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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Schreiner, Nicolas (University of Basel); Stutzer, Alois (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | We study how citizens’ right to directly decide on policies through popular initiatives affects the attractiveness of extreme candidates in representative elections. In our theoretical framework, single prominent policy issues on which individual voters hold extreme views get a large weight in their assessment of candidates, thereby favoring ideologically extreme ones. If citizens can decide the controversial policy issues separately on the ballot, this decouples the issues from legislative politics and moderate candidates become relatively more attractive to voters. We apply our theory to U.S. state legislative elections and find that ideologically extreme candidates receive significantly lower voter support in initiative than in non-initiative states. This holds in particular for states with low qualification requirements for initiatives. In concurrent elections for the U.S. House we do not observe this difference in the electoral success of extreme candidates between initiative and non-initiative states. The effect seems partly mediated by lower campaign donations to extreme candidates. |
| Keywords: | moderating selection effect, initiative right, extremist ideology, direct democracy, campaign donations, polarization, political institutions, voting |
| JEL: | D02 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18266 |
| By: | Alexandre Arnout (Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France); Gaëtan Fournier (Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France) |
| Abstract: | Political campaigns influence how voters prioritize issues, which in turn impacts electoral outcomes. In this paper, we study how candidates’ communication shapes which issues prevail during the campaign, through which mechanisms, and to what extent. We develop an electoral competition model with two candidates, each endowed with exogenous platforms and characteristics. Candidates allocate strategically their communication time across two issues to maximize their expected vote shares. We find that when one candidate holds similar comparative advantages on both issues, the disadvantaged candidate communicate on a single issue to saturate the campaign with one topic and then increases the randomness of the election. The advantaged candidate has the opposite incentive and communicate on both issues, creating an asymmetry in the campaign. We show that in some cases, the campaign can become entirely centered on a single issue. |
| Keywords: | electoral competition, Communication time, Priming |
| JEL: | C72 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2520 |
| By: | Jessie Trudeau |
| Abstract: | How does criminal group taxation affect participation in elections? I argue that criminal groups that tax public service provision use it as a technology of governance, which gives them a comparative advantage in voter mobilization. I predict that higher levels of criminal taxes on services ultimately lead to higher levels of voter participation, and contrast the service provision mechanism with other mechanisms related to coercive taxation and bottom-up reactions to being taxed. |
| Keywords: | Crime, Taxation, Governance, Voter turnout, Political participation |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-86 |
| By: | Paul C. Behler (University of Bonn); Laurenz Guenther (Bocconi University, Toulouse School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | While the recent rise of populism has led many scholars to study populism in the modern era, its long-run evolution remains underexplored. This paper analyzes German parliamentary speeches to study populism over the long run, covering the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) and the united Federal Republic (1991–today). We employ a tailored and validated machine learning model to measure populism and dissect it into anti-elitism and people-centrism. We find that in both republics, populism is similarly common, similarly distributed across the ideological spectrum, and increases over time. Moreover, in both states, left-wing parties were initially the most populist group but were eventually overtaken by right-wing parties. However, we find a difference in the form of populism: in the Weimar Republic, the increase in populism is driven by a surge in the anti-elitism of right-wing parties, while in the Federal Republic, it is due to a general rise in people-centrism. |
| Keywords: | Populism, Nazi, Weimar, Radical, Democracy, Right-wing, Far-right, Machine learning, BERT, Text analysis, Rhetoric |
| JEL: | P16 N40 C89 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:381 |