Andy Baker no longer affiliated with ��ϳԹ�

Chair's Welcome

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 18:59:24 +0000

Chair's Welcome Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/15/2023 - 11:59

By Andy Baker

Welcome to our Winter 2023 newsletter. I’m happy to report that we are well on the way to completing a rather normal academic year—for the first time since 2018/19! Our lecture halls are teeming with students, speculation and fear about the next pandemic surge have faded, and the only threat to in-person learning is the occasional winter snowstorm. It’s great to be fully back!

In the last newsletter, I talked about the recent increase in Political Science majors at CU. Even amidst the turmoil of the COVID pandemic, our numbers remained steady, and this year they continue to be strong at more than 1,000 majors. One of those majors is freshman Ryan Pak, whom we were able to rope in as he was finishing high school by offering him a scholarship. In one of our articles in this newsletter, Ryan talks about this new First Year Scholarship Award program and how it influenced his decision to choose CU.

In another set of articles, we turn to former students, profiling two alumni who followed two very different paths to career success after graduating from CU. One is Missy Kelly, who served as the commencement speaker for our Spring 2022 graduation ceremony. Kelly is a founding CEO of CatTongue Grips. To say her company’s products are used around the world is, amazingly, an understatement. They are also used in outer space! The other CU alum is Alan Zarychta, who is now a widely published professor at the University of Chicago, one of the world's top research universities.

In a final set of articles, we show off (as always) some of the accomplishments of our faculty. CU Political Science faculty have compiled many awards in recent years—far too many for us to cover in a single newsletter. So we will continue to highlight a few awards each time. Megan Shannon is one of the leading experts in the world on the United Nations and, in particular, its peacekeeping operations. Her recent award-winning book on the topic contains some surprisingly optimistic findings on the matter: UN peacekeeping usually works! Finally, we talk about Anand Sokhey, who received an exceedingly prestigious award for his entire body of scholarship. He recently won the emerging scholar award from the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior section of the American Political Science Association. Sokhey describes how he got interested in political science and some of his ongoing work on understanding and combatting antisemitism.

Remember to check out our online course offerings for non-CU students through Continuing Education, https://ce.colorado.edu/, and please consider a donation to help out our undergraduate or graduate students!

All the best,

Andy Baker

Return to Newsletter

Support Political Science at ��ϳԹ�

Off

Traditional

White

Does Democratization Lower Consumer Prices? Regime Type, Prices, and the Consumer–Producer Tradeoff.

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 20:31:04 +0000

Does Democratization Lower Consumer Prices? Regime Type, Prices, and the Consumer–Producer Tradeoff. Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/17/2020 - 14:31

Andy Baker, ��ϳԹ� & Stefan Wojcik, Data Scientist, USA

Published: 2019

Abstract:

The booming literature on the consequences of democratization for material welfare has produced no findings on the relationship between regime type and relative consumer prices. The literature largely shows that democracies favor masses over elites, generating the expectation that democratization should lower consumer prices. Yet it also finds that democratization boosts economic growth, an outcome that is partially contingent on making consumer goods expensive relative to capital goods. We argue that democratization lowers relative consumer prices since politicians under democracy can more effectively chase votes by satisfying consumers’ demands for the immediate payoff of lower prices. Our statistical analysis of 160-plus countries over 60 years shows that democratization raises consumer advantage, which is the consumer price level relative to the price level of capital goods. We also provide evidence of the policy levers that democratizing countries have used to achieve this effect.

Click here to read more.

Off

Traditional

White

Nonpartisans as False Negatives: The Mismeasurement of Party Identification in Public Opinion Surveys

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 19:17:50 +0000

Nonpartisans as False Negatives: The Mismeasurement of Party Identification in Public Opinion Surveys Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/09/2019 - 13:17

Andy Baker, ��ϳԹ�; Lucio Renno, University of Brasília

Published: May 21, 2019

Abstract:

We argue that most survey measures of partisanship are misclassifying many respondents as nonpartisans. Common wordings, especially those in major cross-national surveys, violate well-established best practices in questionnaire design by reading aloud a nonpartisanship option. This is akin, we show, to the taboo of inviting no-opinion responses. Consequently, most wordings produce high rates of false negatives, meaning respondents with partisan leanings who nonetheless choose the nonpartisan response. Our analysis of experimental and observational data from four countries (Brazil, Mexico, Russia, United States) shows that nearly a quarter of respondents are false negatives when read an easy nonpartisan opt out. More importantly, we demonstrate, using item response theory and other measurement checks, that wordings that remedy this problem by not inviting nonpartisan responses have greater measurement validity. Our findings show that scholars are underestimating the prevalence of partisanship and that harbors for false negatives can exist in unexpected forms.

Click here to read more!

Off

Traditional

White

2017 International Political Economy Society Conference

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 17:15:44 +0000

2017 International Political Economy Society Conference Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/28/2017 - 10:15

Several ��ϳԹ� Political Science faculty and grad students attended the 2017 IPES Conference last week to present their most recent research. CU representatives included CU faculty Andy Baker, David Bearce, and Adrian Shin. The International Political Economy Society (IPES) “provides an annual forum for scholars of IPE to present their best new work in progress to an informed and critical scholarly audience". The annual conference is centered on a small number (approximately 75 each year) of carefully screened and selected papers. More information about participants and their work can be found on the IPES website.

IPES Website

Off

Traditional

White

LAPOP 2017 Inaugural Seligson Prize Winner

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2017 15:39:01 +0000

LAPOP 2017 Inaugural Seligson Prize Winner Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/25/2017 - 09:39

Emma Piller

Graduate Student in Political Science

The Department of Political Science would like to congratulate Ph.D candidate Joby Schaffer on receiving the 2017 Inaugural Seligson Prize from Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). Both Schaffer and his co-author Andy Baker, an Associate Professor at CU, received high praise for their publication entitled Clientelism as Persuasion-Buying: Evidence from Latin America.

Schaffer's research focused on analyzing why political parties use material inducements to acquire votes from their constituents in Latin American countries. “In many Latin American countries, political parties engage in a practice called 'clientelism,' Schaffer said. “They go out and purchase voters by offering them food, small consumer items, or other inducements, and in some places in Latin America, this is a rampant practice.

“Among those who study clientelism, there’s this question of given party machines having limited resources--they can’t just go out and give away food and other goods to just anybody--who do they target with clientelism; who do they go after to try and get their votes.

“A lot of scholars have suggested that clientelistic political parties attempt to directly buy votes, which means that they likely try to target people who are undecided in order to sway them to vote for their party. Other scholars say that clientelistic political parties instead try to buy people’s turnout, which means they likely try to buy people that are already loyal, that already care about the party’s positions, who they only have to get to the polls.”

The problem with the first explanation--vote-buying--is largely empirical. Those who have been targeted for clientelism also tend to report higher levels of partisanship. While this supports turnout buying, that strategy isn’t really cost-effective. There are other ways to more efficiently mobilize people.

“We were trying to find a way to balance those two out and address both of these puzzles. We came up with this idea that what these political parties are actually doing is targeting those in a community who tend to engage in political discussion. This comes with the expectation that these individuals will then attempt to persuade those in their personal networks. We call this ‘persuasion-buying.’ This is cost-effective because it creates a ‘multiplier effect,’ where I’ll give you some resources and I tell you to go out and start persuading those you’re close to to vote in the same way. So I’m not only getting your vote, but I’m getting these people around you because you have this network.

“It also works in terms of what we find empirically because we noticed in our analysis of data from the 2006 elections in Mexico that people’s partisanship gets stronger as the election gets closer. Our argument there is that once they’ve received some goods early on from a political party, they start to solidify their position in the direction of that party,” he said. “That allows us to make sense of why strong partisans get targeted benefits.”

The LAPOP award accepts papers that have been published one to two years prior to that year’s award recipient, so when Schaffer received notice he had won, he was pleasantly surprised. “I haven’t thought about this paper in over a year, and I had no idea that it was even been considered.”

Schaffer currently works in Denver as a researcher in a company that helps foundations, non-profits, and other social impact organizations use research and evaluation to improve their work. “The training that I got from CU in terms of doing quantitative and qualitative research is now being used to help these groups understand ‘are we being effective,’” he said. Schaffer plans on continuing his work there and remain in Colorado after he completes his Ph.D.

“Two things I learned through the process are that it takes a long time to publish a paper--this started in 2011, we published in 2016," he said. "And it’s really useful to rely on professors that have a ton of experience and are not only smart but know how to engage with other scholars to get feedback and know how to navigate the process of getting published. For me, it was invaluable having someone like Dr. Baker on the paper. He came in and did so much work to improve it.”

The university is proud to have academics who are dedicated to understanding the global community in a way that allows for deeper connections and learning opportunities to be made.

Off

Traditional

White

Andy Baker *no longer affiliated with ���ϳԹ�*

Chair's Welcome

Off

Does Democratization Lower Consumer Prices? Regime Type, Prices, and the Consumer–Producer Tradeoff.

Off

Nonpartisans as False Negatives: The Mismeasurement of Party Identification in Public Opinion Surveys

Off

2017 International Political Economy Society Conference

Off

LAPOP 2017 Inaugural Seligson Prize Winner

Graduate Student in Political Science

Off

Andy Baker no longer affiliated with ��ϳԹ�