Research
My research is organized around four areas. Please email me for copies of any work in progress.
Local Politics and Accountability: Political Behavior, Community Organizing, and the Environment
Book
Cooperman, Alicia. Grassroots Power: Bloc Voting and Local Democracy in Brazil. Cambridge University Press. Under production; publication March 2027.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Cooperman, Alicia. 2024. “Bloc Voting for Electoral Accountability.” American Political Science Review 118 (3): 1222–1239. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055423000989
Under Review
Cooperman, Alicia, Andrea Junqueira, Thiago Moreira, and Manuela Muñoz. “Local Distributive Politics: Bloc Voting and Public Service Provision in Brazil.” Part of Symposium: Comparative Urban Politics in the Global South; under review at Urban Affairs Review.
Cooperman, Alicia, and Emily Rains. “Climate Politics from the Margins: Environmental Knowledge, Policy Awareness and Claim-Making in Urban Slums.” Part of “Climate Change in your Backyard” Special Issue Convening; under review at Urban Affairs Review.
Working Papers
Cooperman, Alicia, Andrea Junqueira, Thiago Moreira, and Manuela Muñoz. “Local Distributive Politics: Municipal Legislative Behavior and Neighborhood Service Provision in Brazil.”
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, and Manuela Muñoz. “Neighborhood-Based Organizations as Political Actors: Implications for Political Participation, Inequality, and Climate Resilience.” https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4496935
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, Michael Oppenheimer, Rachael Shwom, and Elke Weber. “Property-Owners Associations, Place-Based Climate Policy, and Distribution of Climate-Related Risks and Benefits.”
Cooperman, Alicia, Lizandro Lui, and Ismael Deus Marques. “Politics of YESS: Year-End Spending Spikes and Policymaking in Brazil.”
Trojahn, Kyle, Sara Constantino, Alicia Cooperman, and Manuela Muñoz Fuerte. “Changing City Limits: How Annexation Shapes Social and Political Outcomes.”
Disaster Politics: Political Behavior, Public Opinion, and the Environment
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Andrews, Talbot, Sara Constantino, Alicia Cooperman, and Alexander Gard-Murray. 2025. “Paying Attention and Paying the Costs: Wildfires in the American West.” Climatic Change 178: 159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-03998-1
Sisco, Matthew, Sara Constantino, Yu Gao, Massimo Tavoni, Alicia Cooperman, Valentina Bosetti, and Elke Weber. 2023. “Examining Evidence for the Finite Pool of Worry and Finite Pool of Attention Hypotheses.” Global Environmental Change 78: 102622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102622
Cooperman, Alicia. 2022. “(Un)Natural Disasters: Electoral Cycles in Disaster Relief.” Comparative Political Studies 55 (7): 1158–1197. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211047410 Winner of the 2022 Frances Rosenbluth Editorial Board Prize, Comparative Political Studies
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, Robert Keohane, and Elke Weber. 2022. “Personal Hardship Narrows the Partisan Gap in COVID-19 and Climate Change Responses.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (46): e2120653119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120653119
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, and Thiago Moreira. 2021. “Voting in a Global Pandemic: Assessing Dueling Influences of Covid-19 on Turnout.” Social Science Quarterly 102 (5): 2210–2235. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13038
Under Review
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, Jessica Geiger, Manuela Muñoz, Aksel Sundström, and Lauren Yehle. “The Political Costs and Benefits of Natural Disasters: Synthesis Proposal for APSR.” Under review after resubmission (R&R) at American Political Science Review.
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, Sophia Jingxuan Hu, and Dan Ziebarth. “Extreme Weather Impacts and Climate Policy Preferences in India and the United States.” Under review after resubmission (R&R) at Climatic Change.
Martin, Aaron, Rachael Shwom, Sara Constantino, Alicia Cooperman, and Elke Weber. “Decision-Making Under Organized Irresponsibility: Climate Change and Extreme Weather.” Under review at Global Environmental Change.
Working Papers
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, and Megan Mullin. “Protection or Coercion? Evaluating Public Preferences for Government Buyout Programs.”
Constantino, Sara, Alicia Cooperman, Manuela Muñoz, and Victor Wu. “Winning and Losing the Presidency Change Expectations of Federal Responsiveness, Not Beliefs About Federalism: Evidence from Disaster Relief and the 2024 U.S. Election.”
Muñoz, Manuela, Sara Constantino, Alicia Cooperman, Allison Deese, Carol Goldsmith, and Arnold Vedlitz. “Who Participates in Local Politics? Linking Flood Exposure, Risk Awareness, Social Capital and Urban Infrastructure Provision.”
Water Politics: Equity, Collective Action, and Water Resources
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Cooperman, Alicia, Jenny Linder Rempel, Ellis Adjei Adams, Alida Cantor, Manuela Muñoz Fuerte, Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, Justin Stoler, Nicole J. Wilson, Cassandra L. Workman, Melissa Beresford, Leila Harris, Linda E. Méndez-Barrientos, Sameer H. Shah, and Amber Wutich. 2025. “(De)centralized Water Futures: Clarifying Key Dimensions of Infrastructure, Governance, and Operations.” WIREs Water 12 (5): e70035. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.70035
Jepson, Wendy, Amber Wutich, Amber L. Pearson, Melissa Beresford, Alexandra Brewis, Alicia Cooperman, Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, Jenny Rempel, Asher Y. Rosinger, and Justin Stoler. 2025. “Beyond Peak Water Security: Household-Scale Experiential Metrics Can Offer New Perspectives on Contemporary Water Insecurity in the United States.” PLoS Water 4 (8): e0000413. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000413
Wutich, Amber, Patrick Thomson, Wendy Jepson, Justin Stoler, Alicia Cooperman, James Doss-Gollin, Anish Jantrania, Alex Mayer, Jami Nelson-Nunez, Shane Walker, and Paul Westerhoff. 2023. “MAD Water: Integrating Modular, Adaptive, and Decentralized Approaches for Water Security in the Climate Change Era.” WIREs Water e1680. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1680
Cooperman, Alicia, Alexandra R. McLarty, and Brigitte Seim. 2022. “Drivers of Successful Common Pool Resource Management: A Conjoint Experiment on Groundwater Management in Brazil.” Global Environmental Change 74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102512
Cooperman, Alicia, Alexandra R. McLarty, and Brigitte Seim. 2021. “Understanding Uptake of Community Groundwater Monitoring in Rural Brazil.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (29). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2015174118
Slough, Tara, Daniel Rubenson, Ro’ee Levy, Francisco Alpizar Rodriguez, María Bernedo del Carpio, Mark T. Buntaine, Darin Christensen, Alicia Cooperman, Sabrina Eisenbarth, Paul J. Ferraro, Louis Graham, Alexandra C. Hartman, Jacob Kopas, Sasha McLarty, Anouk S. Rigterink, Cyrus Samii, Brigitte Seim, Johannes Urpelainen, and Bing Zhang. 2021. “Adoption of Community Monitoring Improves Common Pool Resource Management Across Contexts.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (29). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2015367118
Book Chapters
Cooperman, Alicia, Alexandra R. McLarty, and Brigitte Seim. 2025. “Análise da Adopção de um Programa de Monitoramento Comunitário das Águas Subterrâneas.” In Experiências da Insegurança Hídrica no Brasil: Teórico-Metodológicas e Configurações Sociais, edited by Jader de Oliveira Santos, Vanessa Empinotti, Paula Tomaz, and Wendy Jepson. Coleção Metrópoles, Expressão Gráfica e Editora. In press.
Under Review
Cooperman, Alicia, Manuela Muñoz Fuerte, James Doss-Gollin, Miguel Méndez-Alvarado, and Alex Mayer. “Before and After Piped Water Expansion: Water Security, Water Use Patterns, and Trust in Water Quality.” Under review at Water Resources Research.
Methodology: Tools and Applications for Political Science and Environmental Studies
Books
Bahador, Babak, Alicia Cooperman, Alexander Hamilton, Craig Hammer, Tara Slough, and Erin York. Monitoring & Evaluation Manual in Fragile States. Routledge. Under review after revision.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Stoler, Justin, Adam Enders, Wendy Jepson, Amber Pearson, Alexandra Brewis, Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, Melissa Beresford, Alicia Cooperman, Jenny Rempel, Casey Klofstad, Joseph Uscinski, and Amber Wutich. 2026. “Validation and Psychological Correlates of a Water Provider Trust Scale for the United States.” ACS ES&T Water 6 (2): 936–945. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.5c01005
Pearson, Amber L., Wendy Jepson, Alexandra Brewis, Jeremiah Osborne-Gowey, Melissa Beresford, Asher Rosinger, Justin Stoler, and the HWISE USA Consortium. 2025. “A Protocol for the Development of a Validated Scale of Household Water Insecurity in the United States: HWISE-USA.” PLoS One 20 (8): e0330087. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330087
Cooperman, Alicia Dailey. 2017. “Randomization Inference with Rainfall Data: Using Historical Weather Patterns for Variance Estimation.” Political Analysis 25 (3): 277–288. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2017.17
Book Reviews and Invited Publications
Cooperman, Alicia. 2025. Review of Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities, by Veronica Herrera. Social Change 55 (3): 513–516. https://doi.org/10.1177/00490857251355104
Cooperman, Alicia. 2024. “As Associações Comunitárias e a Política De Base: Votação em Bloco para Responsabilidade Eleitoral.” Red de Estudios sobre Política Subnacional en América Latina. https://sites.google.com/view/redsubnacional/blog/31524-as-associa%C3%A7%C3%B5es-comunit%C3%A1rias-e-a-pol%C3%ADtica-de-base?authuser=0
Cooperman, Alicia. 2020. Review of Transforming Rural Water Governance: The Road from Resource Management to Political Activism in Nicaragua, by Sarah T. Romano. Perspectives on Politics 18 (4): 1249–1250. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592720003011
Cooperman, Alicia. 2016. “(Un)Natural Disasters: Distributive Politics in Northeast Brazil.” MPSA Blog, September 13. https://blog.mpsanet.org/2016/09/13/distributive-politics-in-ne-brazil/