PhD Research
Phelan US Centre PhD Summer Research Grants aim to encourage innovative research on the United States and to support students pursuing postgraduate research on topics related to the Centre’s overall mission of promoting internationally-oriented scholarship on America’s changing role in the world.
This page showcases reports from students involved in our PhD Summer Research Grant programme since 2018.
Project Themes
- Effects of Exposure to Online Polarization on Generalized Trust
Tiffany Lau, Department of GovernmentYear: 2022-23
While social media is now an essential site of election campaigns and political discourse, political life online is plagued by misinformation, disinformation, ‘fake news’, propaganda, hostility, trolls, bots, and more. The vast majority of political content online is produced by a tiny minority of unrepresentative users, and tends to be moralized, emotional, and contentious - i.e., highly polarized.
While plenty of work has been done in the race to understand whether this is causing political dysfunction, e.g. whether social media is causing polarization or increasing the probability of violence, less has been done to understand the secondary social consequences, for instance, whether such a climate surrounding American political discussions online is affecting our ability to trust one another and work together. More specifically, does exposure to polarized political discourse online affect generalized trust? - Do Social Media Create Bias in Democratic Deliberation?Nick Lewis, Department of Government
Year: 2022-23
Social media have become increasingly important spaces for political communication and discussion. Facebook, in particular, has been widely cited as influencing recent electoral contests around the world, including the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. However, we still have much to learn about how digital media are shaping the way we talk about politics. Until now, research has focused upon the loudest voices in political debate. Who is most likely to disengage from online political debate, and why?
Leveraging Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's seminal 'Spiral of Silence' theory, I argue that the introduction of divisive issues in Facebook groups leads to a within-subject decrease in the likelihood of engaging in political discussion. Further, I argue that this effect is greater in politically-heterogeneous groups than in politically homogeneous groups. Finding an answer will give us insight into how social media have shaped - and will continue to shape - political discussion, with important implications for democracy.
- The political economy of European competition policy
Tommaso Crescioli, European Institute
Year: 2020-21
In my doctoral research, I have been using Philippon’s (2019) same OECD (2021) data to show that the Great Reversal may be industry-specific. In some industries, US profit margins have neither increased nor are they higher than in Europe (see graphs). An industry-based approach may thereforebe relevant to understand changes in American antitrust policy. The leading federal competition authorities, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), supervise different sectors. Furthermore, their design differs: the DoJ is part of the executive branch, whereasthe FTC is an independent agency making it more similar to the EU regulator. This peculiar setup of American antitrust is the background to the questions I want to answer in this research project: Does antitrust enforcement change depending on the competition authorities responsible? Do differences in antitrust enforcement impact competition in different sectors?Read the final report of Tommaso's summer grant project here. - From the individual to the system and back again: bridging the gap between deconsumption and degrowth for a sustainable path forward
Dallas O’Dell, Department of Psychological and Behavioural ScienceScholars have identified the need to connect strong sustainable consumption (SSC), including individual level deconsumption behaviours, with macro-level strategies for societal transformation such as degrowth. However, the discussion has been mostly conceptual, with little to no empirical evidence. There is also limited research on psychological and behavioural barriers and levers to deconsumption preferences and behaviours, and how these may inform behavioural interventions to promote SSC. In my doctoral dissertation, I aim to address this missing link between individual adoption of deconsumption behaviours on the micro-level and support for degrowth at the macro-level. This question is particularly relevant to the US, with the highest GDP and second highest emissions globally, necessitating immediate curbs to prevent global climate disaster.Read the final report of Dallas' summer grant project here. - Essays on Economic and Political Inequalities in the United States
Alberto Parmigiani, Department of Government
Year: 2021-22
This project aims to critically reassess the relationship between income and political participation in the United States, researching this link in the current period, when scholars have emphasized the importance of identity politics vis-à-vis economic self-interested rational decisions. More specifically, I examine the effect of income changes on a number of political activities in the last decade, which has been characterized by an increasing level of economic inequality and polarization. Making use of nationally representative surveys and voter files, I describe the likelihood of political participation, such as voting in federal elections and donating money to politics, for different income levels and other socioeconomic characteristics. Then, I intend to causally estimate the effect of the economic shock due to the pandemic on the decision to donate and turn out to vote for the 2020 election.
Read the final report of Alberto's summer grant project here. - Consumers' Demand for Digital Privacy
Xinchen Ma, Department of Finance
Year: 2022-23
The trend of globalization represented by global trade seems to have flattened relative to its peak in the 20th century. But globalization hasn't gone into reverse. It's gone digital. Recent decades have brought a digital revolution such that personal data and big data analytics are now essential elements of business, fuelling a $227 billion-a-year data industry across the globe. This sweeping change powers economic growth but also poses the risk of privacy intrusion and unethical consumer surveillance.
Despite the ongoing discussions and major regulatory efforts, there is little evidence on whether and to what extent consumers demand data privacy and what factors drive their privacy preferences and awareness. This research seeks to advance our understanding of consumer demand for data privacy by addressing three objectives. - Political Ideology & InnovationMarta Morando, Department of Economics
Year: 2022-23
Ideological distance has been increasing in the US in recent years and democrats and republicans are becoming further away from each other (Pew Research Center, 2014). From the analysis of survey data, it is possible to see that this holds across a variety of topics and controlling for a variety of characteristics. Being more right-wing is associated with less support for the environmental cause, and for women’s rights, but more confidence in the role of the army and the police, among others. Is this ideological division also reflected in tangible economic choices?
This research project aims to understand whether and how this polarizing pattern may affect innovation. It is relevant to study this phenomenon in the context of innovation –not only because innovation is one of the main drivers of economic growth and well-being—but also because recent evidence has underlined that the individual background of inventors is crucial in shaping the direction of innovation.
- Bowling with Guns: Grievance, resentment, and political action in the milita movement and American right
Ariel Perkins, Department of Government, LSE
Year: 2018-19
This research addresses three puzzles emerging from our accumulated knowledge of the US militia movement. First, does it make sense to assume militia members aretriggered by the same structural grievances as wider partisan bases? Is there a connection betweenpartisan extremism and political action in the US case? Second, what explains ‘extremist’ forms ofmobilization (e.g. armed paramilitary drills) without ‘extremist’ outcomes (e.g. political violence)?Are militias meeting more for coffee than guns, and if so, how and why is such engagementpolitically coded? Third, nearly all primary accounts suggest recruits view membership as a civicduty and public good (Cooter 2013, Shapira 2013, Aho 1990). If this is the case, why does suchactivism manifest in non-traditional forms of democratic political engagement? Are enlisteesinfluenced by shared background characteristics or experiences (e.g. military service)?Read the final report of Ariel's summer grant project here and her interview with the LSE Research team here. - Parklet City: Governing American Public Space
Frida Timan, Department of Geography and Environment, LSE
Year: 2019-20
In 2010, local planners in San Francisco transformed two parking spaces into a sidewalk park called a "parklet", and started a global movement of parklet building. Currently, parklets exist on all continents of the world, reshaping public space in cities such as London, Johannesburg and Melbourne. Through building parklets, San Francisco, known as a liberal hub in the American political context, once again put its name on the global map for cutting-edge local politics and planning. Parklets are public spaces, but managed, maintained and paid for by nearby businesses, a governance arrangement that has accompanied the implementation of parklets elsewhere in the world. My research aims to explore the implications of this space governance model on the many different social groups that inhabit San Francisco’s public space, and additionally research the process through which the parklet space governance model has been implemented beyond the borders of America. - Negative partisanship in multi-party systems
Katharina Lawall, Department of Government, LSE
Year: 2019-20
What happens when politicians and parties start justifying anti-immigration policies with women’s protection and women’s rights? I argue that such genderimmigration messages make anti-immigration views and parties more acceptable and popular. To test this, I conducted survey experiments, varying whether respondents are exposed to a gender-immigration message, an immigration message, a gender message or no message. I find that gender-immigration messages can increase the acceptability of anti-immigration views, particularly among female voters. These findings show that gender equality rhetoric can be used be political actors to normalise anti-immigration views. Talk about "protecting our women" can be a powerful legitimising device for anti-immigrant agendas.Read the final report of Katharina's summer grant project here. - Group-orientated politics: Using group identities and orientations to better understand and predict vote choices, perceptions of candidates, and election results
Denise Baron, Department of Methodology
Year: 2020-21
Among both Democrats and Republicans, the current levels of gender and racial representationin the US Congress are unprecedented. Despite an increase in diverse representation, people of colour and women face particular challenges as political candidates, especially in terms of controlling and shaping their public images. While previous research has investigated the role of demographic traits or partisan affiliation in shaping perceptions of politicians, the role of candidates’ ideology, specifically group orientations such as national identity, authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, is less clear. This study investigates the relative influence of political candidates’ various attributes, including demographics and ideology, on how voters perceive them, importantly assessing how multiple identities can intersect and produce positive or negative perceptions. Using a conjoint experiment, we investigate the causal relationship between voters’ group orientations and their perceptions of candidates of varying identities and ideologies.Read the final report of Denise's summer grant project here. - Populism in parties, politicians and public opinion
Julia Leschke, Department of Government
Year: 2020-21
To succeed in elections, parties and politicians adapt different strategies of framing the current divisionsin society – reaching from the extremist right-wing illiberal populism of Trump, over the socially liberal and unifying appeals of Biden, to the left-wing populist rhetoric of Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez. But how exactly do political parties and actors in the US and Western Europe persuade voters to support their pluralist, radical left- or right-wing worldviews in times of entrenched political polarization? And who are these voters which find extremist, illiberal or anti-establishment appeals so enticing? My PhD seeks to answer these questions by creating and analyzing an unprecedently rich and fine-grained dataset of political communication of more than 6.2 million speeches from the US Congress and multiple West European parliaments, along with almost 900 election manifestos covering the last 60 years. Read the final report of Julia's summer grant project here. - Short-circuiting Protest Deterrence: Repression, Fear Alignment and Social Networks
Agnes Yu, Department of International Relations
Year: 2020-21
The US recorded over 10,600 protests events between May-August 2020, centred around the Black Lives Matter movement catalyzed by the killing of George Floyd. The government response was disproportionately forceful, with President Trump first threatening then applying militarized federal forces against demonstrators in places such as Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Washington DC. Under this context, this project aims to develop a theoretical and methodological framework to understand how repression deters protest in the US. How do perceptions of state repression affect protest non-participation, and under what conditions? What are the wider implications for how dissent occurs and how (democratic) states choose to repress?Read the final report of Agnes' summer grant project here. - Power of Perception: The Impact of Candidate Characteristics on Voting Behaviour
Asli Ceren Cinar, Department of Government
Year: 2021-22
It is well-known that women candidates work on their voice pitch to overcome gender stereotypes and signal specific qualities to voters or the media. This study project will explore how nonverbal communication and voice pitch influence today's political leader preferences. As gender norms shift in the US, we might expect effects to be different today than a decade ago. I plan to analyse how verbal presentation on various policy issues interacts with a candidate's age and gender to affect voters' perception formation. My core research question is "to what extent does a candidate's voice pitch and facial attractiveness affect voters' perceptions and vote choice?"
Read the final report of Asli Ceren's summer grant project here.
- The interaction of health, aging, housing and public finance in the USA
Nilesh Raut, Department of Health Policy
Year: 2020-21
My thesis aims at investigating how health, aging, housing, and public finance interact in the US. The first chapter of my thesis attempts to investigate the impact of Deficit Reduction Act 2005 on the uptake of (Medicaid) and private long-term care insurance in the US and identifies that DRA2005 saved $36 per 65 years old individual. The second chapter identifies the impact of housing and financial wealth on public and private insurance in the US. The third chapter investigates the effect of Affordable care act’s Medicaid expansion on the mental wellbeing of spousal caregivers in the US. The fourth chapter plans to identify how the social housing in the US impacts the nursing home care utilization/admissions. Nursing home care in the US is expensive and can result in welfare loss of individual if not planned properly.Read the final report of Nilesh's summer grant project here. - Changing Ways, Changing Minds: Exploring the determinants of maternal health across the mid-20th century for the US SouthMatthew Purcell, Department of Economic HistoryThe importance of public health policy to governance has become clear in the last couple of years. COVID-19 has highlighted the complexity of disseminating technical knowledge across large, diverse populations. My project addresses these themes by examining how new knowledge and best practices about maternal health were disseminated across racial and class boundaries in Florida from 1931 to 1968. Using social capital theory, the project argues that changes in the regulation of midwifery linked the medical establishment with marginalized communities. This social network allowed for the transference of medical knowledge and resources. The project’s core questions are: 1) How did regulation contribute to the decline of maternal mortality rates across the period? 2) To what extent did the policy address racial and spatial disparities? 3) What can the midwife program teach us about the importance of social capital linkages in confronting complex health challenges? Read the final report of Matthew's summer grant project here.
- Investigating Regulatory Capture of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Robin Forrest, Department of Health Policy
Year: 2022-23
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the most influential drug regulatory agency globally. As I outlined in my recent LSE USAPPP Blog post, the FDA effectively sets the bar in terms of evidentiary standards and incentives for new drugs globally. However, recent approvals have prompted questions as to whether FDA decisions are always made in the public interest. New drugs are increasingly being approved with high levels of clinical uncertainty, at extraordinary prices.
The aims of this project are to (I) elicit the US public preferences concerning drug approvals, and (II) to demonstrate empirically whether these preferences are aligned with FDA current practice for approving new drugs.
- Resisting Marxism and Imperialism in the Persian Gulf: Political Alliances and Revolutionary Transnationalism, 1965-1979
Marral Shamshiri-Fard, Department of International History, LSE
Year: 2018-19
This PhD dissertation analyses the diplomatic and transnational Iranian involvement in the Dhofar revolution in the period of 1965-79 within the context of the global Cold War. Combining international and transnational history, it examines how the global Cold War shaped, and was shaped by, the ideas, actions, and decisions of individuals, states, and organisations, whether they were revolutionaries or statesmen; non-aligned, Western, or Eastern states; and activist, informal or institutional organisations. Building on existing scholarship which has tended to focus on the Moscow vs. Washington lens of Cold War history, this research projects instead centralises so-called Third World actors in Iran and Oman in order to understand how Western hegemony, namely, American dominance, was challenged in the defining period of the Global Sixties. Read the final report of Marral's summer grant project here. - Henry L. Stimson, American Grand Strategy, and the Second world War, 1940-1945
Grant Golub, Department of International History, LSE
Year: 2019-20
This research explores how the War Department, the executive branch agency responsible for managing the United States Army from 1789-1947, performed and operated as a bureaucratic and political actor in the political and strategic debates occurring in Washington during the Second World War. As the largest U.S. government department during the war, the War Department had a compelling and vital interest in attempting to shape the American war effort. Yet as the historiography of the American experience during World War II shifts to the political battles consuming Washington during this period, how different agencies within the executive branch fought over U.S. strategy and policy has been glossed over, marginalized, or ignored.This research explores how the War Department, the executive branch agency responsible for managing the United States Army from 1789-1947, performed and operated as a bureaucratic and political actor in the political and strategic debates occurring in Washington during the Second World War. As the largest U.S. government department during the war, the War Department had a compelling and vital interest in attempting to shape the American war effort. Yet as the historiography of the American experience during World War II shifts to the political battles consuming Washington during this period, how different agencies within the executive branch fought over U.S. strategy and policy has been glossed over, marginalized, or ignored. This research aims to fill that gap.Read the final report of Grant's summer grant project here. - Cold Refuge: Honduran refugee camps and Central America's global Cold War
Fionntán O'Hara, Department of International History, LSE
Year: 2019-20
My research looks at the politics surrounding refugee camps in Honduras during the 1980s and the experiences of those involved with them. During this decade a diverse range of actors were concerned with these camps - Salvadoran refugees, Nicaraguan refugees, Guatemalan refugees, Non-Governmental Organisations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Honduran state, the United States, and eventually European governments. This research will look at the interactions between these groups. This project will answer three overarching research questions. The first is on the relationship between the Cold War and humanitarianism and the manner in which these differing ideological frameworks were simultaneously used to compliment and oppose each other. The second will use the refugee camps as a space to illustrate the global nature of the Central American conflicts. The third will look at the refugees, examining their agency and experiences.
Read the final report of Fionntán's summer grant project here.
- Understanding Reneging: Why Allies Withdraw from Dual-Key Nuclear Sharing Commitments
Jacklyn Majnemer, Department of International Relations, LSE
Year: 2018-19
This summer project will form a key part of a doctoral thesis, which explores the trajectory the dual-key nuclear sharing arrangements between the Canada and the US under NATO and NORAD. The core puzzle that drives my thesis is why some states renege on their previously-held alliance commitments, despite the structural incentives to cooperate within institutionalized alliances. It will be argued that a key source of leverage for reneging is the type of domestic coalition that supports defection, which can mitigate the perceived costs of defection. Coalitions that support reneging on a wide variety of commitments and question the fundamentals of alliance membership, or maximalist coalitions, provide more leverage than coalitions that only oppose a single commitment but generally support membership within the alliance, or minimalist coalitions. Maximalist coalitions have three main sources of bargaining power: a credible threat of total withdrawal from the alliance, a willingness to act unilaterally, and low vulnerability to being influenced by allies. Using Putnam’s two-level game as a model of intra-alliance negotiation, it will be argued that leaders that have the support of a maximalist coalition should be more likely to pursue a reneging strategy vis-à-vis the alliance and to succeed in their attempts to renege on their commitments if they can maintain this support.Read the final report of Jacklyn's summer grant project here.
- Perceptions of Surveillance: Exploring feelings held by Black residents of the Greater Boston Area toward automated camera enforcement for roadway infractions
Lindiwe Rennert, Department of Geography and Environment
Year: 2021-22
Countless evaluations have demonstrated that automated camera enforcement (ACE) is an effective tool for upholding adherence with traffic laws, improving roadway safety, and cultivating driving behavior change. However, since its introduction to the US in the 1980s, implementation of ACE has sparked much controversy. ACE policies host implications for both in-person police presence and algorithmic discrimination, yet the interactions of ACE with race, oppression, liberation, and mobility have been largely overlooked. This research tackles the following question: How do Black community leaders and Black decision-makers in the Greater Boston Area (GBA) understand the potential use of ACE for both traffic and transit roadway violations? I will convene eight focus groups: four comprised of Black decision makers, and four of Black community leaders. This work seeks to add nuance to the policy approach to ACE while amplifying the voices of communities historically abused by systems of policing, surveillance, and enforcement. Read the final report of Lindiwe's summer grant project here.
- Contextualising Universalism: Trade Union Benefit Provision in the US and the UK at the turn of the 20th Century
Maya Adereth, Department of Sociology
Year: 2022-23
My PhD dissertation asks: why didn't the US labour movement advocate universal public health and pension schemes during the Progressive Era—when many of its European counterparts had launched nationwide campaigns for public insurance? I pursue this question through a comparative historical lens, placing the trajectory of the US labour movement in dialogue with its most similar parallel in the UK.
The labour movements in both countries emerged out of an apolitical and voluntarist tradition which denounced government paternalism and upheld the moral virtues of self-help and thrift. For this reason, trade unions in both cases developed an expansive system of voluntary insurance benefits, including funds for sickness, unemployment, superannuation, and death. By the late 19th century, the movements diverged: whereas the British labour movement abandoned its insurance schemes and campaigned for Old Age Pensions (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911), the American Federation of Labor clung to benefit provision and campaigned against the proposals for public insurance advanced by progressive reformers. This turning-point held significant implications for the development of the countries’ respective welfare states in the following decades. - Quantifying the Importance of Legal Assistance for Social Welfare Problems: A Comparative PerspectiveJuliet-Nil Uraz, Department of Social Policy
Year: 2022-23
Although the United States is an outlier among OECD countries in the ubiquity of evictions that renters experience, no federal program guarantees legal assistance to those who are evicted. In the absence of such a guarantee, legal representation for low-income tenants is scarce, uneven, and exceptional. In response, New York City pioneered a right to counsel for tenants facing evictions in 2017. A growing body of evidence found that the program’s recipients were less likely to be evicted. There, lawyers stemmed evictions. But how enduring and protective is such an attorney’s representation? Questions linger, first, about whether lawyers' interventions break or merely postpone housing insecurity; and second, about whether and how seeing a lawyer helps tenants resolve what went wrong in the first place.
In this project, I use econometric methods to answer those questions by evaluating the introduction of NYC’s right to counsel.My ultimate goal is to study how providing legal assistance to low-income households can help alleviate poverty.