Research Portfolio | Political Science 

A common piece of received wisdom about the Cold War is that the spread of Western culture helped bring down the Berlin Wall: Exposure to Western television shows, the idea goes, demonstrated to East Germans, among others, what they were missing by not living in a free society, and loosened the hold of that country’s Communist government on its people. It is an appealing hypothesis. But is it true?

Several years ago, political scientist Jens Hainmueller figured out a way to test it. 

More