Lily L Tsai
Biographic Data
| ID | 1738086 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lily L Tsai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lily L |
| FAMILY NAME | Tsai |
| SIGNATURE | TSAI L L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5264-4655 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 447 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Building trust through messaging and new e-government services in Kenya
Do government accountability and responsiveness enhance support for property taxes? Experimental evidence from China
Regional variation in Covid-19 vaccine uptake and intention in Nigeria
Globally, vaccination has been known to reduce the burden of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, with its effectiveness relying on public acceptance and widespread uptake. Despite the efforts put into the rapid development of SARS-COV-2 vaccines, uptake remains a major challenge in many countries especially those with large population dynamics like Nigeria. Most studies in Nigeria have assessed the uptake of the SARS-COV-2 vaccine among groups …
Using call detail records to determine mobility patterns of different socio-demographic groups in the western area of Sierra Leone during early Covid-19 crisis
Human mobility patterns created from mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) can provide an essential resource in data-poor environments to monitor the effects of health outbreaks. Analysis of this data can be instrumental for understanding the movement pattern of populations allowing governments to set and refine policies to respond to community health risks. Building on CDR mobility analysis techniques, this research set out to test whether com…
Taking Responsibility for Tomorrow
In learning from older and past collective governance practices, we must design new institutions with an ethos that underscores our roles not only as descendants from past innovators but also as ancestors who have a responsibility to provide such legacies for the future. Governance archaeology can only realize its full moral and generative potential when it is practiced in a way that acknowledges our responsibility to future humans as well as pas…
What Makes Anticorruption Punishment Popular? Individual-Level Evidence from China
How does punishment of corruption help to build public support in authoritarian regimes? We outline two primary mechanisms. Instrumentally, the ability to pursue anticorruption initiatives to the end signals government capacity. Deontologically, anticorruption punishment signals moral commitments. Through a novel experiment design for mediation analysis embedded in a series of conjoint experiments conducted in China, we find individual-level evid…
Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South
Easier said than done High-profile instances of police brutality in the last few years have brought attention to patterns of abuse that have existed since the inception of modern policing. There have been many calls for police reform, a process that in many countries has taken the form of increased police engagement with communities. Blair et al . report the results of a large-scale experiment testing the effectiveness of this approach across six…
Building Credibility and Cooperation in Low-Trust Settings
How can governments in low-trust settings overcome their credibility deficit when promoting public welfare? To answer this question, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Liberian government’s door-to-door canvassing campaign during the 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic, which aimed to persuade residents to voluntarily comply with policies for containing the disease. Combining data from an original representative survey of Monrovia during the crisis with v…
Outspoken Insiders
Bringing in China
What do comparativists have to gain by reading recent work on China? In this article, I focus specifically on the ways in which scholarship on China can contribute to the task of theory building in comparative politics. I identify two areas that could reap particularly high benefits from considering scholarship on China—comparative political development and the political behavior of development—and I discuss some of the specific contributions tha…
Public health and public trust
Constructive Noncompliance
Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship? Evidence from an Education Intervention in Rural Kenya
Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems
Accountability without Democracy
Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials t…
Accountability Without Democracy
Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Why would government officials in authoritarian and transitional systems where formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are often weak ever provide more than the minimum level of public goods needed to maintain social stability? Findings from a unique combination of in-depth case study research and an original survey of 316 villages in rural China indicate that even when formal accountability is weak, local officials can …
Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Why would government officials in authoritarian and transitional systems where formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are often weak ever provide more than the minimum level of public goods needed to maintain social stability? Findings from a unique combination of in-depth case study research and an original survey of 316 villages in rural China indicate that even when formal accountability is weak, local officials can …
Public health and public trust
Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship? Evidence from an Education Intervention in Rural Kenya
Outspoken Insiders
Building Credibility and Cooperation in Low-Trust Settings
How can governments in low-trust settings overcome their credibility deficit when promoting public welfare? To answer this question, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Liberian government’s door-to-door canvassing campaign during the 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic, which aimed to persuade residents to voluntarily comply with policies for containing the disease. Combining data from an original representative survey of Monrovia during the crisis with v…
Constructive Noncompliance
What Makes Anticorruption Punishment Popular? Individual-Level Evidence from China
How does punishment of corruption help to build public support in authoritarian regimes? We outline two primary mechanisms. Instrumentally, the ability to pursue anticorruption initiatives to the end signals government capacity. Deontologically, anticorruption punishment signals moral commitments. Through a novel experiment design for mediation analysis embedded in a series of conjoint experiments conducted in China, we find individual-level evid…
Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems
Bringing in China
What do comparativists have to gain by reading recent work on China? In this article, I focus specifically on the ways in which scholarship on China can contribute to the task of theory building in comparative politics. I identify two areas that could reap particularly high benefits from considering scholarship on China—comparative political development and the political behavior of development—and I discuss some of the specific contributions tha…
Do government accountability and responsiveness enhance support for property taxes? Experimental evidence from China
Accountability without Democracy
Examines the fundamental issue of how citizens get government officials to provide them with the roads, schools, and other public services they need by studying communities in rural China. In authoritarian and transitional systems, formal institutions for holding government officials accountable are often weak. The state often lacks sufficient resources to monitor its officials closely, and citizens are limited in their power to elect officials t…
Accountability Without Democracy
Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Why would government officials in authoritarian and transitional systems where formal democratic and bureaucratic institutions of accountability are often weak ever provide more than the minimum level of public goods needed to maintain social stability? Findings from a unique combination of in-depth case study research and an original survey of 316 villages in rural China indicate that even when formal accountability is weak, local officials can …
Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems
Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship? Evidence from an Education Intervention in Rural Kenya
Constructive Noncompliance
Bringing in China
What do comparativists have to gain by reading recent work on China? In this article, I focus specifically on the ways in which scholarship on China can contribute to the task of theory building in comparative politics. I identify two areas that could reap particularly high benefits from considering scholarship on China—comparative political development and the political behavior of development—and I discuss some of the specific contributions tha…
Public health and public trust
Outspoken Insiders
Building Credibility and Cooperation in Low-Trust Settings
How can governments in low-trust settings overcome their credibility deficit when promoting public welfare? To answer this question, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Liberian government’s door-to-door canvassing campaign during the 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic, which aimed to persuade residents to voluntarily comply with policies for containing the disease. Combining data from an original representative survey of Monrovia during the crisis with v…
Community policing does not build citizen trust in police or reduce crime in the Global South
Easier said than done High-profile instances of police brutality in the last few years have brought attention to patterns of abuse that have existed since the inception of modern policing. There have been many calls for police reform, a process that in many countries has taken the form of increased police engagement with communities. Blair et al . report the results of a large-scale experiment testing the effectiveness of this approach across six…
What Makes Anticorruption Punishment Popular? Individual-Level Evidence from China
How does punishment of corruption help to build public support in authoritarian regimes? We outline two primary mechanisms. Instrumentally, the ability to pursue anticorruption initiatives to the end signals government capacity. Deontologically, anticorruption punishment signals moral commitments. Through a novel experiment design for mediation analysis embedded in a series of conjoint experiments conducted in China, we find individual-level evid…
Using call detail records to determine mobility patterns of different socio-demographic groups in the western area of Sierra Leone during early Covid-19 crisis
Human mobility patterns created from mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) can provide an essential resource in data-poor environments to monitor the effects of health outbreaks. Analysis of this data can be instrumental for understanding the movement pattern of populations allowing governments to set and refine policies to respond to community health risks. Building on CDR mobility analysis techniques, this research set out to test whether com…
Taking Responsibility for Tomorrow
In learning from older and past collective governance practices, we must design new institutions with an ethos that underscores our roles not only as descendants from past innovators but also as ancestors who have a responsibility to provide such legacies for the future. Governance archaeology can only realize its full moral and generative potential when it is practiced in a way that acknowledges our responsibility to future humans as well as pas…
Regional variation in Covid-19 vaccine uptake and intention in Nigeria
Globally, vaccination has been known to reduce the burden of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, with its effectiveness relying on public acceptance and widespread uptake. Despite the efforts put into the rapid development of SARS-COV-2 vaccines, uptake remains a major challenge in many countries especially those with large population dynamics like Nigeria. Most studies in Nigeria have assessed the uptake of the SARS-COV-2 vaccine among groups …
Do government accountability and responsiveness enhance support for property taxes? Experimental evidence from China
Building trust through messaging and new e-government services in Kenya
Political science (14 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · China (6 works) · Government (linguistics (6 works) · Local Government Finance and Decentralization (5 works) · Public Administration (5 works)