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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Marco Due\~nas; Hector Galindo-Silva; Antoine Mandel |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of temperature shocks on European Parliament elections. We combine high-resolution climate data with results from parliamentary elections between 1989 and 2019, aggregated at the NUTS-2 regional level. Exploiting exogenous variation in unusually warm and hot days during the months preceding elections, we identify the effect of short-run temperature shocks on voting behaviour. We find that temperature shocks reduce ideological polarisation and increase vote concentration, as voters consolidate around larger, more moderate parties. This aggregated pattern is explained by a gain in support of liberal and, to a lesser extent, social democratic parties, while right-wing parties lose vote share. Consistent with a salience mechanism, complementary analysis of party manifestos shows greater emphasis on climate-related issues in warmer pre-electoral contexts. Overall, our findings indicate that climate shocks can shift party systems toward the centre and weaken political extremes. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.01551 |
| By: | Lester, Cian (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether austerity-induced welfare cuts contributed to a shift in political ideology in the United Kingdom during the 2010s. Combining welfare reform data with general election outcomes and survey-based ideological positioning, the study constructs a Right-Wing Index to capture temporal and spatial variation in rightwing political sentiment. Using a Multi-Way Fixed Effects Difference-in-Difference approach, the analysis estimates the impact of austerity on right-wing ideology. The paper contributes to political economy literature by incorporating updated 2020/21 austerity estimates and a broader ideological framework beyond party vote shares alone. Overall, the findings suggest that austerity shaped British political ideology in complex, time-dependent ways. In the short term, it reduced support for the right through electoral backlash, but may have caused longer-term shifts toward right-wing populism as economic hardship deepened. |
| Keywords: | Voting Behaviour ; Austerity ; Elections ; Fiscal Policy ; Welfare Expenditure JEL classifications: D72 ; H30 ; H53 ; I38 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:88 |
| By: | Walter Bossert; Salvador Barberà |
| Abstract: | In his 1958 classic, The Theory of Committees and Elections, Duncan Black proposed the following lexicographic rule: for any set of feasible alternatives, and any pro- file of voters' goodness relations, choose the strong Condorcet winner if it exists, and select the set of Borda winners otherwise. We provide what we think is the first axiomatic characterization of this rule. We do so through the intermediary study of the generalized social welfare functions that underlie the rule's choices, and the use of axioms that emphasize what is common and what is different in the spirit of the amply debated proposals made by these two 18th-century authors. |
| Keywords: | Black’s voting rule, Borda count, Social choice correspondences, strong Condorcet winners |
| JEL: | D71 D72 D63 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1515 |
| By: | Anina Harter |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how legislative institutions shape distributive policy outcomes. Specifically, I analyze the effect of budget committee membership in the German Bundestag using a novel dataset of 4, 629 geocoded federal grants (1999–2023). Employing a within-legislator difference-in-differences design, I estimate that gaining a seat on the budget committee doubles the average per capita grant amount received by a legislator’s electoral district. This committee benefit corresponds to approximately 2.6 million EUR over a typical budget committee career. Distributive benefits are driven by internal committee hierarchy rather than mandate type or affiliation with governing parties. |
| Keywords: | distributive politics; localized benefits; legislative institutions; parliamentary committees; geocoded data |
| JEL: | D71 D72 H50 H81 |
| Date: | 2025–09–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0075 |
| By: | Jerg Gutmann; Martin Rode |
| Abstract: | Populist governance is fundamentally at odds with constitutionalism. As a political project, populism rejects constraints on “the will of the people, ” including those essential to liberal-democratic constitutions. Yet, the extent to which elected populists actually undermine constitutional order remains contested. This article presents the first empirical analysis of whether constitutional compliance declines following the electoral success of populist parties in parliament and government. Using novel indicators of party populism and constitutional compliance, we find that the entry of populists into government leads to an erosion of constitutional norms, while their mere parliamentary presence has no systematic effect. This negative impact is primarily driven by a weakening of political and civil rights. Our results further show that populist parties — as distinct from individual leaders — are the primary drivers of noncompliance, and that the ideological orientation of these parties predicts the extent of their threat to constitutional order. |
| Keywords: | populism, constitutional compliance, constitutionalism, political ideology, rule of law |
| JEL: | D72 D78 K38 K42 P16 P26 P37 P48 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12191 |
| By: | Silvia Faggian (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Dominika Machowska (University of Warsaw); Agnieszka Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel (University of Warsaw) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the formation of stable coalitions in a differential game of resource extraction where players' resource deposits are interdependent and spatial relations between them are represented as a network. The network structure allows heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of extractable resources. We introduce a new framework for cooperative extraction in which, in addition to side payments, extraction rights can also be shared. The main contribution is the identification of conditions under which partial coalitions with more than three players can be stable, and under which the grand coalition can also be stable. Illustrative examples of such games are provided. |
| Keywords: | resource extraction, network, the tragedy of the commons, cooperation, partial cooperation, stability of coalitions |
| JEL: | C61 C71 C72 C73 D85 Q20 Q21 Q30 Q32 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2025:18 |
| By: | Marina Diakonova (BANCO DE ESPAÑA); Corinna Ghirelli (BANCO DE ESPAÑA); Javier J. Pérez (BANCO DE ESPAÑA) |
| Abstract: | Political polarization—broadly defined as the growing ideological distance between political parties or their supporters—has become an increasingly prominent feature of both U.S. and European political discourse. While it is often associated with legislative dysfunction, existing measures tend to conflate polarization with its consequences. This paper proposes a narrative-based, cross-country approach to separately measure ideological polarization and legislative gridlock. Using dictionary-based analysis of national press coverage in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, we construct two high-frequency indices: a Political Polarization Index, capturing the extent of ideological division, and a Legislative Gridlock Index, capturing evidence of policy stalling. Our results show that polarization has increased significantly in Europe since the Global Financial Crisis, though its institutional consequences vary by country: while France and Germany show a close link between polarization and gridlock, Spain and Italy present more nuanced patterns, likely reflecting differences in political institutions and reform trajectories. |
| Keywords: | political polarization, policy gridlock, fiscal policy uncertainty, textual analysis, Europe |
| JEL: | D72 D74 H3 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:2533 |