Welcome to Ben Qi's Personal Website

Academic · Research

How do institutions distribute power,
shape participation, and respond to change?

My academic interests lie at the intersection of political institutions, public policy, and political philosophy. Across my research, I ask how institutions distribute power, shape participation, and respond to social and technological change. My work ranges from student organizations and democratic governance to algorithmic accountability, presidential power, and international political economy, combining theoretical inquiry with empirical research.

01

What Makes People Show Up: Tasks and the Performance of Voluntary Organizations

Task Theory · Independent Research · 6,000 words

Why do voluntary organizations survive despite the temptation to free-ride? Drawing on 28 hour-long interviews across 30 student-organization cases, I coded qualitative data, developed an original participation index, and ran regression analysis in R. Formal structure showed little consistent effect — participation tracked access to concrete, attributable, bounded hands-on tasks: "Task Theory."

Read More · Coming soon
0Hour-long interviews
0Organization cases
6,000Words
02

Is Democracy in Crisis?

Neoliberalism Research · 3,000+ words

🏆 Shortlisted · John Locke Institute Global Essay Prize (Politics), 2026

Rather than treating populism as the cause of democratic backsliding, I examine it as a symptom of deeper erosion of popular control under neoliberalism. Drawing on Milnor & Shapley's "Oceanic Games" model, I conceptualize fragmented citizens as "oceanic" players and corporations as powerful "atomic" actors — arguing that deregulation weakens the state's capacity to aggregate citizens into an effective coalition, explaining the post-2008 populist backlash.

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First page of Is Democracy in Crisis 8 pages · PDF
03

Beyond Transparency: Algorithmic Bias, Opacity, and the Right to Understand

Technology Ethics & AI Governance · 2,000 words · Dr. Xuan An Ho, UT Austin

Algorithmic bias is often treated as a technical problem requiring a technical fix. I argue bias is inseparable from human processes of induction, classification, and judgment encoded into data and models — so technical debiasing alone is insufficient. I propose a legal framework centered not merely on transparency, but on intelligibility: accessible investigation, understandable reasoning, meaningful appeal.

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First page of Beyond Transparency 9 pages · PDF
04

The Constitutional Expansion of American Presidential Power during the Cold War

3,500 words

94/100🥇 Ranked 1st of 17

How can constitutional power expand without the Constitution itself changing? Drawing on 15 primary and 5 secondary sources, I argue the Cold War strengthened presidential authority through the normalization of constitutional reinterpretation rather than formal amendment — repeated crises made speed, secrecy, and executive discretion routine.

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First page of the Presidential Power research paper 13 pages · PDF
05

Trade Security in an Era of Deglobalization: The Case of Cambodia

Deglobalization Research · 1,200 words

As globalization fragments, smaller economies face growing exposure to trade disruption and geopolitical pressure. Using Cambodia as a case study, I examine structural trade vulnerabilities and argue for deeper ASEAN integration as a two-stage strategy: strengthening collective bargaining power short-term, while creating conditions for industrial upgrading and economic resilience long-term.

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First page of the Cambodia trade security research paper 6 pages · PDF