Mount Kilimanjaro
An abandoned school in Moshi District
Mount Kilimanjaro
Rachael McLellan
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics
University of Glasgow
About Me
I am a Lecturer (equivalent to a US assistant professor) in Politics at the University of Glasgow. I got my PhD in Politics from Princeton University in 2020. I study the strategies of electoral autocrats and opposition parties at the local level. My book project asks how local control - who wins local elections in decentralized autocracies - affects how ruling and opposition parties compete for votes. I use administrative data, interviews, focus groups and surveys to understand how opposition parties use control of local government to governing their way out of the margins of politics: first by winning credibility and second by resisting to survive. I won the American Political Science Association Democracy and Autocracy Fieldwork Prize for my work on Tanzania and received an Honorable Mention for the Ralph Bunche Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper from African Politics Conference Group in 2020, also for my dissertation work. My work has been accepted at Perspectives in Politics, Comparative Politics and Journal of Politics. In the academic year 2020/21, I was an LSE Fellow in Political Science & Public Policy in the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. I am on leave to complete my book manuscript for Semester 1 of 2024/25.
Research
Book Project: Local Control: How Opposition Parties Govern Their Way Out of The Margins
My book manuscript explores how opposition parties can use local government to carve out a role for themselves in authoritarian systems which try to keep them as weak and marginalised as possible. I ask how opposition parties use local government to contest for votes and for their own survival? What implications do opposition local governments then have for the evolution of political competition and so regime durability in these contexts?
Using rich mixed methods data from Tanzania, I show how opposition parties use local government to build bases of support and defend them even in the face of a hostile incumbent. I introduce the concept of local control, the responsibilities, powers and autonomy from the central government that control of local government provides to whoever wins local elections in decentralised electoral autocracies. I argue that local control allows opposition parties to do two things: first change how local state resources are distributed to win over voters beyond their core constituencies (governing for credibility) and second resist regime suppression to survive from one electoral cycle to the next (governing to resist). Local control changes the strategies available to both ruling and opposition parties, shifting the nature of political competition and evening the balance of power in places under opposition local control. By both mechanisms, opposition parties can build their organisational capacity and popularity. That allows them to chip away at the regime’s hegemony and emerge as a competing centre of power over time.
In Local Control, I take a multi-method approach based on around 15 months of fieldwork over 4 years. This project relies on careful subnational comparison facilitated by extensive in-country data collection. I draw on over 200 interviews with regime and opposition politicians, bureaucrats and citizens, fine-grained election data, geo-coded administrative datasets on public spending and public good provision collected from several government ministries as well as survey data (both secondary and novel). The variety of data I use allows me to paint a rich and nuanced picture of opposition and regime local control, how they contrast and why.
Local Control: How Opposition Support Constrains Electoral Autocrats
Scholars conceptualize autocrats as central planners, constrained in how much they can distribute but not where. Autocrats use punishment regimes to sanction disloyalty. In many electoral autocracies, local institutions are the infrastructure of reward and sanction, a legacy of decentralization in the 1980s and 1990s. I show that autocrats face subnational constraints on their ability to enforce punishment regimes. Using administrative and electoral data, interviews and a survey in Tanzania, I demonstrate that local control – who wins elected control of local institutions – determines the autocrats’s ability to punish opposition support. I show incumbent local governments (LGs) punish opposition support while opposition LGs do so less. I find that the extent to which opposition parties can disrupt or even flip the punishment regime depends on the level of de facto decentralization of the local public good in question. As a result, survey respondents in opposition LGs fear community punishment less, making it easier for them to vote on conscience. This suggests even small pockets of opposition support constrain autocrats. This study demonstrates the importance of subnational politics in the study of autocracy and suggests a more democratic legacy of decentralization than prevailing scholarship would suggest.
Conditionally accepted at Journal of Politics.
Working paper published in University of Gothenburg's Institute for Governance and Local Democracy Working Paper Series
The Politics of Data in Authoritarian Regimes (with Ruth Carlitz)
Data availability has long been a challenge for scholars of authoritarian politics. However, the promotion of open government data has motivated many of the world's more closed regimes to produce and publish fine-grained data on public goods provision, taxation, and more. While this has been a boon to scholars of autocracies, we argue that the politics of data production and dissemination in these countries creates new challenges. These include threats to inference and ethical concerns. Systematically missing or biased data and selective restrictions on data collection may jeopardize research quality and lead scholars to simply parrot the ``party line'' in data form. We provide evidence of these risks from Tanzania, comparing data released to the public with verified internal figures. We also present an overview of methods for identifying manipulation. In so doing, we demonstrate that caution must be exercised when conducting research using such data. We conclude by proposing ways that scholars can minimize these risks.
Published at Perspectives on Politics
Delivering the Vote: Community Politicians and the Credibility of Punishment Regimes in Electoral Autocracies
How do authoritarian regimes punish ordinary opposition voters? I argue that elected community politicians help make “punishment regimes,” which discourage opposition support, credible. Strengthened by decentralization reforms, community politicians have information and leverage necessary to identify and punish opposition supporters. When the regime wins community elections, these politicians extend the regime’s reach deep into communities. When opposition parties win, their reach is constrained weakening their electoral control. Using mixed-methods evidence from Tanzania, I show regime-loyal community politicians use their distributive and legal-coercive powers to “deliver the vote” leading voters in these communities to fear individual reprisals for opposition support. In contrast, voters fear individual punishment in opposition-run communities significantly less. This study demonstrates the importance of local institutions and elections when understanding regime durability.
Published at Comparative Politics
Teaching
Politics 4149: Authoritarianism
University of Glasgow
Convenor
Autumn 22-
Honours level course on the politics of authoritarian rule with a focus on research skills. Topics covered included mass politics, elite politics, clientelism, repression, information, opposition politics, protests, backsliding and authoritarian legacies
Politics 4187: Issues in Authoritarian Politics
University of Glasgow
Co-convenor (with Aykut Ozturk)
Spring 25-
A research-focused deep dive into the politics of opposition in electoral autocracies. Aimed at third and fourth year undergraduates, the course is designed to familiarise students with the research process and prepare them to write their dissertations
Politics 2B: Introduction to Comparative Politics
Second year introductory course introducing key comparative politics theory and putting them in the context of four cases: China, Ukraine, Germany and Tanzania
University of Glasgow
Co-convenor (with Kelly Kollman)
Spring 24-
PP408: Introductory Course in Maths and Statistics for MPAs
London School of Economics
Lecturer/course leader
Pre-sessional MT 2020
Intensive introduction to maths and statistics for policy masters students to prepare them to take courses in economics and statistics. Maths component covers algebra, linear and nonlinear functions, differentiation, unconstrained and constrained optimisation. Statistics component covers causal inference, population vs. sample, random variables, CLT, hypothesis testing
PP478: Political Science for Public Policy
London School of Economics
Seminar teacher for Mathilde Emerieau & Joachim Wehner
MT & LT 2020
Survey of comparative politics and political economy literatures for students in Masters of Policy Administration. Topics covered include democracy and autocracy, uprisings, development, political selection, populism, accountability, authoritarian institutions and women in politics. Seminars ground theoretical literature in policy applications and case studies
POL 230: Introduction to Comparative Politics
Princeton University
Preceptor for Grigore Pop-Eleches
Spring 2018
Intro level CP course. Course topics include the relationship between capitalism, democracy, and economic development; the implications of institutional choices (such as electoral systems); the politics of ethnic diversity and conflict; and the dynamics of political mobilization.
POL 346: Applied Quantitative Analysis
Second class in the undergraduate Politics and Sociology statistics sequence. The course covers causal inference and the theory and implementation of various models (OLS, logit, fixed effects, RDD, IV) in R. For this class, I won the George Kateb Award for Best Preceptor for 2017.
Princeton University
Preceptor for Omar Wasow
Spring 2017
POL 347: Mathematical Models in the Study of Politics
Advanced introduction to formal models for Politics and Political Economy majors. Applications covered include strategic voting, bargaining, lobbying, strategic information transmission, and political agency
Princeton University
Preceptor for Matias Iaryczower
Fall 2016
Contact
School of Social and Political Sciences,
42 Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RT