of Propaganda Effectswith Linan YaoData Collection