SURF Research and Publications
SURF provides students with a unique opportunity to engage in research training in international relations and simultaneously conduct their own research.
Students will participate in several workshops to learn how to formulate a research question, collect data, and identify the appropriate method to analyze that data. The workshops are designed so students can immediately apply this knowledge to their own research projects. While we expect that students already have some research experience, our program is tailored specifically to address the questions of international collaboration. Each SURF participant is an expert in their area of interest, and the SURF program is a way to leverage that expertise and apply it in a new context.
Memos
Altruism and the Topology of Transfer Networks
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Democracy and Autocracy, Volume 19(2), September 2021
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Pandemic Spikes and Broken Spears: Indigenous Resilience after the Conquest of Mexico [Working Paper]
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It is well-established that the Conquest of the Americas by Europeans led to catastrophic declines in indigenous populations. However, less is known about the conditions under which indigenous communities were able to overcome the onslaught of disease and violence that they faced. Drawing upon a rich set of sources, including Aztec tribute rolls and early Conquest censuses (chiefly the Suma de Visita} (1548)), we develop a new disaggregated dataset on pre-Conquest economic, epidemiological and political conditions both in 11,888 potential settlement locations in the historic core of Mexico and in 1,093 actual Conquest-era city-settlements. Of these 1,093 settlements, we show that 36% had disappeared entirely by 1790. Yet, despite being subject to Conquest-era violence, subsequent coercion and multiple pandemics that led average populations in those settlements to fall from 2,377 to 128 by 1646, 13% would still end the colonial era larger than they started. We show that both indigenous settlement survival durations and population levels through the colonial period are robustly predicted, not just by Spanish settler choices or by their diseases, but also by the extent to which indigenous communities could themselves leverage non-replicable and non-expropriable resources and skills from the pre-Hispanic period that would prove complementary to global trade. Thus indigenous opportunities and agency played important roles in shaping their own resilience.
POMEPS Studies 43: Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East
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The Future of Platform Power: Solving for a Moving Target
This essay is a part of an exchange based on Francis Fukuyama’s “Making the Internet Safe for Democracy” from the April 2021 issue of the Journal of Democracy.
We use high resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40 year period. We find a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast. We find strong evidence of agglomeration effects both in the static sense—buildup in one cell predicts buildup in a nearby cell—and in a dynamic sense—buildup in a cell predicts buildup in that cell later on and an increase in buildup in nearby cells. These effects are strongest over a 3 to 15 Km radius, which corresponds to a natural hinterland for a population without mechanized transportation. We find no evidence that human settlements are spaced more or less equally either over the landscape or along roads. This suggests that arable land is not yet fully utilized, allowing rural settlements to be separated by areas of un-farmed land. By fitting a transition matrix to the data, we predict a sharp increase in the proportion of the country that is densely built-up by the middle and the end of the century, but no increase in the proportion of partially built-up locations.
Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City
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The power of large internet platforms to amplify or silence certain voices at a scale that can alter major political outcomes poses a grave threat to democracy.
Qualms with Quayside: Public Engagement in the Toronto Smart City Project
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Trading Stocks Builds Financial Confidence and Compresses the Gender Gap [Working Paper]
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Many studies document low rates of financial literacy and suboptimal levels of participation in financial markets. These issues are particularly acute among women. Does this reflect a self-reinforcing trap? If so, can a nudge to participate in financial markets generate knowledge, confidence, and further increase informed participation? We conduct a large field experiment that enables and incentivizes working-age men and women---a challenging group to reach with standard financial training programs---to trade stocks for four to seven weeks. We provide no additional educational content. We find that trading significantly improves financial confidence, as reflected in stock market participation, objective and subjective measures of financial knowledge, and risk tolerance. These effects are especially strong among women. Participants also become more self-reliant and consult others less when making financial decisions.
Governing youth in times of dissent: essay competitions, politics of history, and emotions
An assessment of Russia that suggests that we should look beyond traditional means of power to understand its strength and capacity to disrupt international politics.
Lancet Series on Women’s and Children’s Health in Conflict Settings
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Heroes and Villains: The Effects of Heroism on Autocratic Values and Nazi Collaboration in France [Working Paper]
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We measure the effects of a network of heroes in legitimizing and diffusing extreme political behaviors. Exploiting newly-declassified intelligence files, novel voting data and regimental histories, we show the home municipalities of French line regiments arbitrarily rotated through Philippe Petain's command during the heroic WWI battle of Verdun, though similar before WWI, increasingly espouse Petain's authoritarian political views thereafter, raising 7% more active Nazi collaborators per capita during the Petain-led Vichy regime (1940-44). The effects are similar across joining Fascist parties, German forces, paramilitaries hunting Jews and the Resistance, and collaborating economically.
From the State of Vanguards to the House of Kofta: Reflections on Egypt’s Authoritarian Impasse
Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico
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Authoritarian media and diversionary threats: lessons from 30 years of Syrian state discourse
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Reassessing American Democracy: The Enduring Challenge of Racial Exclusion
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