Donghyun Danny Choi

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brown University
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Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science and a Faculty Fellow at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. I study the challenges associated with governance and representation in diverse societies, with an emphasis on identity politics and political parties.

My first (coauthored) book, Native Bias, examines the extent to which common norms and ideas can facilitate the inclusion of immigrants in democratic societies. The book was published by Princeton University Press (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior) in 2022.

My second book project, Severed Connections, investigates how political parties and the nature of candidate selection institutions influence the relationship between elected representatives and their constituents in new democracies.

My work on these two themes have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Political Analysis, among others.

I have received several awards for my work, including the best book award from the Experimental Research Section of APSA (2023), the Gregory Luebbert Prize for best article in Comparative Politics (2022), the Rebecca Morton Best JEPS Article Award (2022), the best paper award from the European Politics and Society Section of APSA (2021), the Juan Linz Prize for best dissertation in the comparative study of democracy and autocracy (2020), and the Fiona McGillivray Award for best paper in Political Economy (2020).

You can reach me via email: dannychoi [at] brown.edu.

Book Projects

Native Bias: Overcoming Discrimination Against Immigrants

Princeton Studies in Political Behavior, Princeton University Press, October 2022
Best Book Award, Experimental Research Section, APSA 2023

More Info


In the aftermath of the refugee crisis caused by conflicts in the Middle East and an increase in migration to Europe, European nations have witnessed a surge in discrimination targeted at immigrant minorities. To quell these conflicts, some governments have resorted to the adoption of coercive assimilation polices aimed at erasing differences between natives and immigrants. Are these policies the best method for reducing hostilities? Native Bias challenges the premise of such regulations by making the case for a civic integration model, based on shared social ideas defining the concept and practice of citizenship.

Drawing from original surveys, survey experiments, and novel field experiments, Donghyun Danny Choi, Mathias Poertner, and Nicholas Sambanis show that although prejudice against immigrants is often driven by differences in traits such as appearance and religious practice, the suppression of such differences does not constitute the only path to integration. Instead, the authors demonstrate that similarities in ideas and value systems can serve as the foundation for a common identity, based on a shared concept of citizenship, overcoming the perceived social distance between native and immigrants.

Addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time, Native Bias offers an original framework for understanding anti-immigrant discrimination and the processes through which it can be overcome.

Endorsements

“Native Bias offers a compelling and hopeful analysis of the challenges facing countries grappling with increasing cultural diversity. Focusing on the integration of Muslims in Germany, a series of clever experiments reveals what it takes for majorities to stop discriminating against minorities. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in immigrant integration and multicultural politics!”— Rafaela M. Dancygier, author of Dilemmas of Inclusion: Muslims in European Politics

“This excellent book addresses one of the most important issues of our time: how to overcome the discrimination of immigrants and, ultimately, how to secure their successful integration into new societies. This is a major contribution not only to the study of immigrant discrimination and integration, but also to intergroup relations more broadly.”― Peter Thisted Dinesen, University of Copenhagen

“Setting a new standard for theoretically guided fieldwork, Native Bias presents an array of elegant experiments staged in dozens of cities and involving thousands of bystanders. These unobtrusive studies of discrimination do more than simply document the fact that natives look down on immigrants; they illuminate the conditions under which anti-immigrant discrimination diminishes, underscoring in particular the importance of challenging stereotypes that portray immigrants as hostile or indifferent to the values of the native majority.”— Donald P. Green, Columbia University

“This is a terrific book―one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Polished, theoretically sophisticated, and logically structured, it brings to bear new evidence and approaches on a critical contemporary topic.”― Daniel N. Posner, University of California, Los Angeles

“Based on an impressive battery of original field experiments and surveys, this work holds a powerful message: bias and discrimination against Muslim immigrants are widespread and persistent in Europe. Native Bias shows that these shortcomings can be overcome by shared civic norms and identities.”― Christian Joppke, University of Bern


Severed Connections: Intraparty Politics and Representation in Kenya

Juan Linz Prize for best dissertation in the comparative study of democracy, APSA 2020

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How does intraparty politics shape the quality of representation in new democracies? This question has seldom been addressed in existing work on political parties in the developing world, which has traditionally emphasized the weakness of the party system and partisan attachments, as well as mobilization strategies based on ascriptive loyalties or clientelistic relationships as the key barriers to representation. Severed Connections studies this important question by reorienting our focus to the interaction between elected representatives and their party leadership, whose support is critical for their electoral survival. I show that the party leadership is motivated to capture the candidate selection process to cultivate the ideal slate of representatives that allows them to simultaneously pursue their party’s electoral success while diffusing threats against their position within the party’s ranks. The party leadership’s machinations, combined with an electoral geography that often amplifies the centrality of candidate selection, culminate in the emergence of two disparate pools of elected representatives; a majority mostly disinterested in being responsive to their constituents, and a smaller minority who remain steadfast in their commitment to their democratic sovereigns. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Kenya, my project combines insights from in-depth interviews of more than 80 past and current elected representatives and senior party officials, analyses of original surveys, census data, election returns, archival materials, ethnographic observation within party organizations, a series of experiments conducted on more than 3000 primary voters in Kenya, and a text analysis of a corpus of 51000 newspaper articles.

My argument begins from a simple premise: that to understand the relationship between intraparty politics and representation is to understand what types of demands are placed on elected representatives, and by whom. In addition to demands voters place for constituency service, representatives face pressures from their respective political parties. Moving beyond the simplistic assumption that parties are singularly motivated by the need to win elections, however, I posit that the party leadership — a select group of individuals including the party leader herself who control the party organization — is also motivated by the need to preserve and maintain their power over the party hierarchy. The need to manage and balance these two divergent goals underpins the logic by which the party leadership engineers the ideal “roster” of individuals that are nominated as party candidates; privileging “loyalists” at the expense of constituency-oriented “performers” in constituencies where the electoral repercussions of such a strategy is minimal and privileging “performers” in places where electoral success of the party hinges on nominating popular candidates with a proven track record of constituency service. The strategies deployed by the party leadership in turn structure the incentives of representatives to invest effort in serving their constituents, ultimately shaping the quality of representation.

Substantively, these findings contribute to the emerging consensus that democratic elections are necessary but insufficient to foster better representation and responsiveness for the people. However, while the dominant narrative in comparative politics has focused on structural-institutional factors such as ethnicity, clientelism, or electoral systems to understand this deficit, I shift the attention back to political parties. My project shows that the ideal of representative democracy is likely to remain elusive unless democracy within political parties is realized. When power and authority over party institutions and decision-making processes accumulate to a single individual or a small group of elites, these actors have the potential to effectively become autocrats within their domain; manipulating elected representatives who should primarily be interested in tending to their constituents to serve their political ambitions, thereby derailing the democratic process that they should protect.

Publications

Couples Therapy for a Divided America: Assessing the Effects of Reciprocal Group Reflection on Partisan Polarization

[abstract]

Overcoming America's deep partisan polarization poses a unique challenge: Americans must be able to disagree on policy while nonetheless agreeing on more fundamental democratic principles. We study one model of depolarization--reciprocal group reflection--inspired by marital counseling and implemented by a non-governmental organization,''Braver Angels.'' We randomly assigned undergraduate students at four universities either to participate in a Braver Angels workshop or simply to complete three rounds of surveys. The workshops significantly reduced polarization according to explicit and implicit measures. They also increased participants' willingness to donate to programs aimed at depolarizing political conversations. These effects are consistent across partisan groups, though some dissipate over time. Using qualitative data collected during the workshops, we inductively generate a new theory of depolarization that combines both informational and emotional components such that citizens, moved to empathize with an outgroup, become more likely to internalize new information about outgroup members.

  • with Hannah Baron, Robert A. Blair, Laura Gamboa, Jessica Gottlieb, Amanda L. Robinson, Steven C. Rosenzweig, Meghan M. Turnbull, Emily A. West
  • Political Behavior. Accepted.[draft] [policy brief]

Policymakers' Abortion Preferences: Understanding the Intersection of Gender and Wealth

  • with Leo Arriola, Justine Davis, Melanie Phillips, Lise Rakner
  • Comparative Political Studies. Forthcoming. [pdf] [dataverse]

The Hijab Penalty: Feminist Backlash to Muslim Immigrants

  • with Mathias Poertner and Nicholas Sambanis
  • American Journal of Political Science. 2023. 67(2), 291-306. [pdf] [appendix] [dataverse]
  • Gregory Luebbert Prize for Best Article in Comparative Politics, APSA, 2022
  • Best Paper Award, European Politics and Society Section, APSA, 2021
  • Press Coverage: [Süddeutsche Zeitung]

Temperature and Outgroup Discrimination

  • with Mathias Poertner and Nicholas Sambanis
  • Political Science Research and Methods. 2023. 11, 198-206. [pdf] [appendix] [dataverse]

Increasing Intergroup Trust: Endorsements and Voting in Divided Societies

Navigating 'Insider' and 'Outsider' Status as Researchers Conducting Field Experiments

  • with Sumitra Badrinathan, Sabrina Karim, Eunji Kim, and Yang-Yang Zhou
  • PS: Political Science & Politics. 2022. 55(4), 754-758. [pdf]

Ethnic Bias in Judicial Decision-making: Evidence from Criminal Appeals in Kenya

  • with Andy Harris and Fiona Shen-Bayh
  • American Political Science Review. 2022. 116(3), 1067-1080. [pdf] [appendix][dataverse]
  • Fiona McGillivray Award for Best Paper, Political Economy Section, APSA, 2020

Paying to Party: Candidate Resources and Party Switching in New Democracies

  • with Leo Arriola, Justine Davis, Melanie Phillips, Lise Rakner
  • Party Politics. 2022. 28(3), 507-520. [pdf] [appendix]

Linguistic Assimilation Does Not Reduce Discrimination Against Immigrants

  • with Mathias Poertner and Nicholas Sambanis
  • Journal of Experimental Political Science. 2021. 8(3), 235-246.[pdf] [appendix] [dataverse]
  • Rebecca Morton Award for best article published in JEPS, Experimental Research Section, APSA, 2022

Parochialism, Social Norms, and Discrimination against Immigrants

Fuzzy Sets on Shaky Ground: Parameter Sensitivity and Confirmation Bias in fsQCA

  • with Christopher Krogslund and Mathias Poertner
  • Political Analysis. 2015. 23(1), 21-41. [pdf]

Work-in-Progress

The Party's Hand in Primary Elections: Evidence from Party Primaries in a New Democracy

[abstract]

In response to mounting calls for internal party democracy, political parties in new democracies have increasingly allowed for mass participation in the candidate selection process. While these reforms should result in the diminishing influence of party leaders and the ascendancy of mass preferences over the selection of party candidates, few studies have examined whether this is the case. I investigate this question in Kenya, where major incumbent and opposition parties have adopted primary elections to select their candidates for legislative office. Drawing on insights from qualitative interviews with elected officials, original data on primary elections, as well as a survey and embedded experiments of primary voters, I show that contrary to expectations, parties wield significant influence over the outcome of primaries and that primary voters can be persuaded to select the party's favored candidate over other higher quality aspirants. These findings have implications for our understanding of the relationship between internal party democracy and democratic accountability in the developing world.

Arrested Debate: Opposition Repression and Parliamentary Speech

[abstract]

How does the repression of opposition leaders outside of parliament affect legislative behavior within it? Prior research emphasizes the effects of repression on mobilization, protest, and elections, but few works examine its consequences on legislative debate. We argue that in democratic contexts where dissent is normally allowed and encouraged, opposition repression has a chilling effect on both the quantity and quality of opposition speech-making because it generates uncertainty over both the bounds of permissible speech and the consequences of speaking beyond these bounds. We explore these dynamics in Zambia during the presidency of Edgar Lungu, whose main presidential rival, Hakainde Hichilema, was suddenly and arbitrarily arrested on charges of sedition and treason. Using the entire corpus of parliamentary speeches from the Zambian National Assembly between 2011-2021, we leverage a difference-in-differences design to compare parliamentary speech patterns of opposition and incumbent party legislators before and after the arrest of the opposition leader. We find a marked deterioration in the quantity and quality of debate following the arrest, including persistent reductions in the frequency and length of speeches made by opposition legislators as well as their discussion of substantive policy issues. We further show that opposition legislators were more likely to be interrupted during their speaking turn and denied requests to speak by the House Speaker, which we interpret as increased incivility by incumbent party members towards opposition members following the arrest of the latter's leader. Our findings demonstrate the pernicious dynamics of repression, including the indirect consequences of violence on opposition behavior, which has implications for freedom of speech and democratic representation in new democracies.

  • with Fiona Shen-Bayh

Do Voters Respond to Cross-Cleavage Campaigning in Polarized Societies?

[abstract]

Are cross-cleavage campaigns effective in polarized societies? While social demographics and electoral rules in many countries compel candidates to pursue votes outside their own identity groups, the efficacy of such campaigns remains unclear in polarized contexts. We argue that cross-cleavage electoral outreach through in-person campaign rallies can inadvertently trigger inter-group differentiation and competition, resulting in the heightened salience of identity and depressed voter support for outgroup candidates. We assess these claims by exploiting the timing of an unscheduled campaign rally held by an outgroup presidential candidate in another ethnic group's stronghold during Kenya's 2017 election. Comparing survey respondents before and after the rally, we find that the outgroup candidate's post-rally favorability significantly decreased among ingroup voters, while the proportion of voters identifying in ethnic terms simultaneously increased. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges faced in democratic elections in socially divided societies.

  • Under Review
  • with Leo Arriola, Matthew Gichohi, and Ken Opalo [draft]

Mobile Communication Technology and National Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa

[abstract]

We examine how the expansion of mobile internet infrastructure affects national identity in sub-Saharan Africa. In diverse societies where elections are contested along ethno-communal lines, we argue that access to mobile internet undermines national identity because it facilitates voter exposure to the polarizing tendencies of internet-based social media and communication platforms. Applying a difference-in-differences design on mobile coverage maps and geocoded survey data of more than 50,000 African citizens, we show that access to mobile internet reduces identification with the nation by up to 5-7 percentage points. To establish support for our electoral mechanism, we exploit as-if random variation in the timing of individuals' survey interviews relative to presidential elections, during which we argue divisive and polarizing forces are at their peak. Our analysis shows that electoral proximity intensifies the negative effect of mobile internet. These findings highlight how technological innovations can inhibit the process of state-building in diverse societies.

  • with Benjamin Laughlin and Anna Schultz [draft]

LGBT+ Tolerance: Assessing the Impact of Judicial Decisions and Social Campaigns in Africa

[abstract]

Although LGBT+ individuals in some countries around the world are enjoying the gradual expansion of civil liberties and fundamental protections, in many other countries they are experiencing increasing government repression and social sanctions. In this context, it remains unclear to what extent popular attitudes are conditioned by the decisions of state institutions like courts or the social campaigns of civil society organizations -- in either conservative or liberal directions. We assess such dynamics through a three-wave panel survey conducted among a nationally representative sample of Kenyans throughout 2019. Respondents were asked about their attitudes toward LGBT+ individuals, including criminal penalties and social sanctions, before and after Kenya's High Court issued a decision upholding the country's colonial-era anti-sodomy law. Respondents were also randomly exposed to informational and empathy treatments modeled after those employed by LGBT+ rights organizations in Kenya. Our analysis shows that while the information and empathy treatments about LGBT+ individuals did have some sizable short-term effects consistent with prejudice reduction, the effects did not persist beyond the single survey round. Furthermore, results from the post-court decision survey round show that even when respondents were nudged to recall the experience of the information and perspective-taking treatments, they were no less likely to exhibit prejudicial attitudes towards LGBT+ individuals. Taken together, our findings provide evidence for how social campaigns and state institutions may constrain the effectiveness of prejudice-reducing interventions.

  • with Leo Arriola, Matthew Gichohi, Siri Gloppen, and Malcolm Langford

Partisanship, Gender, and the Structure of Politician Networks in Zambia

[abstract]

Although women have entered government in African countries at an unprecedented rate over the past three decades, it remains unknown to what extent they have acquired the influence necessary to shape policymaking. Are women able to exercise personal influence to the same degree or in the same ways as their male counterparts? We argue that women tend to be less influential than men due to the structure of their personal networks with other politicians. Prior scholarship on African politics has demonstrated that political outcomes depend on the personal ties that connect politicians to one other. Based on a novel network survey among Zambian candidates, we demonstrate that women tend to be peripherally situated within networks. We find that women are systematically less likely to be connected to others in social or work networks among politicians. We also demonstrate that, while having fewer connections than men, women have connections with more important people in both social and work networks.

  • with Leo Arriola, Justine Davis, Melanie Phillips, and Lise Rakner

Accountability Under Devolved Government: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya

[abstract]

Political decentralization in African countries has the potential to transform the relationship between citizens and their representatives. But scholars have yet to fully understand whether or how voters adapt to the accountability demands imposed by having to elect representatives at multiple levels of government. Do voter assessments of local politicians depend on coethnicity, as prior studies have shown with national politicians? Are voters willing to update their assessments of incumbent performance based on new information? To answer such questions, we examine how voter evaluations of local incumbents are conditioned by information and partisanship. An experimental survey design presented respondents in two Kenyan counties, Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia, with randomized positive versus negative information about the performance of incumbent county governors in the run-up to the 2017 elections. The results show that some voters are willing to update their vote preference based on positive information about incumbent performance. However, these effects are found almost exclusively in Trans Nzoia, where exposure to positive information significantly increases the likelihood of voting for the incumbent even among non-coethnics, non-copartisans, and respondents with prior negative evaluations of the incumbent. In Uasin Gishu, by contrast, we find no such effects. We postulate that the differences between the two counties may be driven by distinct patterns in the distribution of political support for the two incumbents.

  • with Leo Arriola, Matthew Gichohi, and Ken Opalo

Lasting Effects of Transient Exposure to the Greek Refugee Crisis: Affective versus Cognitive Responses to Tragedy and Realistic Threat

[abstract]

We investigate whether transient exposure to refugees can durably affect native attitudes and behavior. Our case is Greece's refugee crisis, which saw a sudden influx of more than 1 million refugees in 2015 following the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. We capitalize on the fact that the Aegean Islands---the epicenter of the refugee crisis---are home to the campus for the University of the Aegean (UA), which draws students from across Greece. We conduct a targeted survey (N=3,900) of student cohorts that attended university prior to or during the refugee crisis. Employing an instrumented difference-in-difference design and a matching strategy informed by distinctive features of the Greek university admissions system, we compare the current-day attitudes, preferences, and behavioral dispositions of students who attended the University of the Aegean and thereby had significant exposure to refugees during the crisis, to otherwise similar students who attended university elsewhere and thus had limited exposure. Our findings paint a more complex picture than existing work; students who attended UA during the crisis have more favorable attitudinal and behavioral dispositions towards refugees today, but also simultaneously support more restrictive immigration policy.

  • with Nicholas Sambanis

Competing Frames and Policymakers' Preferences for LGBT+ Protection: Experimental Evidence from Zambia

[abstract]

When are politicians willing to extend formal social protections to LGBT+ minorities? While the protection of civil liberties and rights for LGBT+ communities continues to feature prominently in political debates around the world, there is limited understanding of the factors that shape the views of politicians who enact the laws that govern these protections. This study examines the effectiveness of two competing frames---that cast the protection of LGBT+ individuals either as a public health crisis or a human rights crisis---that advocacy organizations frequently employ to persuade policymakers to liberalize their position on LGBT+ minority protection. Drawing on a survey and experiment conducted among more than 600 political candidates who contested for national and local office in Zambia, we show that politicians are significantly more likely to respond to the human rights frame than the public health frame. These effects are primarily driven by male candidates and exist only when the crisis is explicitly framed in terms of its impact on the general public rather than the LGBT+ communities themselves. An analysis of open-ended responses provides suggestive evidence regarding the mechanism underlying these effects; the human rights frame appears to have reduced politicians' tendency to dehumanize members of the LGBT+ community.

  • with Leo Arriola, Justine Davis, Melanie Phillips, and Lise Rakner