Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell

Senior Lecturer and Program Coordinator

Johns Hopkins University

I am a Senior Lecturer and Program Coordinator with the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University. I received my PhD in Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022. My research interests focus on authoritarian nostalgia and related political behavior in post-authoritarian democracies, especially East Asian countries. My dissertation investigates why individual voters feel nostalgic for an authoritarian past and vote for political parties that are linked to the past. My research has appeared or is forthcoming at Party Politics and Political Communication.

My dissertation research is supported by various sources, including a Taiwan Fellowship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan and a Doctoral Fellowship from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

Interests

  • Authoritarian legacies
  • Comparative political behavior
  • Personality and political attitudes
  • Post-authoritarian democracies

Education

  • PhD in Political Science, 2022

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • MA in Political Science, 2015

    Korea University

  • BA in Political Science; Economics, 2011

    Korea University

Dissertation Project

Voting for Nostalgia?: Authoritarian Legacies, Social Identity, and Political Behavior in Post-Authoritarian Democracies

More than three decades since the Third Wave of democratization, authoritarian nostalgia still drives individual political attitudes and related behavior. I investigate the underlying determinants of authoritarian nostalgia with a special focus on political psychology and further examine this nostalgia’s behavioral implications. I argue that the presence of authoritarian nostalgia can produce significant effects on social identity, partisan attachment, candidate preferences, and more.

Publications

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2022). Authoritarian Legacies and Partisan Bias in Performance-based Voting (R&R). Journal of Election, Public Opinion and Parties.

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2022). Alternative Ideological Legacies of Authoritarianism: Pro-dictator Bias in Post-developmental States. Party Politics.

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, Nikki Usher (2021). Putting the Place Back in Understanding Local News Loss: Why Where the News is Lost (and how we measure it) Matters (Forthcoming). Political Communication.

Research

Authoritarian legacies

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2022). Open to an Authoritarian Past?: Dispositional Foundations of Authoritarian Nostalgia. Under Review.

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2022). Varieties of Authoritarian Legacies. Work in Progress.

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, Emily Sallenback (2022). Words of nostalgia: How do citizens praise a fallen dictator?. Work in Progress.

Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2021). Voting for Nostalgia?: Authoritarian Nostalgia, Social Identity, and Political Behavior. Under Review.

Research

Political Communication

Nikki Usher, Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell (2022). How Loud Does the Watchdog Bark? A Reconsideration of Local Journalism, News Non-profits, and Political Corruption. Under Review.

Research

Work in Progress

Right in the past, left in the future?: partisanship and politics of nostalgia
Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell
Religiosity and economic voting in Indonesia
Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, Matthew Winters

Teaching

Johns Hopkins University, Advanced Academic Programs

Instructor

  • AS470.681 Probability and Statistics (Summer 2022)
  • AS470.768 Programming and Data Management (Summer 2022)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Instructor

  • PS230 Intro to Political Research (Spring 2021, Spring 2022)
  • PS241 Comparative Politics in Developing Nations (Online, Spring 2020)
  • GLBL296 Global Politics of Intellectual Property Protection (Spring 2019)
  • PS100 Intro to Political Science (Online, Spring 2019)

Teaching Assistant

I received the A. Belden Fields Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching as a Teaching Assisant in 2019. Teaching evaluations are available upon request.

  • PS231 Strategic Models (Fall 2020, Fall 2021)
  • PS241 Comparative Politics in Developing Nations (Spring 2018, Fall 2018)
  • PS220 Intro to Public Policy (Fall 2017)
  • PS322 Law and Public Policy (Spring 2017)
  • PS321 Principles of Public Policy (Fall 2016)

ICPSR, University of Michigan

Teaching Assistant

  • Causal Inference for the Social Sciences (Summer 2021)