My work focuses on understanding what happens to democracy under conditions of social inequality. I have been broadly inspired by the tradition of community studies in sociology which explore how wider social processes are expressed at a local level. In this way, I have also been inspired by John Dewey’s observation that “Democracy begins at home, and its home is the neighborly community.” My research is motivated by two concerns. First, a concern over the impact of increasing inequality on local institutions and communities. And second, a complimentary concern over how the context of growing inequality shapes questions of belonging, citizenship, and democratic participation in local communities. My goal in pursuing these questions is to understand how democratic culture and social policies can be supported and strengthened by focusing on local community institutions and their challenges.
These motivations have set me on two complimentary and productive lines of empirical research. The first uses taxes and public finances to gain new insights into broader questions and debates around inequality and local institutions that support quality of life. The second focuses on understanding how inequality shapes questions over the boundaries and substance of citizenship and belonging, which has inspired a second line of research focused on immigration and race.
Fiscal Democracy and Citizenship
My current project, titled “The Kansas Tax Cuts and the Social Limits of Neoliberalism,” examines how the 2012 supply-side tax cut policy in Kansas. Drawing on several data sources, including 110 in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, state budgetary documents, and media coverage, I examine the significance to American politics of the Kansas tax cuts. I argue that contemporary Republican politics are in crisis and that the surprising reversal of the Kansas tax cuts signals a potential turning point in the politics of tax cuts. As a policy, tax cuts have been declining in popularity with all but the most fervent Republican partisans. I argue that the experience of Kansans provides insight into this broader trend. I locate the source of this crisis in local communities because it is in local communities that the role of taxes is most apparent. In Kansas, the severity of the tax cuts threatened key community institutions, namely local schools and businesses, which lead (mostly middle-class) Kansans to fear a decline in the quality of life in their local communities. Anxiety over the loss of the features that make up quality of life in communities, I argue, helps explain the decline more broadly in the popularity of tax cuts. I currently have two published articles directly from my dissertation. One, in Politics & Society, examines the counterintuitive political mobilization of small businesses and local chambers of commerce in Kansas to secure the repeal of the tax cuts. A second article, in The Sociological Quarterly, brings the Kansas tax cuts into comparative analysis with the Trump tax cuts to examine the divergent policy trajectories between the reversal of the Kansas tax cuts and the implementation of the Trump tax cuts.
My focus on political struggles over the boundaries and substance of citizenship has also inspired a second line of research focused on immigration and race. In an article published in Urban Affairs Review, Emily Rauscher and I analyzed how voter support for bond and property tax increases varied based on the racial composition of school districts in California. In another first-authored article published in Social Currents, Cecilia Menjívar, Andrea Gómez Cervantes, and I examined how the Trump administration’s immigration executive orders dramatically expanded immigrant criminalization and reshaped the context for the everyday lives of immigrants. I have also explored similar themes in other co-authored articles published in Du Bois Review, Migration Letters, and Sociology Compass. In a first-authored piece with Cecilia Menjívar at Sociological Perspectives, I examined the local media’s role in creating a political climate conducive for passage of harsh anti-immigrant laws in Arizona. Finally, in an article published in Sociological Forum with Walter Nicholls and Cecilia Menjívar, I have examined a local social movement in Tonganoxie, Kansas against a proposed Tyson chicken plant. This movement, which succeeded in preventing the plant’s construction, raised strong local resistance to the possibility of incoming immigrant labor. While empirically diverse, my research trajectory has focused fundamentally on state and society relations and the struggles over citizenship and social rights.
Immigration, Race, and Belonging
Research In Progress
I have two research projects under way that explore the role of public finances in political and economic inequalities. One with Emily Rauscher, titled “Accounting for Legitimacy,” draws on interviews with school superintendents in Kansas and Oklahoma to explore the politicization of school budgetary and accounting rules. Public organizations, like schools, tend to use a highly rationalized accounting system where funds are earmarked to specific expenses. However, conservative lawmakers in Kansas and Oklahoma loosened these rules over time. Rather than responding favorably to these changes, superintendents in both states articulated strong preferences for fund accounting because of the accountability and organizational legitimacy it affords. In this paper, we argue that loosening accounting rules at the state level is another avenue by which conservatives are delegitimizing public education.
A second project, with Jennifer Nations, is similarly exploring urban fiscal democracy. This paper explores the social and political context in which city leaders propose tax increases. According to fiscal theories of democracy, the fiscal needs of the state prompt leaders to seek out greater resources in the form of taxes in exchange for more consultation between state and citizen. Yet it is not clear how well this theory applies to cities. Cities face multiple legal and political limits to revenue at the same time that cities are charged with providing basic social services. This pressure has led to cities growing ever more financialized and indebted. This paper investigates the context in which city leaders propose tax increases. The goal of this paper is to better understand how city public finances can be made more democratic.
Finally, two additional projects stem from my research as a Postdoc at Northeastern University on an NSF-funded project on water unaffordability. One paper, with Laura Senier (PI) and a team of undergraduates, are investigating how water shutoffs are covered in local media. A second paper, with Laura Senier, Sharon Harlan, and Martha Davis, draws on interviews with local policymakers and water department officials to investigate the organizational, fiscal, and political dimensions of increasing water unaffordability in cities across America. This paper delves into the pressures placed on water systems as well as organizational constraints to programs that would provide relief for low-income residents.