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Browsing Research Articles by Department "Comparative Politics"
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Publication 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/02jjdwm75Studies 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.Publication 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/02jjdwm75We 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.Publication Attitudes, Ideological Associations and the Left–Right Divide in Latin America(Sage, 2012-04-01) Wiesehomeier, Nina; Doyle, David; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Do Latin American citizens share a common conception of the ideological left–right distinction? And if so, is this conception linked to individuals’ ideological self-placement? Selecting questions from the 2006 Latinobarómetro survey based on a core definition of the left–right divide rooted in political theory and philosophy, this paper addresses these questions. We apply joint correspondence analysis to explore whether citizens who relate to the same ideological identification also share similar and coherent convictions and beliefs that reflect the ideological content of the left-right distinction. Our analysis indicates that theoretical conceptions about the roots of, and responsibility for, inequality in society, together with the translation of these beliefs into attitudes regarding the state versus market divide, distinguish those who self-identify with the left and those who self-identify with the right.Publication Bureaucratic Politics: Blind Spots and Opportunities in Political Science(Annual Reviews Inc., 2023) Brierley, Sarah; Lowande, Kenneth; Potter, Rachel Augustine; Toral, Guillermo; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Bureaucracy is everywhere. Unelected bureaucrats are a key link between government and citizens,between policy and implementation. Bureaucratic politics constitutes a growing share of research in political science. But the way bureaucracy is studied varies widely,permitting theoretical and empirical blind spots as well as opportunities for innovation. Scholars of American politics tend to focus on bureaucratic policy making at the national level,while comparativists often home in on local implementation by street-level bureaucrats. Data availability and professional incentives have reinforced these subfield-specific blind spots over time.We highlight these divides in three prominent research areas: the selection and retention of bureaucratic personnel,oversight of bureaucratic activities,and opportunities for influence by actors external to the bureaucracy. Our survey reveals how scholars from the American and comparative politics traditions can learn from one another. Copyright © 2023 by the author(s).Publication Can Descriptive Representation Help the Right Win Votes from the Poor? Evidence from Brazil(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2023) Frey, Anderson; Desai, Zuheir; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75The electoral success of the Right in poor nations is typically attributed to nonpolicy appeals such as clientelism. Candidate profiles are usually ignored because if voters value class-based descriptive representation,it should be the Left that uses it. In this article,we develop and test a novel theory of policy choice and candidate selection that defies this conventional wisdom: it is the Right that capitalizes on descriptive representation in high-poverty areas. The Right is only competitive in poor regions when it matches the Left's pro-poor policies. To credibly shift its position,it nominates candidates who are descriptively closer to the poor. Using a regression discontinuity design in Brazilian municipal elections,we show that Right-wing mayors spend less on the poor than Left-wing mayors only in low-poverty municipalities. In high-poverty municipalities,not only does the Right match the Left's policies,it also does so while nominating less educated candidates. © 2021 The Authors. American Journal of Political Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Midwest Political Science Association.Publication ‘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/02jjdwm75This 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).Publication Competence versus Priorities: Negative Electoral Responses to Education Quality in Brazil(Harvard, 2020-05-19) Toral, Guillermo; Boas, Taylor; Hidalgo, Daniel; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Do voters reward politicians for the quality of public services? We address this question by studying voters’ responses to signals of municipal school quality in Brazil, a setting particularly favorable to electoral accountability. Findings from a regression discontinuity design and a field experiment are strikingly consistent. Contrary to expectations, signals of school quality decrease electoral support for the local incumbent. However, we find the expected effect among citizens for whom school quality should be most salient—parents with children in municipal schools. Using an online survey experiment, we argue that voters who do not value education interpret school quality as an indicator of municipal policy priorities and perceive trade-offs with other services. Voters may hold politicians accountable not only for their competence but also for their representation of potentially conflicting interests—a fact that complicates the simple logic behind many accountability interventions.Publication Conditional Populist Party Support The Role of Dissatisfaction and Incumbency(Cambridge University Press, 2025-02-03) Wiesehomeier, Nina; Ruth Lovell, Saskia ; Singer, Matthew; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Populists emerge when distrust of state institutions or dissatisfaction with democracy convince voters that claims about conspiring elites blocking the general will are valid. We propose that these dynamics change when populists are incumbents; once they command institutions, their sustained support becomes contingent upon trust in the new institutional order, and they are held accountable for making people think democracy is working well. Newly collected data on party populism and survey data from Latin America show that support for populist parties in the region is conditioned by satisfaction with democracy as well as the incumbency status of populists. Dissatisfied voters support populist opposition parties, but support for populist incumbents is higher among those satisfied with democracy and its institutions. While democratic deficits and poor governance provide openings for populists, populists are held accountable for institutional outcomes.Publication 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/02jjdwm75This 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.Publication Corruption, Opportunity Networks, and Gender: Stereotypes of Female Politicians’ Corruptibility(Oxford Academy, 2020) Wiesehomeier, Nina; Verge, Tània; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Given the gender stereotype that women are more ethical than men, people should assess female politicians as being less corruptible. Yet information about access to networks suggests that opportunities to engage in unethical behavior may counter this perception. Using a conjoint analysis in a nationally representative survey in Spain, a country shaken by corruption scandals, we asked respondents to identify the more corruptible politician between two hypothetical local councilors by imagining an investor willing to offer a bribe to advance business interests. Results indicate that female politicians do symbolically stand for honesty. However, this assessment is offset by embeddedness cues signaling a woman politician’s access to opportunity networks. We discuss our findings in light of instrumentalist arguments for an increase of women in politics as a means to combat corruption.Publication Cross-country evidence on the impact of decentralisation and school autonomy on educational performance and school autonomy on educational performance(OECD Publising, 2019-03-26) Lastra Anadón, Carlos; Mukherjee, Sonia; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75How do administrative and fiscal decentralisation relate to education system performance? The question is answered by exploiting a panel with several different measures of fiscal decentralisation: a measure of administrative decentralisation, as well as a measure of school autonomy (using six waves of PISA). These measures are related to educational outcomes, measured by PISA score country averages. The panel includes year fixed effects and multiple country covariates. Overall, a positive relationship is found linking administrative and fiscal decentralisation with performance, as measured by PISA tests. School autonomy is also positively related with educational outcomes, strengthening the estimated effects of administrative and fiscal decentralisation.Publication “Deservingness” and Public Support for Universal Public Goods: A Survey Experiment(Oxford academic, 2023-04-03) Lastra Anadón, Carlos; Gift, Thomas; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Voters support less spending on means-tested entitlements when they perceive beneficiaries as lacking motivation to work and pay taxes. Yet do concerns about the motivations of “undeserving” beneficiaries also extend to universal public goods (UPGs) that are free and available to all citizens? Lower spending on UPGs poses a particular trade-off: it lessens subsidization of “unmotivated” beneficiaries, but at the expense of reducing the ideal levels of UPGs that voters personally can access. Studies suggest that individuals will sacrifice their preferred amounts of public goods when beneficiaries who do not pay taxes try to access these goods, but it is unclear whether they distinguish based on motivations. To analyze this question, we field a nationally representative survey experiment in the UK that randomly activates some respondents to think about users of the country's universal National Health Service as either “motivated” or “unmotivated” noncontributors. Although effect sizes were modest and spending preferences remained high across the board, results show that respondents support less spending on the NHS when activated to think of users as “unmotivated” noncontributors. These findings suggest how the deservingness heuristic may shape public attitudes toward government spending, regardless of whether benefits are targeted or universal.Publication Discontent and the Left Turn in Latin America(Cambridge University Press, 2013-11-08) Wiesehomeier, Nina; Doyle, David; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75The electoral success of the left across Latin America has largely been interpreted as a backlash against globalization and a manifestation of anti-market voting of citizens increasingly frustrated with their experience of representative democracy. However, studies trying to test these propositions show rather inconclusive results and face the problem of translating objective economic conditions into observable individual perceptions. This article contends that theories of subjective well-being in psychology and economics can shed light on this left turn. In particular, life satisfaction, as a manifestation of experienced utility, can help explain the electoral outcomes observed throughout the region. The findings show that support for the left is higher the more unsatisfied voters are under a right incumbent.Publication Dissolution power, confidence votes, and policymaking in parliamentary democracies(SAGE, 2019-03-01) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75There 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.Publication Dissolution Threats and Legislative Bargaining(Wiley, 2014-09-09) Becher, Michael; Christiansen, Flemming Juul; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Chief 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.Publication 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/02jjdwm75While 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.Publication Electoral Reform and Trade-Offs in Representation(Cambridge University Press, 2019-03-18) Becher, Michael; Menéndez González, Irene; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75We 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.Publication 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/02jjdwm75When 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.Publication Endogenous Credible Commitment and Party Competition over Redistribution under Alternative Electoral Institutions(Wiley, 2015-12-09) Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Political 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.Publication 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/02jjdwm75For 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.