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Many prominent theories in political science, and social science generally, argue that individuals are imprinted with behaviors and identities over the course of their lives. According to these theories, behaviors and identities persist due to internal, psychological consistency. Here, I argue that persistence in behavior, identity, and social interaction is often maintained by social networks, rather than individuals. Many day-to-day behaviors and identities would be constantly redefined and updated if there were reasons to do so. In other words, imprinting is often highly context specific, consistency in individuals is a property of stable social structures, and individuals can change very quickly when social networks around them allow or encourage it. The first paper in this dissertation ("Widowhood Effects in Voter Participation") studies why people are less likely to vote after their spouse dies. I show that a rapid, permanent drop in turnout is mostly not due to the trauma of the loss or a slowly declining interest in politics. Widows and widowers vote less because their spouse motivated them to vote. The second paper ("Partisan Attachment or Life Stability?") argues that partisan affiliations are stable in the United States electorate because day-to-day lives do not change very much. When lives do change, people reconsider their partisanship and are more likely to change it. A central argument in this paper is that age is associated with increasing partisan stability only because life stability increases with age. The last paper ("Plasticity in Human Social Networks") characterizes social network adaptations after the death of a friend. I show that mutual friends become permanently closer to each other after the shared loss, recovering the same volume of interactions that was lost from the death. Younger people tend to contribute more to recovery than older, but older people contribute equally when a loss was sudden and unexpected. The observed recovery occurs in distinct, overlapping patterns and is mathematically similar to shock responses in small-scale biological networks.

AbstractResearch on Russian troll activity during the 2016 US presidential campaign largely focused on divisive partisan messaging. Here, we document the use of apolitical content—content that could counteract mobilization efforts and escape detection in future campaigns. We argue this resembled techniques used by autocratic regimes domestically, in "flooding" social media with entertainment content to distract from and displace mobilizing messaging. Using automated text analysis and hand coding to construct a timeline of IRA messaging on Twitter, we find left-leaning trolls posted large volumes of entertainment content in their artificial liberal community and shifted away from political content late in the campaign. Simultaneously, conservative trolls were targeting their community with increases in political content. This suggests the use of apolitical content might be an overlooked strategy to selectively manipulate levels of attention to politics.

How have Donald Trump's rhetoric and policies affected Arab and
Muslim American behavior? We provide evidence that the de facto
effects of President Trump's campaign rhetoric and vague policy
positions extended beyond the direct effects of his executive
orders. We present findings from three data sources—television news
coverage, social media activity, and a survey—to evaluate whether
Arab and Muslim Americans reduced their online visibility and
retreated from public life. Our results provide evidence that they
withdrew from public view: (1) Shared locations on Twitter dropped
approximately 10 to 20% among users with Arabic-sounding names after
major campaign and election events and (2) Muslim survey respondents
reported increased public space avoidance.

This paper analyzes the determinants of Chinese government support for methanol automobile fuel development. At the national level, a preference for low carbon alternatives, ongoing bureaucratic restructuring, and profitability concerns of the national oil companies (NOCs) help to explain a lack of support for methanol fuel. At the local level, a short-term and localized view of industry development explains why some governments actively promote methanol fuel through local standardization, subsidies, and management of NOC opposition. The case of methanol fuel illustrates how local governments with strong, embedded interests have filled in the national-level policy vacuum on this issue. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the evolving central-local relations in China and hold lessons for alternative fuel adoption efforts underway in many parts of the world. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

AbstractThis paper analyses Chinese sub-national governments' implementation strategies to meet national energy efficiency targets in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010). Previous research has focused on the ways governance practices and decision-making structures shape implementation outcomes, yet very little attention has been given to what strategies local leaders actually employ to bridge national priorities with local interests. To illustrate how local leaders work politically, this paper highlights specific implementation methods officials use to strengthen formal incentives and create effective informal incentives to comply with energy efficiency mandates. The analysis is drawn from 53 interviews conducted in June and July of 2010 in Shanxi, a major coal-producing and energy-intensive province. Findings suggest that local government leaders conform to national directives by "bundling" the energy efficiency policy with policies of more pressing local importance or by "bundling" their energy efficiency objectives with the interests of groups with significant political influence. Ultimately, sub-national government officials frame policies in ways that give them legitimacy at the local level.

This paper analyses Chinese sub-national governments' implementation strategies to meet national energy efficiency targets in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). Previous research has focused on the ways governance practices and decision-making structures shape implementation outcomes, yet very little attention has been given to what strategies local leaders actually employ to bridge national priorities with local interests. To illustrate how local leaders work politically, this paper highlights specific implementation methods officials use to strengthen formal incentives and create effective informal incentives to comply with energy efficiency mandates. The analysis is drawn from 53 interviews conducted in June and July of 2010 in Shanxi, a major coal-producing and energy-intensive province. Findings suggest that local government leaders conform to national directives by "bundling" the energy efficiency policy with policies of more pressing local importance or by "bundling" their energy efficiency objectives with the interests of groups with significant political influence. Ultimately, sub-national government officials frame policies in ways that give them legitimacy at the local level. (China Q/GIGA)

This paper analyzes the determinants of alternative automobile fuel regulation and development support with a particular focus on methanol fuel. We find that embedded interests, bureaucratic reforms, and political circumstances in the Chinese national, provincial, and municipal governments have all shaped policy outcomes in this area. The paper seeks to explain why at, the national level, support for alternative fuels has waned and finds that the concerns of state oil majors and disorganization during the process of national bureaucratic restructuring have been the deciding factors. Interestingly, at the sub-national level promotion of methanol continues unabated in some places. At the local level, business relationships as well as the embedded economic and personal interests of local leaders help to explain managerial local government behavior and sheds light on why government officials actively create and manage methanol fuel business opportunities through local standardization, subsidies, and hands-on management of SOE opposition. The switch towards methanol fuel was more successful in localities where individuals, either government officials or enterprise managers, formed an alliance and made this their 'pet projects'. The analysis draws on 55 interviews conducted between June and October 2010 in Shanxi, a major coal-producing province which has supported methanol fuel-switching programs for over ten years. The findings contribute to debates about the condition of the local state in China. The argument put forward in this paper is that because of limited state capacity at the central level and insufficient concerns for the development of alternative fuels in the short-term, some sub-national governments with strong embedded interests promote certain alternative fuels by taking on active managerial roles, adopting creative and ad-hoc strategies to fill in the national level policy gap at the local level.