Professor Gabriella Montinola and coauthor Anna Minasyan have published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society. In their article, "Women’s Rights and Global Development Policy," Minasyan & Montinola ask whether there is a link between aid and gender egalitarian outcomes in 150 countries, 1990–2021. Using a novel shift-share instrumental variable built on the share of women in aid donor cabinets, they find that gender-marked aid promotes legal reforms advancing women’s economic rights.

Associate Professor Christopher Hare and coauthor Jack T. Rametta (UC Davis PhD '25) have had their article, "How Model Choice Obscures Forecast Uncertainty: The Rashomon Effect and the 2026 Senate," accepted for publication in PS: Political Science & Politics. Their article will appear alongside other papers in a special issue focused on forecasting the 2026 midterm elections. Rametta and Hare examine an often-overlooked source of uncertainty in election forecasts: different models can predict past elections similarly well yet disagree about who will win the next one.

Jonathan Colner (2024 Ph.D) has published an article in Political Analysis, "Detecting Formatted Text: Data Collection Using Computer Vision". In this article, he describes and demonstrates a workflow process by which researchers can analyze text and visual data text extraction using free models and software.

Thanks to the many alumni and other colleagues who attended the UC Davis Department of Political Science reception at this year's American Political Science Association conference in Boston! Photograph courtesy of the talented Shreya Murthy.

Professor Alyssa Heinze, who will be joining our department next fall, has published an article in the American Political Science Review. Her article, "Democratic Deepening or Elite Persistence? How Local Elites Adapt to Electoral Reform in Rural India," addresses the problem of "elite capture" of local governance, where local executives lack de facto political authority because they are sidelined by unelected elites. She examines one potential institutional remedy: direct elections.

Soon-to-be-PhD Alexa Federice has accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Vienna in the Department of Government, a leading center for research on comparative politics in Europe. It’s a six-year (!) fellowship where Alexa will get the chance to work on her very cool research agenda on party competition, polarization, and populism in Europe. Congratulations, Alexa!

Professor Heather Elko recently published an article in International Interactions titled "Relative BATNAs and the duration of international negotiations: The case of trade." Her research shows that in international negotiations, when states have more asymmetric levels of costs they each pay for not reaching an agreement, the negotiations tend to be shorter in duration. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03050629.2026.2621402