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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Leromain, Elsa; Vannoorenberghe, Gonzague |
| Abstract: | We study how Covid-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher Covid-19 risk. Towns that lean towards the far-right saw a stronger drop in turnout, in particular in the vicinity of clusters. We argue that these patterns are partly a result of risk perceptions, and not only of political considerations. We use data on the drop in cinema admissions in early March 2020 and show that these went down more around infection clusters, especially in areas with substantial vote for the far-right. Taken together, our findings suggest that the fear of Covid-19 may have been on average more prevalent among far-right voters, contributing to a drop in their electoral participation. |
| Keywords: | electoral turnout; local elections; Covid-19; far-right; coronavirus |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2021–07–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113916&r= |
| By: | Molina Ogeda, Pedro; Ornelas, Emanuel; Soares, Rodrigo R. |
| Abstract: | We show that the Brazilian trade liberalization in the early 1990s led to a permanent relative decline in the vote share of left-wing presidential candidates in the regions more affected by the tariff cuts. This happened even though the shock, implemented by a right-wing party, induced a contraction in manufacturing and formal employment in the more affected regions, and despite the left's identification with protectionist policies. To rationalize this response, we consider a new institutional channel for the political effects of trade shocks: the weakening of labor unions. We provide support for this mechanism in two steps. First, we show that union presence-proxied by the number of workers directly employed by unions, by union density, and by the number of union establishments-declined in regions that became more exposed to foreign competition. Second, we show that the negative effect of tariff reductions on the votes for the left was driven exclusively by political parties with historical links to unions. Furthermore, the impact of the trade liberalization on the vote share of these parties was significant only in regions that had unions operating before the reform. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that tariff cuts reduced the vote share of the left partly through the weakening of labor unions. This institutional channel is fundamentally different from the individual-level responses, motivated by economic or identity concerns, that have been considered in the literature. |
| Keywords: | trade shocks; elections; unions; Brazil |
| JEL: | F13 D72 J51 F16 F14 |
| Date: | 2021–11–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113819&r= |
| By: | Rodríguez-Pose, Andrés; Dijkstra, Lewis |
| Abstract: | Some regions in Europe that have been heavily supported by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy have recently opted for parties with a strong Eurosceptic orientation. The results at the ballot box have been put forward as evidence that Cohesion Policy is ineffective for tackling the rising, European-wide wave of discontent. However, the evidence to support this view is scarce and often contradictory. This paper analyses the link between Cohesion Policy and the vote for Eurosceptic parties. It uses the share of votes cast for Eurosceptic parties in more than 63,000 electoral districts in national legislative elections in the EU-28 to assess whether Cohesion Policy investment since the year 2000 has made a difference for the electoral support for parties opposed to European integration. The results indicate that Cohesion Policy investment is linked to a lower anti-EU vote. This result is robust to employing different econometric approaches, to considering the variety of European development funds, to different periods of investment, to different policy domains, to shifts in the unit of analysis and to different levels of opposition by parties to the European project. |
| Keywords: | anti-system voting; cohesion policy; elections; Europe; Euroscepticism; populism; regions |
| JEL: | D72 R11 R58 |
| Date: | 2021–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:107497&r= |
| By: | Fremerey, Melinda; Hörnig, Lukas; Schaffner, Sandra |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effect of the refugee inflow between 2014 and 2017 on voting for the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the national parliamentary election in 2017 in Germany. Drawing on unique small-scale data enables us to distinguish between the contact theory, captured by the inflow of refugees into the immediate neighborhood (1km x 1km), and county-level (NUTS 3) effects, which might pick-up other, broader factors such as media coverage or specific county-level policies. We alleviate concerns of an endogenous refugee allocation by a shift-share instrument. Our results indicate that the contact theory is valid in urban West Germany, i. e., higher refugee inflows in West German urban neighborhoods decrease the shares of far-right voting, while there is no robust evidence of a relationship between refugee inflow and far-right vote shares in East Germany and rural West Germany. |
| Keywords: | voting behavior,neighborhood characteristics,refugees,immigration |
| JEL: | D72 J15 R23 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:dicedp:387&r= |
| By: | Zéphirin Nganmeni; Roland Pongou; Bertrand Tchantcho; Jean-Baptiste Tondji |
| Abstract: | In majoritarian democracies, popular policies may not be inclusive, and inclusive policies may not be popular. This dilemma raises the crucial question of when it is possible to design a policy that is both inclusive and popular. We address this question in the context of vaccine allocation in a polarized economy facing a pandemic. In such an economy, individuals are organized around distinct networks and groups and have in-group preferences. We provide a complete characterization of the set of inclusive and popular vaccine allocations. The findings imply that the number of vaccine doses necessary to generate an inclusive and popular vaccine allocation is greater than the one necessary to obtain an allocation that is only popular. The analysis further reveals that it is always possible to design the decision-making rule of the economy to implement an inclusive and popular vaccine allocation. Under such a rule, the composition of any group endowed with the veto power should necessarily reflect the diversity of the society. |
| Keywords: | Fertility, Inclusive vaccine policy; Leader popularity; Voting rule; Polarization; Social networks; In-group preferences; Minorities. |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:2202e&r= |
| By: | Gülhan, Sinan Tankut (Gaziantep University) |
| Abstract: | The Istanbul metropolitan mayoral election in 2019 provided a suitable way to study the subtle and apparent shifts in the Turkish political landscape. For the first time in recent history, opposition gained ground in this main commercial and population hub. So far, Istanbul local politics were treated from an aspatial perspective. Here, we employ spatial econometrics to understand the subtle groundswell in Istanbul’s political geography. This paper maps the electoral change that took place in the 84 days between two elections using 31 thousand ballot data based on 782 districts in Istanbul. In addition to the change in voting patterns we also employ two different datasets to better situate the change of public opinion. The first database is the socioeconomic status indexing of Istanbul’s districts. The second database comes from the author’s own work employing python-based datamining the online database of for sale properties in Istanbul on the verge of the 2019 election. An OLS regression analysis and a spatial-lag regression is applied on the datasets. The results are contrary to the political punditry and points to a newly emerging middle-class coalition. |
| Date: | 2022–04–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:ufvtz&r= |
| By: | Chitralekha Basu (University of Cologne) |
| Abstract: | This study uses data from the 2005-10 British Election Panel Study to examine the effect of media coverage on voter evaluations of the incumbent government following the 2007-8 financial crisis. By combining sentiment analysis of newspaper content with an instrumental variables approach, I show that newspapers' coverage of these events influenced how their readers, and especially Labour-supporting readers, evaluated the Labour government's handling of the crisis and also the economy in general. I also show that newspaper framing of these events influenced readers' propensity to support Labour throughout the subsequent general election campaign. Formal sensitivity analyses provide further evidence that these effects are not driven by readers' previous assessments of the Labour party. I thus demonstrate that media framing of economic events, through its effects on reader evaluations of incumbents' economic competence, can have durable electoral implications. |
| Keywords: | Political communication; Media effects; Economic voting |
| JEL: | D72 D83 L82 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:156&r= |