The U.S. working class is less organized along class lines than in other advanced democracies. We propose a new explanation: the absence of education on historical class struggle and labor organizing weakens support for the contemporary labor movement. To test this, we conduct two survey experiments exposing respondents to educational videos about the history of an American union and present-day union drives. Our surveys focus on non-college-educated whites in the U.S. South, where union membership is low and racial conflict has historically constrained class-based solidarity. We find that exposure to labor (history) increases enthusiasm for unions and cross-racial class coalitions. These effects appear to be driven by greater political efficacy, better understanding of unions’ material benefits, linked fate with the working-class, and increased allyship with marginalized groups. Our findings suggest that labor history education can shift political attitudes and foster greater class-based mobilization, even in contexts historically resistant to such organizing.

We test whether a community-based governance strategy can succeed in sustaining service provision in war-affected communities where state-managed, centralized approaches had previously failed. Specifically, we test a community-based model for administering primary education in contemporary Afghanistan, an especially hard case. We use a randomized “equivalence trial” that evaluates performance relative to what international non-governmental organizations achieve. The community-based model succeeds in maintaining children’s learning and household satisfaction. It does not increase gender or ethnic bias nor does it result in resource misappropriation. However, survey results from a one-year follow-up with community leaders suggest that the long-term viability of the model depends on higher-level support being in place. Our results show that a community-based governance strategy can work in war-affected contexts where centralized strategies have failed.

Recent debates over how to address racial injustice in the United States often center on two types of policies: redistributive measures that redress material inequities between groups and symbolic reforms that challenge dominant racial narratives. How do citizens evaluate these differing approaches to advancing racial justice? How do recent removals of Confederate symbols shape support for each of these policy types? In a survey of American adults, we find that support for redistributive and symbolic policies is positively correlated across partisan, racial, and regional lines. However, when pressed, respondents express a stronger preference for redistributive measures, often viewing symbolic reforms as insufficient or distracting. In an experimental framework, we find that informing respondents about recent Confederate statue removals does not significantly alter support for either policy type. Looking at qualitative reactions to the treatment, we identify a plausible explanation for this null finding: most respondents see the removals as a fight over history and less directly relevant to a broader racial justice policy agenda.

Waves of activism following the mass murder of Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 resulted in the removal of hundreds of Confederate symbols across the South and the rest of the United States. What effect, if any, did these removals have on people’s attitudes and behavior regarding race and racial inequality? Using difference-in-differences strategies with panels of both individuals and geographic units, I find that the removal of Confederate symbols decreased racial resentment, increased support for affirmative action and warm feelings toward Blacks, and decreased anti-Black hate crimes. These effects were strongest at the most local level at which removals took place and decayed with greater distance from removal sites. These findings are congruent with an account that local residents interpreted removals of Confederate symbols as a shift toward liberalizing social norms regarding race.

Under what conditions do elites mobilize around ideology to sustain dominance? I present a test of the theory of compensatory ideology — ideas, narratives, and symbols that elevate a group’s perceived status — and argue that dominant-group elites organize around ideology under specific threat conditions: when subordinate groups achieve high levels of advancement that elites cannot fully suppress, and when discontent within the dominant group threatens coalition cohesion. Under these conditions, mobilization around compensatory ideology becomes an attractive response to manage these perceived threats to elites’ material interests. I test this using the case of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), an elite white women’s organization that explicitly focused on spreading the “Lost Cause” across the Jim Crow South. Combining archival UDC meeting minutes (1900-1925) with county-level census data, I show that UDC chapters were more likely to emerge where Black literacy, economic competition between poor whites and Blacks, and intrawhite inequality were high. These findings provide a framework for understanding when dominant-group elites turn to status-elevating ideology in stratified societies.

When are women at the forefront of conservative movements? This paper argues that shocks to men’s status drives women to mobilize around upholding patriarchal norms and traditional household and social gender roles. I test this theory using the case of the post-Civil War U.S. South and novel data on the formation of local chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which mobilized extensively around honoring and rehabilitating the reputation of Confederate veterans through memorial and historical education activities that spread the “Lost Cause” ideology to Southern whites. Using county-level data on Civil War battles, I find evidence that UDC chapters were more likely to exist in counties where there were intensive negative shocks to Confederate soldiers’ lives and reputations, as measured by Confederate army battle losses. I support this argument with qualitative evidence on gendered humiliation of Confederate soldiers and discourse in UDC meeting minutes. This paper provides a new lens on women’s post-war activism: namely, the conditions under which women participate in spreading traditional gender ideology and reifying gender roles back to more conservative pre-war structures.

How do cultural conflicts reshape the composition of the institutions they target? We argue that culturally conflictual policies threaten employees’ public sector motivation and shape employment patterns through two channels: how a policy constrains an employee’s discretion, and whether the ideological direction of the policy aligns with the employee’s own values. We test our argument by collecting administrative roster data on 2.9 million public school employees across 12 states. We link each employee to a contentious policy adoption in their school district, and identify how each policy impacts their individual employment choices. Using a matched triple difference-in-differences design, we find that school district bans on the instruction of Critical Race Theory increase the probability that Democratic employees move to other districts, while Republican employees become more likely to remain in their current districts. Further, we find book ban adoptions drive profession exit among Democratic librarians. Interviews with current and former public school employees corroborate both channels, showing policy misalignment imposes costs even on educators whose own subject is not directly targeted. Our findings reveal how nationalized local political conflict can lead to durable partisan sorting in the bureaucracy.

What should be done with contested political symbols, such as Confederate monuments? While political symbols may act as incendiary flashpoints, in other instances they remain unnoticed and banal. Debates about what to do with Confederate statues—highlighting deep fissures regarding racial justice, public memory, and the allocation of status—have been a prominent feature of US politics for nearly a decade. As communities nationwide grapple with whether and how to remove, contextualize, or replace these symbols, little experimental evidence exists on how different interventions shape public attitudes. We study preferences for, and reactions to, five common policies: non-interference, removal, contextualization, adding an alternative monument, and replacement. We employ a two-stage survey experiment (n=2,400) measuring whether individuals accurately forecast their reactions to symbolic policy interventions, including a sixth condition that isolates the causal effect of deliberating about the decision beforehand, restricted to the removal condition. We further supplement this with novel observational data of over 1,000 new monument proposals. By comparing expressed and revealed preferences, this manuscript contributes to our understanding of how policy choices surrounding political symbols might inflame, mute, or transform racial status conflicts in US politics.