Amanda Lea Robinson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 205990 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Amanda Lea Robinson |
| PRENOMES | Amanda Lea |
| SOBRENOME | Robinson |
| ASSINATURA | ROBINSON A L |
| AFILIAÇÕES | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8315-7753 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 21 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 509 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 21 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2014 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Beyond the urban–rural divide
While Africa’s rapid urbanisation is expected to transform many aspects of political, economic and social life, decades of Africanist research shows that urban migration rarely severs rural ties. Building on this tradition, we use original survey data from 472 residents of Nairobi, Kenya, to examine how multiple forms of rural connection vary with urban duration and urban (re)orientation. We conceptualise four analytically distinct linkages – dir…
Couples Therapy for a Divided America
Representation increases women's influence in climate deliberations
Women's inclusion is now the norm in global and local initiatives to combat climate change. We examine how women's representation affects climate deliberations using the case of community‐managed forests in Malawi. We run a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment randomly varying the gender composition of six‐member groups asked to deliberate on policies to combat local overharvesting. We find that any given woman has relatively more influence in group delib…
The Political Logic of Cultural Revival
Since 2008, prominent members of the Lhomwe ethnic group — a large but politically marginalized community in Malawi — have waged an aggressive campaign to revive their lost cultural heritage, including their language, names, foods, and dances. Existing research has linked such processes of “inventing tradition” to the strategic actions of political elites who benefit from mobilizing members of marginalized ethnic communities for political ends. Y…
Ethnic Visibility
The political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual‐level ethnic visibility is indee…
Inventing traditional authority
Chiefs in Malawi exercise significant authority based on legitimacy derived from the position's purportedly deep historical origins. But, does such legitimacy confer when a new chieftaincy is created from scratch? I address this question within the context of an ongoing cultural revival of the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi, which has included the appointment of many new Lhomwe chiefs and the creation of a Lhomwe paramount chieftaincy. Using a com…
Why (Some) Immigrants Resist Assimilation
Scholarship shows that Black immigrants to the US resist assimilation to reduce exposure to racial discrimination faced by native-born African Americans. But, not all Black immigrants are equally likely to be (mis)perceived as African American. We argue that immigrants who are likely to be misidentified as African American have incentives to reify ethnic boundaries as a form of protection against racial discrimination. We develop this argument fr…
Triggers of Escalations in Violence Against Civilians by Non-State Actors in Africa
Although past research has addressed why civilians are targeted, we know less about why non-state actors escalate violence against civilians at particular times. This article seeks to identify the events that trigger spikes in violence against civilians committed by non-state actors. We employ an innovative method to identify 24 such escalations in Africa committed by 20 different non-state groups between 1989 and 2015. Rigorous case studies reve…
How to Close the Gender Gap in Political Participation
While gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general in…
(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi
How do voters evaluate women candidates in places where traditional gender norms are strong? We conduct a survey experiment in Malawi to assess both whether citizens discriminate against women candidates and how other salient candidate characteristics—political experience, family status, policy focus, and gendered kinship practices—interact with candidate gender to affect citizen support. Contrary to our expectations, we find citizens prefer wome…
Ethnic Diversity, Segregation and Ethnocentric Trust in Africa
Ethnic diversity is generally associated with less social capital and lower levels of trust. However, most empirical evidence for this relationship is focused ongeneralized trust, rather than more theoretically appropriate measures ofgroup-based trust. This article evaluates the relationship between ethnic diversity – at the national, regional and local levels – and the degree to which coethnics are trusted more than non-coethnics, a value referr…
Coethnicity and Corruption
Corruption is widespread in many developing countries, though public officials’ discretion in the solicitation of bribes may expose some citizens to more corruption than others. We derive expectations about how shared ethnicity between government officials and citizens should influence the likelihood of bribe solicitation. We evaluate these expectations through a field experiment in which Malawian confederates seek electricity connections from re…
Ethnic associations and politics in contemporary Malawi
Malawi has recently seen a rise in the number and prominence of formal ethnic associations. What is the nature of these organizations and what effect will they have on politics? To answer these questions, we conducted in-depth interviews with current and former leaders of the three main ethnic associations, Mulhako wa Alhomwe, Mzimba Heritage Association, and Chewa Heritage Foundation. The interviews and other documentary sources allow us to plac…
Who is Targeted in Corruption? Disentangling the Effects of Wealth and Power on Exposure to Bribery
Corrupt government officials must weigh the potential costs and benefits of soliciting a bribe using limited information about a citizen’s ability to pay but also to punish. We conduct a field experiment in Malawi to determine the effects of political connections and socioeconomic status on a citizen’s exposure to corruption at traffic police roadblocks. We find that political connections reduce exposure to bribery, while relative wealth only ins…
Segregation, Ethnic Favoritism, and the Strategic Targeting of Local Public Goods
This article demonstrates that ethnic segregation is a key determinant of local public goods provision. We argue that this results from politicians’ strategic engagement in ethnic favoritism: Only when ethnic groups are sufficiently segregated can elites efficiently target coethnics with local public goods. We test this expectation with fine-grained data from Malawi on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups, geolocated distributive goods (wate…
Do Men and Women Have Different Policy Preferences in Africa? Determinants and Implications of Gender Gaps in Policy Prioritization
Policies designed to increase women’s representation in Africa are often motivated by the assumption that men and women have different policy preferences. This article finds that gender differences in policy priorities are actually quite small on average, but vary significantly across policy domains and countries. The study leverages this variation to show that the economic and social empowerment of women influences the size of gender gaps in the…
Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines
Past research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment m…
Internal Borders
Nationalism and Ethnic-Based Trust
In diverse societies, individuals tend to trust coethnics more than non-coethnics. I argue that identification with a territorially defined nation, common to all ethnic groups, reduces the degree to which trust is ethnically bounded. I conduct a “lab-in-the-field” experiment at the intersection of national and ethnic boundaries in Malawi, which measures strength of national identification, experimentally manipulates national identity salience, an…
Who’s Asking? Interviewer Coethnicity Effects in African Survey Data
Face-to-face interviews constitute a social interaction between interviewer and respondent, and in the African context, social interactions are strongly shaped by ethnicity. Yet research using African survey data typically fails to account for the effect of shared ethnicity on survey responses. We find that respondents give systematically different answers to coethnic and noncoethnic interviewers across surveys in 14 African countries, but with s…
National Versus Ethnic Identification in Africa
Communal conflicts, civil wars, and state collapse have led many to portray the notion of African nation-states as an oxymoron. Some scholars of African politics—often referred to as second-generation modernization theorists—have argued that strong ethnic attachments across the continent resulted from rapid economic and political modernization, the very forces credited with reducing parochial ties and consolidating European nations in classic mod…
National Versus Ethnic Identification in Africa
Communal conflicts, civil wars, and state collapse have led many to portray the notion of African nation-states as an oxymoron. Some scholars of African politics—often referred to as second-generation modernization theorists—have argued that strong ethnic attachments across the continent resulted from rapid economic and political modernization, the very forces credited with reducing parochial ties and consolidating European nations in classic mod…
Segregation, Ethnic Favoritism, and the Strategic Targeting of Local Public Goods
This article demonstrates that ethnic segregation is a key determinant of local public goods provision. We argue that this results from politicians’ strategic engagement in ethnic favoritism: Only when ethnic groups are sufficiently segregated can elites efficiently target coethnics with local public goods. We test this expectation with fine-grained data from Malawi on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups, geolocated distributive goods (wate…
Who’s Asking? Interviewer Coethnicity Effects in African Survey Data
Face-to-face interviews constitute a social interaction between interviewer and respondent, and in the African context, social interactions are strongly shaped by ethnicity. Yet research using African survey data typically fails to account for the effect of shared ethnicity on survey responses. We find that respondents give systematically different answers to coethnic and noncoethnic interviewers across surveys in 14 African countries, but with s…
Do Men and Women Have Different Policy Preferences in Africa? Determinants and Implications of Gender Gaps in Policy Prioritization
Policies designed to increase women’s representation in Africa are often motivated by the assumption that men and women have different policy preferences. This article finds that gender differences in policy priorities are actually quite small on average, but vary significantly across policy domains and countries. The study leverages this variation to show that the economic and social empowerment of women influences the size of gender gaps in the…
Nationalism and Ethnic-Based Trust
In diverse societies, individuals tend to trust coethnics more than non-coethnics. I argue that identification with a territorially defined nation, common to all ethnic groups, reduces the degree to which trust is ethnically bounded. I conduct a “lab-in-the-field” experiment at the intersection of national and ethnic boundaries in Malawi, which measures strength of national identification, experimentally manipulates national identity salience, an…
How to Close the Gender Gap in Political Participation
While gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general in…
Ethnic Diversity, Segregation and Ethnocentric Trust in Africa
Ethnic diversity is generally associated with less social capital and lower levels of trust. However, most empirical evidence for this relationship is focused ongeneralized trust, rather than more theoretically appropriate measures ofgroup-based trust. This article evaluates the relationship between ethnic diversity – at the national, regional and local levels – and the degree to which coethnics are trusted more than non-coethnics, a value referr…
(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi
How do voters evaluate women candidates in places where traditional gender norms are strong? We conduct a survey experiment in Malawi to assess both whether citizens discriminate against women candidates and how other salient candidate characteristics—political experience, family status, policy focus, and gendered kinship practices—interact with candidate gender to affect citizen support. Contrary to our expectations, we find citizens prefer wome…
Who is Targeted in Corruption? Disentangling the Effects of Wealth and Power on Exposure to Bribery
Corrupt government officials must weigh the potential costs and benefits of soliciting a bribe using limited information about a citizen’s ability to pay but also to punish. We conduct a field experiment in Malawi to determine the effects of political connections and socioeconomic status on a citizen’s exposure to corruption at traffic police roadblocks. We find that political connections reduce exposure to bribery, while relative wealth only ins…
Ethnic associations and politics in contemporary Malawi
Malawi has recently seen a rise in the number and prominence of formal ethnic associations. What is the nature of these organizations and what effect will they have on politics? To answer these questions, we conducted in-depth interviews with current and former leaders of the three main ethnic associations, Mulhako wa Alhomwe, Mzimba Heritage Association, and Chewa Heritage Foundation. The interviews and other documentary sources allow us to plac…
Internal Borders
Couples Therapy for a Divided America
Why (Some) Immigrants Resist Assimilation
Scholarship shows that Black immigrants to the US resist assimilation to reduce exposure to racial discrimination faced by native-born African Americans. But, not all Black immigrants are equally likely to be (mis)perceived as African American. We argue that immigrants who are likely to be misidentified as African American have incentives to reify ethnic boundaries as a form of protection against racial discrimination. We develop this argument fr…
Ethnic Visibility
The political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual‐level ethnic visibility is indee…
Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines
Past research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment m…
Representation increases women's influence in climate deliberations
Women's inclusion is now the norm in global and local initiatives to combat climate change. We examine how women's representation affects climate deliberations using the case of community‐managed forests in Malawi. We run a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment randomly varying the gender composition of six‐member groups asked to deliberate on policies to combat local overharvesting. We find that any given woman has relatively more influence in group delib…
Triggers of Escalations in Violence Against Civilians by Non-State Actors in Africa
Although past research has addressed why civilians are targeted, we know less about why non-state actors escalate violence against civilians at particular times. This article seeks to identify the events that trigger spikes in violence against civilians committed by non-state actors. We employ an innovative method to identify 24 such escalations in Africa committed by 20 different non-state groups between 1989 and 2015. Rigorous case studies reve…
Coethnicity and Corruption
Corruption is widespread in many developing countries, though public officials’ discretion in the solicitation of bribes may expose some citizens to more corruption than others. We derive expectations about how shared ethnicity between government officials and citizens should influence the likelihood of bribe solicitation. We evaluate these expectations through a field experiment in which Malawian confederates seek electricity connections from re…
National Versus Ethnic Identification in Africa
Communal conflicts, civil wars, and state collapse have led many to portray the notion of African nation-states as an oxymoron. Some scholars of African politics—often referred to as second-generation modernization theorists—have argued that strong ethnic attachments across the continent resulted from rapid economic and political modernization, the very forces credited with reducing parochial ties and consolidating European nations in classic mod…
Internal Borders
Nationalism and Ethnic-Based Trust
In diverse societies, individuals tend to trust coethnics more than non-coethnics. I argue that identification with a territorially defined nation, common to all ethnic groups, reduces the degree to which trust is ethnically bounded. I conduct a “lab-in-the-field” experiment at the intersection of national and ethnic boundaries in Malawi, which measures strength of national identification, experimentally manipulates national identity salience, an…
Who’s Asking? Interviewer Coethnicity Effects in African Survey Data
Face-to-face interviews constitute a social interaction between interviewer and respondent, and in the African context, social interactions are strongly shaped by ethnicity. Yet research using African survey data typically fails to account for the effect of shared ethnicity on survey responses. We find that respondents give systematically different answers to coethnic and noncoethnic interviewers across surveys in 14 African countries, but with s…
Nationalism and Social Sanctioning Across Ethnic Lines
Past research shows that ethnic diversity reduces the ability to sanction norm violators, ultimately undermining cooperation. We test this directly by experimentally varying the ethnic composition of groups playing a dictator game with third-party punishment among two ethnic groups along the Kenya–Tanzania border. We also implement a structurally identical game where the endowment division is randomly determined in order to isolate a punishment m…
Who is Targeted in Corruption? Disentangling the Effects of Wealth and Power on Exposure to Bribery
Corrupt government officials must weigh the potential costs and benefits of soliciting a bribe using limited information about a citizen’s ability to pay but also to punish. We conduct a field experiment in Malawi to determine the effects of political connections and socioeconomic status on a citizen’s exposure to corruption at traffic police roadblocks. We find that political connections reduce exposure to bribery, while relative wealth only ins…
Segregation, Ethnic Favoritism, and the Strategic Targeting of Local Public Goods
This article demonstrates that ethnic segregation is a key determinant of local public goods provision. We argue that this results from politicians’ strategic engagement in ethnic favoritism: Only when ethnic groups are sufficiently segregated can elites efficiently target coethnics with local public goods. We test this expectation with fine-grained data from Malawi on the spatial distribution of ethnic groups, geolocated distributive goods (wate…
Do Men and Women Have Different Policy Preferences in Africa? Determinants and Implications of Gender Gaps in Policy Prioritization
Policies designed to increase women’s representation in Africa are often motivated by the assumption that men and women have different policy preferences. This article finds that gender differences in policy priorities are actually quite small on average, but vary significantly across policy domains and countries. The study leverages this variation to show that the economic and social empowerment of women influences the size of gender gaps in the…
Coethnicity and Corruption
Corruption is widespread in many developing countries, though public officials’ discretion in the solicitation of bribes may expose some citizens to more corruption than others. We derive expectations about how shared ethnicity between government officials and citizens should influence the likelihood of bribe solicitation. We evaluate these expectations through a field experiment in which Malawian confederates seek electricity connections from re…
Ethnic associations and politics in contemporary Malawi
Malawi has recently seen a rise in the number and prominence of formal ethnic associations. What is the nature of these organizations and what effect will they have on politics? To answer these questions, we conducted in-depth interviews with current and former leaders of the three main ethnic associations, Mulhako wa Alhomwe, Mzimba Heritage Association, and Chewa Heritage Foundation. The interviews and other documentary sources allow us to plac…
(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi
How do voters evaluate women candidates in places where traditional gender norms are strong? We conduct a survey experiment in Malawi to assess both whether citizens discriminate against women candidates and how other salient candidate characteristics—political experience, family status, policy focus, and gendered kinship practices—interact with candidate gender to affect citizen support. Contrary to our expectations, we find citizens prefer wome…
Ethnic Diversity, Segregation and Ethnocentric Trust in Africa
Ethnic diversity is generally associated with less social capital and lower levels of trust. However, most empirical evidence for this relationship is focused ongeneralized trust, rather than more theoretically appropriate measures ofgroup-based trust. This article evaluates the relationship between ethnic diversity – at the national, regional and local levels – and the degree to which coethnics are trusted more than non-coethnics, a value referr…
How to Close the Gender Gap in Political Participation
While gender gaps in political participation are pervasive, especially in developing countries, this study provides systematic evidence of one cultural practice that closes this gap. Using data from across Africa, this article shows that matrilineality – tracing kinship through the female line – is robustly associated with closing the gender gap in political participation. It then uses this practice as a lens through which to draw more general in…
Why (Some) Immigrants Resist Assimilation
Scholarship shows that Black immigrants to the US resist assimilation to reduce exposure to racial discrimination faced by native-born African Americans. But, not all Black immigrants are equally likely to be (mis)perceived as African American. We argue that immigrants who are likely to be misidentified as African American have incentives to reify ethnic boundaries as a form of protection against racial discrimination. We develop this argument fr…
Triggers of Escalations in Violence Against Civilians by Non-State Actors in Africa
Although past research has addressed why civilians are targeted, we know less about why non-state actors escalate violence against civilians at particular times. This article seeks to identify the events that trigger spikes in violence against civilians committed by non-state actors. We employ an innovative method to identify 24 such escalations in Africa committed by 20 different non-state groups between 1989 and 2015. Rigorous case studies reve…
The Political Logic of Cultural Revival
Since 2008, prominent members of the Lhomwe ethnic group — a large but politically marginalized community in Malawi — have waged an aggressive campaign to revive their lost cultural heritage, including their language, names, foods, and dances. Existing research has linked such processes of “inventing tradition” to the strategic actions of political elites who benefit from mobilizing members of marginalized ethnic communities for political ends. Y…
Ethnic Visibility
The political utility of ethnicity is typically attributed to the ease with which it can be observed. However, ethnic visibility is not universal, and I argue that its variation has political implications; namely that more visible group members support ethnic parties at higher rates because they have the most to gain (or lose) from ethnopolitical competition. Using original data from Malawi, I find that individual‐level ethnic visibility is indee…
Inventing traditional authority
Chiefs in Malawi exercise significant authority based on legitimacy derived from the position's purportedly deep historical origins. But, does such legitimacy confer when a new chieftaincy is created from scratch? I address this question within the context of an ongoing cultural revival of the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi, which has included the appointment of many new Lhomwe chiefs and the creation of a Lhomwe paramount chieftaincy. Using a com…
Beyond the urban–rural divide
While Africa’s rapid urbanisation is expected to transform many aspects of political, economic and social life, decades of Africanist research shows that urban migration rarely severs rural ties. Building on this tradition, we use original survey data from 472 residents of Nairobi, Kenya, to examine how multiple forms of rural connection vary with urban duration and urban (re)orientation. We conceptualise four analytically distinct linkages – dir…
Couples Therapy for a Divided America
Representation increases women's influence in climate deliberations
Women's inclusion is now the norm in global and local initiatives to combat climate change. We examine how women's representation affects climate deliberations using the case of community‐managed forests in Malawi. We run a lab‐in‐the‐field experiment randomly varying the gender composition of six‐member groups asked to deliberate on policies to combat local overharvesting. We find that any given woman has relatively more influence in group delib…
Political science (20 obras) · Economics (13 obras) · Ethnic group (12 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Sociology (11 obras) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (10 obras) · Law (10 obras) · Psychology (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Social Psychology (9 obras)