These are current working papers only, and more recent versions may be available upon request. See my CV for a full list of publications. Links to most of my published work can be found here and at my Google Scholar profile.
Comparative Politics and the New Area Studies (with Jordan Gans-Morse and Daniel Gingerich, October 2025, Paper)
The area studies wars of the 1990s are over, and the time is ripe for a reconciliation with comparative politics.
The Political Economy of Shitcoins (with Mark Copelovitch, August 2025, Paper)
Cryptocurrency is bound by the constraints of economics and politics, with implications for the politics of monetary policy and the global system of states.
State, Society, and the Politics of Democratic Backsliding (July 2025, Paper)
Threats to democracy are not just about competitive elections, they are also about the role of the state and the structure of society.
From White Elephant to White Whale: The Economics and Politics of Nusantara (with Aichiro Suryo Prabowo, June 2025, Paper)
Indonesia’s new planned capital city is popular but costly, and there is little public appetite to pay for it.
The Electoral Mechanisms of Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Indonesia (with Saiful Mujani and R. William Liddle, November 2024)
Democratic backsliding in Indonesia is the joint product of executive aggrandizement by elites and voters’ tolerance of it.
Observing the Transformation of Religious Identity through Indonesian Naming Practices (with Nicholas Kuipers and Joel C. Kuipers, April 2024, Paper, Slides)
We develop a semi-supervised classifier to identify Arabic and Western names from the full count 2010 Indonesian census, and chart the rise of Islamic identity over the past century of Indonesian history.
Biased Learning in Elections (with Andrew Little and Andrew Mack, August 2022, Paper)
Motivated reasoning leads to platform divergence when parties try to learn what is popular from election results.
The Political Construction of Indigeneity: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia (with Risa J. Toha, June 2022, Paper)
Indigeneity is a political construct, and a close analysis of ethnic Chinese politics in Singkawang, Indonesia demonstrates how.
Tom Pepinsky 