I am an Associate Professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. I study public opinion and democratic governance with a focus on managing immigration, ethnic tensions, and other demographic issues in high-income countries. I specialize in computational and experimental methods, drawing on diverse data sources from surveys to historical records. My book In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular (Columbia University Press, 2025) examines under what conditions most people would accept freer immigration despite their biases.

My research has been published in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. It has been recognized by leading grants and awards, including from the Russell Sage Foundation, American Political Science Association, and Department of Defense Army Research Office. I have also written for The Washington Post and Foreign Affairs, and been featured in The New York Times, Economist, Atlantic, and Financial Times, as well as by think tanks such as the Bipartisan Policy Center, Center for Global Development, and Niskanen Center.

Currently, I am the author of the Popular by Design newsletter and a contributor at Good Authority. Prior to my appointment at Notre Dame, I was an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. I received my joint Ph.D. in Politics and Social Policy from Princeton University. I can be reached at akustov [at] nd [dot] edu. You can find my CV here.

Select Articles

Kustov, Alexander and Michelangelo Landgrave. 2025. Immigration is Difficult?! Informing Voters About Immigration Policy Fosters Pro-immigration Views. Journal of Experimental Political Science.

Most Americans know surprisingly little about how the immigration system actually works. In this study, we ran a national survey experiment showing people just how difficult and burdensome the legal immigration process really is—through short, verifiable narratives. It turns out that simply informing voters about these realities shifted their views in a pro-immigration direction. Unlike past efforts that tried to correct misperceptions about immigrants themselves, explaining the process proved far more effective at changing minds.

Kustov, Alexander. 2025. Beyond Changing Minds: Raising the Issue Importance of Expanding Legal Immigration. Perspectives on Politics. 23 (4): 1444-1463.

Even when polls show majority support for immigration, anti-immigration voters tend to care about the issue much more—which gives them outsized political influence. This study tested whether that gap can be closed. Using a large national experiment, I showed that presenting verifiable arguments about the benefits of expanding legal immigration not only shifted opinions but, critically, made pro-immigration voters care more about the issue. The treatment didn't backfire by mobilizing the other side, suggesting it could work as a broad public information campaign.

Kustov, Alexander, Dillon Laaker, and Cassidy Reller. 2021. The Stability of Immigration Attitudes: Evidence and Implications. Journal of Politics. 83 (4): 1478-1494.

Can people's views on immigration be changed by events, economic downturns, or political campaigns? Drawing on nine panel datasets, we find that immigration attitudes are remarkably stable over time—even through major shocks. This challenges a large body of research that assumes attitudes shift with changing circumstances. Instead, the evidence points toward deep-rooted predispositions formed through socialization. The implication: scholars should be cautious about attributing political change to shifting immigration opinions, because those opinions barely budge.