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Is there ethnic favoritism in street-level bureaucracy? And do conflict legacies facilitate ethnic favoritism? Street-level bureaucracy is the primary state institution that allows for direct interactions between ordinary citizens and agents of the state. While evidence of ethnic favoritism in distributive politics is overwhelming, existing works primarily explain the state agents’ behavior in contexts where they…

Prior research demonstrates discretionary policing engenders unnecessary intrusions in the lives of civilians without a commensurate increase in public safety.

The literature on welfare chauvinism shows that ethnocentric bias reduces individual support for outgroup redistributive policies.  To limit bias, scholarship suggests framing policies universally or focusing on beneficiary deservingness. However, policies intended to support disadvantaged groups and ensure equity cannot always be framed in universal terms. Moreover, individuals hold minoritized groups to a deservingness double…

Prior research demonstrates acculturated co-ethnics of immigrant groups adopt restrictive immigration policy preferences akin to that of host country dominant groups. However, a puzzle remains where acculturated Latinxs in the United States still maintain relatively liberal immigration policy preferences despite their distance from the canonical immigrant archetype (e.g. Spanish-speaking, immigrant). To answer the puzzle, I…

Protection of minorities is a hallmark of liberal democracy, but partisan competition typically requires appealing to majoritarian groups. When do electoral incentives encourage candidates to target immigrant communities with racist or discriminatory rhetoric? This paper aims to address this question through a novel dataset of refugee-related Twitter posts by political elites in Lebanon, the country…