Summer Research Assistant to Dr. Didi Kuo, Center Fellow, CDDRL
Research Assistant Position: Full-Time Research Assistant to Didi Kuo, Center Fellow, CDDRL
Research Project Title: Democratic Representation and Renewal
Research Project Description: The Project on Democratic Representation and Renewal builds a research agenda to understand contemporary challenges related to democratic interests and political influence in advanced democracies. The project develops three lines of research:
1. Pro-democracy factions and civil society organization: What are the conditions under which pro-democracy factions emerge, and what kinds of resources do they need (financial, ideational, political) to succeed? This project will use a comparative approach to examine how parties coordinate (or fail to coordinate) in times of democratic erosion, and on the tricky relationship of coalitional politics and programmatic agendas. An RA will need to aggregate and synthesize party campaign messages, platforms, and legislative priorities and outcomes.
2. Programmatic Decay and Post-Policy Politics. This research develops a concept of programmatic decay--of politics “beyond policy”—-and builds upon related work on populism, party cleavages, identity politics, and polarization to more rigorously assess the party-citizen relationship. An RA will likely need to hand-code several open-ended survey responses and party platforms, and conduct statistical analysis of cross-national data.
3. Interests and Influence in the 21st century. The final line of research explores the evolution of economic interests in an era of global capitalism. While many advanced democracies are described as “post-class” or “post-materialist,” voters nonetheless continue to rank economic issues as their foremost concern. This research considers what it means for parties to represent economic interests today. How do parties reconcile the competing interests of economic elites (whether corporations or individuals) and lower- or middle-income taxpaying citizens? How do economic interests get defined and mobilized, and by whom? This project uses a historical and comparative lens to examine periods of time when economic “interests” were crafted and redefined and is particularly attentive to the way globalization reshapes domestic economic interests.
An RA will need to conduct literature reviews and write brief research memos, and will also need to analyze existing observational data.
- Work in-person from designated office space in Encina Hall at CDDRL through the summer
- This is a full-time (40 hours per week for 10 consecutive weeks during the summer) research opportunity, open to continuing undergraduate students.
- Students who are awarded funding for a full-time opportunity may not engage in any additional full-time internship, job, or volunteer positions, whether funded by Stanford or another source.
- Meet weekly with their Faculty mentor throughout the project timeline.
- Duration: June 22-August 28
Qualifications/Skills Required of Research Assistant: At a minimum, an RA is expected to have relevant coursework in comparative politics, democracy, development, and economics/history. Needs to be familiar with using the library (both the physical, actual library as well as digital resources). Needs to understand the difference between academic research and publications, versus non-academic or trade publications. Needs to be able to conduct basic data analysis (visualizations, statistical analyses) with existing databases. Because this is a full-time position, the RA will be doing a variety of assignments including writing research memos, analyzing data, compiling databases, and more to be determined. Optimally, the RA would also have the following skills: - organized and thorough - adaptable/flexible from week to week as research tasks may vary - problem-solver, effective communicator.
Position is open to all rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors. To apply, please send a (brief) cover letter, resume, and (unofficial) transcript.
