Tanika Raychaudhuri, Ph.D.
traychaudhuri@uh.edu
Assistant Professor
University of Houston
About Me:
Tanika Raychaudhuri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Houston. She received her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. Her research is in American politics with a focus on political behavior, immigration, race and inequality. Raychaudhuri was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration at the University of Pennsylvania. She employs surveys, interviews and experimental methods in her work and is currently working on a book manuscript that explains why Asian Americans support Democrats in national elections. She has published several articles in noted political science journals, including Electoral Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Politics, Groups and Identities, and PS: Political Science & Politics.
Research Interests
Immigration & Citizenship
Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Political Participation
Public Opinion
Class, Inequality, and Labor Politics
Asian Americans
Immigrant Socialization
Political Behavior
Partisanship
Inequality
Countries of Interest
United States
My Research:
My current book project, “Socializing Democrats: Peer Influence and Asian American Partisan Acquisition," explores why Asian Americans, a diverse pan-ethnic immigrant group with some conservative predispositions, supports Democrats in national elections. I develop a novel theory of “social transmission,” grounded in partisan influence from peers in local contexts. This account is motivated by the fact that standard theories of familial political socialization do not explain partisan acquisition among immigrants and their children, who rarely discuss American politics at home. I test social transmission and alternative explanations using national surveys, in-depth interviews, a longitudinal dataset of college students, and an original social endorsement experiment. The results have important implications for American politics as the electorate becomes more diverse. My collaborative research projects focus on topics at the intersection of race, political behavior, and public policy. These include studies of public space and civic engagement, the political impact of racialized framings of opioid use, and local context and immigration policy views. My published co-authored work includes studies of income inequality and the college experience and Puerto Rican political mobilization. My research has been published in Electoral Studies; Perspectives on Politics; Politics, Groups, and Identities; and PS: Political Science & Politics and featured in Scroll.In, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. I received the award for the Best Paper on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (w. Chinbo Chong) and the Best Poster (w. Stephanie Chan and Ali Valenzuela) from the American Political Science Association in 2021.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Symposium article discussing new research in APA politics.
Puerto Ricans are a growing population on the U.S. mainland. They hold a distinctive position in the hierarchy of American citizenship because they are disenfranchised in national elections on the island but immediately become eligible to vote if they move to the mainland. How can Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland be mobilized to participate in politics? This paper explores whether campaign contact increases Puerto Rican political participation. Using observational data, we establish that campaign contact is associated with political participation among mainland Puerto Ricans. We also conduct a survey experiment, testing the mobilizing effects of positive and negative campaign messages that prime Puerto Ricans to think about their group’s distinctive political experiences. These messages convey the enfranchised status of Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland and their disenfranchised status on the island. While the negative treatment has limited effects, the positive treatment increases intentions to vote, to participate in non-electoral political activities, and feelings of political efficacy relative to a pure control. We observe heterogenous treatment effects across electoral contexts and levels of linked fate with other Puerto Ricans.
College is a key pathway to political participation, and lower-income individuals especially stand to benefit from it given their lower political participation. However, rising inequality makes college disproportionately more accessible to high-income students. One consequence of inequality is a prevalence of predominantly affluent campuses. Colleges are thus not insulated from the growing concentration of affluence in American social spaces. We ask how affluent campus spaces affect college’s ability to equalize political participation. Predominantly affluent campuses may create participatory norms that especially elevate low-income students’ participation. Alternatively, they may create affluence-centered social norms that marginalize these students, depressing their participation. A third possibility is equal effects, leaving the initial gap unchanged. Using a large panel survey (201,011 students), controls on many characteristics, and tests for selection bias, we find that predominantly affluent campuses increase political participation to a similar extent for all income groups, thus leaving the gap unchanged. We test psychological, academic, social, political, financial, and institutional mechanisms for the effects. The results carry implications for the self-reinforcing link between inequality and civic institutions.
Asian Americans are increasingly voting for Democrats in national elections. High levels of Democratic vote choice among Asian Americans are notable because many have high incomes, immigrated from countries with communist histories, or are Evangelical Christians. Why do Asian Americans support Democrats despite these conservative predispositions? I develop a novel theory of “social transmission” to explain Democratic vote choice among Asian Americans. The theory predicts that Asian Americans, who receive limited partisan socialization through the family, develop partisan preferences partly through the diffusion of political views in local contexts. This process leads to Democratic support because Asian Americans tend to settle in liberal metropolitan areas of the United States. I test this theory as an explanation for Asian American vote choice using data from the 2008 National Asian American Survey. In support of the theory, local partisan context emerges as a moderately-sized predictor of vote choice alongside some established predictors, including national origin and religion. Some measures of social integration into local communities heighten the effects of partisan context on vote choice. The results hold across various tests for self-selection and after accounting for several alternative explanations, including socioeconomic status, religion, national origin, group consciousness, and perceived discrimination.
An important question in the study of Asian American political behavior is why members of this group, who have some Republican predispositions, are strong Democratic supporters. How do Asian Americans develop preferences for the Democratic Party? This paper considers this question through a theory-building case study of political socialization in Houston, Texas, a mixed-partisan area where many Asian Americans support Democrats. Using qualitative interviews and supplemental survey data, I examine voting behavior and partisan identification, developing a socially based explanation for high levels of Democratic support. I argue that Asian Americans develop Democratic preferences through interactions within peer groups. These peer groups vary in composition by generational status, leading to different reasons for Democratic support across generations. I find that first-generation Asian Americans primarily interact with fellow Asian immigrants. Relative to their children’s generation, they develop positive attitudes about conservative ideology but vote for Democrats because they perceive contemporary Republicans as ideologically extreme. In contrast, transitional-generation and second-generation Asian Americans have racially diverse peer groups. Rarely discussing politics at home, they develop pro-Democratic attitudes through interactions with liberal friends in educational settings.