International Criticism of Domestic Freedoms

When outside actors criticize domestic rights and freedoms, do voters update their beliefs on rights and freedoms? We argue that messages coming from outsiders who condition resources on democracy, and who possess expertise on democracy, are more likely to change respondents’ beliefs.

Floods and Corruption

What happens to funds provided to deal with the aftermath of natural disasters?  In this project, Marinov joins with an economist Elena Nikolova to ask a question about the most corrupt country in the EU, from which he hails.

Does Social Media Promote Civic Activism?

Promoting democracy has also become more personal, by seeing me advocate for civic causes in my birth-country of Bulgaria. An award-winning campaign to save a park on social media generated a target of opportunity: a field experiment. The ink is still fresh on the resultant paper.

Rules and Allies: Foreign Election Interventions

"Rules and Allies: Foreign Election Interventions", co-authored with Johannes Bubeck, is about how great powers back local allies in elections, how that affects democracy promotion, the policy positions candidates take, levels of corruption in the affected countries, and about the long-term consequences.  

Electoral Proximity and Troop Contributions

Photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times

Aid and Rights: A Natural Experiment

We find that when a country’s former colonizer is the president of the Council of the European Union during the budget-making process, the country is allocated considerably more foreign aid than are countries whose former colonizer does not hold the presidency.

Why Elections After the Coup?

In a recent project, co-authored with Hein Goemans and published in the British Journal of Political Science, we show a striking development.

NELDA

National Elections Across Democracy and Autocracy

Principal Investigators: Susan Hyde and Nikolay Marinov

Grants

I have one grant proposal under review: a proposal to the German Science Foundation (DFG), filed on September 21, 2015, Processes or Candidates? The International Community and the Demand for Electoral Integrity

Summary:

Process or Candidate? How States Intervene in Elections

This is a pilot coding for a paper by the same name, and the book on different kinds of interventions, undertaken by foreign powers, in other countries' elections.  The coding was done by Yale RA's (Baobao Zhang, Vinny Lindoso, thanks).