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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Gardner, Graham (Texas Christian University); McCrary, Kayleigh (University of Richmond); Spencer, Melissa (University of Richmond) |
| Abstract: | Do ballot measures generate spillover effects on voters’ choice of candidates? We examine this question by studying 16 abortion ballot measures in the 2022 and 2024 US general elections. Nationwide electoral returns show that the 2022 measures aided Democrats, but the 2024 measures aided Republicans. These effects are not explained by turnout. Instead, ballot measures incentivize voters to select candidates along margins other than the ballot measure issue. Survey data from 2024 show that moderate voters who preferred abortion rights and had the chance to vote on abortion ballot measures became more likely to vote Republican. |
| Keywords: | abortion, voting, elections |
| JEL: | D72 I18 J13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18928 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde; Carlos Sanz |
| Abstract: | How socially distinct are competing political parties' candidate pools? Since names encode cultural milieu, lineage, linguistic origin, and ancestry that standard socioeconomic variables miss, we measure social sorting across parties with names, predicting affiliation out of sample within municipality-years. Across more than 2.5 million local-election candidates, names pick the right-wing candidate in a random within-municipality pair 55.8% of the time in Spain and 56.5% in France. Given names alone do most of the work: around 55.0%. Under a stylized model of intergenerational transmission of political orientation, this translates to an implied gap of about 25 p.p. in parental naming propensities. The signal is stable in Spain but doubles in France by 2026. Within ideological families, names separate parties as sharply as across the right-left divide, even more so in France. The Spanish cleavage is linguistic and growing. The French one runs through names of immigrant origin and is strongest in large cities. |
| Keywords: | political selection, social sorting, political cleavages, party candidates, machine learning prediction |
| JEL: | D72 J15 Z13 C53 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13005 |
| By: | Vasiliki Fouka; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | We discuss how immigration affects identity, with implications for politics. We build on key insights from social psychology and their formalization in economics to derive predictions about how immigration changes both self-identification and categorization of others into groups. These immigration-induced identity changes can explain two recent political transformations that have characterized many Western democracies: the rise of right-wing populism and the realignment of voters and parties along a socio-cultural, rather than economic, dimension of political conflict. We also discuss how immigration can reshape group boundaries and political cleavages, depending on the characteristics of immigrants, host populations, and the local context. We highlight open questions and possible directions for future research. |
| JEL: | D72 D91 J15 N32 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35777 |
| By: | Fabrizio Adriani (University of Leicester); Abigail Barr (University of Nottingham); Anna Hochleitner (Norwegian School of Economics); Silvia Sonderegger (University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact of rising inequality on social instability through a novel multi-period laboratory experiment. In each period, members of two groups are randomly matched to play a battle of the sexes game, in which payoffs are either zero for both or positive but unequal. At the beginning of the game, the implied payoff inequality is low but, under some treatments, it increases over time. While under low initial inequality, unequal conventions – where one group is systematically better off – tend to emerge, increasing inequality causes destabilization. This is initiated by the group disadvantaged by the unequal convention and is particularly pronounced when not only the relative, but also the absolute position of the disadvantaged group is worsening. These findings are consistent with a simple model incorporating disadvantageous inequality aversion. Finally, we show that history matters; responses to current inequality depend on past experiences of inequality and stability. |
| Keywords: | Inequality; Conflict and Revolutions; Coordination; Group Behavior; Experiments |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2026-04 |
| By: | Jamshidi, Jamshid |
| Abstract: | The Islamic Republic of Iran dissolved its only ruling party in 1987 and has governed its provinces ever since without the organisation that comparative politics treats as essential to durable authoritarian rule. Yet elections have been held continuously, elites have circulated at extraordinary rates---roughly two in three parliamentary incumbents and four in five city councillors are replaced each cycle---and mass participation has persisted, with some 273, 000 candidates registering for a single round of local elections. This article asks how political coordination is accomplished at the subnational level in the structural absence of party organisation. Drawing on original electoral data covering all eleven parliamentary terms and on remote qualitative fieldwork in Khuzestan Province, it argues that durable, territorially embedded informal networks---kinship and tribal structures, religious associations, patronage hierarchies, and economic coalitions---perform the coordinating functions normally attributed to ruling parties. Read through Gramsci's account of hegemony and the integral state, these networks constitute decentralised sites of consent production that complement, rather than replace, coercive and institutional power. The case of Dezful illustrates the mechanism. The argument specifies a model of network-based hegemony with implications for the study of authoritarian durability, party substitution, and informal institutions beyond Iran. |
| Date: | 2026–09–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:chpx5_v1 |
| By: | Ajzenman, Nicolas (McGill University); Aksoy, Cevat Giray (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development); Pickard, Harry (Newcastle University) |
| Abstract: | Populists govern more of the world’s countries than at any point in the past century, on both the right and the left. What they share is not an economic programme but a worldview that casts politics as a struggle between ordinary citizens and a self-serving establishment, a conflict that is zero-sum at its core. We show that exposure to this political environment leaves a durable imprint on citizens’ beliefs. Combining data on populist leaders with surveys of more than 260, 000 respondents in 53 countries, we exploit within-country-survey-year variation across birth cohorts and find that greater exposure during early adulthood is associated with stronger zerosum beliefs later in life. The result is replicated in two independent surveys and across multiple measures of zero-sum thinking and perceived economic conflict and persists into respondents’ mid-forties. The mechanism evidence provides little support for an economic-scarcity explanation and instead points towards a rhetorical channel, as populist rule features substantially more anti-elite rhetoric in two independent measures and more domestic zero-sum framing in United Nations speeches. |
| Keywords: | populism, zero-sum beliefs, political socialisation, belief formation |
| JEL: | D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18929 |