About

Michael Tomz is the William Bennett Munro Professor in Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. His academic role is associated with the Program in International Relations at Stanford University. The information provided does not include specific details about his research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Psychology
• Political economy
• Social psychology
• Computer Security
• Public relations
• Economics
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Race, Democracy, and Public Support for War

  American Political Science Review · 2025-10-08

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Studies have found that voters in democratic countries are far more reluctant to use military force against democracies than against nondemocracies. This pattern may help explain why democracies almost never wage war against other democracies. In an important contribution, Rathbun, Parker, and Pomeroy (2025) propose that the apparent democratic peace in public opinion is an artifact of failing to account for race. Rather than democracy itself influencing support for war, they argue, the term “democracy” cues assumptions about the adversary’s racial composition, and those racialized assumptions are the true drivers of support for war. We reevaluate RPP’s evidence, concluding that their data do not support their predictions. In fact, their novel experiments provide powerful evidence that democracy affects support for war, independent of race. Our findings contribute to major debates about both regime type and race in international relations, as well as the design and interpretation of survey experiments.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How persuasive is AI-generated propaganda?

  PNAS Nexus · 2024-02-01 · 106 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Can large language models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), generate persuasive propaganda? We conducted a preregistered survey experiment of US respondents to investigate the persuasiveness of news articles written by foreign propagandists compared to content generated by GPT-3 davinci (a large language model). We found that GPT-3 can create highly persuasive text as measured by participants' agreement with propaganda theses. We further investigated whether a person fluent in English could improve propaganda persuasiveness. Editing the prompt fed to GPT-3 and/or curating GPT-3's output made GPT-3 even more persuasive, and, under certain conditions, as persuasive as the original propaganda. Our findings suggest that propagandists could use AI to create convincing content with limited effort.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity

  Science · 2024-10-17 · 99 citations

  articleOpen access

  = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans' partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices-most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans' views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse-which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study's findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity

  Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2024-10-31

  articleOpen access

  Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans' partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices-most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans' views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse-which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study's findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Domestic Political Costs of Soliciting Foreign Electoral Intervention

  The Journal of Politics · 2024-09-17 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  When would voters punish politicians for soliciting foreign help to win an election? We used US-based survey experiments to study this question. Our experiments offer a mixed message about public willingness to defend democracy against external interference. On the one hand, the vast majority of voters—from both major parties—were unwilling to defect from candidates who solicited. Candidates could further reduce the domestic costs of soliciting by approaching allies rather than nonallies, refraining from explicit quid pro quos, recruiting elites to defend their behavior, and cultivating uncertainty. On the other hand, candidates who sought foreign help lost support on average, and in many situations, the penalty could be sizable enough to sway an election. Our experiments therefore suggest that a small but consequential sliver of the electorate would punish candidates who solicit and could influence whether and how politicians invite foreign meddling in future races.

  PublisherDOI

• Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity

  2023 · 43 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy (n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans’ partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices – most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans’ views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse – which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study’s findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How NATO Membership Transforms Public Support for War

  2023-03-25

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How do military alliances affect public support for defending targets of aggression? We explore this question in the context of current debates about NATO expansion. We fielded an experiment on 14,000 voters in 13 NATO member-states involving a hypothetical scenario in which Russia attacked a target country, and we randomly varied whether the target was a member of NATO. Contrary to the view of alliances as empty gestures, we found that voters in every country were far more willing to use military force to defend each target when the target was in NATO. We also uncovered important heterogeneity across targets and within domestic audiences. These findings have profound implications for understanding the effects of NATO and debates about NATO enlargement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research can help to tackle AI-generated disinformation

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2023-11-20 · 54 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization transforms public support for war

  PNAS Nexus · 2023-07-01 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  How do military alliances affect public support for defending targets of aggression? We studied this question by fielding an experiment on 14,000 voters in 13 member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Our experiment involved a hypothetical scenario in which Russia attacked a target country. We randomly varied the identity of the target (Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, or Sweden), and whether the target was a member of NATO at the time of the attack. We found that voters in every member country were far more willing to use military force to defend each target when the target was in NATO, than when the target was outside the alliance. The expansion of NATO could, therefore, transform European security by altering the likelihood and scale of future wars. We also uncovered important heterogeneity across targets: the benefits of joining NATO were considerably larger for Bosnia and Georgia than for Finland and Sweden, since most voters in NATO countries would defend Finland and Sweden even if they remained outside the alliance. Finally, the effect of NATO was much stronger among voters who perceived NATO as valuable for their own country. Rhetorical attacks on NATO could, therefore, undermine the alliance by eroding the public's willingness to defend other members, whereas rhetoric highlighting the benefits of NATO could bolster defense and deterrence. These findings advance knowledge about the effects of alliances, while also informing policy debates about the value and size of NATO.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can AI Write Persuasive Propaganda?

  2023-04-08 · 11 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Can large language models, a form of artificial intelligence, write persuasive propaganda? We conducted a pre-registered survey experiment to investigate the persuasiveness of news articles written by foreign propagandists compared to content written by GPT-3 davinci (a large language model). We found that GPT-3 can write highly persuasive text. We investigated whether a person fluent in English could improve propaganda persuasiveness: editing the prompt fed to GPT-3 or curating GPT-3's output made GPT-3 even more persuasive, and, under certain conditions, as persuasive as the original propaganda. Our findings suggest that if propagandists get access to GPT-3-like models, they could create convincing content with limited effort.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: The Democratic Peace - An Experimental Approach

  NSF · $20k · 2014–2018

• CAREER: Credible Commitments in International Relations

  NSF · $400k · 2006–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Gary King

  Harvard University Press

  45 shared

• Jason Wittenberg

  26 shared

• Jessica Weeks

  21 shared

• Jason Wittenberg

  17 shared

• Jon Pevehouse

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  13 shared

• Mark L. J. Wright

  13 shared

• Jeffry Frieden

  Columbia University

  11 shared

• Gary King

  10 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Stanford University

  1999

• M.A., Political Science

  Stanford University

  1995

• B.A., Political Science

  Harvard University

  1992