Dan Honig Profile picture
Jul 28, 2021 12 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Now out in @apsrjournal #APSRFirstView! Joint with @JamesBisbee, this (unusually for me) is about voters & politicians; specifically, voters' COVID fear-induced ‘flight to safety’, to the benefit of mainstream candidates. 🧵on where this paper came from & why IMO it matters 👇1/ Image
It was March 13, 2020. I was home in Dakar; my “cold” had gotten bad. I was having trouble breathing, and indeed getting out of bed. I was reading an NY Times article on possible COVID futures, feeling for the 1st time genuinely scared about what that might mean for us all. 2/
I’ve spent a lot of my life living overseas. But I felt a sudden pull to be back where I still feel most comfortable, back in Detroit, that surprised me; a really strong desire for the familiarity & safety of the known, of where I feel most rooted. 3/
The next NYT story was about the Bernie/Biden race. I thought “where people feel more COVID concern I bet they vote for Biden more; that the desire for less disruptive change is stronger than the now-more-salient advantages of Bernie’s health care and social support platform.”4/
I texted @JamesBisbee, TBH mainly because I was bored, wanted to distract myself a little, and texting didn't require lung capacity. We talked as friends, but eventually as coauthors. The core ideas & empirical strategy of the published paper are in our messages from that day. 5/ ImageImageImage
I got better (slowly), and we got to work. Now, some 15 months later, those texts are to my surprise (and joy!), a paper with an answer to our question. That answer: areas where people had more fear voted quite a lot less for Sanders and more for Biden. 6/ Image
With the help of an MTurk survey experiment, US house, & French municipal election data, we show this is not just a Biden-Bernie or US thing & not about ‘left’ vs’ right’. Voter anxiety is generally status quo-preserving. 7/ Image
The effect sizes are quite large, and the flight to safety benefits not just incumbents; not just those who seemed to have ‘leadership qualities’; but the mainstream more generally, at the expense of the more anti-establishment right and anti-establishment left. 8/ Image
In my view arguably most concerningly, it’s possible this electoral ‘flight to safety’ is a kind of ‘Burkean conservative’ friction lowering the prospects of radical change where/when necessary. 9/ Image
I believe our current governance models and systems need somewhat marked reform to serve all citizens & ensure we have a planet humans can live on comfortably in a century. So this potential feedback mechanism concerns me quite a bit, and I think warrants further attention. 10/
In closing, let me thank first my amazing coauthor @JamesBisbee. This paper also owes a big debt of gratitude to @benlauderdale (now my colleague @uclspp, though we’ve still never met or spoken!), the @apsrjournal team, really wonderful, generative reviewers, & many others. 11/ Image
To read the full paper see (gated) link at the top, or the authors' final version (ungated) is at bit.ly/3x41aOw. Thanks for reading!, Dan (12/12)

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More from @rambletastic

Feb 3, 2022
+1 this view of the APSR note debate (for non-political scientists - an 'inside baseball' discussion of the framing/content of an in-many-ways-troubling note from the editors of the journal American Political Science Review, arguably political science's most esteemed journal) 1/
I agree with everything @benwansell says in this thread. But would add to that that I don't think APSR is in fact a field-wide journal in practice (which need not be a bad thing, but would be good if more widely recognized). 2/
I have a piece in the issue of APSR where the controversial note is - my first. I'm proud of the piece and honored to be included in the pages of what is (I agree) the most prestigious political science journal. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Feb 1, 2022
New paper from Ranjit Lall, Brad Parks @AidData, & myself out in @AJPS_Editor early view today! Rambly explanation below: 👇👇 We find that access to information (ATI) policies do improve project delivery outcomes... 1/
doi.org/10.1111/ajps.1…
...but only when the ATIs have independent appeals mechanisms, drawing on a new (now public) “world’s-biggest-dataset-of-aid-project-outcomes”. 2/ Image
We started from the observation that a lot of staff time and effort often goes into answering access to information requests; and we wondered when and whether there was evidence of behavior change and (possibly) changes in performance. 3/
Read 19 tweets
Jun 17, 2020
The UK's Department for International Development (@DFID_UK) ceased to be yesterday. gov.uk/government/new… This is a bad idea for a number of reasons - not least, because of what it will likely mean for the #MissionDrivenBureaucrats who so typify DFID. 1/
While my current book manuscript on Mission-Driven Bureaucrats mentions DFID 0 times, my thinking on the topic is heavily influence by observing the agency for some time now. 2/
In my professional work in developing countries I was struck how different the DFID representatives often seemed to all the other donors'. The DFID folks seemed to have more autonomy to make decisions, and also to care more about outcomes over process. 3/
Read 19 tweets
Apr 7, 2020
My family and I took an @StateDept evacuation flight from Senegal to the US on Friday. I’d like to say a few things about that, focusing on 1) The people who work for State (wonderful) & 2) The impression it left me about coordinated US airport response to COVID (disturbing). 1/
First, let me just say my family and I were and remain fine – like I imagine many of my fellow passengers, we took the flight over worries about (Senegal’s) closed borders and what might happen IF things got bad there/we couldn’t get back to America for some time. 2/
So it came to pass that on April 3 we joined 150 or so other Americans, many quite sad to be leaving Senegal and possibly worried about at what lay ahead of them in America, at Dakar’s very empty airport. 3/
Read 25 tweets
Mar 21, 2019
Part 2: That's what @CGDev is about to me (in research/policy/mission , not hiring of MA students, of course) - changing life trajectories. Treating everyone as people. Trying to make sure it's not just the lucky few who get a chance to do transformative things. Using data 23/
But not forgetting unmeasurable soft information, and people, and empathy, and voice, and empowerment. 24/
And I was right about the life changing bit, by the way - an incredibly pivotal experience. Hardest job I'll ever do. Most meaningful job, maybe, too. I made a ton of mistakes; tried not to make the same mistake twice, but probably did that too. 25/
Read 15 tweets
Mar 21, 2019
Thread: It's probably silly to do a CRAZY LONG tweet storm about being named a non-resident fellow @CGDev. But I feel really touched. CGD has been a special place for me for a good part of my professional life. 1/
And I kind of want to tell how that began. It was 2007 when I first heard from CGD. It was @CohanShapiro's voice, telling me I could interview for a job as a Scott Fellow (cgdev.org/article/scott-…) if I could be in DC to do so in 48 hours. I was shocked to get the interview;3/
First thought was that I must have come off some kind of wait list. Second was that I needed time to cram; I could put Liberia on a map but that was close to it, so I asked to delay the interview. Justin gently explained to me that it was the offered hour or no interview. 4/
Read 22 tweets

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