In my book project based on my dissertation, I draw on newly-collected data on subnational election outcomes after 1990 and utilize a close-election discontinuity design and panel models to show that opposition governors and mayors help keep the national executive from aggrandizing. My other work explores (a) state capacity building by subnational actors in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and (b) how opportunities to emigrate were strategically targeted at regime opponents in the German Democratic Republic.
Julian Michel 