Melina Platas, Ph.D.
mplatas@nyu.edu
New York University Abu Dhabi
About Me:
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. I study the politics of service delivery, political accountability, and the role of identity and culture in shaping economic and political outcomes. My book project, The Religious Roots of Inequality in Africa, documents and explains the origin and persistence of educational inequality across religious groups in Africa. I employ a variety of methods, ranging from field experiments to ethnography. The regional focus of my research is sub-Saharan Africa, where I have worked and conducted fieldwork in eight countries since 2005. I am a member of Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) and a faculty fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS). I am a contributor for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, and a panelist on KfM‘s TheHot Seat and NTV Uganda’s Fourth Estate in Uganda. I worked as a reporter at the Daily Monitor and The Independent magazine in Kampala, Uganda, from 2007-2009. I received a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2016, and a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University in 2007.
Research Interests
African Politics
Health Politics and Policy
Religion & Politics
Countries of Interest
Uganda
Malawi
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Social scientists have shown how easily individuals are moved to exclude outgroup members. Can we foster inclusion instead? This study leverages one of the most significant humanitarian crises of our time to test whether, and under what conditions, American citizens adopt more inclusionary behavior toward Syrian refugees. We conduct a nationally representative survey of over 5,000 American citizens in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election and experimentally test whether a perspective-taking exercise increases inclusionary behavior in the form of an anonymous letter supportive of refugees to be sent to the 45th President of the United States. Our results indicate that the perspective-taking message increases the likelihood of writing such a positive letter by two to five percentage points. By contrast, an informational message had no significant effect on letter writing. The effect of the perspective-taking exercise occurs in the short run only, manifests as a behavioral rather than an attitudinal response, and is strongest among Democrats. However, this effect also appears in the subset of Republican respondents, suggesting that efforts to promote perspective taking may move to action a wide cross-section of individuals.
We examine the effect on service delivery outcomes of a new information communication technology (ICT) platform that allows citizens to send free and anonymous messages to local government officials, thus reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of communication about public services. In particular, we use a field experiment to assess the extent to which the introduction of this ICT platform improved monitoring by the district, effort by service providers, and inputs at service points in health, education and water in Arua District, Uganda. We find suggestive evidence of a short-term improvement in some education services, but these effects deteriorate by year two of the program, and we find little or no evidence of an effect on health and water services at any period. Despite relatively high levels of system uptake, enthusiasm of district officials, and anecdotal success stories, we find that relatively few messages from citizens provided specific, actionable information about service provision within the purview and resource constraints of district officials, and users were often discouraged by officials’ responses. Our findings suggest that for crowd-sourced ICT programs to move from isolated success stories to long-term accountability enhancement, the quality and specific content of reports and responses provided by users and officials is centrally important.
Ebola emerged on U.S. soil during the 2014 midterm election campaign, and the threat of infectious disease became prominent in political rhetoric. African immigrant communities experienced stigma and suspicion during the outbreak. This study investigates the implications of this epidemic on immigration attitudes. We fielded a survey experiment during the Ebola crisis with a sample of 3881 adults in the United States to examine the conditions under which global health threats affect domestic attitudes on immigration. Contrary to expectations, we find that the mere mention of Ebola has no effect on immigration attitudes, even when the identity of the Ebola carrier is described as an African traveler into the United States. Our results show, however, that politicizing the crisis can lead to more exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants. This finding is driven by partisanship: views of immigration were significantly more negative when Republican participants read a statement by a Republican politician critical of President Obama's Ebola response. The study has implications for future epidemics, including the important role political entrepreneurs can play in shaping public perceptions during a disease outbreak. The results raise concerns about how political rhetoric surrounding disease can have both short-term and longer term consequences for vulnerable populations.
Do targeted aid programs have unintended consequences outside of the target issue area? We investigate this question with an examination of one of the largest targeted aid programs in the world: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Critics of PEPFAR worry that a targeted program focusing on single diseases has a negative externality, in which the influx of massive amounts of target aid damages broader public health systems in countries that receive PEPFAR funds. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find statistical evidence that supports critics of targeted aid.