Alyssa R. Heinze

I’m a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development. My research sits at the intersection of the political economy of development, gender and politics, and environmental and climate politics, with a regional focus on India.

Much of my work focuses on understanding the persistence of male elite power. This includes research that investigates male elite “capture” of local democracy and the limitations of institutional solutions to democratize power. My current research program focuses on how agricultural transformations, natural resource politics, and climate change have shaped patriarchy in historical and contemporary perspective. A related line of work investigates the broader politics of gender and climate change. I employ a variety of methods in my research: survey and field experiments, qualitative fieldwork and ethnography, observational causal inference, natural language processing, and the use of geospatial and weather data.

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, and World Development. My research has been funded by the Empirical Study of Gender Research Network, the Center for Effective Global Action, the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Association, the Global Democracy Commons, the Institute of International Studies, and the Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics.

Publications

Heinze, Alyssa R. "Democratic Deepening or Elite Persistence? How Local Elites Adapt to Electoral Reform in Rural India."
Forthcoming at American Political Science Review.
Winner of the 2024 Paula D. McClain Award for the MPSA Best Paper
Winner of the 2024 MPSA Evan Ringquist Field Award for best paper on the topic of political institutions.
Winner of the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science
Honorable mention, Center for the Study of Law and Society Paper Prize
Pre-analysis plan. Populated PAP.

Heinze, Alyssa R., Brulé, Rachel E. and Simon Chauchard. 2025. "Who Actually Governs? Gender Inequality and Political Representation in Rural India." The Journal of Politics. 87(2).
Access. Replication.

Chauchard, Simon, Brulé, Rachel E. and Alyssa R. Heinze. 2025. "Inclusive Reforms as Levers for Social Exclusion: The Paradoxical Consequences of Quotas for Women in Rural India." World Development. 196(2025).
Access.

Working papers

Why Discussion Rules Matter for Representation: Experimental Evidence from Rural India
With Rachel Brulé and Simon Chauchard
Pre-analysis plan. Populated PAP.

Selected works in progress

Feminized Victimhood: The Political Consequences of Global South Vulnerability in Climate Policy Discourse
With Leonardo Arriola and Allison Grossman
Pre-analysis plan. Populated PAP.

Agriculture and Patriarchy: Growing and Severing the Roots of Male Dominance

The Gender Politics of Water: Patriarchal Control of Community Natural Resource Governance Institutions

Piped Water and Gender Empowerment: Evidence From a Downstream RCT in Urban India
With Anjali Thomas and Nikhar Gaikwad