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Robert C. Lieberman
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
1998 to 1999
Robert C. Lieberman, assistant professor of political science and public affairs at Columbia University, will compare the politics of racial conflict in the United States, Great Britain, and France. Lieberman will show how the development of national political institutions shaped the role of race in questions of political representation, economic opportunity, and social integration.
Mark Lilla
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2016 to 2017
Lilla will work on a book, Ignorance and Bliss: On the Rationality of Not Knowing, which explores why people often choose not to know. The book will examine the relationship between ignorance and happiness and bridge the humanities (philosophy, religion, and literature) and the social sciences (cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, cultural anthropology) in order to investigate the consequences for individuals and societies of choosing ignorance over knowledge.
Ann Chih Lin
University of Michigan
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Ann Chih Lin, assistant professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, will study how first-generation immigrants to the United States become involved in politics and the barriers that hinder their participation, including economic insecurity, language difficulties, and a lack of familiarity or identification with the political culture of their adopted country. She will concentrate her work on Arab immigrants living in multiethnic Detroit neighborhoods. Lin will investigate who participates and why.
Milton Lodge
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Lodge and James L. Gibson will examine the use of judicial symbols (robes of judges, the honorific forms of address, the temple-like buildings in which courts are usually housed) to inculcate democratic values in different cultural contexts. They will test their hypothesis that citizens who positively view judicial symbols are more likely to accept court decisions they disagree with. They hope to understand why people obey the law and whether judicial symbols enhance the efficacy of courts.
Gabriele Magni
Loyola Marymount University
Visiting Scholar
2023 to 2024
Magni will examine the experiences of LGBTQ political candidates. He will draw on survey data, an original dataset of political candidates and district characteristics, archival materials covering political campaigns, and interviews with LGBTQ candidates and their staff to explore their decisions to run for office, the role that sexual orientation and gender identity play during their campaigns, the barriers they face, and election results.
Neil Malhotra
Stanford University
Visiting Scholar
2012 to 2013
Malhotra will write a book that discusses how much attention voters pay to recent events and how it affects their voting behavior. While the literature presents such voter responsiveness as beneficial, Malhotra argues the American public may be too responsive, a tendency he labels “hyper-accountability.”
Jane Mansbridge
Visiting Researcher
Jane Mansbridge is Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University. She is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy, an empirical and normative study of face-to-face democracy, and the award-winning Why We Lost the ERA, a study of anti-deliberative dynamics in social movements based on organizing for an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Jane Mansbridge
Harvard University
Margaret Olivia Sage Scholar
Jane Mansbridge is the Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University and a former visiting researcher at RSF. She is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy and the award-winning Why We Lost the ERA. She has served as president of the American Political Science Association and is the the recipient of the 2018 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science.
Isabela Mares
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Isabela Mares, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, will complete a manuscript looking at the evolution of widely varying policies of social protection in weak states like those of Southeast Asia or Central America. Over the past twenty years, some of these countries have enacted universal health care coverage, while making no provision for old-age insurance; other countries have moved in the opposite direction, shifting the responsibility for providing health insurance and retirement benefits entirely to the private sector.
Melissa J. Marschall
Rice University
Visiting Scholar
2009 to 2010
Melissa J. Marschall, associate professor of political science at Rice University, will write a book on the involvement of immigrant parents in schools, examining how broader institutional and governing factors influence the incentives and behaviors of schools and parents. The study will focus on the organization and leadership of schools and parent-school interactions across four distinct ethnic groups: Chinese, Dominicans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.
Yalidy Matos
Rutgers University
Visiting Scholar
2024 to 2025
Matos will explore the importance of racial identity and underlying racial ideologies in Latina/o politics. She hypothesizes that the conceptualization of Latinos as a panethnic group glosses over the significance of discrete racial identities and racialized ideologies for how Latino/as make sense of the world around them and their political attitudes and behavior.
James A. McCann
Purdue University
Visiting Scholar
2014 to 2015
McCann will complete a book on the effects of political campaigns in fostering partisan identification among Latino immigrants. Though other research on this topic has shown immigrants to be generally estranged from party politics, McCann finds considerable “potential” partisanship among immigrants. He will also coauthor an essay on Latino politics and immigration for the first issue of the new RSF online journal.
Gwyneth McClendon
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2021 to 2022
McClendon will draw on psychology and neuroscience research to analyze how political movements invite people and communities to reimagine political structures. Focusing on social movements in the United States and South Africa, McClendon’s project will include both analysis of digital communications and a series of online experiments. The project will demonstrate how social movements that aim to reduce inequality stimulate the public’s imagination and to what effect.
Kathleen R. McNamara
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
1999 to 2000
Kathleen R. McNamara, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, will study the politics of globalization in the context of tax and spending policies in the European Union. What limits and demands have the increasingly integrated E.U. markets placed on fiscal policymaking within each member state? Will fiscal policymaking, at present the province of elected officials, become as removed from electoral accountability as the monetary policy of the independent central bank? Does market integration always lead to convergence in policies?
Tali Mendelberg
Princeton University
Visiting Scholar
2015 to 2016
Mendelberg will conduct an in-depth analysis of the consequences of affluence on American college campuses, looking at how concentrations of high-income students at universities may reinforce economic inequality. She will explore whether the presence of many affluent students creates social norms on campuses that prioritize the wealthy and marginalize low-income students, thereby leading to lower rates of leadership and future political participation among low-income young adults.
John H. Mollenkopf
City University of New York
Visiting Scholar
2000 to 2001
Philip Kasinitz and John Mollenkopf, professors of sociology and political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will analyze the findings of a major study of the new second generation of immigrants in metropolitan New York, which they are directing with Professor Mary Waters of Harvard University.
Jana Morgan
University of Tennessee
Visiting Scholar
2017 to 2018
Morgan will study how rising economic inequality has shaped the priorities of policymakers. She will explore the influence of wealthy voters on the congressional agenda and investigate why most politicians have not pursued initiatives designed to reduce inequality. She will also analyze a database of machine-readable congressional speeches and other sources to understand how monied interests have shaped legislators’ stances on pro-poor and pro-rich policies in the post-World War II period.
Rebecca Morton
New York University
Visiting Scholar
2007 to 2008
Rebecca Morton, Professor of Politics at New York University, will complete a book analyzing the significant variation in how election laws are administered across the nation and how this affects the U.S. political system. Her preliminary research shows that even if states have the same laws, the enforcement of those laws is often selective and influenced by partisan considerations.
Maria Victoria Murillo
Columbia University
Visiting Scholar
2011 to 2012
Murillo will write a book exploring the impact of income inequality on voter expectations and the ability of political parties to respond equitably to rich and poor constituents. She argues that in democracies with high inequality, politicians are often torn between promoting policies that will serve the public good and responding to the narrower demands of particular groups. Murillo will utilize longitudinal data and in-depth interviews with elected politicians and political workers collected in Argentina, Peru, and Chile.