Current Research PapersWhat Difference Does a Regime Make?This study uses individual-level data on child immunization from 50 developing countries to explore the extent to which democratic regimes provide for social good coverage in comparison to non-democracies. This study supports other findings that democratic regimes have a positive effect on individual welfare outcomes while also providing results that call into question the substantive impact of regime type. Methodologically, this study offers an innovation by using an individual-level data set rather than the aggregate country-level data used in most other studies. Individual-level data provides an opportunity to control for individual and household attributes that are likely to have a substantial impact on an individual’s ability to obtain a social good. Our results show that while democratic regimes are statistically related to an increased likelihood of childhood immunization, the magnitude of the effect is minor. Other factors, including household wealth, mother’s education, ethnic fractionalization, conflict, and net official development assistance are more robust and influential predictors that a given child is fully immunized. In summary, this study finds no substantive evidence that democratic regimes in developing countries significantly outperform non-democracies in providing childhood immunizations.
Distributional Politics and International Organizations: Understanding Child Immunization in India
If democratic political elites are motivated to distribute goods because of electoral benefits, what explains the massive resources committed by the Government of India to providing a universal social good, like child immunization, where there is little popular demand and even resistance? Using in-depth, in-country interviews with Indian health officials, members of international organizations and experts, as well as qualitative process tracing of the history of immunization policy in India, in this paper I argue that international pressure was a central impetus in India’s national commitment to routine immunization. Furthermore, I contend that the recent intensive monitoring by international organizations has been a key component in ensuring accountability at the state-level, particularly for the implementation of strategies to achieve universal coverage polio. These findings have important implications for the discipline’s understanding of domestic distributional choices and add further theoretical complexity to the nature of accountability in democratic states. Coercive Population Control Policies in IndiaThis research tests Amartya Sen’s (1994) assertion that coercive policies are counterproductive and often lead to an increase, rather than decrease, of family size. This research uses data from the 2006 Demographic Health Survey (DHS) of India to empirically test whether women living in Indian states with coercive population control policies were less likely to comply with the two-child norm than women in states without coercion. Using a logistic regression of individual-level data and controlling for women’s education, employment, economic autonomy, religion, class, and caste status, I find that living in a state with coercive policies has no statistically measurable impact on non-compliance with the two-child norm. Instead, primary risk factors for non-compliance were related to measures of boy-child preference. Along with evidence from research on India, this finding indicates gender preferences for children often drive decisions regarding family size, while the presence of coercion appears to have little impact on mediating these choices.
PresentationsConference Presentations
Cahill, Katie. 2017. “Democracy Is Not Enough: Accountability, International Organizations, and the Politics of Social Good Distribution” Midwest Political Science Association Conference (April 2017) Cahill, Katie. 2014. "A Study in the Politics of Social Good Distribution: Child Immunization in India and Bangladesh" American Political Science Association Conference (August 2014) accepted, but did not present due to bone marrow donation for anonymous recipient. Cahill, Katie. 2014. “Distributional Politics and International Organizations: Child Immunization in India” Western Political Science Association Conference (April 2014) Boling, Patricia, Katie Cahill and Summer Forester. 2013. “The Value of Comparative Public Policy” Midwest Political Science Association Conference Paper (April 2013) Cahill, Katie. 2012. “Coercive Population Control Policies and the Two-Child Limit in India” Policy,International Relations, Comparative, American, Theory (PIRCAT) Workshop (October 2012) Cahill, Katie. 2011. “Are Democracies More Than Average? An Analysis of Democratic Regime Performance on Public Health” Public Policy and Political Theory (PPPT) Workshop (February 2011) Cahill, Katie, George Avery, Felicia Trembath, Joshua Beck and Emily Trent. 2011. “Working Together: Integrated Health Systems and Recommendations for Future Reform” Midwest Political Science Association Conference Paper (March 2011) Danyi, Paul and Katie Cahill. 2010. “From IMBY to NIMBY: The Siting of U.S. Airports in the Twentieth Century” Midwest Political Science Association Conference Paper (March 2010) Invited Presentations Cahill, Katie. 2014. “Distributional Politics and International Organizations in Global Immunization Efforts” Purdue University Political Science Department (February 2014) Cahill, Katie. 2013. “A Child Survival Revolution: The Role of International Organizations in India’s Immunization Program” GIRI Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (August 2013) SkillsQuantitative Methods: Multilevel Modeling; Logistic Regression; OLS Regression; Time-Series/Trend Analysis; Panel Studies (Cross-Sectional Time Series Analysis); Survey Design and Experiments
Qualitative Methods: Unstructured Interviews; Direct Observation; Case Studies; Archival Data Analysis Database Expertise: Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) USAID Database; Quality of Government (QOG) Database; POLITY Database; US Census Database Statistical Software: SPSS; STATA; Qualtrics Research WorkshopsDisaster Law: Can Laws Make Communities Safer from Disasters? | November 2014, Jawarharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India)
Feminist Methodologies Workshop | April 2014, Western Political Science Association Conference (Seattle, WA) Population Planning in Uttar Pradesh, Government of India and International Organization Conference | September 2013, Uttar Pradesh Rural Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh) Comparative Politics and Fieldwork Symposium | April 2013, Jawarharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) Multilevel Modeling Methods Workshop (organizer) | January 2013 – May 2013, Political Science Department, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) Social Science Mechanics Forum Series (organizer) | August 2011 – May 2012, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) National Science Foundation Grant Writing Workshop | September 2009, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) Grant and Proposal Writing Workshop | February 2009, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) |
Dissertation ResearchCahill, Katie A. Ph.D., Purdue University, August 2016. Democracy Is Not Enough: Accountability, International Organizations, and the Politics of Social Good Distribution. Major Professor: Patricia Boling.
Fully-Immunized Children in India and Bangladesh: Rates are based on fully immunized children 12 to 23 months in 2005-2006. This information was adapted from the 2006 Uttar Pradesh Planning Atlas. States that are not colored did not have data available. The all-India average is 43.5%. Bangladesh’s coverage is based on estimates for 2006 from the WHO/UNICEF (2011) database. This map was generated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.
Why are some developing states more successful at distributing necessary goods and services to their population than others? Using a large-N multi-level dataset on childhood immunization of over 200,000 children across 50-countries and extensive fieldwork, I examine the role and importance of accountability in distributional decision-making and programmatic successes. For this study, I conducted over nine months of fieldwork in three Indian states (Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and West Bengal), and in Dhaka, the capitol of Bangladesh. My field interviews with national, sub-national, and international actors in these locations illustrated the variation in the nature and structure of accountability partnerships. These analyses point to the minor influence of democratic institutions and the overarching importance of international involvement; a stark departure from much of the research on this topic.
Using a nested analysis and mixed methods research design, I find that the presence of internal accountability, or democratic elections, is not a sufficient explanation for social good distribution. The minor effect of regime type in my preliminary and secondary statistical analyses, and in my qualitative field research, suggest that whether or not a country is a democracy is unlikely to predict the likelihood that a child is fully immunized. Instead, the presence of external accountability, vis-à-vis mechanisms tied to funding and monitoring by international organizations, may be a sufficient condition for ensuring that 80% of children are reached with child immunizations; the general standard for herd immunity and the level of coverage committed to by every country in the world. In addition, an examination of the impact of foreign aid on outcomes shows that external involvement can be “trump card” that can help a country to overcome the lack of accountability, capability, and any feasibility challenges. Contrary to much of the literature on this topic, my research suggests that democracy is not enough to ensure that social goods are distributed to those in most need of them. Research ExperienceField Researcher- India and Bangladesh
June 2013- January 2015 (9 total months in country) Conducted field research on routine child immunization in India (New Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal) and Bangladesh (Dhaka) and observed immunization rounds in villages and at public health centers, including polio booth days Interviewed more than 60 top public health officials and representatives of international organizations from the World Health Organization, Unicef, Rotary International, CORE, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Affiliated Researcher with: Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University; GIRI Institute of Development Studies; James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University Graduate Research Assistant— Purdue University August 2009- August 2014 Assessing Candidates at Home and Abroad: Immigration and Politics | Summer 2014: related to the 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study (LINES); coded bilingual surveys, cleaned data, and performed basic statistical analysis Media Coverage of Terrorism and Social Psychology | Summer 2014: coded news media sources on Boston Marathon bombing and created training modules Institutions, Movements, and Social Change | Summer 2014: funded by the National Science Foundation; copy-edited UNDP report, verified citations and conclusions of statistical analysis Diversity and Inclusion: Implications for Science and Society | Spring 2014: funded by the Office of the Vice-President for Research; drafted white papers on the definition and measurement of diversity and inclusion, prepared remarks for faculty to present at academic conference on the topic Regional Hub Reception Center (RHRC) Emergency Management |Summer 2012: funded by the City of Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) grant; managed work of graduate students in the creation and finalization of video and written training modules for first responders State and Sex Equality: When and Why Do Governments Promote Women’s Rights? | August 2009 - August 2010: funded by the National Science Foundation; wrote reports on the status of women’s movements in South Korea, Japan, and Russia Methods WorkshopsSocial Science Mechanics Lecture Series (organizer)Now in its sixth year, the purpose of this lecture series was to supplement conventional graduate seminars in quantitative or qualitative methods using a narrative-centered pedagogical approach.
In a series of lectures, scholars reflect on how their published articles originally were framed, the trade-offs that were necessary to advance the investigation, the methodological challenges and non-findings that had to be addressed—but may not have been printed—and the evolution of a piece as it progressed through the peer-review stages. We termed this approach to exposing graduate students to the entirety of the research process Social Science Mechanics: A Look under the Hood at Innovative Research Designs. I presented a paper on this series at the 2013 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference. A revised version is published in the April 2015 edition of PS: Political Science. Multilevel Modeling Workshop (organizer)The purpose of this workshop was to learn Multilevel Modeling techniques in a collaborative environment. Participation was voluntary and members included faculty and graduate students. We met during the Fall semester of 2012.
|