Working Papers:

"The Protest Dilemma: The Effect of Threat of War in Sustaining Non-Democratic Regimes" (with Mariam Malashkhia) (Job Market Paper) [Accepted at APSA 2025 and Comparative Politics and Formal Theory Conference 2025]

In non-democratic regimes, where elections do not provide a viable path to regime change, protests serve as the primary means of voicing political discontent. While there is a growing body of literature on protests, the role of external factors, such as threat of war, remains underexplored. This gap is particularly significant given that many non-democratic regimes operate under the persistent threat of invasion.  

In this paper, we develop a formal model showing that the threat of invasion can deter protests, ultimately benefiting the incumbent. Thus, our findings help to explain why regimes manipulate media to exaggerate invasion risks. The core mechanism driving this result is that citizens only gain from regime change if the country is not invaded, making protest a risky gamble. 

Several factors amplify this demobilization effect, including the likelihood of a successful invasion, the enemy’s strong incentives to intervene, and the low perceived costs of war. 


“Politics of Non-Full Democracies: Fraud, Post-Election Boycotts, and Protests” (with Mariam Malashkhia) [R&R at APSR]

Non-democracies are often characterized by electoral manipulation and contested results. Despite a growing literature on these regimes, opposition strategies remain underexplored. To address this gap, we develop a formal model analyzing  the interactions between the incumbent, the opposition, and the citizens' protest decisions. In contexts where the opposition faces public outreach constraints, a post-election boycott –  forfeiting parliamentary seats – acts as a powerful signal of the opposition's strength, thereby mobilizing large-scale protests. This new information about the opposition's ability explains why citizens express support for the regime one day but protest the next. Moreover, our model offers a new perspective  on the strategic role of fraud –  shaping post-election dynamics. Additionally, we demonstrate that peaceful transitions are driven by a combination of a credible threat of protests and the country holding parliamentary elections. Lastly, we analyze the role of international support to the opposition, showing that it can sometimes backfire.


"Political Incentives for Health Insurance Provision" [Accepted at APSA 2025]


"How did the Russo-Ukrainian War Affect Voting Behavior and Party Affiliation in the US?" (with Mariam Malashkhia) [Accepted at MPSA 2025 and APSA 2025]

Per the "Almond-Lippmann consensus", the public is uninformed, has incoherent opinion on foreign policy and is irrelevant to decision making. However, after addressing the endogeneity issue, we find that support for Ukraine has a strong negative effect on identifying as a Republican. Moreover, the support for Ukraine, a foreign policy issue, has a larger effect than the variables consistently found in the literature to have a large and significant effect on party identification. As for identifying as a Democrat, the results from the probit model show that when other, potentially exogenous, variables are included as controls, the support for Ukraine has a strong, significant, and positive effect. However, when we add other, possibly endogenous variables, the effect disappears. The strong negative effect of Ukraine support on identifying as a Republican contradicts most of the existing work that foreign policy is a low salience issue.


Selected Work in Progress:

"Insurance Provision with Electoral Incentives and Market Power" (with Santiago Seoane)