Hahrie Han
Biographic Data
| ID | 3628679 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hahrie Han |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hahrie |
| FAMILY NAME | Han |
| SIGNATURE | HAN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Johns Hopkins University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5259-8943 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 397 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Roundtable: Perspectives on The Public
Organizing and Democracy: Understanding the Possibilities for Transformative Collective Action
Democracy requires collective action—but not all forms of collective action are the same. Scholars need a more coherent intellectual infrastructure to differentiate distinct forms of collective action and to identify the kinds of collective action that enable democracy. We distinguish between two types of collective action: organizing, which seeks to transform individuals and groups into effective agents who can shape public outcomes, and mobiliz…
Response to LaGina Gause’s Review of Prisms of the People: Power & Organizing in Twenty-First Century America
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Civic Feedbacks: Linking Collective Action, Organizational Strategy, and Influence over Public Policy
Democracy is premised on the ability of individuals, often working with others, to influence policies affecting them. However, existing theory cannot always explain why some organized efforts are more influential than others. We introduce the concept of civic feedbacks, arguing that the ways organizations engage individuals in collective action have feedback effects that shape the strategic position of organizations, the options available to lead…
The unequal landscape of civic opportunity in America
Civic engagement and psychological distress during the Covid-19 pandemic
Civic engagement that facilitates interpersonal interactions may protect against psychological distress
Getting out the vote in the projects: Lessons from a community organizing experiment
We analyze the effects of a community organizing initiative in low-income public housing on voter turnout among race-class subjugated communities. Get-out-the-vote campaigns and voter turnout are among the most heavily studied topics in empirical political science. Yet, we know much less about how to increase turnout among race-class subjugated communities, where community-level (as opposed to individual or household-level) interventions are nece…
American Trust in Science & Institutions in the Time of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many discussions about how people's trust in science shaped our ability to address the crisis. Early in the pandemic, our research team set out to understand how trust in science relates to support for public health guidelines, and to identify some trusted sources of science. In this essay, we share our findings and offer ideas about what might be done to strengthen the public's trust in science. Notably, our resear…
Igniting Change: An Evangelical Megachurch’s Racial Justice Program
Congregations, with their size, breadth, and legacy of shaping political activism, have the potential to be important sites of action for addressing racial injustice in America. Yet historical legacies of racism and persistently high levels of racial animus have made white evangelical communities in particular resistant to addressing racism. Most efforts to address racism in these communities begin with prejudice reduction programs that often fai…
Civil Society, Realized: Equipping the Mass Public to Express Choice and Negotiate Power
We examine the ways in which change in civil society has contributed to the erosion of democracy in the United States. Democracy demands that people commit to pluralistic self-determination, which means that people must be willing to seek power and also share it. We argue that civil society plays two important roles in sustaining people's willingness to do both: first, civil society cultivates a capacity for expressing choice; and second, it teac…
Interventions to reduce partisan animosity
Habits of courage: Reconceptualizing risk in social movement organizing
We examine the types of risk that organizers seeking to build people‐based political power take and describe how organizers cultivate habits of courage in themselves and others to regularly confront these risks. While prior literature emphasizes the degree of risk (high vs. low), we identify and elaborate two qualitatively different types of risk: internal and external. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 88 movement organizers in six states, we …
Change Over Time in Public Support for Social Distancing, Mask Wearing, and Contact Tracing to Combat the Covid-19 Pandemic Among US Adults, April to November 2020
Objectives. To examine how sociodemographic, political, religious, and civic characteristics; trust in science; and fixed versus fluid worldview were associated with evolving public support for social distancing, indoor mask wearing, and contact tracing to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. Surveys were conducted with a nationally representative cohort of US adults in April, July, and November 2020. Results. Support for social distancing amo…
Linking Members to Leaders: How Civic Associations Can Strengthen Members’ External Political Efficacy
Americans’ sense of external political efficacy—their belief in their ability to influence government decisions—has declined precipitously in recent decades, eroding the public’s confidence in our system of representative democracy. Scholars have long argued that involvement in civic associations can help ordinary Americans realize their political efficacy, yet a lack of longitudinal data on association members’ attitudes and behaviors has impede…
Psychological Distress and Loneliness Reported by US Adults in 2018 and April 2020
This study used national survey data to compare the prevalence symptoms of psychological distress and loneliness among US adults during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in April 2020 vs those reported in the National Health Interview Survey in 2018.
The exchange between citizens and elected officials: A social psychological framework for citizen climate activists
Citizen activists play a role in translating public concern about the climate crisis to policymakers and elevating it on the political agenda. We consider the dynamic between citizen activists and the decision-makers they seek to influence and we review psychological research relevant to advocating for climate legislation. We conducted a study with citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. …
If We Build It, Only Some Will Come: An Experimental Study of Mobilization for Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program
Seattle, Washington instituted a new “democracy voucher” program in 2017 providing each registered voter with four $25 campaign finance vouchers to contribute to municipal candidates. Prior research shows that without efforts to mobilize voters, electoral reforms like the voucher program are often insufficient to increase participation among underrepresented groups. We examine how mobilization affects the voucher program’s redistributive goals – …
Apsa Presidential Task Force Report on New Partnerships
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Public Support for Social Safety-Net Policies for Covid-19 in the United States, April 2020
Objectives. To examine public support for health insurance, income support, and unemployment policies during the initial phase of disease transmission and economic distress following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak and to assess varying public support based on beliefs about the role of government. Methods. We fielded a nationally representative survey of US adults (n = 1468) from April 7, 2020, to April 13, 2020. Results. Of US a…
Constituency and Leadership in the Evolution of Resistance Organizations
This chapter examines the way old and new movement organizations addressed strategic dilemmas regarding constituency and leadership in the Trump Era. This chapter examines two case organizations to illustrate how long-standing and new organizations grappled with two particular challenges: (1) How would they define their constituencies, and what is the extent to which they will put questions of race at the center (or not)? And (2) Will they invest…
Understanding the Asian American Vote in the 2016 Election
As the number of Asian American voters has increased with each election, more research is needed to understand the participation and voting patterns of this diverse electorate. This paper offers an analysis of Asian American political participation and vote choice preferences during the 2016 presidential election. The paper begins by addressing the concerns related to Asian American political incorporation. We disaggregate Asian Americans into th…
Re-engaging social relationships and collective dimensions of organizing to revive democratic practice
The weakening of the everyday practice of democracy around the world presents profound challenges for social scientists working with an applied focus on issues of inequality and justice in social change. This paper examines community organizing (in the US) as an instrument for equitable and just social change, and argues that three interrelated trends are subtly undermining a core practice of organizing: developing social relationships. An expand…
Opening up the black box: Citizen group strategies for engaging grassroots activism in the twenty-first century
A Shared Future: Faith-Based Organizing for Racial Equity and Ethical Democracy
The feedback effects of interest groups on American democracy
Primary Elections and Candidate Ideology: Out of Step with the Primary Electorate
This article draws on a new dataset of House primary‐ and general‐election outcomes (1956–98) to examine the relationship between primary elections and candidate ideology. We show that, like presidential candidates, congressional candidates face a strategic‐positioning dilemma: should they align themselves with their general‐ or primary‐election constituencies? Relative to general‐election voters, primary voters favor more ideologically extreme c…
The Organizational Roots of Political Activism: Field Experiments on Creating a Relational Context
This article examines the role that democratic organizations play in fostering political activism in America. Activists make democracy work by attending meetings, engaging others, trying to make their voice heard, and participating in myriad other ways. Yet, we still need a deeper understanding of what role organizations play in cultivating that activism. The article presents data from three field experiments showing that creating a relational or…
Leadership, Membership, and Voice: Civic Associations That Work
Why are some civic associations more effective than others? The authors introduce a multidimensional framework for analyzing the effectiveness of civic associations in terms of public recognition, member engagement, and leader development. Using original surveys of local Sierra Club organizations and leaders, the authors assess prevailing explanations in organization and movement studies alongside a model highlighting leadership and internal orga…
Interventions to reduce partisan animosity
A Delayed Return to Historical Norms: Congressional Party Polarization after the Second World War
Although a rich body of research has explored the sources of party polarization in the US House of Representatives, it has focused primarily on the House since the late 1970s. Drawing on a dataset of historical election outcomes, legislative voting and survey data, this article takes an alternative approach that examines both the US Senate and the House in their broader historical contexts. It is argued that the unusually bipartisan era of the 19…
Leading Associations: How Individual Characteristics and Team Dynamics Generate Committed Leaders
Leaders make vital contributions to the survival and success of civic associations, but they vary widely in levels of commitment to those groups. Why are some leaders more committed than others? We draw from scholarship on civic participation, volunteering, social movements, and team management to develop an original explanation. Although theory suggests individual and organizational factors may explain differences, most prior empirical studies e…
Re-engaging social relationships and collective dimensions of organizing to revive democratic practice
The weakening of the everyday practice of democracy around the world presents profound challenges for social scientists working with an applied focus on issues of inequality and justice in social change. This paper examines community organizing (in the US) as an instrument for equitable and just social change, and argues that three interrelated trends are subtly undermining a core practice of organizing: developing social relationships. An expand…
Does the Content of Political Appeals Matter in Motivating Participation? A Field Experiment on Self-disclosure in Political Appeals
Organizing and Democracy: Understanding the Possibilities for Transformative Collective Action
Democracy requires collective action—but not all forms of collective action are the same. Scholars need a more coherent intellectual infrastructure to differentiate distinct forms of collective action and to identify the kinds of collective action that enable democracy. We distinguish between two types of collective action: organizing, which seeks to transform individuals and groups into effective agents who can shape public outcomes, and mobiliz…
Civic Feedbacks: Linking Collective Action, Organizational Strategy, and Influence over Public Policy
Democracy is premised on the ability of individuals, often working with others, to influence policies affecting them. However, existing theory cannot always explain why some organized efforts are more influential than others. We introduce the concept of civic feedbacks, arguing that the ways organizations engage individuals in collective action have feedback effects that shape the strategic position of organizations, the options available to lead…
Civil Society, Realized: Equipping the Mass Public to Express Choice and Negotiate Power
We examine the ways in which change in civil society has contributed to the erosion of democracy in the United States. Democracy demands that people commit to pluralistic self-determination, which means that people must be willing to seek power and also share it. We argue that civil society plays two important roles in sustaining people's willingness to do both: first, civil society cultivates a capacity for expressing choice; and second, it teac…
The Relationship of Leadership Quality to the Political Presence of Civic Associations
Member-based civic associations, or citizen groups, have two crucial roles in American democracy. They advocate for members' interests in the public arena, but also operate as Tocquevillian “schools of democracy” linking citizens to politics and equipping them with the skills of democratic citizenship. Yet scant research has examined the interrelationships of these two roles. Does the work that civic associations do in developing democratic parti…
The unequal landscape of civic opportunity in America
Change Over Time in Public Support for Social Distancing, Mask Wearing, and Contact Tracing to Combat the Covid-19 Pandemic Among US Adults, April to November 2020
Objectives. To examine how sociodemographic, political, religious, and civic characteristics; trust in science; and fixed versus fluid worldview were associated with evolving public support for social distancing, indoor mask wearing, and contact tracing to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. Surveys were conducted with a nationally representative cohort of US adults in April, July, and November 2020. Results. Support for social distancing amo…
Opening up the black box: Citizen group strategies for engaging grassroots activism in the twenty-first century
Igniting Change: An Evangelical Megachurch’s Racial Justice Program
Congregations, with their size, breadth, and legacy of shaping political activism, have the potential to be important sites of action for addressing racial injustice in America. Yet historical legacies of racism and persistently high levels of racial animus have made white evangelical communities in particular resistant to addressing racism. Most efforts to address racism in these communities begin with prejudice reduction programs that often fai…
Linking Members to Leaders: How Civic Associations Can Strengthen Members’ External Political Efficacy
Americans’ sense of external political efficacy—their belief in their ability to influence government decisions—has declined precipitously in recent decades, eroding the public’s confidence in our system of representative democracy. Scholars have long argued that involvement in civic associations can help ordinary Americans realize their political efficacy, yet a lack of longitudinal data on association members’ attitudes and behaviors has impede…
If We Build It, Only Some Will Come: An Experimental Study of Mobilization for Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program
Seattle, Washington instituted a new “democracy voucher” program in 2017 providing each registered voter with four $25 campaign finance vouchers to contribute to municipal candidates. Prior research shows that without efforts to mobilize voters, electoral reforms like the voucher program are often insufficient to increase participation among underrepresented groups. We examine how mobilization affects the voucher program’s redistributive goals – …
Public Support for Social Safety-Net Policies for Covid-19 in the United States, April 2020
Objectives. To examine public support for health insurance, income support, and unemployment policies during the initial phase of disease transmission and economic distress following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak and to assess varying public support based on beliefs about the role of government. Methods. We fielded a nationally representative survey of US adults (n = 1468) from April 7, 2020, to April 13, 2020. Results. Of US a…
The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life
Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign Jane Booth-Tobin (bio) and Hahrie Han (bio) A persistent gender gap in political participation has plagued American politics for many years. Although women are more likely than men to vote, they are less likely to engage in other political activities, such as volunteering for campaigns, being active in community politics, or discussing political beliefs among…
Getting out the vote in the projects: Lessons from a community organizing experiment
We analyze the effects of a community organizing initiative in low-income public housing on voter turnout among race-class subjugated communities. Get-out-the-vote campaigns and voter turnout are among the most heavily studied topics in empirical political science. Yet, we know much less about how to increase turnout among race-class subjugated communities, where community-level (as opposed to individual or household-level) interventions are nece…
American Trust in Science & Institutions in the Time of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many discussions about how people's trust in science shaped our ability to address the crisis. Early in the pandemic, our research team set out to understand how trust in science relates to support for public health guidelines, and to identify some trusted sources of science. In this essay, we share our findings and offer ideas about what might be done to strengthen the public's trust in science. Notably, our resear…
Habits of courage: Reconceptualizing risk in social movement organizing
We examine the types of risk that organizers seeking to build people‐based political power take and describe how organizers cultivate habits of courage in themselves and others to regularly confront these risks. While prior literature emphasizes the degree of risk (high vs. low), we identify and elaborate two qualitatively different types of risk: internal and external. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 88 movement organizers in six states, we …
Apsa Presidential Task Force Report on New Partnerships
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Primary Elections and Candidate Ideology: Out of Step with the Primary Electorate
This article draws on a new dataset of House primary‐ and general‐election outcomes (1956–98) to examine the relationship between primary elections and candidate ideology. We show that, like presidential candidates, congressional candidates face a strategic‐positioning dilemma: should they align themselves with their general‐ or primary‐election constituencies? Relative to general‐election voters, primary voters favor more ideologically extreme c…
A Delayed Return to Historical Norms: Congressional Party Polarization after the Second World War
Although a rich body of research has explored the sources of party polarization in the US House of Representatives, it has focused primarily on the House since the late 1970s. Drawing on a dataset of historical election outcomes, legislative voting and survey data, this article takes an alternative approach that examines both the US Senate and the House in their broader historical contexts. It is argued that the unusually bipartisan era of the 19…
Does the Content of Political Appeals Matter in Motivating Participation? A Field Experiment on Self-disclosure in Political Appeals
Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign Jane Booth-Tobin (bio) and Hahrie Han (bio) A persistent gender gap in political participation has plagued American politics for many years. Although women are more likely than men to vote, they are less likely to engage in other political activities, such as volunteering for campaigns, being active in community politics, or discussing political beliefs among…
Leadership, Membership, and Voice: Civic Associations That Work
Why are some civic associations more effective than others? The authors introduce a multidimensional framework for analyzing the effectiveness of civic associations in terms of public recognition, member engagement, and leader development. Using original surveys of local Sierra Club organizations and leaders, the authors assess prevailing explanations in organization and movement studies alongside a model highlighting leadership and internal orga…
The Relationship of Leadership Quality to the Political Presence of Civic Associations
Member-based civic associations, or citizen groups, have two crucial roles in American democracy. They advocate for members' interests in the public arena, but also operate as Tocquevillian “schools of democracy” linking citizens to politics and equipping them with the skills of democratic citizenship. Yet scant research has examined the interrelationships of these two roles. Does the work that civic associations do in developing democratic parti…
Response to S. Laurel Weldon's review of Moved to Action: Motivation, Participation, and Inequality in American Politics
I thank Laurel Weldon for her generous and incisive review of my book. Our two books share a common interest in investigating the mechanisms through which marginalized constituencies gain voice in politics. While my book takes a micro, individual perspective, focusing on questions about participation in American politics, Weldon's takes a macro perspective, analyzing the impact of social movements and movement organizations in a comparative conte…
Committees of Apsa
The administrative committee consists of the president, president-elect, treasurer, and four other council members whose main duties include preparing agendas for council meetings and annual business meetings and acting on behalf of the council to dispose of policy issues deemed of insufficient weight to require decisions by the council
Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada
Leading Associations: How Individual Characteristics and Team Dynamics Generate Committed Leaders
Leaders make vital contributions to the survival and success of civic associations, but they vary widely in levels of commitment to those groups. Why are some leaders more committed than others? We draw from scholarship on civic participation, volunteering, social movements, and team management to develop an original explanation. Although theory suggests individual and organizational factors may explain differences, most prior empirical studies e…
What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Illuminate about Bystander Publics as Proto-Players
How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century
Why are some civic associations better than others at getting—and keeping—people involved in activism? From MoveOn.org to the National Rifle Association, Health Care for America Now to the Sierra Club, membership-based civic associations constantly seek to engage people in civic and political action. What makes some more effective than others? Using in-person observations, surveys, and field experiments, this book compares organizations with stro…
The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life
Bridging the Research-Practice Gap in Climate Communication: Lessons From One Academic-Practitioner Collaboration
Recent evidence suggests that a research-practice gap exists for climate change communication, whereby practitioners are not making optimal use of knowledge that exists and scholars are not answering questions most relevant to practitioners. Closer collaboration between academics and practitioners is one way to close this gap. We recount our collaboration with a group of Sierra Club staff and volunteers working to improve their climate advocacy a…
The feedback effects of interest groups on American democracy
The Untilled Field of Field Campaigns
This paper considers the challenges and opportunities of conducting a thick, qualitative study of a twenty-first century presidential ground campaign. Our goals in the study were to describe phenomena that are not commonly examined in most studies of field campaigns, namely (a) the purportedly transformative impact of the campaign on both individuals and collective contexts, (b) the holistic interaction of different strategic elements of the camp…
Chapter 9. Establishing Common Ground: Finding Better Ways to Communicate About Climate Disruption
The key message of this chapter is that solving the climate problem will require motivating social and behavioral changes through effective communication. More and better communication about climate issues is needed so people will mobilize solutions. Currently most people in the world do not believe that climate change is worth doing anything about, if they have even heard of it at all. Despite the efforts of many journalists, scientists, educato…
The Organizational Roots of Political Activism: Field Experiments on Creating a Relational Context
This article examines the role that democratic organizations play in fostering political activism in America. Activists make democracy work by attending meetings, engaging others, trying to make their voice heard, and participating in myriad other ways. Yet, we still need a deeper understanding of what role organizations play in cultivating that activism. The article presents data from three field experiments showing that creating a relational or…
Opening up the black box: Citizen group strategies for engaging grassroots activism in the twenty-first century
A Shared Future: Faith-Based Organizing for Racial Equity and Ethical Democracy
Constituency and Leadership in the Evolution of Resistance Organizations
This chapter examines the way old and new movement organizations addressed strategic dilemmas regarding constituency and leadership in the Trump Era. This chapter examines two case organizations to illustrate how long-standing and new organizations grappled with two particular challenges: (1) How would they define their constituencies, and what is the extent to which they will put questions of race at the center (or not)? And (2) Will they invest…
Understanding the Asian American Vote in the 2016 Election
As the number of Asian American voters has increased with each election, more research is needed to understand the participation and voting patterns of this diverse electorate. This paper offers an analysis of Asian American political participation and vote choice preferences during the 2016 presidential election. The paper begins by addressing the concerns related to Asian American political incorporation. We disaggregate Asian Americans into th…
Re-engaging social relationships and collective dimensions of organizing to revive democratic practice
The weakening of the everyday practice of democracy around the world presents profound challenges for social scientists working with an applied focus on issues of inequality and justice in social change. This paper examines community organizing (in the US) as an instrument for equitable and just social change, and argues that three interrelated trends are subtly undermining a core practice of organizing: developing social relationships. An expand…
Psychological Distress and Loneliness Reported by US Adults in 2018 and April 2020
This study used national survey data to compare the prevalence symptoms of psychological distress and loneliness among US adults during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in April 2020 vs those reported in the National Health Interview Survey in 2018.
The exchange between citizens and elected officials: A social psychological framework for citizen climate activists
Citizen activists play a role in translating public concern about the climate crisis to policymakers and elevating it on the political agenda. We consider the dynamic between citizen activists and the decision-makers they seek to influence and we review psychological research relevant to advocating for climate legislation. We conducted a study with citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. …
Political science (39 works) · Politics (30 works) · Law (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Public relations (24 works) · Law (20 works) · Democracy (16 works) · Public Administration (14 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (13 works) · Psychology (12 works)