Student Opportunities

Position: Part Time Assistant to Dr. Didi Kuo, Senior Research Scholar, Associate Director for Research, CDDRL

Research Project Title: Building political parties

Research Project Description: This is a research project on political parties, and the essential role they play in democracies. It is part of a book on the erosion of parties over the past fifty years.

Research Assistant Position Description: The RA will focus on parties as intermediary organizations with strong ties to civic groups. Research will include historical cases of strong and weak parties, both in and outside the United States. The RA will also conduct research into contemporary party-building efforts in the United States.

Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: This RA must have undergraduate coursework in political science or history related to the study of democracy, and must demonstrate prior research experience and strong written communication skills. RA must be able to search electronic databases and academic journals, summarize academic books and articles, understand differences between primary and secondary sources. RA will be asked to do historical research, compile sources, and potentially write brief synopses.

Hours per week: 10

Stipend: $1500 stipend paid at the end of the quarter

Duration: Winter quarter, may be extended to Spring quarter

How to apply: Please apply via Handshake - Job #7241248  Cover letter, resume, and transcript are required. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

Research Assistant Position: Part Time Research Assistant to Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director and Senior Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution (by courtesy). 

Research Project Title: Was Putin Inevitable? How Russia Got Lost in Transition

Research Project Description: This is a book-length project that examines the forty-year trajectory of political and economic change in Russia since 1985 and the earliest days of Soviet-era reform through to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Was it inevitable that the process of reform ended with the reinstatement of a repressive autocracy? If not, why not? What went wrong? What lessons does Russia have for comparative students of political and economic change? These are the central questions this project will seek to answer. 

Research Assistant Position Description: Much of this project will initially entail reading secondary source material and summarizing it. A second component will be compiling economic and public opinion data. The research assistant should have strong analytical skills and the ability to read and summarize secondary reading. The RA will meet weekly with Prof. Stoner to discuss the project and progress. 

Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: Ideally, the student would have some Russian language skills, but google translate makes this no longer a deal breaker for reading basic material in Russian. The student should have strong organizational skills so that they can log material they have found and read for the project in a database (currently just in excel). Basic statistical skills are handy but not vital for this stage of the project. 

Hours per week: 10

Stipend: $1500 stipend paid at the end of the quarter

Duration: Winter quarter, may be extended to Spring quarter

How to apply: Please apply via Handshake - Job #7241177  Cover letter, resume and transcript required. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

Research Assistant Position: Part Time Research Assistant to Stephen J. Stedman, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science

Research Project Title: Climate Change and Democracy

Research Project Description: The goal of this project is to explore: 1.) How will climate change affect political systems, in particular, democracies, rule of law, and governance? How will climate change stress political systems around the world? 2.) In turn, what can we say about the challenges that democracy, governance, and rule of law pose for the political sustainability of environmental policies aimed to reduce global warming and adapt to current and ongoing climate change?

Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: We are looking for an RA with some knowledge of R and GIS.

Hours per week: 10

Stipend: $1500 stipend paid at the end of the quarter

Duration: Winter quarter, may be extended to Spring quarter.

How to apply: Please apply via Handshake - Job #7241328  Cover letter, resume and transcript required. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

Research Assistant Position: Part Time Research Assistant to Anna Grzymala-Busse, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies; Professor of Political Science; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Director of The Europe Center

Research Project Title: Populism and the Erosion of Democracy

Research Project Description: This research project is founded on a database of populist party support, which covers populist parties in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

Research Assistant Position Description: The RA would update and continue to fill out the database to ensure that it is kept up to date.

Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: Looking up parties and party codes. Making entries and editing databases in any of the usual formats (Excel, R, Stata).

Hours per week: 10

Stipend: $1500 stipend paid at the end of the quarter

Duration: Winter quarter, may be extended to Spring quarter

How to apply: Please apply via Handshake - Job #7257960  Cover letter, resume and transcript required. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.

Research Assistant Position: Part-Time Research Assistant to Margaret Levi, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor of Political Science; Faculty Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment; Co-director, Stanford Ethics, Society and Technology Hub

Research Project Title: Causal Inference for Social Impact Lab

Research Project Description: The Causal Inference for Social Impact Lab (CISIL) at CASBS attempts to advance both causal inference techniques for non-randomized designs and their application to the design and evaluation of public policies. The application of non-randomized approaches faces many significant challenges. The techniques are often new and quite complicated, use individual-level data that cannot be made publicly available due to privacy protections, and can require a great deal of computing power. Complicating matters even further is the range of statistically reasonable analytic decisions a researcher can make and the effect those decisions have on their analysis. Not only could different non-randomized techniques (e.g. difference-in-differences versus a matching design) produce different results, but the myriad of small decisions nested within that technique (e.g. how concepts are measured or the threshold a researcher sets for sufficient matches) may also change the outcome.

Research Assistant Position Description: Responsibilities will range from participating in team meetings, conducting qualitative coding of narrative reports and analytic code, locating relevant literature, estimating basic descriptive statistics, and creating data visualizations. 

Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: The position does require some basic statistics knowledge and proficiency with one of the common statistics programs. Extensive knowledge of non-randomized causal inference techniques is not a requirement, but a willingness to learn about them is a plus. An ideal RA would also have some experience conducting qualitative coding. The student must be able to work in a team, as the work will involve engaging directly with the CASBS director, the program director, and others involved in the project.

Hours per week: 10

Stipend: $1500 stipend paid at the end of the quarter

Duration: Winter quarter, may be extended to Spring quarter

How to apply: Please apply via Handshake - Job # 7258248.  Cover letter, resume and transcript required. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the role is filled.