A Career in Political Science: Exploring Democracy, Power, and Global Change

*Note: This episode was recorded in November 2024.

00:08 Dr. Sarah Bush

One of the things that I like about the field of political science, where I teach and do my research, is that it is something that we're all unified by an interest in the political world.

00:25 Vincent Ni

Hello everyone, this is Vincent and you're listening to Ever Thought About, created by undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. We hope to bring you exciting episodes about the diverse research undertaken around campus. Sit down with us as we chat with Penn professors about their research careers, academic journeys, and work they've dedicated their lives to. In this episode, we're incredibly fortunate to be joined by Dr. Sarah Bush from the Political Science Department here at Penn. Her work examines the role of international actors in trying to aid democracy, promote women's representation, and influence elections globally, with a recent interest in climate change. Dr. Bush is also the author of two books, The Taming of Democracy Assistance and Monitors and Meddlers, and she is currently writing a forthcoming book, Crowded Out: The Competitive Landscape of Contemporary International NGOs, so keep an eye out for that. Dr. Bush's work has also appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review and International Organization, as well as a number of outlets such as The Economist and The Washington Post. Dr. Bush received her PhD from Princeton University. Prior to coming to Penn, she had held faculty positions at Yale University and Temple University and fellowships at the Perry World House and the Harvard Kennedy School. Welcome, Dr. Bush.

01:40 Dr. Bush

Thanks for having me.

01:41 Vincent

Thank you so much. And we're so excited to chat with you today. And the first part of this, we really just wanted to trace your own academic journey and how you came to be in the position that you are today. And so going back to the beginning, really wanted to chat with you about what first drew you to political science. Specifically the fields of international relations and comparative politics - was there a defining moment for you or did you always envision yourself in this field?

02:08 Dr. Bush

I think I was always interested as a kid growing up in different countries around the world and traveling. But I would say that when I started college, it was at a really interesting moment. I arrived at Northwestern University to start my freshman pre-orientation program, and during the time that I was on that pre-orientation program is when September 11th happened. And like a lot of students that were starting college then, I was so interested in why did this happen? What does this mean for the US role in the world? And I signed up for a class that was “Introduction to International Relations” that fall, along with, I think, more than 200 other students. And I just became more and more interested in studying this topic and trying to understand US foreign policy and global dynamics. And I think that is kind of what set me on the path to wanting to major in political science. And then I had an experience writing a senior thesis and also being a research assistant for professors at Northwestern. And I discovered through those experiences that I really loved doing research. And I think that is what ultimately made me want to apply to grad school and then kind of do this as a career.

03:30 Vincent

Fantastic. And could you talk to us a little bit about kind of the broad categories of methods that you use in your work? And especially over time, especially in the last 20 years, how have you seen the field of political science and your own research focus shift as a result of particular world events, trends, and global shifts? And how has that changed, reshaped the questions that you asked and the methods you used to explore the question of democratization?

03:56 Dr. Bush

One of the things that I like about the field of political science where I teach and do my research is that it is something that we're all unified by an interest in the political world, but then we use a lot of different approaches and methods to try to understand the questions that drive us. And so I am most driven by wanting to understand questions about democracy and representation and human rights around the world. And I have tried to do research that tackles those topics in a lot of different ways, so it kind of depends on the particular question at hand as well as maybe what kind of resources I have at the time that I'm working on the project. So I have done field work overseas in places like Jordan and Tunisia where I've lived and for periods of time and interviewed people and also conducted my own surveys to understand public attitudes. I've also done work that is using archival materials. And then some of my research is much more quantitatively oriented and involves building data sets and then analyzing those data sets using statistical methods. So it kind of like the methods sort of run the gamut according to what seems to me at the time to best serve the question that I'm interested in.

05:23 Vincent

Great. And usually when we approach research, there's usually the empirical, the observational side, there is the experimental side. But I felt that in your work there's also an additional perspective that's more nuanced and to a point you might be even cynical. And what I mean by that is it's almost, at times you're adversarial to power, to an extent. And you often question the intent behind certain policy changes in target countries or our allies, supposed allies, the democracy-promoting organizations. So one example I was thinking about was when you did your project on gender quotas in legislative representation, you talked about how there's a direct causal pathway where governments are willingly giving up power to enact certain policies in their post-conflict peace operations, but there's also another side where they're indirectly accepting certain policy changes out of a want for foreign aid. So where does that lead us in terms of this genuine versus an ends-driven nature of policy adoption? And where does that, what's the implications of this type of distinction?

06:37 Dr. Bush

Yeah, I think one thing that has always really interested me is in the space of democracy promotion or advocating for human rights globally, we have really lofty ideals that a lot of us think are good and right. But then in terms of how democracy promotion or human rights advocacy works on the ground, it can get more complicated. And one of the reasons why is because often there are a lot of forces in the countries that are the targets of this democracy promotion or international advocacy. There's a lot of people who don't really like, they don't want to see democracy promotion. If you're an autocrat, that doesn't sound so good to you. And people often disagree about human rights issues too. And so in the research that you mentioned, for example, I was really interested in how more than 100 countries around the world adopted what are called “gender quotas”, which are basically laws that are designed to, in the national parliament of a country, either set aside seats that are reserved for women or require political parties to nominate a certain number of women candidates. And I was really interested in how countries that we don't think of as being paragons of gender equality were adopting these policies, including a country like Afghanistan, which was infamous for its abuses of women's rights. And I found that the reason why a lot of countries that don't stand out otherwise in terms of women's rights are adopting these laws is because of international pressure to do so or encouragement. And sometimes that these kinds of laws can still really have positive changes for women and can make sure that their voices are heard even in really patriarchal settings. But sometimes they can also have less positive effects where countries that are autocratic can maybe burnish their reputation and seem a little bit more democratic by including women in their political institutions while still not doing things like holding free and fair elections or having a free, an environment of free media and expression. And so they're not, these kinds of laws are not always a good thing. And that's something that I'm interested in more generally in this space of democracy promotion, how sometimes, despite the best of intentions, once things are implemented on the ground, they run into trouble or resistance.

09:22 Vincent

Some work rings the bell in autocracies or illiberal democracies' role in diluting the impact of democracy-promoting efforts through the support of mechanisms such as low-quality election monitoring or what you call “zombie monitoring”. And especially considering the global election year that it is, what are some of the things directly in your work that we should be keeping an eye out for?

09:44 Dr. Bush

So you mentioned the phenomenon of low-quality election observers, which is something that I've been really interested in and studying for the last couple of years, along with colleagues at other universities. And that's something that we have seen, I think, in this global year of elections, as you mentioned, where increasingly, countries, and these are especially countries that are not consolidated democracies. So countries that are, they hold elections, but the elections aren't exactly free and fair, or actually they're even really autocratic in quality. More and more of these countries invite different types of international observers. And I think the observers that we're used to hearing about most are high quality, really credible, capable groups. A great example of this would be the Carter Center, which is based here in the United States, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, and among other things, observes a lot of elections around the world in a really professional way and renders verdicts or writes reports that shed light on election integrity. But although these kinds of groups became really famous, maybe especially in the 1990s, for spreading a norm of inviting election observers, now there's this other phenomenon of the low-quality groups, or some people call them zombie election observers, that they may kind of give some appearance of credibility. They may have “democracy” in the name of the group, but they actually go around and seek to validate autocratic elections. And they're especially common in the post-Soviet region, in countries like Azerbaijan, but they also observe elections in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East, and elsewhere. And these groups try to say that autocratic elections are really free and fair and offer kind of a counter narrative to a more credible group like the Carter Center and encourage the public to accept the elections, and maybe confuse people about who we should trust for information about elections. And certainly we've seen, in the United States over the past few elections, too, how people's trust in elections is a really important factor that matters for the legitimacy of democratic institutions and can lead to protests if people don't trust elections, can lead to violence in some cases. And so these low quality or zombie monitors can really try to reassure the public that bad elections are worth trusting.

12:34 Vincent

In 2015, you published a book called The Taming of Democracy Assistance, where you made a case that democracy assistance in foreign countries needs to be more robust and more confrontational. While authoritarian governments are constantly in power, the democracy-promotional efforts, including the investors as well as operators on the ground, have grown more risk averse and they have grown more cautious, and they became more organizationally fragmented on a global scale. And one of the key implications that you drew from these findings was that the democracy-promotion effort needed a re-imagination that could truly hold autocrats' feet to a fire. And now that nine years has passed since this book's publication, has that re-imagination come to life?

13:19 Dr. Bush

It's such an interesting question, and I'm not sure that it has. I think that one of the trends that I was looking at in my book back in 2015, and when I started it a number of years earlier, was the way that smart autocrats can try to respond to international pressure to democratize and create an environment that makes it really difficult for the organizations that are trying to advance democracy around the world to operate freely and kind of force them or create an environment that encourages them to do these activities that I call “tame”. So, maybe encouraging more women to run for office, but they're running for office for an autocratic parliament that has no lawmaking power and can be dismissed at will. And I think, unfortunately, since 2015, there's only been kind of an acceleration of this, of autocracy around the world. We have become even more concerned that there's democratic backsliding and that authoritarian regimes are consolidating power and learning more and more about how to resist external pressure to democratize. And so I think that the environment has only become more challenging than it was 10 years ago. And another thing that has happened is that I think in the United States, as well as elsewhere, in the countries and organizations that are trying to promote democracy around the world, we're seeing problems at home with our own democracies. And I think some political leaders that are questioning really the previous consensus about whether it's helpful and a good idea for the US and European countries and international institutions to be so focused on issues of democracy promotion. And so I think that also creates an environment where it's even harder for organizations working in the democracy assistance space to push the envelope and do something that isn't just kind of tame and non-confrontational.

15:42 Vincent

Thank you. And in your paper, “Facing Change: Gender and Climate Change Attitudes Worldwide”, you addressed the phenomenon that women are much more concerned about climate change than men, and that divergence is especially accentuated in wealthier countries. And central to your argument are the theories of loss aversion and the will to protect one's identity and the status quo, which you indicated mostly impacted men if the status quo is at risk. And as a comparative politics researcher, how do you approach very perceptible questions, such as climate change and gender roles in other countries that may view these issues through a very different lens and very different, or speak very differently about these issues than we do?

16:26 Dr. Bush

Yes, I think that's a great question. And I've been, this is a newer area of research for me, and it's been really fun to learn more about climate change given its urgency for all of us as a social issue of our time. And I think one of the things that I've been trying to do in this research is understand, as you suggest, really comparatively how people in different settings think about climate change. And one of the findings that's come out of my research in this space, and other people have shown this too, is that in richer countries, on average, according to cross-national surveys, in richer countries, people are actually less concerned about climate change on average than people in poorer countries are. And I think that cuts against the way some people think about what their stereotype might be. Certainly, we hear a lot about climate activists like Greta [Thunberg] or others who are coming from countries that are very wealthy. But it seems that in wealthier countries, people are less concerned about climate change, both because in those countries, there are a lot more resources to adapt to climate change and to deal with natural disasters or changes in the weather. Wealthier countries are less reliant on agriculture. So they can kind of deal with climate change a little bit easier than poorer countries can because of their different governance and economies. And also in those wealthier countries, there are some people who might feel like they have more to lose because of established industries that are based in those countries that people are worried about job losses but also changes to the way of life. And in poorer countries, it's just a much more immediate concern about, what does a drought mean for people's livelihoods, and so on. And so I think that's been an important thing for me and for my collaborator on that project to think about is really how the context that you live in shapes the way that you think about climate change as an issue, how it varies by countries and also within countries, how men and women may tend to think about the issue differently too.

19:01 Vincent

Thank you. And I want to bring the conversation to a broader level about the field that you work in, but also perhaps political science or even the role of academics. And one thing I'm curious about is what role do you believe academics have in shaping foreign policy conversations, particularly when it comes to very contentious or even evolving issues? And I ask that because, especially with academics who I talk to in the policy space, there's usually kind of two ends of a spectrum. There's usually the one end that says, that feels that they're instrumental in the policy-making process. Another also, but the other side feels that they're looking at policy from a 30-foot-high, no, 30,000-foot-high view, and there is a detachment of their perspective and also actual policymaking. So I'm really curious to hear about your experience from your research or perspective that played a role in reframing a policy.

20:05 Dr. Bush

I think within political science as a whole, people vary a lot in how if at all they want to be involved in sort of policy or politics outside of their research and teaching. So there's some colleagues that I have, for example, in political science here at Penn, my colleague, Mike Horowitz, who just came back from a stint serving in the Department of Defense. There's people who take on high-level roles and get really involved and can also work with and for nonprofit organizations or political campaigns, you name it. So some people get really involved and some people just want to be here on campus and doing their research and doing their teaching. So it really varies. I think for me, I always have wanted to do research that in some ways that I think or hope would matter outside of the “ivory tower”. And I've tried to communicate my findings in ways that might be accessible to a broader public or to folks that are working on the issues that I research within the government or within organizations. And I might do that by trying to write a policy brief or writing something kind of short and snappy in some place like The Washington Post or The Conversation. Or I might give presentations to folks in Washington, D.C. Next week, I'm going to be going to Brussels to give a presentation at a conference organized by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, which is a German foundation that has offices all around the world that are trying to advance democracy. And so I really love the opportunity to share findings with audiences like that and also learn from audiences like that what are the issues that are really important for their work so that I can think about if there's some way that the research I'm doing can be targeted to be useful. I don't know that the research I'm doing is transforming anybody's work or really changing the conversation that people are having. I wouldn't be that bold or confident to say that it's having that kind of impact, but I definitely look for the chance to engage with the people who are working on these topics in the policy and kind of practitioner space, because there's a lot that I learn from that and hopefully there's something that coming from my research can also be useful for them. Like, the work that we were talking about before about the low-quality election observers. People that are working for high-quality election observers are well aware of this phenomenon because they're dealing with it on the ground that these low-quality groups are trying to kind of undercut the work that they're doing. But even though they have that very granular appreciation for the phenomenon, it may nevertheless be helpful for them to see, okay, here's exactly what I found looking across, you know, 100 countries about the frequency of this phenomenon and which countries it's more likely to be in. And so, yeah, I hope that the research can provide a different take that can be useful to people who are working on these issues who I admire a lot.

23:39 Vincent

While we're on the topic of engaging with fellow audiences in your field, I want to ask about what are some common misconceptions or misinterpretations that you've encountered about your field, whether it's among the general public or just within the academic circle as well.

23:55 Dr. Bush

One thing that is a common misperception about political science is that we're all doing politics, maybe, that if you talk to someone who's a political science professor, that they're hoping to run for office someday. And although I do know the occasional political science professor that does get involved in politics like that, in general, that is not what anybody is doing. And so I think that's a little bit of a misconception.

24:27 Vincent

I want to kind of put yourself in the shoes of a student interested in your field. How would you recommend a student to get into your field? What would be a good starting point?

24:37 Dr. Bush

If you're interested in political science, and I guess if you're thinking about how to prepare for it before college or how to do work outside of the classes that you might take, I think that it's really helpful and important to keep up with the news and also read history and just be kind of learning about the world, especially if your interest like mine is in international politics, then you really want to do everything that you can to learn about other countries, to learn about what's going on out there. I know for me, in thinking about my own research ideas, they've often come from chance encounters that I've had while traveling or an interesting thing that I've read in the news or in a book that's not a political science book, but it's just something that puzzles me, like about, oh, here's this so-called democracy-promotion activity that seems like it's actually very tame, to go back to the book that we were talking about before. Why is that? Or, here's this group that calls itself an election monitor, but it is endorsing an election that everybody says is super flawed. Why is that? And so I think for me, often the most interesting things just come from reading something in the news or coming across something in my life that I find interesting and then it turns out to be a thread that I want to pull a little bit more.

26:13 Vincent

Great. And can you also talk a little bit about your mentorship of undergraduate students and the role they played in your work?

26:21 Dr. Bush

Yes, undergraduate students have played a really important role in my research. And I think of that as something that's really important to do in part because as I mentioned earlier, part of the reason why I wanted to go to graduate school and do this is because I had an experience doing research and being mentored as an undergraduate student. That was really transformative for me. And so I definitely want to pay that forward and give students their own opportunity to get involved in research projects. Over the summer, earlier this year, I was able to work with two amazing undergrads at Penn, Corinne Cai and Alia Goldstein, who helped me through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship Program, PURM, start collecting data on non-governmental organizations' participation in the United Nations main human rights review process. And we've been collecting data on something that we call “government-organized” non-governmental organizations, which is kind of a strange oxymoron kind of label. We call them GONGOs. Other people call them GONGOs, too. And these are basically groups that are going to the UN and submitting reports about countries' human rights performance and being extremely praiseworthy, even for countries that have really bad human rights records. And in some cases, they’re domestic groups, and in other cases, they’re are global groups that are going around and really praising a number of rights-abusing countries' reputations. And so we got started on that over the summer together, and they helped develop the guidelines for how to read reports, and then they coded dozens of reports very painstakingly in countries like Venezuela and China, as well as the United States gets reviewed through this process too. And it turned out to be an even bigger undertaking than I realized at the start of the summer. And so now a number of additional students have come on board the project this fall to work on reading more reports and pulling out information about NGOs’ participation and finding which countries have these GONGOs that are taking part in the process. And so it's been really great to work together with students to kind of get our hands dirty really in the research process of creating what will hopefully be a large-scale data set that we can analyze and other researchers can do so as well.

29:11 Vincent

Thank you, Dr. Bush.

29:12 Dr. Bush

Thanks for having me.