WORKS IN PROGRESS

“The Psychology of Nuclear Restraint: Reactance in Latent States” (Working Paper). With Oto Montagner and Guilherme Fasolin.

Abstract: When confronted with U.S. counterproliferation pressure, nuclear latent states often defy demands to curtail their programs rather than comply. We identify psychological reactance—people's resistance to perceived threats to their autonomy—as a crucial yet overlooked factor explaining this pattern of defiance. Reactance theory suggests that when states perceive coercive demands as constraining their nuclear policy autonomy, they experience psychological motivation to resist, even when compliance would serve their material interests. This dynamic helps explain why nuclear agreements frequently collapse despite favorable conditions and why coercive approaches often backfire. We test this theory through a multi-method approach combining formal modeling, survey experiments, and historical case studies. Our formal model demonstrates how reactance can bias nuclear bargaining away from materially optimal outcomes. Survey experiments with Brazilian citizens isolate the causal effects of reactance by comparing coercive threats to equivalent scenarios imposing identical costs without autonomy threats. Historical analysis of South Korea (1970s), Brazil (1980s), and Iran (2010s) traces how reactance manifests in real-world nuclear negotiations. Results consistently show that coercive pressure triggers defiance beyond what material calculations would predict, while approaches preserving target states' sense of autonomy prove more effective.

“Strategic Theory of Nuclear Latency” (Working Paper). With Oto Montagner.

Abstract: The spread of nuclear fuel cycle technologies that enable fissile material production confronts the United States with fundamental challenges in managing nuclear latency risks. States exhibit varying levels of nuclear latency, defined by the scale of fissile material production and opacity surrounding these activities. We develop a game-theoretic model explaining this variation: states choose their optimal latency level by assessing the risk of US punishment. As the architect of the global nonproliferation regime, the US seeks to minimize the scale and opacity of other states' nuclear programs. States weigh the strategic benefits of increasing their nuclear latent capabilities against the risk of triggering punishment, which depends on US intolerance for uncertainty and enforcement costs. We identify four equilibrium scenarios based on these parameters. When US intolerance is low and punishment costs are high, states can significantly increase both scale and opacity with minimal constraints. When both factors are low, states advance scale carefully while reducing opacity. When US intolerance is high but punishment costs are also high, states exploit US reluctance to intervene while managing uncertainty through adjustments to scale and opacity. When US intolerance is high and punishment costs are low, states face severe constraints on both dimensions and may abandon nuclear ambitions entirely. We probe the empirical plausibility of this model through cases across time and space, showing how states strategically adjust scale and opacity in response to US preferences.

“Global Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy Polarized in Shadow of Zaporizhzhia.” With Lauren Sukin (lead author), Stephen Herzog and 20 others

Abstract: Military hostilities in Ukraine have threatened Europe’s largest nuclear power plant since 2022. While the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station are now in cold shutdown with little chance of a major accident, scientists and the media previously warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine risked nuclear catastrophe. Accidents remain an enduring challenge to pledges by industrialized countries to triple atomic energy production by 2050. Nuclear power can aid climate change mitigation and energy independence efforts, but Chernobyl and Fukushima soured public opinion. In light of Zaporizhzhia, we therefore offer a large-scale, systematic public opinion study of 24 countries (N = 27,250) with nuclear programs, plans to construct reactors, and/or proximity to Ukraine. This includes data collection in several understudied countries. Our cross-national survey shows that developing country publics are generally supportive of building nuclear power plants while developed countries are more skeptical. Interest in nuclear exports from Russia and the United States is largely split along geopolitical lines. Although Zaporizhzhia has not suffered a major accident, publics worldwide nevertheless report that events in Ukraine have worsened their views on nuclear energy. Absent cinematic consequences, however, nuclear power will remain in the global conversation about fossil fuel alternatives.

“Does Hypocrisy Carry Costs? How Foreign Audiences Contest the US-led Order” (multi-paper research program). With Guilherme Fasolin

Abstract: When the United States engages in behavior that contradicts its professed liberal values, does this perceived hypocrisy undermine foreign public support for the liberal international order (LIO)? While scholars have theorized that inconsistency between U.S. actions and stated principles may compromise the legitimacy of the international order it leads, empirical evidence remains limited. We address this gap through survey experiments examining how perceived U.S. hypocrisy affects third-party public attitudes toward the LIO. Our experimental design isolates the causal effects of perceived hypocrisy while testing key scope conditions and alternative mechanisms. We find that perceived U.S. hypocrisy significantly reduces foreign public support for liberal international institutions and norms, but these effects are moderated by public perceptions of material stakes—suggesting that hypocrisy charges themselves can be strategically motivated. By manipulating whether inconsistent behavior stems from U.S. actions versus identity, we demonstrate that reactions to perceived hypocrisy are driven primarily by behavioral contradictions rather than inherent antipathy toward American leadership. Mediation analysis reveals that hypocrisy operates through two distinct pathways: eroding trust in U.S. credibility and generating moral outrage over perceived double standards. Importantly, we find that liberal and conservative individuals respond similarly to perceived hypocrisy, indicating that such reactions transcend ideological divisions. These findings have significant implications for U.S. foreign policy strategy and theories of international legitimacy, suggesting that maintaining consistency between stated values and actions is crucial for sustaining support for the liberal international order, even among natural allies.

“The Global South in the Nuclear Age.” In The Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age, edited by Leopoldo Nuti and Christian Ostermann. (Accepted for publication)

Abstract: This chapter investigates the role of the Global South in the historical evolution of the nuclear age. In doing so, it challenges prevalent narratives that narrowly center it around great-power politics. The chapter argues that the norms and institutions that came to govern the nuclear age were inextricably linked with the anti-colonial revolution, characterized by developing nations' quests for sovereignty, national autonomy, racial equality, and political emancipation. The narrative sheds light on the ebb and flow of the successive Global South coalitions that formed as global nuclear politics evolved. Beginning with resistance in the late 1930s and 1940s against Western impositions over mineral resource extraction, it transitions to opposition against nuclear weapons testing and the call for nuclear-weapons free zones in the 1950s and early 1960s, clashes that contributed to the racialization of the nuclear age. The chapter explores how the atom captured the imagination of modernizing elites across the Global South, and turns to their demands for access to nuclear technologies and the intricate negotiations over non-proliferation, disarmament, and the ‘inalienable right’ to technological development which culminated in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It further explores how Western regulatory initiatives from the mid-1970s incrementally weakened and ultimately fragmented the Global South coalition, rendering it ineffectual for approximately two decades. The chapter concludes by highlighting the resurgence in the 2000s of the Global South coalition, as its members responded to the collapse of arms controls, U.S. counterproliferation policies, and the renewed salience of humanitarian concerns. Ultimately, the chapter posits that the historical evolution of the nuclear age can only be understood by acknowledging the role the postcolonial world played in shaping nuclear order.

“Costless Defection: How Leader Counter-Rhetoric Undermines the Paris Agreement” (Working Paper). With Guilherme Fasolin and Renan C. Marques.

Abstract: Lacking punitive measures to prevent defection from international environmental cooperation, the Paris Agreement relies on effective peer pressure to ensure compliance. Scholars have shown that foreign climate shaming drives domestic public support for compliance in Western democracies, while rhetorical efforts by incumbents to counteract such criticism prove largely ineffective. The present study extends the analysis to the Global South, a region essential to the success of the Paris Agreement due to its growing emissions and disproportionate vulnerability to climate change. Through survey experiments in Brazil, we find that foreign climate shaming decreases public support for leaders who fail to comply with climate commitments, but targeted government counter-rhetoric justifying noncompliance completely eliminates this effect. Our results show that incumbents can eliminate the audience costs of noncompliance by deploying four rhetorical strategies common in Global South environmental diplomacy: historical responsibilities, reciprocity as effectiveness, reciprocity as self-interest, and defiance. The effects prove robust across demographic and political subgroups, suggesting that climate shaming operates less uniformly as a compliance mechanism than existing scholarship implies. These findings reveal fundamental asymmetries in international pressure dynamics across different political contexts, with important implications for the design of global environmental governance.

“Defiance Against Foreign Shaming during Climate Crises” (Working Paper). With Guilherme Fasolin, Juliana Camargo, and Renan C. Marques.

Abstract: States increasingly deploy naming-and-shaming tactics to drive third-party compliance with international environmental norms. This is despite scholarly research showing that in related fields such as human rights foreign criticism can backfire if it hits a nerve among ordinary citizens in the target state. In this paper, we experimentally explore public defiance against foreign climate shaming for the first time. Defiance occurs when domestic audiences support policies that explicitly challenge foreign critics by insisting on non-compliant behavior. We make two novel contributions by fielding a conjoint experiment to a representative sample in Brazil, a recurrent target of international climate criticism. First, we empirically establish defiance against critical cues in the climate sphere. Second, we leverage experimental methods to provide micro-foundations for defiant behavior, specifying the factors that are more likely to trigger such a response. Our results show domestic audiences to be more prone to defy foreign climate shaming when the source of the criticism is perceived to be hypocritical, when the critical message is couched in liberal-cosmopolitan rather than sovereigntist-parochial language, and when critics threaten to impose costlier measures (the threat of the use of force triggers defiance more powerfully than trade sanctions or diplomatic pressure). These effects are moderated by political orientation, with conservative and Right-wing members of the public more easily mobilized to defy international shaming than their progressive and Left-wing co-nationals. Together, these findings carry important implications for theories of foreign shaming and the practice of diplomacy.

“Pushing Back Against Foreign Direct Investment from China: Evidence from Brazil” (Working Paper). With Carolina Moehlecke and Guilherme Fasolin.

Abstract: Public backlash against China’s expanding outward foreign direct investment (FDI) has become a defining feature of the global economy. While opposition in advanced economies is often linked to security concerns and strategic rivalry, responses from other regions remain underexplored. We examine how political narratives shape public attitudes toward Chinese FDI in Brazil, one of its largest recipients in the developing world. A survey experiment shows that certain negative political frames significantly reduce support for Chinese investment, even when material benefits are emphasized. Unlike in advanced economies, opposition in Brazil centers on concerns about engagement with an authoritarian economic partner and excessive foreign dependence. Traditional explanations based on economic self-interest offer limited traction: material conditions do little to moderate views. Instead, we identify a strong ideological divide: right-leaning individuals are markedly more responsive to negative narratives about Chinese investments than their left-leaning counterparts. We contextualize these findings with qualitative evidence showing how right-wing actors in Brazil have actively politicized relations with China, spreading the narratives our experiment identifies as most influential among right-leaning individuals. Our study underscores how domestic political narratives and ideology interact to shape public opinion on foreign engagement with China in a transforming global economy.