About

Paul Joseph Schuler is an Associate Professor who specializes in political institutions and Southeast Asian politics. His research focuses on Vietnamese politics, and he has contributed to the understanding of this field through publications in reputable journals such as the American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of East Asian Studies. His work has also been featured in mainstream media outlets including the New York Times and BBC. Currently, he is working on a book that explores the evolution of the Vietnam National Assembly, further advancing scholarship in Vietnamese political development.

Research topics

• Political science
• Political economy
• Economics
• Public administration
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Founding Leaders and National Narratives: Anthropomorphism and the Roots of Founding Leader Personality Cults in Three East Asian Cases

  Comparative Political Studies · 2025-10-07

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Founding leader personality cults are crucial components of national narratives. Yet, relatively little research examines how they emerge. A small political science literature argues that cults follow a personalization of power to dominate society and induce loyalty . We argue this conceptualization explains late-stage cults. We theorize that rival elites sometimes intentionally promote a leader’s image prior to personalization to generate emotional connections to the masses. We call these cults of legitimation. To explain why elites concede to cults that could erode their own power, we apply social psychology research to argue that personality cults can generate greater emotional attachment to an abstract group – in this case a nation – by anthropomorphizing it. Symbols alone are less powerful in this regard. Using Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, we process trace cult emergence to demonstrate the plausibility of our theory. Our paper provides a new perspective on a visible, undertheorized component of authoritarian rule.

  PublisherDOI

• Informal Taxation, Co‐Production and Political Gender Bias: A Theory of Voter Bias Against Women Village Leaders

  Governance · 2025-05-06

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Are voters particularly biased against women holding village leadership positions? We initially theorize that traditional ceremonial roles drive anti‐woman bias for rural village leadership positions. Our results partially align with expectations. While we find that voters in rural areas are more biased against women as village leaders than for other positions, our results and follow‐up interviews suggest a different mechanism. We find that women face heightened voter bias because village leadership positions require personal authority, stereotypically seen as a male trait necessary to mobilize co‐production. Support for this explanation comes from three waves of a massive, nationally representative survey in Vietnam. The findings demonstrate that women face high levels of bias against becoming village leaders in rural areas, where personal authority is important. This suggests that bias against women village leaders is rooted in the need for informal taxation, distinguishing it from biases against women in other positions.

  PublisherDOI

• Climate information on sea level rise risk influences individuals' migration preferences in Vietnam

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2025-10-29 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  An important yet understudied factor in climate adaptation is information: are people informed about future climate-related risks, and does adaptation depend on this knowledge? Focusing on whether communication about projected sea level rise affects the stated likelihood of migration, here we developed a randomized information experiment implemented in a face-to-face survey of >7,000 respondents across Vietnam. We find that providing a text-based information treatment regarding Vietnam’s exposure to projected sea level rise increases respondents’ stated likelihood of migration, including respondents at low-risk. A map information treatment leads to a more targeted effect, only increasing the likelihood of migration among respondents in high-risk areas. Finally, adding doubt to the treatments, by mentioning an official repudiation of the information, does not reduce the treatments’ impact. Our findings are inconsistent with the assumption that people are fully informed about climate risks and highlight the importance of spatially precise information in facilitating climate adaptation. In Vietnam, providing text-based information about exposure to projected sea level rise increases respondents stated likelihood of migration, with maps prompting more targeted responses, according to a large-scale survey experiment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Signal Received? Authoritarian Elections and the Salience of Autocrats

  2024-05-15

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding

  A large literature on authoritarian elections suggests they allow autocrats to signal strength while also acting as focal points for opposition. These theories rest on the assumption that authoritarian elections attract the public's attention, but we know little about how attention shifts in these elections and toward whom. We expect that elections should increase the salience of both autocrats and their opponents, and we argue that opponents may gain nearly as much attention as autocrats despite restrictions inherent to these political systems. We confirm these patterns using Google Trends search data, which shows that opponents experience average boosts almost as large as those for autocrats. These increases are substantively large enough to indicate that opponents, who are typically starved of attention, attract similar public interest during election periods as autocrats do in non-electoral periods. The findings contribute to understanding how elections create opportunities but also risks for autocrats.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gender and Clientelism: Do Expectations of Patronage Penalize Women Candidates in Legislative Elections?

  Comparative Political Studies · 2023-09-30 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  How does the salience of clientelism in politics impact voter support for women legislative candidates? Existing research finds little bias against women legislative candidates in survey experiments. Where bias exists, it is due to “role congruity,” where voters penalize women because of a perceived lack of specific traits or issue preferences suitable for the position. Building on existing work, I theorize that the ability to deliver patronage is a “role” voters might find stereotypically incongruous with women. Using two waves of a nationally representative survey in Vietnam, I generate preregistered predictions about the impact of a clientelism prime on bias against women legislative candidates. I then test the prediction, with results showing that when clientelism is primed, bias against women candidates increases. These results provide evidence that clientelism has gendered effects on political representation. It also theorizes an additional “role” that could penalize women at the polls.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: Gender and Clientelism: Do Expectations of Patronage Penalize Women Candidates in Legislative Elections?

  Harvard Dataverse · 2023-07-28

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How does the salience of clientelism in politics impact voter support for women legislative candidates? Existing research finds little bias against women legislative candidates in survey experiments. Where bias exists, it is due to “role congruity”, where voters penalize women because of a perceived lack of specific traits or issue preferences suitable for the position. Building on existing work, I theorize that the ability to deliver patronage is a “role” voters might find stereotypically incongruous with women. Using two waves of a nationally representative survey in Vietnam, I generate pre-registered predictions about the impact of a clientelism prime on bias against women legislative candidates. I then test the prediction, with results showing that when clientelism is primed, bias against women candidates increases. These results provide evidence that clientelism has gendered effects on political representation. It also theorizes an additional “role” that could penalize women at the polls.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconsidering the Rubber Stamp Thesis: A Consolidation Theory of Oil Expropriations and Legislatures in Party-based Autocracies

  Studies in Comparative International Development · 2022-05-16 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Signal received? Authoritarian elections and the salience of autocrats

  Electoral Studies · 2022-02-07 · 8 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Vietnam in 2021

  Asian Survey · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  COVID-19 and the Party Congress dominated the headlines in Vietnam in 2021. This essay reviews the leadership changes after the Party Congress and the challenges the new leaders faced in confronting the Delta variant of COVID-19. It also considers other economic challenges that have simmered under the surface, such as its approach to securing infrastructure funding, particularly in the energy sector. It concludes by considering Vietnam’s international posture relating to the US and China.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conclusion Curbing Our Expectations for the VNA, Single-Party Legislatures

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2021-01-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Edmund Malesky

  15 shared

• Dimitar D. Gueorguiev

  Syracuse University

  14 shared

• Kai Ostwald

  University of British Columbia

  12 shared

• Raphael Cunha

  King's College London

  10 shared

• Scott Williamson

  10 shared

• Anh Tran

  4 shared

• Le Dang Trung

  University of Copenhagen

  2 shared

• Ian Hinsdale

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D, Political Science

  University of California San Diego

  2014

• BA, Government and Politics

  University of Maryland

  2005