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Zachary Houser
Lecturer II at Boise State University
Zachary Houser
B.A Political Science, North Carolina State University
M.S. Political Science, Florida State University
Ph.D. Political Science
Florida State University
About
About
I am a Lecturer II of Political Science at Boise State University. I received my PhD in Political Science from Florida State University in 2024.
Broadly, my research is in international political economy, foreign policy, and the domestic politics of international relations. More specifically, my research answers questions that fall into two main themes:
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Understanding what drives public support for foreign aid provisions
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Understanding how donor nations use foreign aid to achieve domestic and foreign policy objectives, increase their international status, and enhance their economic standing.
To answer these questions, I employ a range of advanced methods, including survey experiments, instrumental variables, and network analysis. My research interests also extend to teaching and pedagogy. My research is featured in The Journal of Political Science Education and Political Science Now
I won Teacher of the Year from the FSU Political Science Department during the 2021-2022 academic year. I teach classes on American Foreign Policy, International Organizations, and American National Government.
Research
Research
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Houser, Zachary. 2024. “Making Agreements With Friends: Using an Analogy to Teach Informal Agreements and Bargaining in International Relations Courses.” Journal of Political Science Education, August, 1–16. doi:10.1080/15512169.2024.2390548.
The activity Making Agreements with Friends was developed to help students understand the complex concepts of informal agreements and bargaining. Specifically, this activity sheds light on the reputation costs and strategies (iteration, issue linkage, and coercion) that countries rely on to foster cooperation. To do so, the activity leverages a relatable analogy, in which students are tasked with deciding which of their friends they should (and should not) lend money to at a pub. This approach is valuable because although students do not have firsthand knowledge about creating informal international agreements, they have extensive experience with informal interpersonal agreements. That is, the logic and strategies students use to decide who they can trust in an informal interpersonal agreement are similar to the logic and strategies countries use when making informal international agreements. Anonymous student evaluations and results from a pre-and-posttest on the material provide evidence that this activity is a fun, engaging, and effective way to teach these concepts to undergraduate students.
Under Review
Framing Foreign Aid: Elite Issue Frames and Public Support for Foreign Aid
How can elites frame foreign aid to increase public support for foreign aid spending? Using an original pre-post survey experiment, I test how different elite issue frames (transactional, altruistic, status) about the benefits of providing foreign aid impact public support for foreign aid spending. My analysis shows that framing foreign aid as providing transactional benefits to the U.S. and altruistic benefits to those in need increases support for foreign aid spending. In fact, on average, respondents go from wanting the U.S. to decrease foreign aid spending to increasing foreign aid spending after learning the transactional and altruistic benefits of providing foreign aid. Additionally, contrary to past findings, I find that framing foreign aid as providing transactional benefits to the U.S. increases support for foreign aid for both conservative (Republican) and liberal (Democrat) respondents.
Noblesse Oblige: Status Motivations and Public Support for Foreign Aid (with Marina Duque)
What drives support for foreign aid provision? Conventional explanations posit that donors give aid for strategic reasons, to achieve domestic or foreign policy goals; or for altru- istic reasons, to help those in need. In this paper, we argue that status can also motivate aid. Hierarchical relationships typically involve a sense of noblesse oblige, as privileged actors are expected to behave charitably towards the less privileged. Therefore, the more citizens value their country’s international status, the more they should support foreign aid provision. Using two survey experiments in the United States, we show that respondents cued to consider that a reduction in foreign aid spending would hurt U.S. status are more supportive of foreign aid than respondents not cued to consider such an impact. Moreover, respondents are more support- ive of foreign aid the higher their reported need for national status—whose substantive impact is comparable to that of the variables traditionally considered in foreign aid research. While previous research on status-seeking behavior focuses on conflict, our results suggest that status can also motivate international cooperation. In addition, the analysis indicates that framing foreign aid in terms of status can encourage richer states to help more those in need.
Buying Monetary Status: Chinese Foreign Aid and the Rise of the Renminbi
How do states attain monetary status? States can attain monetary status by taking actions that promote the use of their currency. By linking diversification into its currency with policies that benefit the investing state, a reserve currency issuer can promote its currency even if the economic factors of the currency alone are insufficient to attract other nations to invest. Scholars have long studied the influence geopolitical and security considerations have on the rise and persistence of reserve currencies. Security guarantees have often been linked to monetary status, but these are not the only commodity that reserve currency issuers can leverage to enhance their monetary status. The author proposes that foreign aid is an alternative tool that a reserve currency issuer can use to encourage states to invest in its currency. Using an instrumental variable, the present study demonstrates how China has used foreign aid to induce other nations to invest in the renminbi (RMB) and thereby enhance its monetary status. The findings show that the probability that a country will adopt the RMB as a reserve currency increases as the number of Chinese-financed aid projects the state receives increases. When a state’s currency lacks the economic factors to achieve international reserve currency status, states can turn to foreign aid to buy monetary status.
Working Papers
Selling Foreign Aid: A Conjoint Experiment on Public Support for Foreign Aid
What drives public support for foreign aid? Foreign aid is a crucial tool donor nations use to advance their interests at home and abroad. Therefore, to sell foreign assistance to the public, elites portray foreign aid programs as 1) a means to alleviate suffering in the recipient country (altruistic frame), 2) a tool to gain access to natural resources and help domestic industries at home (transactional frame), or 3) a way to enhance international status and prestige (status frame). Prior research has tested these frames in isolation and typically does not vary the type of aid being allocated or the regime type of the recipient country. Using an original pairwise conjoint experiment, this paper demonstrates how different frames impact attitudes toward different types of foreign assistance (humanitarian aid, military aid, and aid for economic development) going to democracies and non-democracies. My analysis shows that respondents are generally the most supportive of humanitarian aid, going to a democracy, that is framed as providing altruistic benefits to the recipient. However, conservatives and isolationists are more supportive of aid framed as providing the donor nation transactional benefits compared to aid framed as providing altruistic or status benefits.
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