Why do White supremacists mobilize in some places and not others? I answer this question within the case of the Civil-Rights era South, where the Ku Klux Klan resurged after decades of dormancy. Curiously, however, the KKK did not re-emerge everywhere in the South, but chiefly in North Carolina. In order to elucidate this particular puzzle and the broader forces driving White supremacist terrorism in the U.S., I analyze data on North Carolina Klan rallies from 1963-1967 and the number of klaverns per county in the 1960s. I implement a finite mixture model to evaluate three possible explanations of KKK activity: racial threat, school desegregation, and generational Klan legacies. Previous research has focused primarily on racial threat as the explanation for Klan activity, but I find that the desegregation and Klan legacies outperform racial threat in explaining a majority of county-year observations. The results encourage scholars to reassess the historical and political correlates of White supremacist activity.
[paper] [journal link] [online appendix] [replication materials]
Australia has recently witnessed a dramatic reduction in the aid it provides to developing countries. Debates often focus on the implications for poverty eradication, but also at stake is Australia’s leadership position in certain international financial institutions. To explore this political dimension, we examine the pattern of Australian aid to developing countries through the lens of the Bretton Woods Institutions: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Specifically, we consider countries that elect Australia to the executive boards of these institutions. Using aid data from 1960 to 2009 for 186 countries, we test whether Australia rewards members of its voting bloc with more foreign aid. Descriptive data and regression analyses support our hypothesis: Australia gives as much as 10 times more annual aid to bloc-members than to other developing countries. We take the finding as evidence of one of the many ways in which Australian aid can advance foreign policy objectives.
[journal link] [replication materials] NB: Written during undergraduate.
High school students’ math courses are important predictors of postsecondary outcomes like college readiness and enrollment. Specifically, a high-school level math course taken in the last year of middle school—8th grade algebra—puts students on the path to postsecondary success. There is a positive, statistically significant relationship between participation in high-quality public pre-K and completing Algebra I before beginning high school.
[policy brief] NB: Written while working at the Center for Research on Children in the US.