The forthcoming article “The territorial rights of wild animals: Justification” by Pablo P. Castello is summarized by the author below.

The field of territorial rights focuses on justifying why a given human people, state, or nation should have a moral right to a particular territory, why human displacement is a source of harm, and how the boundaries of human communities should be drawn, among other things. Yet, wild animals are usually left out of these debates. Virtually all territorial rights theorists develop their arguments on the assumption that wild animals are mere natural resources, akin to minerals. This article explores whether that assumption is justified.

Taking mule deers in Wyoming as a case study, I argue that some wild animals have moral rights to reside in the territories to which they are attached, use the resources those territories provide, and control their fate as individuals and social collectives. This means that the lives of some wild animals can go better or worse for them, and that their ability to thrive depends so strongly on access to specific territories that this imposes duties on humans, such as duties not to displace them.

Recent scientific evidence demonstrates that mule deer herds have collective identities and cultures that have developed over many generations and are embedded in the territories they inhabit. Moreover, older members of mule deer communities pass on social knowledge about how to live peacefully in community, how to migrate back to their intergenerational calving grounds, how to safely raise their young, where to find food, and more. Familiar territories play a crucial role in this process of knowledge transfer because they provide security of place and access to nutritious food. Moreover, these territories serve as repositories of mule deer intergenerational knowledge and identities.

The implications of these findings are significant. Roads, fences, housing developments, energy projects, hunting policies, and wildlife management practices should no longer be evaluated only in terms of human interests. They should also be assessed in light of animals’ own claims to remain in, use, and shape the territories on which their lives depend, including their socio-cultural and political lives.

This does not mean that mule deers should have exclusive claims over land, or that humans and other non-mule deer animals must abandon all territories over which mule deers have territorial claims. Rather, it means that wild animals should no longer be treated as mere resources and that we should abandon the idea that humans hold exclusive sovereign authority over the territories in which those animals reside. Instead, many nonhuman animals are agential beings with their own individual and collective relationships to place and should be understood as subjects of justice with moral and political claims to reside in the territories to which they are attached.

About the author: Pablo P. Castello is a Research Fellow and Faculty Co-Director of the Executive Certificate Animals Forward: Advancing Interspecies Justice at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law. He conducted this research while working as a Research Fellow at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. His research “The territorial rights of wild animals: Justification” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “A theory of political divergence and gradual institutional change” by Clair Yang is summarized by the author below.

Many societies in history were ruled by kings, emperors, or aristocrats. Yet over time, they evolved in strikingly different ways. Why did medieval Europe gradually move toward representative institutions and parliaments, while imperial China transitioned from a once aristocratic society to one dominated by a centralized bureaucratic state? Why did some societies manage to break away from historical constraints while others did not?

This paper combines both formal theory and illustrative historical case studies to explain these divergent political trajectories.

The core argument is simple: political institutions and social structures evolve together over time. In the short run, rulers must survive by building coalitions. Sometimes they ally with powerful nobles; other times they cooperate with weaker groups in society to counterbalance entrenched elites, creating what I call “weak-coalition autocracies.” But the coalitions they build in the short run can slowly reshape the underlying balance of power itself, leading to enormous long-term consequences.

The interaction between short-run and long-run forces generates distinct pathways. Some institutions become self-enforcing. They stabilize society and reproduce themselves over generations. Others are self-undermining: they gradually strengthen the very groups that may later challenge the regime.

A key insight of the paper is that many historical institutions functioned like “inheritance taxes” on political power. Under primogeniture, the son of a duke typically becomes the next duke. But the son of a Mamluk general is generally disqualified from joining the ranks, while the son of a Chinese minister may spend years, even decades, preparing for a highly competitive exam. Systems such as the imperial examination system of China or the Mamluk military institutions in medieval Muslim states systematically reshuffle the elites and prevent powerful families from monopolizing authority. These institutions allowed rulers to recruit new allies from outside the small circle of elites and limit the long-run accumulation of elite power.

More broadly, the paper suggests that political development is neither entirely predetermined nor purely accidental. The paper offers a way to think about “critical junctures,” a term historians and political scientists often use to describe turning points in history. Shocks matter, but their effects depend on underlying social structures and institutions. In some places, the impact of a shock gets gradually absorbed by the system. In others, it triggers a chain reaction that pushes society “across the Rubicon.” 

Small differences in institutions and social structures can accumulate over centuries, producing very different worlds from surprisingly similar beginnings.

About the author: Clair Yang is a Long Endowed assistant professor of political economy at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. Their research “A theory of political divergence and gradual institutional change” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Global harms, local profits: How the uneven costs of natural disasters affect support for green political platforms” by Silvia Pianta and Paula Rettl is summarized by the author(s) below.

A common view in studies of climate politics is that when people personally experience natural disasters—such as fires, floods, or droughts—they become more aware of the costs imposed by climate change and therefore more supportive of environmental protection. In our new paper, Global Harms, Local Profits: How the Uneven Costs of Natural Disasters Affect Support for Green Political Platforms, we take a closer look at this view by examining how natural disasters shape support for green political platforms when they generate not only losses for affected populations but also economic opportunities.

In Brazil, large-scale fires create a range of hazards and losses: they increase rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and reduce the economic returns of sustainable logging. Yet these same fires can also create profit opportunities. By destroying natural vegetation and “clearing” land, they facilitate land grabbing and the expansion of agricultural commodity production in protected areas.

Using detailed data on fire exposure and voting outcomes for Marina Silva—the major green candidate in Brazil—we find that, on average, exposure to large-scale fires in the week before the 2018 presidential election increased her vote share by about 1.6 percentage points. But this boost was far from universal. In areas where many people work in cattle ranching or soy production, the pattern reversed: fire-affected municipalities became less supportive of the green candidate.

Survey data help us understand why. We show that changes in voting behavior are likely driven by perceived trade-offs between carbon-intensive economic development and the protection of natural vegetation. Respondents exposed to fires generally became more skeptical of the idea that “Amazon fires are necessary for economic growth.” However, in municipalities with large shares of workers in cattle or soy production, fire exposure actually made people more likely to agree with that statement.

Our main takeaway is that as climate change makes natural disasters more frequent, electorates will not automatically demand stronger environmental policies. Instead, climate change is already intensifying distributive conflicts—shaping who gains, who loses, and ultimately how much support exists for climate mitigation in democratic systems.

About the Author(s): Silvia Pianta is a Junior Scientist at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment and a fellow at the GREEN Research Center at Bocconi University and Paula Rettl is an Assistant Professor in the Business, Government and the International Economy Unit at the Harvard Business School. Their research “Global harms, local profits: How the uneven costs of natural disasters affect support for green political platforms“ is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Durable majority gerrymanders: Where partisan gerrymandering can displace democracy” by Maxwell Palmer and Benjamin Schneer is summarized by the author(s) below.

A defining feature of democracy is that the party in power should have some chance of losing it. Yet, partisan gerrymandering can enable politicians to draw electoral maps so skewed as to subvert this basic principle. In our new research, we examine “durable majority gerrymanders”—district maps specifically designed to lock in legislative control regardless of how voters actually vote.

We focus on state legislative elections, which merit particular attention for two reasons. First, in many states the legislature itself controls the redistricting process, creating a troubling conflict of interest: the same officials who benefit from gerrymandered maps are the ones drawing them. Second, because majority control of a state legislature depends entirely on outcomes within that state, a well-executed gerrymander can entrench a party’s power for a decade or more—unlike congressional elections, where national control depends on results aggregated across all fifty states.

To understand the extent of this threat, we used computer simulations to identify the most extreme maps possible for each state legislature. Our findings were stark: unconstrained gerrymandering could allow at least one party in every state to draw maps ensuring a high probability of maintaining a legislative majority for an entire decade—even when facing significant electoral headwinds. In competitive states, the effects are especially pronounced. In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas, either party could potentially lock in durable majorities if given control of the redistricting process. On average, optimal gerrymandering can boost a party’s chances of winning a legislative majority by more than 20 percentage points compared to a neutral map, and in some states this advantage is even larger, as illustrated in the Figure below.

Fortunately, most enacted maps don’t approach these extremes. State-level rules—particularly compactness requirements and independent redistricting commissions—appear to meaningfully constrain the worst outcomes. Texas, however, stands out as a state where the enacted maps come closest to the theoretical limits of partisan advantage. 

Why does this matter? When gerrymandering forecloses any realistic chance for the opposing party to win power, it threatens a foundational democratic principle. Legislators insulated from electoral consequences face less pressure to respond to voters, and unpopular policies can persist without accountability. As legal constraints on gerrymandering continue to evolve, understanding the outer bounds of what’s possible helps identify where reforms are most urgently needed. Our research provides that roadmap.

About the Author(s): Maxwell Palmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, a Civic Tech Fellow in the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, and a Faculty Fellow at the Initiative on Cities and Benjamin Schneer is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Their research “Durable majority gerrymanders: Where partisan gerrymandering can displace democracy” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Contesting repression in divided democracies: Can counternarratives reduce support for police violence?” by Yanilda María González and Natán Skigin is summarized by the author(s) below.

In recent years, massive protests against police violence have erupted worldwide. George Floyd’s murder sparked unprecedented demonstrations across American cities. In Nigeria, the #EndSARS movement mobilized millions against police brutality. From Chile to Hong Kong, citizens demanded accountability for state repression. These uprisings revealed widespread citizen discontent—yet also exposed deep polarization and competing narratives over whether such violence is justified. 

Despite these protests, police killings persist at alarming rates in many democracies, often with substantial public support. In deeply polarized societies, can anything change minds on such divisive and consequential issues? 

Our Findings: Brazil as a Critical Case 

Our paper examines this puzzle in Brazil, which experiences police killings at over five times the U.S. rate. Police violence enjoys considerable public support, prominent politicians explicitly promote extrajudicial killings and, as our survey reveals, stark polarization persists between left and right-wing voters. 

Through a nationwide survey experiment, we tested whether counternarratives from victims’ mothers—prominent figures in Brazilian anti-violence movements—can reduce support for extrajudicial killings. We demonstrate that, while police narratives criminalizing victims increase endorsement of violence, mothers’ statements can override these effects, particularly when emphasizing their sons’ innocence or disadvantages tied to race and class. 

The mechanism matters: mothers’ narratives increase empathy and reduce victim-blaming. Crucially, we observed the largest effects among right-wing voters and others who typically support police killings. 

However, not all narratives succeed. When mothers acknowledged their sons’ criminality while demanding due process, victim-blaming and perceptions that police killings improve security increased, and empathy with victims decreased. These findings reveal citizens’ reluctance to uphold rights for criminalized populations. 

Implications for Democratic Reform 

Our findings offer key insights for democracies grappling with police violence. First, marginalized victims can shape public attitudes across ideological lines, strengthening politicians’ incentives to enact reforms. 

Second, victims are most effective when highlighting innocence and disadvantage, but their advocacy can backfire when acknowledging criminality—suggesting strategic considerations for movements in “tough on crime” environments. 

Finally, perspective-getting can reduce support for state violence, but framing is critical. As populist politicians increasingly curtail rights for criminalized groups, understanding when victims’ voices succeed or fail becomes essential for democratic accountability. 

The global protests of recent years revealed widespread demand for police reform. More recently, ICE’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good during an anti-immigration raid in Minneapolis reignited debates about state violence in democracies, prompting competing narratives. Our findings suggest that voices from directly affected communities can help translate that demand into sustained attitude change—even in the most polarized democracies. 

About the Author(s): Yanilda María González is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Natán Skigin is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia. Their research “Contesting repression in divided democracies: Can counternarratives reduce support for police violence?” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Getting on the grid: A field experiment on bottom-up political pressure and access to essential public services” by Nikhar Gaikwad and Anjali Thomas is summarized by the author(s) below.

In developing nations, basic human rights such as access to clean drinking water are often inaccessible to millions of marginalized citizens. Such failures in public service delivery are frequently the result of politicians and bureaucrats entrenched in vested interests and competing priorities. Consequently, socio-economically disadvantaged citizens are forced to rely on informal channels to access essential services, which renders them illegible to the state and disincentivizes political responsiveness to their condition. Resource insecurity thereby becomes the equilibrium, making increased access to public services one of human development’s most vexing problems.

“Getting on the Grid” examines how marginalized communities can escape informality and incentivize governments to provide essential public services. We develop a theoretical framework to illustrate how public service provision occurs through a multi-stage process, wherein each stage entails distinct degrees of bureaucratic discretion and political influence. We argue that formalized public services have two different stages: a petitioning stage and an infrastructural stage. In the petitioning stage, it is relatively simple for bureaucrats to adjudicate the validity of petitions filed by citizens to claim services to which they are entitled. However, in the infrastructural stage, extensive bureaucratic coordination is required to establish the physical infrastructure for service delivery. Politicians play a key role at the infrastructural stage to facilitate coordination between agencies, but only when they have the electoral incentives to do so. Therefore, citizens encounter distinct hurdles at each stage of the service delivery process. In the petitioning stage, they face significant “hassle costs” in interfacing with the bureaucracy; in the infrastructure stage, they must overcome coordination problems to collectively make claims on politicians who can in turn pressure bureaucrats to deliver services. Barriers endemic to each of the stages need to be overcome jointly for societies to shift out of the status quo of informality.

We used our theoretical framework to design a cluster randomized control trial run in partnership with two local NGOs between 2018 and 2023 across almost 7,000 households in informal settlements in Mumbai, one of the world’s largest cities. Our focus was on access to municipal water; large swaths of Mumbai’s settlement dwellers have historically been unable to link up to the city’s water supply system. We implemented two different large-scale interventions targeting the two stages in which citizens face hurdles to claim-making: a bureaucratic assistance treatment arm, where NGO partners helped citizens navigate the process required to establish eligibility for formal services; and a political coordination treatment arm, where NGO workers convened public events, mobilized group visits to politician and bureaucrat offices, and organized collective petitions to demand access.

Our findings reveal that citizen empowerment interventions led by civil society organizations that provide bureaucratic assistance and political coordination to marginalized communities can have powerful effects when delivered in tandem. In settlements that were legally eligible for formalized water, bureaucratic assistance in the presence of political coordination increased the likelihood of citizens receiving municipal water connection by about 19 percentage points, or about 45% of the control mean. We show that while the bureaucratic assistance intervention helped citizens navigate the petitioning stage, political coordination played an important role in boosting the effect of this intervention in the infrastructural stage. Moreover, these effects emerged not in the immediate aftermath of the interventions but in the run-up to subsequent municipal elections, thus highlighting the importance of political incentives in shaping service delivery. The combined interventions also had positive results in migrant dominant settlements represented by nativist politicians, showing that politicians respond to coordinated citizen pressure even outside their traditional constituencies.

With the first study to experimentally examine the joint effect of bureaucratic assistance and political coordination interventions, we illuminate a potential pathway through which citizens can overcome the vicious cycle of informality.  Specifically, our findings show how scalable interventions that both reduce citizens’ inconvenience costs as well as give them political voice can succeed in securing them access to municipal services. At the same time, our research clarifies the limits of such interventions, suggesting that they do not work in situations where the legal framework precludes informal settlements from receiving formalized public services or where politicians do not face electoral incentives to respond to bottom-up pressure. Nevertheless, our results highlight that civil society organizations in the Global South can successfully expand marginalized citizens’ access formal public services by pursuing bureaucratic and political pathways simultaneously.

About the Author(s): Nikhar Gaikwad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Member of the Committee on Global Thought, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the South Asia Institute at Columbia University and Anjali Thomas is an Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Director of the Nunn School Program in Global Development, and a 2024 (Non-Resident) Fellow at the Gothenburg Governance and Local Development Institute. Their research “Getting on the grid: A field experiment on bottom-up political pressure and access to essential public services” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Breaking barriers: How an international treaty for women reduces the size of the informal economy” by Chris Gahagan is summarized by the author below.

Whether international treaties alter domestic policy has long been an open question in international politics. Some scholars argue that treaties constrain state behavior and meaningfully change domestic outcomes, while others contend that treaties merely screen out non-compliers, implying that ratifying countries would have behaved similarly even in the absence of international commitments. These competing views are especially visible in debates over the effectiveness of international human rights treaties, where scholars remain divided over whether ratification produces substantive improvements or amounts largely to symbolic commitment.

Within this broader debate, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) offers a revealing case. Existing research credits the treaty with advances in women’s political and social rights, yet largely concludes that it has failed to improve women’s economic standing. I argue that this assessment understates CEDAW’s economic effects for three reasons.

First, much of the prior research relies on broad indicators of women’s economic rights that blend law and practice into a single score, making it difficult to identify what is actually changing within countries. Focusing instead on specific legal barriers that directly relate to women’s ability to work provides a clearer test of whether CEDAW matters for women’s economic outcomes. Second, economic improvements may occur through channels that standard expert-based reports do not capture, meaning important consequences of the treaty can go unnoticed. Third, recent methodological advances allow for stronger causal analysis by better accounting for differences between countries and the timing of treaty ratification.

The core finding is straightforward. Countries that ratify CEDAW make measurable progress in reducing legal barriers that prevent women from working on equal terms with men. These reforms include eliminating gendered restrictions on women’s access to employment, requirements for male permission to work, and other legal constraints on formal employment. After ratification, the likelihood that women face such barriers declines significantly, and this effect strengthens over time. In short, CEDAW does what it is meant to do—improves women’s economic rights.

I also show that CEDAW generates an important and largely overlooked downstream effect. By removing legal obstacles to formal employment, the treaty facilitates movement out of the informal economy and into formal work. Informal employment is typically associated with lower wages, unsafe working conditions, and limited protection during economic shocks. Shortly after ratification, countries experience a significant reduction in the size of their informal economies, amounting to roughly half a percentage point of gross domestic product. This shift reflects expanded employment opportunities rather than government crackdowns on informal activity and is unique to CEDAW rather than a general feature of human rights treaty ratification.

These findings matter beyond academic debates. For governments, reductions in informality can increase tax revenues and strengthen the provision of public goods. For individuals, especially women, formal employment brings safer working conditions, higher pay, and lower risks of poverty and inequality. More broadly, this research underscores that international treaties can matter in indirect but meaningful ways, shaping economic outcomes through channels that are often overlooked.

About the Author: Chris Gahagan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Florida State University and an incoming 2026-2027 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Their research “Breaking barriers: How an international treaty for women reduces the size of the informal economy”” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Climate exposure drives firm political behavior: Evidence from earnings calls and lobbying data” by Christian Baehr, Fiona Bare, and Vincent Heddesheimer is summarized by the author(s) below.

As the world races to decarbonize, firms are increasingly on the front lines of climate politics. Some champion bold policies; others resist them. What explains these divides? How do firms translate their diverse climate experiences into political action?

We develop a framework that links different types of climate exposure to distinct forms of corporate political behavior. Climate exposure is multidimensional: some firms see climate policy as a source of market opportunity, others as a regulatory constraint, and still others as a physical threat to assets and supply chains. Our framework highlights how these exposure types shape firm decisions to lobby based on variation in motive, policy good type, and expectations about the timing of impact. Crucially, what matters is not just the type of exposure, but its degree relative to competitors – firms that are more exposed than their peers have stronger incentives to act politically.  Opportunity exposure generates incentives to push for ambitious policies that expand markets; regulatory exposure triggers efforts to shape or slow costly rules; and physical exposure (damage from floods, heat, or storms) rarely mobilizes lobbying at all.

To test this theory, we combine a novel text-based measure of climate exposure, drawn from 20 years of corporate earnings-call transcripts, with comprehensive U.S. lobbying data covering more than 11,000 publicly traded firms. Firms most exposed to opportunities and regulation compared to others in their industry are substantially more likely to lobby on climate issues and to spend more when they do. The type of exposure also predicts where firms lobby: opportunity-exposed firms target innovation-oriented agencies like the Department of Energy, while regulatory exposure directs attention to the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress.

A case study of the automotive industry illustrates the mechanisms at work. Within the same sector, firms such as Ford and General Motors, more exposed to electric-vehicle opportunities, actively supported clean technology and infrastructure policies, while Toyota, facing higher regulatory risk, lobbied to slow emissions standards. These within-industry contrasts exemplify how relative exposure shapes corporate strategy.

Taken together, our findings suggest that climate politics are not a zero-sum contest between corporate winners and losers, but rather a complex arena in which firms weigh not only the direct risks and opportunities of climate action but also those faced by their closest rivals. Theoretically, the paper contributes a new framework for understanding how multidimensional, relative exposure across opportunity, regulatory, and physical dimensions shapes firms’ political behavior. Empirically, it integrates large-scale earnings call and lobbying data to capture how these perceptions translate into action. By linking these insights, we show that corporate engagement in climate policy is dynamic and uneven, with important implications for how business power will shape the trajectory of decarbonization.

About the Author(s): Christian Baehr is a Ph.D. Candidate in Politics at Princeton University, a Graduate Affiliate of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, and a Graduate Fellow with the Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab, Fiona Bare is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics and a 2025-2026 Prize Fellow in the Social Sciences at Princeton University, and Vincent Heddesheimer is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Their research “Climate exposure drives firm political behavior: Evidence from earnings calls and lobbying data” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “Vote buying and negative agenda control: A problem for the study of money in politics” by Andre Van Parys is summarized by the author below.

Politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens frequently argue that money has an outsized influence on U.S. politics. Yet research on the effect of money on politicians’ behavior finds limited effects, especially on voting behavior. In this paper, I construct a formal model to show that these limited effects may be an artifact of the strategic interactions between vote buying and negative agenda control. Specifically, a roll call vote may fail to occur precisely because special interests have convinced the relevant legislators to oppose the bill, leading to challenges in empirically estimating the effect of money on votes.

The model features three actors: an agenda setter who proposes a policy, a legislator whose policy preferences are private information, and an interest group that can offer transfers to influence the legislator’s choice. The key feature is that the agenda setter can learn the legislator’s intended vote (for example, through public statements or whipping) and then decide whether it is worth paying the cost of bringing the proposal to the floor.

The model yields two main implications. First, vote buying can be effective even when no vote occurs. If an interest group prefers the status quo to a proposed change, it can pay the legislator to oppose the bill. Anticipating defeat, the agenda setter rationally tables the proposal, meaning the influenced “vote” is not observed. Second, the model clarifies when this hidden influence is most likely: when uncertainty about the legislator’s ideal point is high, the agenda setter and interest group are relatively extreme, and the legislator is relatively moderate.

I then connect these predictions to the 2021 negotiations over the Build Back Better Act. In that episode, the bill never came to the Senate floor amidst intense attention on two pivotal Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and widespread speculation about donor pressure. Using the synthetic control method, I estimate whether these pivotal senators received more campaign contributions than they would have absent the bill’s consideration. I find that Sinema, but not Manchin, received significantly more contributions. These findings suggest that interest groups can and do spend strategically to block major legislation even when no formal vote occurs. Thus, the votes that we observe are unrepresentative of vote buying efforts from interest groups, leading many empirical designs to underestimate the effect of money on legislators’ voting behavior.

About the Author: Andre Van Parys is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Rochester. Their research “Vote buying and negative agenda control: A problem for the study of money in politics” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.

The forthcoming article “What exploitation is” by Benjamin Ferguson, Peter Hans Matthews, David Ronayne, and Roberto Veneziani is summarized by the author(s) below.

What does it mean to say someone is being exploited? The word is often used in debates about sweatshops, migration, or gig work, but philosophers and social scientists have long disagreed about its precise meaning. Some argue that exploitation is about unfair outcomes—when one side gains much more than the other. Others think it is about power—when one party can disproportionately dictate terms. Some emphasize disrespect or bad luck. But until now, nobody had systematically asked how experts and lay subjects actually apply the concept.

Our study set out to do just that. We surveyed more than 2,000 people—around 550 professional philosophers and 1,500 members of the public. Each person read short scenarios, or vignettes, about everyday transactions (buying and selling mugs), in which we varied key features such as unequal payoffs, market power, unmet basic needs, prior injustice, or disrespectful attitudes. Participants then rated how exploitative each scenario was on a scale from 0 (“not at all”) to 100 (“maximally”). In total, we collected over 23,000 ratings.

The results were striking. First, exploitation is not an empty label: people clearly distinguish exploitative from non-exploitative interactions. In baseline scenarios where both parties benefitted equally and no one had special power, the vast majority rated them as “not at all exploitative.”

Second, both inequality and power matter. When one side gained more, people judged the scenario more exploitative. The same was true when one side had monopoly power. But the real force came when inequality and power were combined: people judged those scenarios as even more exploitative than the sum of either factor alone. In other words, subjects are very likely to apply exploitation when unfair gains and unequal power reinforce one another.

Third, certain background conditions amplify judgments. Exploitation is seen as especially severe when power stems from an injustice. By contrast, disrespectful attitudes or sheer bad luck were much weaker drivers.

Finally, experts and laypeople largely agreed. Both groups of subjects displayed a shared understanding of what makes an interaction exploitative. While philosophers emphasized power slightly more, and the public put more weight on unequal outcomes and disrespect, the similarities between the groups far outweighed the differences.

These findings matter beyond academic theory. They suggest that public concerns about sweatshops, predatory loans, or migrant work are not simply about inequality or coercion alone, but about their interaction—power exercised to secure unfair advantage, often against a backdrop of injustice. The results challenge narrow theories that treat exploitation as either purely distributive or purely about domination, and instead support hybrid accounts that capture both.

By mapping the ordinary meaning of exploitation, our study provides a common foundation for future debates in ethics, politics, and policy. If lawmakers, activists, and employers want to take exploitation seriously, they must attend not just to unequal outcomes or to power imbalances, but to the ways these combine—especially when they leave people with unmet needs or result from prior injustice.

About the Author(s): Benjamin Ferguson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick and the director of Warwick’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, Peter Hans Matthews is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at Middlebury and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland and the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics, David Ronayne is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) Berlin, and Roberto Veneziani is a Professor in Economics at the School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London. Their research “What exploitation is” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.