Research Themes

Established in 2017, the Political Analysis Lab is committed to promoting political science research and enhancing the quality of evidence-based analysis locally and globally. It develops an integrative approach that combines the empirical studies of pressing socio-political phenomena with cutting-edge research methodologies.

The PAL currently has more than 20 faculty members, 2 post-doctoral fellows, 5 doctoral students and 3 research assistants studying comparative politics, collaborative governance, political communication, public health, and interactions between citizens, business communities, and public organizations. We particularly focus on experiments, surveys, computational methods, and critical analysis of observational data. The research program in the lab can be divided into four interacted themes.

Political Contestation & Conflict Resolutions

• “Surveying Spontaneous Mass Protests: Mixed-mode Sampling and Field Methods”. Sociological Methodology, 2022.
• “Life satisfaction and the conventionality of political participation: The moderation effect of post-materialist value orientation”. International Political Science Review, 2021.
• “Punishing the dissidents: The selective implementation of stability preservation in China”. Journal of Contemporary China, 2019.
• “Neither repression nor concession? A hybrid regime’s attrition against mass protests”. Political Studies, 2017.

Comparative Governance & Administrative Accountability

• “Accountability intensity and bureaucrats’ response to conflicting expectations: a survey experiment in China”. Public Management Review, 2021.
• “Citizens’ Confidence in Government Control of Corruption: An Empirical Analysis”. Social Indicators Research, 2020.
• “Advocacy channels and political resource dependence in authoritarianism: Nongovernmental organizations and environmental policies in China”. Governance, 2019.
• “The formation and impact of isomorphic pressures: Extravagant position‐related consumption in China”. Governance, 2017.

Political Communication & Digital Society

• “An Eye for an Eye? An Integrated Model of Attitude Change Toward Protest Violence”. Political Communication, 2022.
• “Revisiting the public sphere in 20th- and 21st-century China”. China Quarterly Special Issue, 2021.
• “Affordances, movement dynamics, and a centralized digital communication platform in a networked movement”. Information, Communication & Society, 2021.
• “Speaking Up or Staying Silent? Examining the Influences of Censorship and Behavioral Contagion on Opinion (Non-)Expression in China”. New Media & Society, 2021.
• “The road to cynicism: The political consequences of online satire exposure in China”. Political Studies, 2019.

Public Health & Risk Assessment

• “Pandemic Vulnerability, Policy Feedback, and Support for Immigration: Evidence from Asia”. British Journal of Social Psychology, 2022.
• “Stratified Impacts of Infodemic during Pandemic: A Cross-sectional Survey in Six Asian Jurisdictions”. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2022.
• “Risk Perceptions, Anxiety and the Future of International Trade”. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2021.