The following is a list of published and ongoing projects. Please email me at sarah_hummel@fas.harvard.edu for the latest version of any working papers.

Publications:

• Mutual Restraint in Nondemocratic Legislatures

Nondemocratic regimes sometimes benefit from tolerating the expression of critical opinions and visions for policy in their legislatures. Doing so enables them to gather important information about societal preferences, to co-opt potential challengers, and to address other threats to their control. In these cases, regimes and deputies exhibit mutual restraint: deputies respect regime-set limits on their freedom to express critical opinions, while regimes refrain from punishing deputies for expressing negative views when the stakes are acceptably low. By examining both the responsiveness of individual deputies and how regimes police the limits of acceptable behavior, we are better able to identify both the functions and strengths of nondemocratic legislatures. I illustrate these dynamics using data about deputy voting behavior and legislative success in the Kyrgyz Jogorku Kenesh (2016–2020).

Published Online. American Journal of Political Science

• Leaders Online: Social Media Communication by Political Leaders Across Regime Type (with Philipp Zimmer)

How do the strategic political incentives of different regime types influence the structure and sentiment of social media communication by heads of government? Political leaders increasingly view social media as an essential way to connect with their citizens. However, differences in accountability structures and control over information, which vary with the level of democracy, systematically influence the intended audience and purpose of this communication. We analyze the structure and sentiment of over 30,000 French and English language tweets made by 24 political leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2018 and 2021. We find evidence that leaders of more democratic countries tweet more frequently, are less likely to engage directly with specific users, and are more measured in their communication style.

Published Online. Political Research Quarterly

• Elections, War, and Gender: Self-Selection and the Pursuit of Victory (co-authored with Stephen Chaudoin and Yon Soo Park)

Why might female leaders of democratic countries commit more resources - money, equipment, soldiers, etc. - to interstate conflicts than male leaders? We argue that gender bias in the process of democratic election helps explain this behavior: since running for office is generally more costly for women than men, only women who place a higher value on winning competitions choose to become candidates for political office. After election, they also devote more resources to pursuing victory in conflict situations. To provide microfoundational evidence for this claim, we analyze data from an online laboratory game featuring real-time, group play in which participants chose to run for election, conducted a simple campaign, and represented their group in a contest game if elected. Women who placed a higher non-monetary value on winning were more likely to self-select into candidacy and, when victorious, spent more resources in intergroup contests than male elected leaders. The data suggest that electoral selection plays an important role in observed differences between male and female leaders in the real-world.

2024. International Organization 78(4): 853-875.

• The Election Effect: Democracy in Inter-Group Contests (co-authored with Stephen Chaudoin and Yon Soo Park)

Interactions between groups often depend on choices made by democratically selected group leaders. Using an online laboratory experiment, we show that democratic leader selection increases inefficient effort in inter-group contest games. We attribute a large portion of this increase to an election effect, wherein individuals behave differently after the experience of being elected by members of their group. Democratic election intensifies group identification and creates a sense of obligation to voters, causing leaders to exert more costly effort in competitive situations. We use a carefully specified decomposition strategy to distinguish the election effect from better known selection effects, wherein eventual leaders are non-randomly chosen. From a welfare perspective, our negative finding in an inter-group interaction is contrary to the near-universal positive effects of democracy found in intra-group experiments.

2024. International Studies Quarterly 68(1): squad107.

• Leader Age, Death, and Political Liberalization in Dictatorships

This article examines how expectations about the likelihood of a dictator’s death affect the strategic calculations of regime insiders and potential challengers. On the one hand, would-be reformers are better positioned to plan and execute post-death challenges as dictators age. On the other hand, regime insiders anticipate these challenges and try to proactively solve the problem of political succession. The circumstances surrounding leader death determine which of these competing effects dominates. Accordingly, leader death is more liberalizing as leaders age in personalist regimes compared to nonpersonalist regimes, and in countries with high levels of economic development compared to those with low levels of development. Furthermore, preemptive actions in personalist dictatorships, such as coup attempts and irregular removals, are more likely as leaders age and their death becomes imminent.

2020. The Journal of Politics. 82(3): 981-995.

• Sideways Concessions and Individual Decisions to Protest

Sideways concessions to protest are policy reforms that decrease grievance among potential protesters, without being directly linked to the stated demands of the protest. By avoiding both the backlash effect of repression and the inspirational effect of direct concessions, they are theoretically powerful tools for quelling unrest. This article evaluates the effectiveness of sideways concessions at reducing individual mobilization potential using a survey experiment conducted in Kyrgyzstan in October 2015. The evidence shows sideways concessions are effective among respondents who were dissatisfied with the government and not optimistic about the future of the country. The article also demonstrates the plausibility of these results in other settings, drawing on observational data from the 2014 Gezi Park protests in Turkey and the 2013 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine.

2019. Comparative Politics, 52(1): 65-96.

• Relative Water Scarcity and Country Relations along Cross-Boundary Rivers: Evidence from the Aral Sea Basin

How do countries that share cross-border rivers respond to periods of abnormally low water availability? Existing research concerning water scarcity focuses on how cross-basin differences in absolute availability influence relations between countries. I argue that understanding whether countries react cooperatively or conflictually to within-basin shortages is important. I use the case of two major cross-boundary rivers in the Aral Sea basin of Central Asia to study the effects of within-basin relative scarcity. Employing original data on interactions among the Central Asian countries over the issue of water management, I find an association between, on the one hand, relative water scarcity and, on the other hand, an increased likelihood of both cooperative and conflictual interactions. By showing that relative scarcity affects when cooperative and conflictual events occur, my analysis highlights the fact that absolute scarcity is not the only type of water scarcity that influences international relations on cross-boundary rivers.

2017. International Studies Quarterly, 61(4): 795-808.

Selected Ongoing Projects:

• Gender and Law-making in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Russia (with Valeria Umanets)

From gender-washing to gender-bashing, authoritarian leaders pursue diverse policies related to female representation and empowerment. Legislatures are one arena in which these dynamics play out, with some authoritarian countries closing in on gender parity and some lagging far behind. Other countries, like Russia, pursue a middle path: women are not barred from political office, but neither is their presence actively promoted. In such contexts, the onus is on individual female deputies to prove their worth and, like many of their democratic counterparts, they do so by working harder and delivering better results than their male colleagues. Drawing on extensive bill sponsorship data from the Russian State Duma (2000-2020), we demonstrate that female deputies are more productive and effective lawmakers across a wide-range of issues.

Draft available upon request