Please join us for a UW Data Science Seminar featuring UW Political Science PhD Candidate Jihyeon Bae on Thursday, January 16th from 4:30 to 5:20 p.m. PT. The seminar will be held in IEB G109.

“Measuring International Organization’s Distributions: Rethinking How We Measure Group Composition”

Abstract: This project introduces a new framework for measuring the political composition of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) by modeling member-state regime types as full Beta distributions rather than relying on sample means. The Bayesian approach yields probabilistic, uncertainty-aware classifications that more accurately capture polarized, skewed, or heterogeneous memberships. The paper then applies this framework to IGO–member country links and shows that greater exposure to authoritarian-skewed IGOs is associated with lower democracy scores in the following year. We aim at offering both methodological and substantive leverage for understanding how international organizations shape domestic politics.
 

Speaker Bio: Jihyeon Bae is a PhD Candidate at the department of political science at the University of Washington. Her work focuses on authoritarian politics and international relations.