Project Search Options
Enter one or more search options below then click the Search button.
Click on a project's title to view more details.
Vinod Aggarwal - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
The Berkeley Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC) brings together scholars from various disciplines, institutes, and centers from Berkeley and around the world to foster collaborative research on APEC and other trade-related issues. We are looking for students interested in working on the US-China superpower competition, particularly...
Social SciencesVinod Aggarwal - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: Off Campus
In a world of rising inequality and globalization, international coordination on tax policy has increased in importance. In this project, I investigate how international tax coordination was formed between states and how changes to the global tax rules affect the international investment environment. I argue that the global minimum tax...
Social SciencesVinod Aggarwal - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
Business and Politics is an internationally ranked, peer-reviewed international political economy journal. This is a fantastic opportunity for students who desire social science writing and editing experience. This URAP also provides a unique inside look at the academic publishing process...
Social SciencesVinod Aggarwal - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: Off Campus
The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of an American-led era characterized by multilateralism and expanding international trade. This period witnessed a rapid shift toward greater openness, globalization, and opportunities for mutual economic gain. However, in recent years, there has been a notable rise in legislation and...
Social SciencesDavid Broockman - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Scholars and commentators argue that Congress is broken because both parties' politicians take increasingly extreme positions on issues, failing to listen to voters. However, these claims are based on assuming that politicians of both parties don't adjust which proposals they make as voters' demands and the world change. In other...
David Broockman - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
In recent years, city councils across the United States have become significantly more diverse—in 2000, 62% of city councils were entirely white, but by 2021, only 24% were. Scholars have long argued that this kind of descriptive representation matters for minority communities, but we don't actually know much about...
Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
People are exposed to stories of all kinds in their daily lives, including appealing but false stories such as conspiracy theories. One way to understand the causal influence of stories on beliefs and behaviors is to use them as experimental treatments. The outcomes of these experiments can vary widely depending...
Social SciencesMarika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Threat perception has always played a major role in foreign and domestic policy-making. From Covid to climate change to terrorism, policy-makers have made decisions about which potential threats to address and which to ignore. This project investigates how policy-makers in the U.S. and in other countries determine...
Social SciencesMarika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Neuroscientists have studied the brain's response to threatening stimuli since the earliest days of brain imaging. Yet there is no single catalogue of threat perception studies and their findings. Meta-analysis involves using data from many studies to characterize the collective state of knowledge in a field. This project seeks...
Social SciencesMarika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Social scientists often assign categorical values to text data in order to structure it (e.g., categorizing statements made by Congress members as pro- or anti-immigration). Traditionally, this coding has been done manually by humans who read and categorize the texts of interest. This method risks both systematic error (e.g...
Social SciencesGabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
US cities continue to experience a criminal justice nightmare with high rates of interpersonal violence, police violence, and incarceration. When did this nightmare start? Why did it start? In preliminary work, I've found that this nightmare appears to have begun in Jim Crow southern cities around 1900. This finding suggests...
Social SciencesGabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Unions are one of the few democratic institutions within the workplace. However, the institutional structure of unions can encourage or constrain democracy within unions. I am interested in investigating the inner workings of union locals by collecting data on union local constitutions and bylaws, and collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, unions...
Social SciencesGabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
Research apprentices will assist with a project studying the racial identity and racial attitudes of white Democrats. This group has become markedly more liberal on race-related issues over the past decade, and scholars don’t know exactly why. This projects help to explain this shift by exploring how white survey...
Social SciencesGabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
This project has two parts. Part 1 looks at how the news media shapes policy outcomes and whether disparities in coverage lead to policy inequity. Can we show convincing evidence that news coverage of pedestrian fatalities leads to a change in local transportation policy? Are certain communities more likely to...
Social SciencesXiaobo Lü - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
How do political parties and rebel groups strengthen their organizations while simultaneously waging violent struggles against external rivals? This project investigates this question by examining the formative period of party building within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1927 to 1945. Founded in 1921, the CCP soon became embroiled in...
Arts & Humanities Social SciencesMichaela Mattes - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Overview: (This is one of three pieces of a collaborative project between Professors Arriola, Matanock, and Mattes.) Countries around the world are increasingly confronting violent irregular threats such as insurgencies and terrorism. Yet, many countries have proven unable to effectively deploy their security institutions (including regular militaries, paramilitaries, and police...
Social SciencesMichaela Mattes - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: Off Campus
On September 20, 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush addressed the nation and declared war against terror. In his speech, the President repeatedly used religious connotations. For instance, “Prayer has comforted us in sorrow, and will help strengthen us for the journey ahead.” President showed...
Social SciencesMichaela Mattes - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Throughout history countries have done terrible things to one another: genocide, war crimes, forced displacements etc. Apologizing for past wrongs was very rare before the 1990s and has become only slightly more common. Interestingly, there is a lot of variation in whether a country apologizes, when it does so, the...
Social SciencesMichaela Mattes - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
This project synthesizes work done by URAP teams led by Professors Arriola, Matanock, and Mattes in previous semesters.) Countries around the world are increasingly confronting violent irregular threats such as insurgencies and terrorism. Yet, many countries have proven unable to effectively deploy their security institutions (including regular militaries, paramilitaries, and...
Social SciencesRebecca Perlman - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
There is growing concern about the so-called “revolving door” between regulatory agencies and the firms they are charged with regulating. However, until recently, it was impossible to comprehensively document this phenomenon, due to the difficulty of linking individual bureaucrats with their subsequent work trajectories at scale. In this project...
Social SciencesAlison Post - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
What are the main types of concerns that citizens bring to mayors and city councilors in Latin America? What sorts of incentives do public officials have to address these concerns? And how do these dynamics vary between cities of different sizes? In this project, we will investigate local-level politics...
Social Sciences Biological & Health Sciences Engineering, Design & TechnologiesHunter Rendleman - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Public service is under strain. Government agencies today face unprecedented political attacks and mounting challenges in attracting and retaining skilled workers. Yet the strength of the state depends on its people: without committed professionals, government cannot carry out its core functions. From public health to law, education, and regulation, a...
Social SciencesHunter Rendleman - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Note: This project is co-mentored by Cailin Slattery, Assistant Professor in the Business and Public Policy Group at the Haas School of Business (cailin.slattery@berkeley.edu), and Hunter Rendleman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science (hrendleman@berkeley.edu) Project Description Lawyers perform an indispensable role in modern democratic societies...
Social SciencesEric Schickler - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
Union members have increasingly left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party. Despite this, many labor union leaders still prominently support the Democratic Party with a few exceptions. How is that the case when labor unions are ostensibly democratically designed? Specifically, why are union leaders so overwhelmingly supportive of...
Social SciencesEric Schickler - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
State parties regularly produce platforms that outline their positions on major issues facing the state and nation. These platforms have been used by scholars to understand the development of party polarization, changes in party positions on major issues, and dynamics of accountability and responsiveness in the U.S. political system. They...
Social SciencesScott Straus - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
How should scholars conceptualize contemporary African International Relations? In today’s increasingly multipolar world, many African states are dialing back relations with traditional partners—such as France—and engaging with a broader suite of states outside the region. While China has been increasingly active on the continent since the 1990s, several...
Social SciencesSteven Vogel - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
I will be actively working on several projects in Fall 2025. 1) I will be conducting research for an international project sponsored by the Canon Institute in Japan called the Global Order Framework Project. The project goals include developing guidelines and metrics for monitoring the behavior of governments and firms...
Social SciencesMartha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
How does the precolonial past influence contemporary African politics? This question animates a growing literature on precolonial legacies, yet this work has been hindered by imprecise and incomplete data on the nature of precolonial political organization. This project builds an original Atlas of Africa's precolonial polities in the 19th century...
Social SciencesMartha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
The construction of the African colonial state saw extensive re-arranging of political space as European colonial powers sought to extend their control across newly claimed territories. In many cases, these subnational boundaries largely persist to the present, raising the question of how colonial visions of state-building influence contemporary...
Social SciencesMartha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
In an era of democratic instability and electoral autocracy, understanding when and where viable opposition parties emerge is critical. This question is particularly pressing in sub-Saharan Africa, where opposition parties vary in their capacity to contest elections. This project seeks to a) develop a descriptive dataset of the region’s...
Social Sciences