This summer, PhD candidate Ally Lazar was selected as a RAND summer associate. She spent the summer in the Defense and Political Science section of RAND, working on a project in the Arroyo Center (RAND Army Research Division). This work builds on Ally's broader research interests of international security, political violence, and terrorism. https://www.rand.org/jobs/summer-associates/cohort-2024.html

PhD alumni Carlos Algara (Assistant Professor, Claremont Graduate University) and Jonathan Colner (Faculty Fellow, NYU) each co-authored an article as part a PS: Political Science & Politics journal symposium on the 2024 presidential election. Their models were the only ones in the symposium to correctly forecast former President Trump taking both the electoral college and popular vote.

Ph.D. Candidate Alice Malmberg has published an article in Election Law Journal where she assesses the effects on the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) on electoral backsliding across the American states. Check out the article here <https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2023.0052> and coverage on Rick Hasen's Election Law blog here <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=146878>.

PhD candidate Miley Liu recently launched a python package called PoliPrompt that streamlines the process of text classification using LLMs, addressing some of the key limitations researchers face in this domain. PoliPrompt uses automatic prompt optimization to significantly improve the accuracy and scalability of LLM classification tasks while reducing the manual effort required from researchers. You can find the package on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/PoliPrompt/

Professor Josephine Andrews and PhD candidate Yu-Shiuan Huang have co-authored an article, “Winners, Losers, and Affective Polarization,” in Party Politics. They analyze the winner-loser gap in affective polarization and find that winners’ affective polarization is significantly greater than losers’, and the difference is due to winners’ consistently higher in-party favoritism. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13540688241292556

Professor Brandon Kinne and recent PhD Dr. Nahrain Bet Younadem, along with coauthor Iliyan Iliev, recently published an article in the journal PNAS Nexus examining whether verbal attacks by governments on violent extremist groups deter or exacerbate violence. They find that while verbal attacks seem intended to deter extremists, they are actually often followed by increases in violent attacks. They argue that this pattern is driven by a credibility deficit, as extremists use violence to signal that they have the capabilities and willingness to inflict harm.

Professor Jim Adams was the subject of a recent profile piece in College of Letters & Science Magazine, entitled "Political Polarization is Not Unique to the U.S., but its Causes Are." The profile showcases Professor Adams's expansive work on affective polarization around the world and in the U.S. Check it out!

https://lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu/self-society/political-polariz…

Jonathan Colner (UCD PhD 2024) recently published some of his dissertation research in the AJPS. Proponents of ranked choice voting (RCV) have argued that it can increase candidate entry, quality, and diversity. Using a pre-registered difference-in-difference design that covers 273 American cities over 30 years, Colner finds that RCV has short-term effects on candidate entry but does not increase quality or increase the proportion of under-represented groups like women and minorities. Other policies may be needed to more fundamentally change the candidate pipeline.

PhD candidate Anya Stewart was named a dissertation fellow by the UC Institute for Global Cooperation and Conflict in 2024-2025. Her dissertation research focuses on the uses and abuses of martial law, a situation in which governments replace local civilian authority with military authority following an explicit declaration by the central government. Anya is also a UC Davis undergraduate alumni - go Aggies! https://ucigcc.org/people/anya-stewart/

PhD candidate Enrico La Viña was named a dissertation fellow by the UC Institute for Global Cooperation and Conflict in 2024-2025. His dissertation project asks why, despite safeguards like civil society, professional bureaucracies, international organizations, and elections, democratic governments evade repercussions and even profit from state repression. He shows that in situations of democratic backsliding, democratic processes and institutions could, paradoxically, fuel rather than curb state repression.

PhD candidate Andrew Roskos-Ewoldsen won a doctoral dissertation research improvement grant (DDRIG) to support his research on reciprocity in international relations. His research project explores the process by and the conditions under which the norm of reciprocity affects security decision-making. https://politicalsciencenow.com/meet-andrew-roskos-ewoldsen-2023-apsa-doctoral-dissertation-research-improvement-grantee/

Associate Professor Lauren Young's recently published articles won multiple awards at the American Political Science Association this year. Her article "Repression and dissent in moments of uncertainty", coauthored with Adrienne LeBas and published in 2023 in the APSR, won honorable mention for the best article from the Democracy and Autocracy Section. "Mobilization under threat" won the award for the best article published in Political Behavior in 2023 from the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section of APSA.

UCD political science PhD Dr. Rizwan Asghar, currently a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin, recently published some of his dissertation research on nuclear weapons and interstate conflict behavior in the journal Conflict Management and Peace Science. Dr. Asghar argues that civil-military relations moderate the effect of nuclear weapons on interstate war.