Synthetic Control

AJPS — 2026-09-07 Original Designing multi‐site studies for external validity: Site selection via synthetic purposive sampling

PMR — pp. 1-35 2026-06-25 Original Pathways to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Role of Organizational Learning in Enhancing Racial Minority Leadership Ivy Liu, Hongtao Yi

AJPS — 2026-05-05 Original Vote buying and negative agenda control: A problem for the study of money in politics Andre Van Parys Abstract Abstract Politicians, pundits, and ordinary citizens frequently argue that money has an outsized influence on US politics. Yet research on the effect of money on politicians' behavior finds limited effects, especially on voting behavior. I construct a formal model to show that these limited effects may be an artifact of the institutional powers of agenda setters, and the strategic nature of the data generating process. The model predicts that, under general conditions, vote buying against proposals can occur with no vote held, and that vote buying is most likely when uncertainty is high, the interest group and agenda setter are extreme, and the pivotal legislator is moderate. I argue that these conditions held during the 2021 negotiations over the Build Back Better Act. Using a synthetic control design, I test whether the swing voters in the Senate received more campaign contributions than they would have otherwise, finding evidence consistent with the model.

PA — 2026-03-10 Original How Do Strikes and Lockouts Affect Applications to Danish Public Service Professional Education Programs? A Synthetic Control Analysis Christian Heide, Florian Keppeler

PA — 2026-03-02 Original Do Government Interventions Improve Local Public Service Performance? Evidence From a Synthetic Control Approach Rhys Andrews Abstract ABSTRACT Governments in many democratic countries have the mandate to require local authorities to address failures in the management and performance of the public services that they provide. Such policies often involve the takeover of authorities to implement improvements assumed to result in organizational turnaround. However, critics argue that locally‐directed change remains a more reliable means for achieving service transformation. To cast light on these issues, this paper applies a quasi‐experimental synthetic difference‐in‐differences approach to investigate whether partial takeovers of poorly‐performing education services in four Welsh local authorities in 2013 were effective in turning them around. The findings suggest that the establishment of independent recovery boards to oversee local education policy helped some of them to improve educational outcomes, but that local authorities were not always able to sustain improvements after the recovery boards were decommissioned. The study highlights that government interventions to improve local public service performance need to be focused on supporting long‐term organizational change.