Democracy, Transparency, Information Provision, and Participation
Costin, Professor Erlich, Saewon and Andrew giving talks on their research at the SPSA in Austin
Bringing together researchers interested in transparency, information provision, and participation (TIP), the DemoTIP laboratory applies state of the art research methods to bring answers to empirical problems in political science. Lab members test and challenge conventional theories regarding political transparency and accountability, the provision of political information, and citizen participation in democratic processes. Email if you are interested in getting involved!
Principal Investigator
Aaron Erlich is Assistant Professor of Political Science at McGill University’s political. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2016. His wide-ranging research interests touch upon various themes such as democracy, political participation, the effect of information, and the development and use of advanced quantitative methods. His research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, and Development Engineering.
Affiliated Researchers
Benjamin Bagozzi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. His research interests lie in the application of automated text-analysis and statistical methods to questions of international relations, political violence, and comparative politics. He has published multiple articles on these topics in journals such as The Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, and The Journal of Conflict Resolution. He currently serves as a co-investigator on an NSF-RIDIR award that seeks to modernize the infrastructure and validity of political event data for big data social science research. He is also currently a co-PI on an NSF Division of Mathematical Sciences award related to the development of spatio-temporal algorithms for threat detection in contexts of big data.
Dan Berliner is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. His primary research focuses on the politics of transparency and accountability reforms around the world. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, Seattle in 2012, and subsequently held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. His research has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Governance, and World Development.
Brian Palmer-Rubin is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. His research has to do with interest representation and the political economy of development, with central focus on Mexico. His book project, Organizing for Representation: Policy and Patronage in Mexico, explains the factors that shape the participation of interest organizations in development policy and in electoral politics. Brian’s research combines experiments and other causal inference strategies with field-based qualitative methods.
Calvin Garner is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Washington, where his main fields are comparative politics, international relations, and political methodology. He had a regional focus on Russia and Ukraine, and is broadly interested in the rest of post-communist Europe. His main substantive interests address authoritarian strategy for regime survival, including through selective repression, electoral institutions, and efforts to control information. Additionally, he is interested in national identity and political behavior in recently democratizing states. His research is forthcoming in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties.
McGill Graduate Researchers
Aengus Bridgman is a Ph.D. Candidate at McGill University and sometimes management consultant. His work focuses on participatory and deliberative democracy, local government, and more generally on mass participation in civic and political life. He studies these phenomena in Canada and other mature democracies using survey, census, and textual data, and has a secondary interest in machine learning, natural language processing and computational social science in a more general sense.
C
ostin Ciobanu is a Ph.D. Candidate in McGill’s Department of Political Science. His substantive research interests revolve around economic voting, campaign effects, and political communication, with a focus on Eastern and Western Europe. Specifically, he looks at how voters integrate the local context in economic evaluations and voting behaviour when confronted with economic shocks; moreover, he seeks to understand how the interaction of local, national, and international economic factors impacts the attribution of electoral responsibility and is shaped by citizens’ information biases. Methodologically, Costin is interested in causal inference with observational data, time-series analysis, and survey design and analysis.
Alex Xin Tong Wang is a Master’s student at McGill University’s Department of Computer Science. Alex pursues research interests in applied machine learning, especially relating to temporal data and ML system security. His subjects include time series embedding, feature extraction, and adversarial attack prevention.
Tim Roy is a Master’s student at McGill University’s Department of Political Science. He was a 2019-2020 Guy Drummond fellow. Tim conducts data preparation and quantitative analysis of surveys, with experience working on public opinion about conflict resolution and conspiracy beliefs in Ukraine and youth political participation in Canada.
Mathieu Lavigne is a Ph.D. student at McGill University’s Department of Political Science. His main substantive interests include campaign and media effects, public opinion, political psychology, and political behavior. He has a regional focus on Canada and other Western democracies and mostly relies on survey and textual data.
Stefano Dantas is a Master’s student at McGill University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include applied machine learning, time-series, and economics. He also has previous experience working with renewable energy and information security.
Henry Atkins is a Master’s student at McGill University’s Department of Political Science. A 2018-2019 Guy Drummond Fellow, his research interests include the formation and diffusion of public opinion, the radical right in democracies, and political methodology. He received an Honours BA in Political Science from McGill, and is a native of Vermont.
McGill Undergraduate Researchers
Alice Brocheux is a second-year undergrad student at McGill University, double majoring in Political Science and Mathematics. She wishes to use her background in mathematics to gain deep understanding of quantitative analysis methods, applied to Comparative Politics and International Relations.
DemoTIP Alumni
Researcher Degree Graduation Year Publications & Research Post-McGill Employment/Education
Étienne Gagnon
Master's 2020
Saewon Park
Master's 2020
TrackTik
Andrew McCormack
Master's 2019
Data Sciences
Tanner Ducharme Bachelor's 2020
Hair Parra Barrera Bachelor's 2020
Su Goh Bachelor's 2020
Annie Chen
Master's 2020
Bright Line Watch
Tim Roy Bachelor's
Dilse Kaygisiz
2022
Data Sciences