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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Maria Titova |
| Abstract: | How does targeted advertising influence electoral outcomes? This paper presents a one-dimensional spatial model of voting in which a privately informed challenger persuades voters to support him over the status quo. I show that targeted advertising enables the challenger to persuade voters with opposing preferences and swing elections decided by such voters; under simple majority, the challenger can defeat the status quo even when it is located at the median voter's bliss point. Ex-ante commitment power is unnecessary -- the challenger succeeds by strategically revealing different pieces of verifiable information to different voters. Publicizing all political ads would mitigate the negative effects of targeted advertising and help voters collectively make the right choice. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.10422 |
| By: | Alrababah, Ala; Delouis-Jost, Maelle (University of Zurich); Gauthier, Germain; Polak, Adam |
| Abstract: | Do place-based interventions that raise visibility and economic activity affect far-right voting? We study the Tour de France (TdF) as a case of brief but highly visible exposure that combines economic activity with symbolic recognition. Using variation in the annual TdF route between 2002 and 2022, we show that exposed municipalities experience declines in far-right support of 0.03–0.04 standard deviations. The effect exceeds 0.1 standard deviations in recent elections and is strongest in poorer areas and in towns with high prior far-right support. We find evidence consistent with the symbolic mechanism and mixed evidence for the economic one. TdF exposure increases local GDP per capita, effects on voting are larger when French riders win stages, and a two-wave survey around the 2025 TdF provides suggestive evidence that residents in exposed towns report greater pride and recognition. These results contribute to research on geographic inequalities, symbolic politics, and the electoral consequences of place-based interventions. |
| Date: | 2025–09–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:fj4vh_v1 |
| By: | Klaus Desmet; Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín; Romain Wacziarg |
| Abstract: | We develop a new method to endogenously partition society into groups based on homophily in values, using fractional hedonic games as a theoretical foundation. The between-group differentiation that results from this partition provides a novel measure of latent polarization in society. We implement this method empirically using U.S. data from the World Values Survey. For the last forty years, the degree of latent polarization of the U.S. public has been high and relatively stable. In contrast, the degree of values polarization between voters of the two main political parties has steadily increased since the 1990s, and is now converging toward that of underlying values-based clusters. Thus, growing partisan polarization in the U.S. is a reflection of partisan views becoming increasingly aligned with the main values-based clusters in society. |
| JEL: | D71 D72 Z1 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34229 |
| By: | Weiss, Chagai M.; Siegel, Alexandra; Romney, David |
| Abstract: | In our article, "How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation, " we argue that threats of exclusionary policies can mobilize minority citizens through both electoral and non-electoral channels. Using Donald Trump's 2020 "Deal of the Century" (DOC)- which explicitly threatened the citizenship status of a subset of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Triangle area-we show that the announcement increased political discourse on Facebook, voter turnout, and registrations to a Jewish-Arab social movement. Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025) replicate our analyses and reproduce our main findings. They raise thoughtful concerns about the parallel trends assumption, and robustness to alternative treatment definitions and outcome measures. While we welcome these contributions, we clarify that our core design choices-including focusing our analysis on three recurring elections in 2019-2020, and ten localities mentioned in the DOC-were substantively motivated and pre-registered. Building on Bochkareva, Silagadze and Stephan (2025), and drawing on our substantively justified research design, we employ additional event studies that provide further support for the observable implications of the parallel trends assumption, as well as our theoretical argument that threats of exclusion can mobilize minority political participation. We also address data sharing limitations stemming from platform terms of service, data agreements, and ethical concerns, and explain our matching procedures. We conclude by commending the authors' decomposition of mobilization patterns and agree that variation between institutionalized and non-institutionalized responses presents a promising avenue for future research. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:262 |
| By: | Bochkareva, Yana; Silagadze, Givi; Stephan, Meret |
| Abstract: | Weiss et al. (2023) study the effect of Trump's peace plan announcement on Palestinian political participation, arguing that a threat of exclusion mobilizes minorities. Their study includes: (1) social media analysis showing differential treatment effects, (2) a difference-in-differences (DiD) analysis of voter turnout, and (3) a DiD analysis of social movement registrations. First, we reproduce their analysis in R and find no substantial errors. Second, we check the parallel trends assumption more rigorously and find that it does not unequivocally hold. Third, we conduct a series of robustness and sensitivity checks, ultimately demonstrating that different definitions of the treatment group and an outcome variable alter the results significantly. Although the results generally support the authors' main argument, our replication raises questions about expanding their grievance mechanism. Our findings indicate that ambiguous and weak threats are more likely to result in institutionalized political participation, while explicit and strong threats tend to mobilize non-institutionalized political participation. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:261 |