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Browsing by Author "Becher, Michael"

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A guilt-free strategy increases self-reported non-compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures: Experimental evidence from 12 countries
(PLOS, 2021-04-21) Daoust, Jean François; Bélanger, Éric; Dassonneville, Ruth; Lachapelle, Erick; Nadeau, Richard; Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Studies of citizens’ compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures routinely rely on survey data. While such data are essential, public health restrictions provide clear signals of what is socially desirable in this context, creating a potential source of response bias in self-reported measures of compliance. In this research, we examine whether the results of a guilt-free strategy recently proposed to lessen this constraint are generalizable across twelve countries, and whether the treatment effect varies across subgroups. Our findings show that the guilt-free strategy is a useful tool in every country included, increasing respondents’ proclivity to report non-compliance by 9 to 16 percentage points. This effect holds for different subgroups based on gender, age and education. We conclude that the inclusion of this strategy should be the new standard for survey research that aims to provide crucial data on the current pandemic.
Addressing vaccine hesitancy: experimental evidence from nine high-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic
(BMJ Journals, 2023-09-22) Galasso, Vincenzo; Pons, Vincent; Profeta, Paola; McKee, Martin; Stuckler, David; Becher, Michael; Brouard, Sylvain; Foucault, Martial; French National Research Agency ; French region Nouvelle Aquitaine; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
We study the impact of public health messages on intentions to vaccinate and vaccination uptakes, especially among hesitant groups. We performed an experiment comparing the effects of egoistic and altruistic messages on COVID-19 vaccine intentions and behaviour. We administered different messages at random in a survey of 6379 adults in December 2020, following up with participants in the nationally representative survey Citizens' Attitudes Under COVID-19 Project covering nine high-income countries (Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the USA). Four alternative interventions were tested, based on narratives of (1) self-protection, (2) protecting others, (3) reducing health risks and (4) economic protection. We measure vaccination intentions in the December 2020 survey and elicit actual vaccination behaviour by respondents in the June/July 2021 survey. Messages conveying self-protection had no effect on vaccine intentions but altruistic messages, emphasising protecting other individuals (0.022, 95% CI -0.004 to 0.048), population health (0.030, 95% CI 0.003 to 0.056) and the economy (0.038, 95% CI 0.013 to 0.064) had substantially stronger effects. These effects were stronger in countries experiencing high COVID-19 mortality (Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, the UK and the USA), where health risks may have been more salient, but weaker and, in several cases, not significant where mortality was low (Australia, Germany and New Zealand). On follow-up at 6 months, these brief communication interventions corresponded to substantially higher vaccination uptake. Our experiments found that commonly employed narratives around self-protection had no effect. However, altruistic messages about protecting individuals, population health and the economy had substantially positive and enduring effects on increasing vaccination intentions. Our results can help structure communication campaigns during pandemics and are likely to generalise to other vaccine-preventable epidemics.
‘Citizens’ Attitudes Under Covid19’ a cross-country panel survey of public opinion in 11 advanced democracies
(Nature Research, 2022) Brouard, Sylvain; Foucault, Martial; Michel, Elie; Becher, Michael; Vasilopoulos, Pavlos; Bono, Pierre Henri; Sormani, Nicolas; Becher, Michael; World Bank Group; Harvard Business School; McGill University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Edinburgh; Agence Nationale de la Recherche; European University Institute; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Bocconi University; Agence Française de Développement; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
This article introduces data collected in the Citizens’ Attitudes Under Covid-19 Project (CAUCP),which surveyed public opinion throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in 11 democracies between March and December 2020. In this paper,we present a unique cross-country panel survey of citizens’ attitudes and behaviors during a worldwide unprecedented health,governance,and economic crisis. This dataset investigates the behavioral and attitudinal consequences of multifaceted Covid19 crisis across time and contexts. In this paper,we describe the design of the CAUCP and the descriptive features of the dataset; we also present promising research prospects. © 2022,The Author(s).
Cognitive Ability, Union Membership, and Voter Turnout
(2019) Stegmueller, Daniel; Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Labor unions are said to in uence elections and public policy by increasing their members’ electoral turnout. But existing research likely overestimates the turnout effect of union membership by ignoring sorting in the labor market. In the presence of a union wage premium, both membership and turnout are shaped by the same (unobserved) factors, such as cognitive ability. To disentangle the union effect from positive selection, we use unique data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It allows us to specify a latent factor potential outcome model with matching on both observable and unobservable individual characteristics. We find that about one-third of the observed union turnout effect is due to selection, more than what previous studies suggest.
Comparative Experimental Evidence on Compliance with Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic
(SSRN, 2020-07-04) Becher, Michael; Stegmueller, Daniel; Brouard, Sylvain; Kerrouche, Eric; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Social distancing is a central public health measure in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, but individuals’ compliance cannot be taken for granted. We use a survey experiment to examine the prevalence of non-compliance with social distancing in nine countries and test pre-registered hypotheses about individual-level characteristics associated with less social distancing. Leveraging a list experiment to control for social desirability bias, we find large cross-national variation in adherence to social distancing guidelines. Compliance varies systematically with COVID-19 fatalities and the strictness of lockdown measures. We also find substantial heterogeneity in the role of individual-level predictors. While there is an ideological gap in social distancing in the US and New Zealand, this is not the case in European countries. Taken together, our results suggest caution when trying to model pandemic health policies on other countries’ experiences. Behavioral interventions targeted towards specific demographics that work in one context might fail in another.
Constraining Ministerial Power: The Impact of Veto Players on Labor Market Reforms in Industrial Democracies, 1973-2000
(Sage, 2009-08-19) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
This article investigates how veto players affect the reform of labor market policies in advanced industrial democracies. Complementing Tsebelis’s veto player model with the assumption of ministerial agenda control within the cabinet, the argument is that the constitutional and partisan distribution of veto power affects the capability of ministers to change the status quo in line with their partisan goals. This claim is tested with panel data on unemployment insurance entitlements and employment protection legislation in 20 OECD countries between 1973 and 2000. The central finding is that veto players constrain the power of ministers, cabinet ministers and prime ministers alike, to pursue their partisan interests. The partisanship of ministers shapes reforms only if the ideological distance between veto players is relatively small, and the influence of ministerial partisanship declines as ideological distance increases.
Dissolution power, confidence votes, and policymaking in parliamentary democracies
(SAGE, 2019-03-01) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
There is striking variation across parliamentary democracies in the power of prime ministers to employ two prominent procedures to resolve legislative conflict: the vote of confidence and the dissolution of parliament. Whereas previous contributions in comparative politics have investigated each of these two fundamental institutions in isolation, I develop a simple unified model to unbundle how this richer variety of institutional configurations shapes political bargaining over policy. The analysis clarifies that the effects of the confidence vote and dissolution power interact. As a consequence, there can be a non-monotonic effect of increasing prime ministers’ formal power on their ability to shape the policy compromise. Counterintuitively, introducing dissolution power makes the prime minister worse off under some conditions. These results suggest new directions for empirical research on the consequences of parliamentary institutions for legislative politics and policy. They also lay analytical foundations for explaining institutional variation and reforms.
Dissolution Threats and Legislative Bargaining
(Wiley, 2014-09-09) Becher, Michael; Christiansen, Flemming Juul; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Chief executives in many parliamentary democracies have the power to dissolve the legislature. Despite a well-developed literature on the endogenous timing of parliamentary elections, political scientists know remarkably little about the strategic use of dissolution power to influence policymaking. To address this gap, we propose and empirically evaluate a theoretical model of legislative bargaining in the shadow of executive dissolution power. The model implies that the chief executive's public support and legislative strength, as well as the time until the next constitutionally mandated election, are important determinants of the use and effectiveness of dissolution threats in policymaking. Analyzing an original time-series data set from a multiparty parliamentary democracy, we find evidence in line with key empirical implications of the model.
Economic Performance, Individual Evaluations, and the Vote: Investigating the Causal Mechanism
(https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1017/S0022381613000959, 2013-10) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
While there are many studies on the impact of the economy on elections, there is little evidence on the full mechanism of economic voting implied by performance-based theories of elections. Addressing the scarcity of evidence on the mechanism, this study provides the first estimates of the linkage between macroeconomic performance, individual economic evaluations, and vote choice. Building on recent advances in the statistical analysis of causal mechanisms, we conduct a causal mediation analysis in a data set covering 151 surveys in 18 countries. We find that the effect of economic performance on the incumbent vote is largely accounted for by voters’ retrospective evaluations of the national economy. The effect is stronger in contexts where policymaking power is concentrated rather than dispersed. Altogether, the results imply that the performance-based channel of voting is more relevant in accounting for election outcomes than suggested by recent individual-level studies.
Electoral Reform and Trade-Offs in Representation
(Cambridge University Press, 2019-03-18) Becher, Michael; Menéndez González, Irene; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
We examine the effect of electoral institutions on two important features of representation that are often studied separately: policy responsiveness and the quality of legislators. Theoretically, we show that while a proportional electoral system is better than a majoritarian one at representing popular preferences in some contexts, this advantage can come at the price of undermining the selection of good politicians. To empirically assess the relevance of this trade-off, we analyze an unusually controlled electoral reform in Switzerland early in the twentieth century. To account for endogeneity, we exploit variation in the intensive margin of the reform, which introduced proportional representation, based on administrative constraints and data on voter preferences. A difference-in-difference analysis finds that higher reform intensity increases the policy congruence between legislators and the electorate and reduces legislative effort. Contemporary evidence from the European Parliament supports this conclusion.
Endogenous Benchmarking and Government Accountability: Experimental Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
(Cambridge University Press, 2024) Becher, Michael; Brouard, Sylvain; Stegmueller, Daniel; Becher, Michael; Duke University; College of Natural Resources and Sciences; Humboldt State University; Agence Nationale de la Recherche; National Research Foundation of Korea; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
When do cross-national comparisons enable citizens to hold governments accountable? According to recent work in comparative politics,benchmarking across borders is a powerful mechanism for making elections work. However,little attention has been paid to the choice of benchmarks and how they shape democratic accountability. We extend existing theories to account for endogenous benchmarking. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a test case,we embedded experiments capturing self-selection and exogenous exposure to benchmark information from representative surveys in France,Germany,and the UK. The experiments reveal that when individuals have the choice,they are likely to seek out congruent information in line with their prior view of the government. Moreover,going beyond existing experiments on motivated reasoning and biased information choice,endogenous benchmarking occurs in all three countries despite the absence of partisan labels. Altogether,our results suggest that endogenous benchmarking weakens the democratic benefits of comparisons across borders. © 2024 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
Endogenous Credible Commitment and Party Competition over Redistribution under Alternative Electoral Institutions
(Wiley, 2015-12-09) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Political parties competing in elections for the power to set public policy face the problem of making credible their policy promises to voters. I argue that this commitment problem crucially shapes party competition over redistribution. The model I develop shows that under majoritarian electoral rules, parties' efforts to achieve endogenous commitment to policies preferred by the middle class lead to different behavior and outcomes than suggested by existing theories, which either assume commitment or rule out endogenous commitment. Thus, left parties can have incentives to respond to rising income inequality by moving to the right in majoritarian systems but not under proportional representation. The model also generates new insights about the anti-left electoral bias often attributed to majoritarian electoral rules, and the strategic use of parliamentary candidates as a commitment device. I find evidence for key implications of this logic using panel data on party positions in 16 parliamentary democracies.
Executive Accountability Beyond Outcomes: Experimental Evidence on Public Evaluations of Powerful Prime Ministers
(Wiley, 2020-09-08) Becher, Michael; Brouard, Sylvain; French National Research Agency; Nouvelle Aquitaine; University Toulouse; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
For valuable comments and discussions, we are grateful to Christian Breunig, Martial Foucault, Victor Gay, Carlo Horz, Patrick Le Bihan, Nolan McCarty, Saurabh Pant, Daniel Pemstein, Leah Rosenzweig, Petra Schleiter, Karine Van Der Straeten, Yannis Vassiliadis, Christopher Wlezien, Christina Zuber as well as conference/seminar participants at APSA (2017), EPSA (2018), IAST/TSE, Sciences Po Paris, the University of Konstanz and the University of Oxford, as well as the anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the “Investissements d'Avenir” program within the framework of the LIEPP center of excellence (ANR11LABX0091, ANR 11 IDEX000502). Financial support from the region Nouvelle Aquitaine (DEMOREG project) is also gratefully acknowledged. Becher gratefully acknowledges IAST funding from the ANR under the Investments for the Future (“Investissements d'Avenir”) program, grant ANR-17-EURE-0010, and from the IDEX-Emergence program at University Toulouse 1 Capitole.
From Anti-vax Intentions to Vaccination: Panel and Experimental Evidence from Nine Countries
(2022-02) Galasso, Vincenzo; Pons, Vincent; Profeta, Paola; Becher, Michael; Brouard, Sylvain; Foucault, Martial; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Millions of people refuse COVID-19 vaccination. Using original data from two surveys in nine OECD countries, we analyze the determinants of anti-vax intentions in December 2020 and show that half of the anti-vax individuals were vaccinated by summer 2021. Vaccinations were more likely among individuals aged 50+, exposed to COVID-19, compliant with public restrictions, more informed on traditional media, trusting scientists, and less concerned about vaccines’ side effects. We run a survey experiment with informational messages. In EU countries, a message about protecting health largely increases vaccinations, even among anti-vax individuals. In the U.K. and U.S., a message about protecting the economy generates similar effects. Our findings suggest that informational campaigns should adopt adequate narratives and address concerns about vaccines’ side effects.
Gender differences in COVID-19 attitudes and behavior: Panel evidence from eight countries
(National Academy of Sciences, 2020-11-03) Galasso, Vincenzo; Pons, Vincent ; Profeta, Paola; Becher, Michael; Brouard, Sylvain; Foucault, Martial ; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
The initial public health response to the breakout of COVID-19 required fundamental changes in individual behavior, such as isolation at home or wearing masks. The effectiveness of these policies hinges on generalized public obedience. Yet, people's level of compliance may depend on their beliefs regarding the pandemic. We use original data from two waves of a survey conducted in March and April 2020 in eight Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (n = 21,649) to study gender differences in COVID-19-related beliefs and behaviors. We show that women are more likely to perceive COVID-19 as a very serious health problem, to agree with restraining public policy measures, and to comply with them. Gender differences in attitudes and behavior are sizable in all countries. They are accounted for neither by sociodemographic and employment characteristics nor by psychological and behavioral factors. They are only partially mitigated for individuals who cohabit or have direct exposure to the virus. We show that our results are not due to differential social desirability bias. This evidence has important implications for public health policies and communication on COVID-19, which may need to be gender based, and it unveils a domain of gender differences: behavioral changes in response to a new risk.
Global Competition, Local Unions, and Political Representation: Disentangling Mechanisms
(SSRN, 2023-01) Becher, Michael; Stegmueller, Daniel; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
While recent scholarship has demonstrated multiple political effects of international trade, less attention has been paid to unbundling the mechanisms through which import competition affects democratic politics. One mechanism, in theory, works through labor unions as domestic countervailing powers shaping legislative responses on compensation and trade votes. We assess the relevance of unions as a mediating variable in the US Congress. For identification, we leverage two distinct sources of exogenous variation, one instrument for import exposure and another for unionization, and combine them in a semiparametric estimator. We find that (i) import competition lowers district-level unionization, (ii) weaker unions lead to less legislative support for compensating economic losers and less opposition to trade deregulation, and (iii) the union mechanism represents a large fraction of the overall effect of import exposure on legislative votes. The results help explain weak compensation and further trade liberalization in the face of rising global competition.
Government Performance and Democracy: Survey Experimental Evidence from 12 Countries during COVID-19
(The University of Chicago Press, 2024-10) Becher, Michael; Longuet Marx, Nicolas; Pons, Vincent ; Brouard, Sylvain; Foucault, Martial; Galasso, Vincenzo; Kerrouche, Eric; León Alfonso, Sandra; Stegmueller, Daniel; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Crises of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic may plausibly affect deep-seated attitudes of a large fraction of citizens. In particular, outcome-oriented theories imply that leaders’ performance in response to such adverse events shapes people’s views about the government and about democracy. To assess these causal linkages empirically, we use a preregistered survey experiment covering 12 countries and 22,500 respondents during the pandemic. Our design enables us to leverage exogenous variation in evaluations of policies and leaders with an instrumental variables strategy. We find that people use information on both health and economic performance when evaluating the government. In turn, dissatisfaction with the government decreases satisfaction with how democracy works, but it does not increase support for nondemocratic alternatives. The results suggest that comparatively bad government performance mainly spurs internal critiques of democracy.
Ideology and compliance with health guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative perspective
(Wiley, 2021-08-30) Becher, Michael; Stegmueller, Daniel; Brouard, Sylvain; Kerrouche, Eric; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
Objective We measure the prevalence of noncompliance with public health guidelines in the COVID-19 pandemic and examine how it is shaped by political ideology across countries. Methods A list experiment of noncompliance and a multi-item scale of health-related behaviors were embedded in a comparative survey of 11,000 respondents in nine OCED countries. We conduct a statistical analysis of the list experiment capturing degrees of noncompliance with social distancing rules and estimate ideological effect heterogeneity. A semiparametric analysis examines the functional form of the relationship between ideology and the propensity to violate public health guidelines. Results Our analyses reveal substantial heterogeneity between countries. Ideology plays an outsized role in the United States. No association of comparable magnitude is found in the majority of the other countries in our study. In many settings, the impact of ideology on health-related behaviors is nonlinear. Conclusion Our results highlight the importance of taking a comparative perspective. Extrapolating the role of ideology from the United States to other advanced industrialized societies might paint an erroneous picture of the scope of possible nonpharmaceutical interventions. Heterogeneity limits the extent to which policymakers can learn from experiences across borders.
Local Union Organization and Law Making in the US Congress
(The University of Chicago Press, 2018-04) Becher, Michael; Stegmueller, Daniel; Käppner, Konstantin; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
The political power of labor unions is a contentious issue in the social sciences. Departing from the dominant focus on membership size, we argue that unions’ influence on national law making is based to an important degree on their local organization. We delineate the novel hypothesis that the horizontal concentration of union members within electoral districts matters. To test it, we draw on administrative records and map the membership size and concentration of local unions to districts of the US House of Representatives, 2003–12. We find that, controlling for membership size, representatives from districts with less concentrated unions have more liberal voting records than their peers. This concentration effect survives numerous district controls and relaxing OLS assumptions. While surprising for several theoretical perspectives, it is consistent with theories based on social incentives. These results have implications for our broader understanding of political representation and the role of groups in democratic politics.
Organized Interests and the Mechanisms behind Unequal Representation in Legislatures
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-12-07) Becher, Michael; Stegmueller, Daniel; Lupu, Noam; Pontusson, Jonas; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
How do organized interests contribute to unequal representation in contemporary democracies? We discuss two central channels: the selection of partisan legislators through elections and postelectoral influence via lobbying. We argue that these channels are potentially complementary strategies used by rational actors. Employing a game-theoretic model and simulations of interest group influence on legislative voting, we show that this logic may explain interest group strategies in unequal times. Our model implies that interest group strategies vary with party polarization and it highlights a challenge for empirical research on unequal representation and the literature on lobbying. Using statistical models commonly used in the literature to study biases in legislative voting or policy adoption, researchers are likely to overstate the relevance of elections as a channel through which groups affect legislative responsiveness and understate the role interest groups’ postelectoral influence. Our results stress the importance of theoretical models capturing the strategic behavior of political actors as a guiding light for the empirical study of mechanisms of unequal representation.

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