My current research program has three interrelated threads, which include seven projects at different stages of development. Please email any thoughts, comments, and/or questions: douglas.page.sc@gmail.com
The first thread concerns the political mobilization of marginalized individuals:
Gay rights and political mobilization. Competing narratives of ‘progress’ and ‘backlash’ characterize existing political science research concerning gay rights. Studies show growing tolerance globally, but also a growing phenomenon of political homophobia, where anti-gay rhetoric and policies are deployed by politicians in order to bolster heterosexual and patriarchal values. Phillip Ayoub (Occidental College), Samuel Whitt (High Point University), and I are examining the extent to which political homophobia and gay rights movements affect attitudes and real-world behavior of ordinary citizens. We are conducting panel surveys around the first-ever Gay Pride March in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in September 2019.
When does discrimination mobilize voters? Patturaja Selvaraj (Gettysburg College) and I are implementing a survey that examines the effects of caste-based discrimination on political participation in India. The Indian Constitution’s reservation policies (providing jobs, education, and political representation to lower-castes) may mobilize lower-castes that feel that they are affected positively by the reservations. We argue that individuals experiencing caste-based discrimination will have a greater sense of political efficacy when they feel that reservations benefit them. We also are testing for mobilization among upper-castes that feel that they are negatively affected by reservations. We are collecting pilot data this summer, with a plan for a survey of a representative sample of India later this year.
The second thread concerns the way in which institutions both perpetuate and work to address marginalization.
How does shaming in the international community affect target governments? Faradj Koliev (Stockholm University) and I are designing a survey that examines the effects of “shaming” in the international community. International institutions like the International Labor Organization, European Union, and the Council of Europe criticize the Russian government for its labor, environmental, and social policies like the treatment of LGBT+ people. We plan to conduct survey experiments in Sweden and Russia that examine the effects of this shaming on support for these policies and opinions of the criticized government.
The political origins of homophobia and citizenship. I am interested in figuring out the origins of political homophobia, promoted by state institutions. Why do states target and punish homosexuality? In order to answer this question, I employ a sociological institutionalist approach to the analysis of historical data. I work to establish how homosexuality became defined as a heinous act (‘sodomy’) in the late Middle Ages in Europe, and how states appropriated ‘sodomy’ and criminalized it for their political ends. I argue that the regulation of homosexuality was a deliberate strategy to make female-male sex and the suppression of male-male homosexuality political duties for the state, thereby engendering efficacy among men with respect to their states. I show that the intense persecution of sodomy in Northern Italy in the late Middle Ages coincides with the emergence of a communitarian and male citizenship or ‘civic community’ (as Robert Putnam describes it), which entailed increased marginalization of women in public life. This era produced legacies of intensified patriarchy and homophobia that persist until today. This paper is under review.
Can the “carrot on the stick” work? Assessing the EU’s mission to export human rights. Ridvan Peshkopia (University for Business and Technology, Kosovo) and I are replicating my dissertation surveys regarding the European Union’s promotion of women’s rights and gay rights in countries that are trying to join the EU. We expect that those who want to remain independent of the EU will exhibit lower levels of support for those rights when they are addressed as an EU issue in a survey experiment. We plan to conduct surveys in Albania and Kosovo.
The third thread concerns the possibilities for peace-making between institutions and marginalized communities.
When do power-sharing arrangements build trust in the governments of post-conflict societies? In collaboration with Caroline Hartzell (Gettysburg College) and Matthew Hoddie (Towson University), we are examining the effects of power-sharing agreements on public support for governments and individual-level likelihood to engage in violence. We are writing our first paper based on data collected on peace settlements in the Philippines.
Caroline, Matt, and I also are designing a survey of Nepal that gauges public responses to post-conflict power-sharing agreements. We plan to use a conjoint experiment to unpack the effects of inclusiveness regarding the types of negotiating parties in power-sharing agreements: government, rebel groups, international organizations, women’s groups and NGOs, and businesses.
Supporting Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence. Samuel Whitt (High Point University) and I are examining public support for survivors of wartime sexual violence: stipends, legal aid, and public recognition for survivors. We collected data in July and November 2018 in Bosnia. Our paper on this topic was accepted at the Journal of Conflict Resolution. First, we found a persistent ethnocentric view of sexual violence, where respondents are less supportive of survivors when the perpetrator is identified as coethnic and survivors are perceived as out-groups. Second, we found that framing survivors as male leads to less public support than framing survivors as female. We argue that the social stigma of same-gender sexual activity likely undermines public support for male survivors. Consistent with our argument, those who are intolerant of homosexuality are especially averse to providing aid to male survivors.
Samuel Whitt, Vera Mironova (Harvard University), and myself are working to replicate this research in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. We plan to unpack the stigma that survivors of sexual violence face in order to help advise the distribution of aid in the refugee camps.
Furthermore, Vera Mironova, myself, Richard Traunmüller (University of Mannheim), and Samuel Whitt are also working to estimate the number of survivors of sexual violence in Mosul, Iraq in the aftermath of the government’s retaking of the city. Following Richard Traunmüller’s prior research in Sri Lanka, we are using list experiments to gauge the proportion of Mosul adults that experienced sexual violence.