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Browsing Research by School "IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs"
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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 Analyzing the Impact of Events Through Surveys: Formalizing Biases and Introducing the Dual Randomized Survey Design(SSRN, 2024-02-13) Bertoli, Andrew; Jakli, Laura; Pascoe, Henry; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Social scientists and public opinion analysts often use survey data to test how important events impact respondent beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. This paper offers a formal analysis of the pre-event/post-event survey approach, including designs that seek to reduce bias using quota sampling, rolling cross-sections, and panels. Our analysis distinguishes between various sources of bias and clarifies the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each approach. We then propose a modified panel design that can reduce bias in cases where asking respondents to complete the same survey twice could impact their responses in Wave 2. This issue is acute when fielding conventional pre-event/post-event panels due to the short time horizon between Waves 1 and 2. Our analysis elucidates important insights that can improve social scientists’ ability to study the causal impact of important events through surveys.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 Coalition cabinets, presidential ideological adjustment and legislative success(CRV, 2019) Arnold, Christian; Doyle, David; Wiesehomeier, Nina; Oliveira Xavier, Lídia; Dominguez Avila, Carlos Federico; Fonseca, Vicente,; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75-Publication Cognitive Ability, Union Membership, and Voter Turnout(2019) Stegmueller, Daniel; Becher, Michael; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Labor 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.Publication 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/02jjdwm75Social 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.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 Daring to Fail: Input-Oriented Voting under Supranational Policy Constraints(European Consortium for Political Research, 2023-08) Konstantinidis, Nikitas; Jurado, Ignacio; Dinas, Elias; Ministry of Economy, Industry andCompetitiveness of Spain; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75Recent literature argues that with ever-increasing levels of supranational constraints governments haveless ‘room to manoeuvre’; therefore, voters will place less weight on policy outcomes in their voting decisions. Thequestion that remains less explored is how voters fill this accountability gap. We argue that, in this context, votersmay move away from outcome- to input-oriented voting. Fulfilling their promises becomes less vital for incumbentsas long as they exhibit effort to overturn an unpopular policy framework. We test this argument against a surveyexperiment conducted in the run-up to the September 2015 election in Greece, where we find a positive impact ofthe incumbent’s exerted effort to challenge the status quo of austerity on vote intention for SYRIZA – the seniorcoalition government partner at the time – despite the failed outcome of the government’s bailout negotiationsPublication “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.