About

Regina Bateson is an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies violence and politics, the rule of law, and problems of democracy, with a geographical focus on Latin America, especially Guatemala, and the United States. Her work has been published in prominent outlets such as the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Politics, the Journal of Peace Research, and Comparative Political Studies. Regina's research has received several awards, including the American Political Science Association's Heinz Eulau Award and the Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in comparative politics. She earned her BA in history from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Prior to her academic career, she served as a Foreign Service Officer for the US Department of State.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Criminology
• Gender studies
• Political economy
• Epistemology
• Public administration
• Business
• Advertising
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Finance
• Economics
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• The Criminal Threat to Democracy in Guatemala

  2024-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Finding Meaning in Politics: When Victims Become Activists

  Perspectives on Politics · 2024-08-07 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Victimization is often associated with increased political participation, and victims are influential political actors in many countries around the world. Yet for victims, activism is costly: they tell and re-tell painful stories, face searing criticism, and work to exhaustion—all at one of the worst moments of their lives. So why do they do it? Based on ethnographic research with Families for Safe Streets, a group of victims-turned-activists in New York City, this article advances a new explanation for victims’ participation in politics. I propose that for some victims, meaning-making is an in-process benefit of activism. My inductive research suggests three ways victims find meaning in politics. First, through their activism, victims can re-conceptualize the losses and harms they have suffered as policy problems, rather than random, inexplicable events. Victims may also seek to help others by changing laws to prevent similar tragedies from recurring, and some victims see their activism as a way of fulfilling important obligations to their communities, their families, and their deceased relatives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research ethics and state power: access vs. integrity in the study of armed actors

  Conflict Security and Development · 2024-11-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the study of armed actors, the state poses significant – yet often unrecognised – ethical challenges for researchers. This article provides a framework for researchers to pro-actively manage their relationships with the state. First, we show how the state affects the ethics of research on armed actors. Then we illustrate the danger of ignoring, discounting, or misreading the state, both at home and abroad. We question common assumptions about state unity, competence, and legitimacy, and we identify a persistent ethical dilemma between <i>access</i>, which is often mediated or controlled by the state, and<i> integrity</i>. We probe this dilemma via three dimensions of state power: the power of funding and partnership; the power of policy laundering; and the power of gatekeeping, surveillance, and coercion. Ultimately, we argue that ethically sound research on armed actors requires researchers to carefully and continuously re-examine their beliefs about the state. Along the way, we offer practical guidance on interacting with state-backed funders; mitigating risk and tempering the influence of the state during fieldwork; and thinking through the state’s complex and contradictory roles. We also raise uncomfortable questions about the red lines separating researchers’ interests from states’ interests.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vigilantisim in Political Science

  2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Transcript Auto scroll search expand close Search Transcript Search Up Search Down Close Search Tools Tools icon close Download PDFopens in new window Cite Cite icon close Format APA APA Chicago Harvard MLA AMA Bateson, R. (Academic). (2023). Vigilantism in political science [Video]. Sage Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529670110 Bateson, Regina. "Vigilantisim in Political Science." In Sage Video. : SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2023. Video, 00:31:55. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529670110. Bateson, R., 2023. Vigilantisim in Political Science, Sage Video. [Streaming Video] London: Sage Publications Ltd. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529670110 & gt; [Accessed 17 Mar 2023]. Bateson, Regina. Vigilantisim in Political Science. Online video clip. SAGE Video. London: SAGE Publications, Ltd., 31 Jan 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529670110. 17 Mar 2023. Vigilantisim in Political Science [Streaming video]. 2023. doi:10.4135/9781529670110. Accessed 03/17/2023 copy to clipboard or Export to your reference manager Endnote Endnote Reference Manager ProCite RefWorks BibTeX Zotero Medlars Mendeley Word Export Cancel Share Share icon close Share via Email Please log in from an authenticated institution or log into your member profile to access the email feature. Sign in/register Embed Embed icon close Embed this Content Add this content to your learning management system or webpage by copying the code below into the HTML editor on the page. Look for the words HTML or </>. Learn More about Embedding Video icon link (opens in new window) Clip - https://methods.sagepub.com/video/vigilantism-in-political-science Embed code: Copy to clipboard Select a length: Entire video Entire video Select a size: 420x236 640x360 853x480 Sample View: (opens in new window) Cancel Get link Get link icon close Select a length: Entire video Entire video Link to this page directly with a permalink: https://methods.sagepub.com/video/vigilantism-in-political-science Copy to clipboard Cancel

  PublisherDOI

• Democracy, Transitional Justice and Security in Guatemala

  Open Science Framework · 2023-12-19

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  This survey is the second second round of a previously registered survey. The project seeks to assess attitudes of Guatemala citizens towards democracy, transitional justice, and security in their country.

  PublisherDOI

• Perceptions of pandemic resume gaps: Survey experimental evidence from the United States

  PLoS ONE · 2023-03-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people found themselves out of work in 2020 and 2021. Going forward, will their pandemic resume gaps be stigmatized or forgiven? In a recent survey experiment in the United States, I find that US adults have negative perceptions of individuals who were unemployed during the novel coronavirus pandemic. When asked to select among fictional applicants for a job opening in the hospitality industry, respondents prefer those who were employed continuously throughout the pandemic. Respondents are about 20% less likely to choose applicants with pandemic resume gaps, regardless of whether they were laid off, stopped working to supervise virtual school, or yo-yoed in and out of employment. Respondents also describe applicants with pandemic resume gaps in more negative terms, perceiving them as less hardworking, less dedicated, less professional, and less qualified than otherwise identical applicants who remained employed. Public opinion toward individuals with breaks in employment during the pandemic matters because it may affect public policy, and because stigma harms job seekers in multiple ways. Furthermore, the results of the experiment are consistent among survey respondents with hiring and managerial experience. While we should always be cautious about generalizing from survey experiments, these findings suggest that people who were out of work during the COVID-19 pandemic may face disadvantages when they return to the labor market.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unemployment Scarring and the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Pandemic Resume Gaps Affect Perceptions of Job-Seekers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Balancing Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Graduate School

  Iowa State University Digital Repository (Iowa State University) · 2022-01-01

  other

  While some scholarly articles and reports examine the needs of faculty parents (Bassett 2005; Colbeck and Drago 2005; APSA CSWP 2016; van Assendelft et al. 2019), graduate student parents remain largely ignored in academia. The number of graduate students with children is increasing (Mason 2009; Perry 2021), and the lack of support for such students may contribute to the “leaky pipeline” in academia (Windsor and Crawford 2020). This chapter aims to recognize the needs and existence of graduate student parents. T he authors represent a diverse set of experiences and perspectives. Some of us were pregnant and/ or had children while in graduate school, were expectant on the job market, or gave birth to children as non-tenured assistant professors. One of the authors underwent fertility treatments, two of the authors suffered multiple miscarriages and a third suffered one, and two of the authors had twins. We offer our viewpoints juggling the competing demands of our academic and domestic responsibilities. However, we acknowledge that our perspectives are finite; they do not fully encompass everyone’s intersectional identities and experiences as graduate student parents. Nevertheless, we hope the guidance here serves as one source of information for those on this journey.

  Publisher

• Voting for a Killer: Efraín Ríos Montt's Return to Politics in Democratic Guatemala

  Comparative Politics · 2021-03-10 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  From 1982 to 1983, General Efraín Ríos Montt presided over an especially bloody period of the Guatemalan civil war. Under Ríos Montt's watch, the state killed approximately 75,000 of its own citizens. Yet less than a decade later, the former dictator emerged as one of the most popular politicians in newly democratic Guatemala. How did a gross human rights violator stage such an improbable comeback? Using process tracing, I argue that Ríos Montt's trajectory is best explained by his embrace of populism as his core political strategy. This analysis deepens our knowledge of an important case, while shedding light on broader questions about how and when actors with profoundly undemocratic values can hijack democracy for their own ends.

  PublisherDOI

• The 2016 Election and America’s Standing Abroad: Quasi-Experimental Evidence of a Trump Effect

  The Journal of Politics · 2021 · 23 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Political economy

  Global favorability toward the United States declined by more than 10 percentage points from 2016 to 2017. This shift coincided with the end of the Obama administration and the inauguration of Donald Trump—but did Trump’s election cause America’s standing abroad to erode? Leveraging a natural experiment, we show that Trump’s victory had an immediate, negative effect on international public opinion toward the United States. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that a major cross-national survey, the AmericasBarometer, was in the field when the 2016 US presidential election occurred. Using data from four Latin American countries, we compare respondents surveyed just before and after the election. We find that Trump’s unexpected win caused a sharp drop in trust in the US government. While scholars have long observed that domestic political considerations shape leaders’ foreign policy decisions, we show that domestic political events—such as elections—can also affect a country’s international image.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Troy Montserrat-Gonzales

  Universidad Mariano Galvez

  100 shared

• Noelle Stout

  Harvard University

  100 shared

• Carol Hendrickson

  Marlboro College

  100 shared

• Alex Fattal

  Universidad Mariano Galvez

  100 shared

• David Carey

  100 shared

• Deborah Greebon

  Harvard University

  100 shared

• Pakal B'alam

  University of Chicago

  100 shared

• Miriam Shakow

  American Anthropological Association

  100 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Stanford University

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Yale University

Awards & honors

• Heinz Eulau Award
• Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in compara…