Heather Ba, Ph.D.
heatherleigh.ba@gmail.com
Assistant Professor
University of Missouri-Columbia
Year of PhD: 2017
Phone: 6104424699
City: Columbia, Missouri
Country: United States
About Me:
I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. My research lies in the areas of international relations, US foreign policy, and international political economy.
Research Interests
Political Economy
American Presidency And Executive Politics
Foreign Policy
Networks And Politics
International Trade
Financial Crises
Foreign Policy Crisis
Cryptocurrency
Global Monetary Order
My Research:
My primary research interests lie in the field of international political economy, especially financial crises. I have published on the international systemic causes of financial crises and am writing a book manuscript about the political economy of credit. My secondary research interests include US foriegn policy and the American presidency. I am currently working on a text analysis project that classifies 100 years of US foreign policy documents according to frames that reflection dominant streams of IR theory. Finally, I am affiliated with the non-partisan White House Transition Project as a research fellow, and my work for them has focused on the politics of political appointment and executive crisis management.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
While still in their nascent stages, cryptocurrencies have the potential to reshape the international political economy by hastening the end of the US dollar hegemony and reducing the US’ coercive financial power. Recently, governments have adopted various regulatory approaches to the new technologies. Most commonly, countries have implemented an array of partial and absolute bans. What explains governments’ responses to the new and potentially disruptive technology? We argue that governments’ decisions to ban cryptocurrencies stem from their desire to maintain monetary control. While cryptoization threatens all governments' monetary policy autonomy, governments who choose to fix their exchange rates and restrict cross-border movement of capital are most motivated to ban crypto because digital currencies can be used to evade exchange and capital controls. A country's regime type also affects its ability to enact bans; democracies will be less likely to enact a ban than autocracies. Our results suggest that cryptocurrency threatens the international political and economic status quo less than many speculate because regimes most likely to be at odds with US monetary and financial dominance face a strong incentive to ban the technologies in their own countries.
Global financial cycles are of increasing concern for scholars and policymakers. A growing body of research has identified these cycles as originating in American markets, at least in part due to policy innovations in the United States. We argue that expansions in the US financial cycle disproportionately affect global credit conditions, leading to a higher incidence of gross capital inflow surges that subsequently create a boom-bust dynamic in economic growth in recipient economies. We empirically evaluate this argument for a set of 102 countries from 1975-2011 and find substantial support for the argument. This suggests that US financial conditions and capital flow cycles present major challenges for policymakers interested in macroeconomic stabilization, and domestic policy tools alone may be insufficiently powerful to counteract volatility induced by capital waves.
We argue that authoritarian regimes engage in subnational propaganda targeting in pursuit of political survival. Drawing on an original dataset of propaganda collected inside North Korea, we show that the regime tailors messaging to elites and masses differently. We outline a schema of strategies and themes that authoritarian regimes utilize when crafting propaganda, theorize variations in their use, and test these variations empirically, using qualitative analysis, regression, and text analysis.
Contemporary research on presidential appointments tends to focus on the Senate’s political climate as a primary cause of its “broken politics.” In contrast, we focus on the role the president plays in setting the stage for Senate confirmation of federal appointees. Our empirical approach suggests that an active president who demonstrates initiative in the transition planning phase of an administration can better control the agenda of the Presidentially Appointed and Confirmed by the Senate (PAS) appointment process by jump-starting it before the Senate’s policy workload accumulates and legislative politicking takes over. This approach suggests that better transition planning can hasten the overall appointments process.
In what situations is the speech of foreign policy officials a reflection of speech expounding grand theories of International Relations? Using a linear support vector classification algorithm, we analyze all the published volumes of Foreign Relations of the United States as a single corpus, examining the use of five frames taken from a mix of academic theory and day-to-day practice: realism, geopolitics, liberalism, Cold War politics, and a pragmatic frame. We also investigate how the use of these frames varies across subject matter and in ways that are consistent with some simple hypotheses that connect frame use to situational factors.
Current explanations of demand for anti-dumping protections focus on the role of the business cycle, and fluctuations in real exchange rates. However, empirical evidence supporting these explanations is based primarily on the experience of industrialized countries. Here, we examine anti-dumping petitions in a broader sample of thirty-four industrialized and middle income countries from 1978–2015. We also propose a new determinant of demand for anti-dumping petitions—changes in the pattern of industrial production between developed and developing economies over this period have contributed to deindustrialization in advanced economies and premature industrialization some developing countries. These changes threaten established industries and motivate them to demand protection.
International Relations scholars have long recognized the need to study the complex interdependencies of the international economy in order to understand the economic sources of national power and influence. Renewed interest in the patterns of international economic interdependencies and the structure of globalization has led scholars to a better, more empirically grounded understanding of the significance of complex interdependence for the evolution of international power. This paper examines the effect of one important and persistent characteristic of complex interdependence, American centrality within the international banking system, and argues that changes in the US financial cycle drive international financial volatility and crisis. These dynamics comprise the underbelly of American financial hegemony and pose a fundamental challenge to US leadership in the contemporary liberal international order. Financial stability is key to economic growth, which in turn perpetuates liberal political norms and institutions. Financial instability, on the other hand, breeds political discontent, which may take the form of populism or nationalism. The ability and willingness of the United States to reign in its own financial system may be key to ensuring that the liberal international system it established 75 years ago survives and thrives in the coming decades.
Senate majorities of both parties have altered the rules of debate to speed up deliberations on presidential nominees, particularly on judicial nominations. These deployments of the Senate's “nuclear option,” however, have had no demonstrable effect with respect to judicial nominations. We suggest the evidence highlights the role of “opportunism” rather that partisan obstruction in delaying nominations. We also document how thwarting opportunism by removing substantive legislation in favor of exclusively considering judgeships early in an administration's tenure can speed up deliberations. We recommend seven specific reforms along these lines to improve the appointments process.
In a globalized and hegemonically organized international economy, the economic fundamentals and policy choices of the hegemon often have spillover effects for peripheral economies. This is a well-recognized dynamic of the contemporary political economy, but it was true during the first age of globalization as well. Motivated by literature examining the impact of the U.S. macroeconomic conditions on other economies throughout the international system, this article advances a systemic theory of financial crisis and applies it to the long nineteenth century, when British hegemony reigned. My main motivation is the earliest example of a systemic theory of financial crisis, Charles Kindleberger’s Hegemonic Stability Theory. However, while Charles Kindleberger focused on the stability brought about by a hegemonically structured international economy, I emphasize the dynamics of volatility present in this type of system. I argue that a hierarchical distribution of economic activity in the international system means that the financial cycle of the most central country influences the financial conditions in peripheral countries that lead to financial crisis. Evidence from financial crises which occurred in the long nineteenth century supports this theory.
Media Appearances:
Newspaper Quotes:
Under Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate is working to even out Trump’s selections for the federal bench with Biden nominees, and advance Biden’s wide-reaching economic agenda. Negotiations over infrastructure, climate change, and social policy legislation have dragged on for months, draining the upper chamber’s capacity to consider nominees, said Heather Ba, a University of Missouri political science professor. “It’s all one inter-connected mess,” Ba said.
What Happens if President Donald Trump Catches Coronavirus? BY ELIZABETH CRISP ON 5/21/20 AT 9:49 AM EDT Heather Ba, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, agreed that as long as Trump isn't incapacitated the public may not see much change. "If he were just to fall ill, he can still do his job even if it's not to the standard he usually does," she said. There also could be symbolic repercussions—the "leader of the free world" contracting a deadly disease in a pandemic, Ba said. But it's less likely to have real-world impacts as Trump hasn't taken the lead on directing the global coronavirus response or coordinating with other countries. "It's hard for me to imagine that there would be much of an impact besides people looking at the United States as a very powerful country and the leader falling ill with the coronavirus," she said.
Blog Posts:
Why does it take so long to confirm Trump’s appointments? The Senate “went nuclear” — but that won’t speed things up much.
In 2013, during the 113th Congress, the Senate Democratic majority temporarily deployed what some have called the “nuclear option,” purportedly to break a confirmation logjam over President Obama’s judicial nominees. They argued the 60 vote threshold embedded in the filibuster rule allowed the minority to obstruct nominations, thereby thwarting the Obama agenda, both of which would otherwise receive majority support. So the Democrats exempted judicial from the filibuster, ultimately reducing the numbers needed for confirmation to a simple majority. Later, in 2019, during the current, 116th Congress, the Republican Senate majority revived the same rule change ostensibly to accomplish the same objective in the face of the same minority obstruction. This time, though, the two parties reversed roles. So, how has deploying the nuclear option worked out? Simply put, it made things worse. Here’s how we know.
This post compares Trump's progress on appointments to that of the past four presidential administrations.