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Distributive Politics & Credit Claiming
How governments time, target, and take credit for the benefits they deliver — and how those strategies convert policy into political support.
Political Science · Emory University
The politics of local governments and public policy.
The Local Politics and Policy Lab studies how local governments, public policies, and elections shape political behavior and democratic accountability — with a global perspective.
We combine field and survey experiments, original administrative data, and causal-inference methods to understand distributive politics, housing and welfare, misinformation, and political representation.
What we study
We ask how the everyday machinery of local government — who gets what, when, and how they know it — we examine how public policy shapes citizens’ attitudes and behavior.
Local & distributive
How governments target benefits, claim credit, and delegate services — and how voters respond.
Multi-method
Experiments, original administrative and survey data, and strong designs for credible causal inference.
Global Focus
Focused on democracies everywhere, with an emphasis on deep knowledge of Latin America.
Open & reproducible
Committed to transparency, replicability, and tools that make research more credible.
Research
Three threads of local politics
Our work clusters around how local institutions distribute resources, how information shapes preferences and behavior, and how local institutions and information reshape elections, accountability, and representation.
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Housing & Social Policy
How housing and welfare programs reshape political behavior, social cohesion, and well-being — and how the way benefits are allocated changes their effects.
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Elections & Misinformation
How false information spreads through elections in the Global South — and what actually works to blunt it, from inoculation to fact-checking.
People
The lab
Principal Investigators
Natália S. Bueno
Principal Investigator · Associate Professor of Political Science, Emory University
Natália studies comparative politics and public policy, with an emphasis on how local governments distribute resources and information and how those choices shape elections, political behavior, and accountability. Her work draws on experiments, original administrative data, and causal-inference methods, primarily in Brazil and Latin America. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University; her research has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, World Politics, and Comparative Political Studies, among others.
She is a recipient of the APSA Urban and Local Politics Section’s Clarence Stone Scholar Award (2024) and the Harold D. Lasswell Award for best dissertation in public policy (2019).
Clara Bicalho
Principal Investigator · Postdoctoral Associate in Political Science, Emory University
Clara holds a Ph.D. in political science from UC Berkeley. Her research examines the determinants of collective land-titling reforms in Latin America and their effects on identity, governance, and political participation — with fieldwork on quilombo communities in Brazil — and she builds tools for causal inference, reproducibility, and research transparency.
Undergraduate Research Fellows
Emory undergraduates join the lab as research fellows — working on data collection, coding, and fieldwork while gaining hands-on training in empirical social science.
Frequent Collaborators
- Frederico Batista Pereira — UNC Charlotte
- Thad Dunning — UC Berkeley
- Felix Garcia Lopez — IPEA
- Fernando Meireles — IESP/UERJ
- Felipe Nunes — FGV
- Nara Pavão — UFPE
- Daniel Schiff — Purdue
- Kaylyn Jackson Schiff — Purdue
- Guadalupe Tuñón — Princeton
- Valerie Wirtschafter — Brookings
- Cesar Zucco — Columbia University
Publications
Selected publications & working papers
Public Policy, Distributive Politics & Housing
- Coordination Advantage: How Partisan Favoritism Persists Under Accountability Institutions. Under review. 2026 Deil S. Wright Best Paper Award, APSA Federalism & Intergovernmental Relations Section
- Housing, Social Cohesion, and Well-Being: Experimental Evidence from Informal Settlements.
- (2024). Benefits by Luck: A Study of Lotteries as a Selection Method for Government Programs. Comparative Political Studies. 2024 Best Comparative Policy Paper Award, APSA Public Policy Section
- (2023). What You See and What You Get: The Direct and Indirect Political Dividends of Public Policies. British Journal of Political Science. 2022 Best Paper Award, REPAL (Red para el Estudio de la Economía Política de América Latina)
- (2022). Making the Bourgeoisie? Values, Voice, and State-Provided Home Ownership. Journal of Politics, 84(4), 2064–2079. 2021 Best Paper on Public Policy Award, APSA Public Policy Section
- (2021). The Timing of Public Policies: Political Budget Cycles and Credit Claiming. American Journal of Political Science.
- (2018). Bypassing the Enemy: Distributive Politics, Credit Claiming, and Non-State Organizations in Brazil. Comparative Political Studies, 51(3), 304–340. Honorable Mention, 2019 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Award for best article in the social sciences, LASA Brazil Section
- (2011). Waves of Change within Civil Society in Latin America: Mexico City and São Paulo. Politics & Society, 39(3), 415–450.
Elections & Misinformation
- Sincere or Opportunistic? Understanding the Nature of Election Fraud Beliefs in Brazil. Revised and resubmitted.
- (De)Mobilizing Effects of Misinformation. Invited to revise and resubmit.
- (2025). How to Fight Election Misinformation. Science Advances, 11(35).
- (2024). The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?. American Political Science Review.
- (2024). Detecting Misinformation in the Global South: The Spread of False News by Political Leaders. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 4(2).
- (2024). Inoculation Reduces Misinformation: Experimental Evidence from a Multidimensional Intervention in Brazil. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 11(3), 239–250. Best Research Article Published in JEPS in 2024, APSA Experimental Research Section
- (2022). Fake News, Fact Checking, and Partisanship: The Resilience of Rumors in the 2018 Brazilian Elections. Journal of Politics, 84(4), 2188–2201.
- (2017). Race, Resources, and Representation: Evidence from Brazilian Politicians. World Politics, 69(2), 327–365.
- (2012). Raça e Comportamento Político: participação, ativismo e recursos em Belo Horizonte. Lua Nova, 85, 187–226.
- (2009). Race, Resources, and Political Participation in a Brazilian City. Latin American Research Review, 44(2), 59–83.
Methodology & Other
- (2024). Promoting Reproducibility and Replicability in Political Science. Research & Politics, 11(1).
- (2015). Graphical Presentation of Regression Discontinuity Results. The Political Methodologist, 22(2), 4–8.