|
on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Eliaz, Kfir; Rubinstein, Ariel |
| Abstract: | We propose a model of electoral competition in which parties compete by making statements linking policies to outcomes. Voters assess these statements not by Bayesian updating, but by sequentially sampling past cases until they encounter evidence that confirms or refutes one of the two statements made by the incumbent and a challenger. The incumbent's policy determines the distribution of cases voters observe. We introduce equilibrium notions capturing stable regimes and cyclical competition over statements. Our analysis highlights several phenomena such as: logically equivalent statements may differ in effectiveness, parties with less successful policies may remain in power, society may become trapped in cycles of power change, and politicians may strategically deviate from their ideology to shape the evidence available to voters. |
| Keywords: | Electoral campaign |
| JEL: | D72 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21491 |
| By: | Riaño, Juan Felipe; Trebbi, Francesco |
| Abstract: | Between 2021 and 2024, the United States experienced one of the most severe inflation episodes in decades, coinciding with renewed debate over the role of economic conditions for electoral outcomes. This paper studies the political economy of inflation and real wages using U.S. county-level data on family budget costs, nominal income, and electoral results for President and Congress during this period. Exploiting within-state, cross-county variation in changes in local prices over time, it examines how inflation, real wage growth, and purchasing power relate to changes in vote shares of incumbents, vote margins, and turnout. Real wage decline, rather than higher inflation, is predictive of Republican electoral gains, in line with an economic voting rationale. Inflation, however, retains an association with presidential vote shares beyond pure economic voting. |
| Keywords: | Inflation; Us politics |
| JEL: | P0 E31 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21563 |
| By: | Konrad Bierl; Klaus Eisenack; Angelika von Dulong; Peter Wieland |
| Abstract: | Do democratic elections affect policy outcomes, and how do these effects evolve over time? Existing evidence is mixed, focusing on federal elections in two-party systems using RDDs. We study municipal elections in Germany’s multiparty system, examining how electoral support for the pro-environmental Green Party affects photovoltaic power capacity investment. Exploiting quasi-random variation generated by staggered elections, we implement a triple difference-in-differences design using panel data (1990-2022). We find strongly time-dependent electoral effects. Electoral support generates sizable short-run increases in capacities (+3.4 MW/municipality), including anticipation effects. These effects reverse in the long-run (-4.2 MW/municipality), primarily driven by less residential capacity. |
| Keywords: | Local elections; Municipal climate action; Renewable energy; Political parties; Triple difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | C21 D78 Q48 |
| Date: | 2026–06–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdp:dpaper:0098 |
| By: | Gersbach, Hans |
| Abstract: | Incumbents can secure re-election by strategically raising the cost of reversing their policies, allowing low-ability office-holders to persist and weakening electoral accountability. We develop a dynamic electoral model with heterogeneous candidates in which policy choices endogenously generate switching costs that shape future electoral competition. This mechanism creates a novel channel of political entrenchment: incumbents can deter replacement not by outperforming challengers, but by making policy change sufficiently costly. We introduce midterm reviews — an institutional device that allows voters to determine, during the term, whether an incumbent remains eligible for re-election — which constrains this form of entrenchment. Midterm reviews weakly increase voter welfare and strictly do so when they screen out low-ability incumbents who would otherwise survive. More broadly, the mechanism strengthens democratic resilience by limiting institutional entrenchment and preserving effective electoral accountability. Extending the model to multi-member executives, we show that cabinet-level reviews mitigate collective entrenchment arising from joint cost-setting. |
| Keywords: | midterm reviews; democratic resilience; Electoral accountability; Political entrenchment |
| JEL: | C72 C73 D72 D78 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21465 |
| By: | Fontana, Nicola; Nannicini, Tommaso; Snyder, James |
| Abstract: | We study whether the partisan affiliation of U.S. state governors affects the outcome of partisan judicial elections. Exploiting close gubernatorial races from 1946 to 2023, we find that electing a Democratic (Republican) governor significantly increases the subsequent vote share of Democratic (Republican) judicial candidates. This executive spillover effect arises despite the formal institutional independence of the judiciary and holds in contexts with similar levels of polarization and partisanship. Our findings show that, under partisan judicial elections, even narrow shifts in executive power can erode the separation of powers, as some voters adjust their judicial choices in response to the partisan control of the executive. This effect is stronger when executive and legislative powers are unified and when the judicial election occurs soon after the governor's race. |
| JEL: | D72 D73 K40 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21544 |
| By: | Buonanno, Paolo; Lecce, Giampaolo; Ogliari, Laura; Plevani, Giacomo |
| Abstract: | We study how violence reshapes electoral competition and political selection during state formation. Using new district-level data on brigandage, elections, and political elites in post-unification Southern Italy, we show that violence reduced turnout, especially where it increased the risks of accessing polling stations. Beyond participation, brigandage also altered the supply side of politics: exposed districts experienced fewer contested elections and fewer new candidates. At the same time, political representation shifted away from aristocratic deputies and toward more locally embedded elites with administrative experience, while candidate pools also moved away from court-linked elite profiles. We provide evidence that these shifts were also reflected in parliamentary activity, with locally embedded representatives placing relatively greater emphasis on territorially targeted claims. Consistent with this pattern, districts more exposed to violence experienced greater expansion of the road network, but not railways, precisely where conflict induced a stronger shift toward local representation. These findings point to a political-representation channel through which violence shapes development, by altering who competes for office and how public resources are allocated. |
| JEL: | D72 N43 O43 H41 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21428 |
| By: | Descamps, Raphael; Marx, Benjamin; Pons, Vincent; Rollet, Vincent |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the global incumbency advantage. We first show that existing subnational estimates of the incumbency advantage correlate positively with GDP per capita and democratic quality, and negatively with corruption across countries. Building on this meta-analysis, we then consider all presidential and parliamentary elections held since 1945 to estimate how a national electoral victory affects the probability that winning parties and candidates retain power beyond the term for which they were elected. On average, national election winners benefit from an incumbency advantage, but this effect is short-lived and differs markedly across contexts: it is large in Africa, North America, and Western Europe, but muted or even reversed in other regions. We explore how standard incumbency effects and electoral manipulation contribute to these results. In established democracies, the national incumbency advantage reflects gains in the subsequent electoral performance of election winners. In less democratic regimes, it mainly stems from manipulation of the fairness and the timing of elections. Overall, this advantage is largest in both the most and the least democratic countries, due to radically different types of equilibria. |
| Keywords: | Elections |
| JEL: | D72 P0 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21282 |
| By: | Broso, Matteo; Valletti, Tommaso |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of mergers on quid-pro-quo lobbying and elections in a political agency model. Two incumbent firms can lobby an incumbent politician to block a pro-competitive reform. The politician’s type determines whether they are susceptible to the firms’ influence or not. A representative voter tries to infer the politician’s type monitoring the policy-making process. We show that lobbying increases when firms merge because rents from political protection are not dissipated by price competition. While greater market concentration may increase prices and political influence, it also improves voters’ ability to screen bad politicians by observing distorted policy outcomes. This generates a novel trade-off: mergers can harm consumers through market and political power, yet improve selection of politicians. We characterize when standard consumer welfare–based merger control is too lenient or too strict once these political economy effects are taken into account. |
| Keywords: | Mergers; Lobbying; Consumer welfare standard; Antitrust policy; market power; Political economy of competition policy |
| JEL: | D72 D43 L41 L13 K21 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21420 |
| By: | Aswin Sivapragassam |
| Abstract: | We revisit the two-candidate, three-alternative election campaign game with strategic ambiguity of Aragones & Postlewaite (2002), in which ambiguity arises in equilibrium when no pure alternative is majority-winning and voters exhibit sufficiently intense preferences. We show that the existence condition for winning strategies of the candidate associated with the Condorcet alternative is not sufficient for the existence of such a strategy. The original derivation evaluates the worst-case opponent strategy only at two extreme points of the feasible set, whereas the relevant bound is attained elsewhere. We provide a counterexample showing that the original condition can be satisfied even though no winning strategy exists, and derive a corrected characterization: winning strategies rely on voters who most prefer the remaining alternative, associated with neither candidate, rather than those who rank the Condorcet alternative second. This mirrors the coalition logic of the non-Condorcet candidate, yielding a structural symmetry between the two candidates’ equilibrium strategies. As a consequence, association with a Condorcet alternative does not confer a systematic strategic advantage, and strategic ambiguity operates as a selective rather than aggregative electoral device. |
| Keywords: | Strategic ambiguity, Condorcet winner, Electoral competition, Coalition structure, Voting |
| JEL: | C72 D71 D72 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2026-13 |
| By: | Bettarelli, Luca; Estefania Flores, Julia; Furceri, Davide; Ostry, Jonathan D.; Pisano, Loredana |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the political effects of trade liberalization using a global panel of 130 countries over the period 2000–2021. By linking detailed tariff and non-tariff measures to an opinion-based indicator of political support, it estimates short- and medium-term impacts using local projections. The findings reveal a clear asymmetry: tariff reductions reduce incumbents’ political support, while non-tariff liberalization has neutral or mildly positive effects. The political costs of reforms are larger under adverse economic conditions—such as recessions, high unemployment, or heightened financial stress—in more unequal societies, and in countries with weaker external positions, such as those running trade deficits. These costs are also amplified when reforms occur close to elections, but largely disappear in periods of high uncertainty, consistent with weaker electoral accountability under heightened informational frictions. |
| Keywords: | Trade; Trade policy; Political support; Local projections; Non-tariff barriers; Structural reforms; Political economy |
| JEL: | D72 J65 L43 L51 O43 O47 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21493 |
| By: | Armand, Alex; Mendonça, Frederica; Sandholtz, Wayne; Vicente, Pedro |
| Abstract: | Urbanization can generate large economic gains, but it presents electoral risks for incumbents. This paper studies the economic and political effects of a program to integrate rural migrants in a growing Mozambican city. We randomized city blocks into three arms: program delivery with or without the involvement of local leaders, and a no-program control. The program increased rural-to-urban migration across both treatment arms, but improved labor market integration and local incumbent electoral outcomes only with leader involvement. We also observe electoral spillovers in migrants' origin areas, no clientelistic responses, and no resident backlash. These findings show that city-level integration policies can deliver both economic and political returns. |
| Keywords: | Urbanization; Internal migration; Political economy; Urban policy; Political leaders |
| JEL: | D72 O18 R23 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21450 |
| By: | Davies, Rob; Mehlum, Halvor; Moene, Kalle; Torvik, Ragnar |
| Abstract: | The relationship between land reform and electoral support for the government is crucial for countries considering any form of asset redistribution. We develop a unique data set for Zimbabwe, in which we combine data for 19, 374 farm redistributed properties and other estates, with election results from 1, 960 wards in the presidential election in 2018. The farm data are collected in the midst of the land reform in Zimbabwe, and make it possible to analyze how a massive and national land reform goes hand in hand with the support for the long-term ruling party in Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF. The results show that for every percent of a rural ward's land area that was subject to land redistribution, the support for ZANU-PF increases by a quarter of a percentage point. The results are compatible both with a mechanism of gratitude from the beneficiaries and with a precautionary strategy where beneficiaries want to block regime change and potential reversal of the redistribution. |
| Keywords: | Land reform |
| JEL: | D72 P48 Q15 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21396 |
| By: | Martin Adler; Stefanie Peer; Antonio Russo |
| Abstract: | Policymakers frequently implement environmental policies that are less ambitious than what voters would prefer. We document this gap using findings from previous research as well as evidence from climate policy in Austria's transport sector. To account for this pattern, we develop a model in which political parties compete with electoral platforms that involve multiple policy dimensions. When voters place greater weight on a primary issue -such as fiscal policy - than on environmental policy, we show that parties may refrain from proposing environmental reforms, even when these reforms enjoy broad public support. This dynamic arises once the primary issue becomes sufficiently salient to voters. We then examine potential ways to overcome this policy inertia, including the use of direct democratic instruments (e.g., referendums) and the delegation of environmental policy decisions from national to regional governments. |
| Keywords: | parties, political economy, environmental policy, transport policy |
| JEL: | Q58 D78 H23 R41 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12785 |
| By: | Bhusal, Bhishma; Callen, Michael; Pande, Rohini; Prillaman, Soledad; Singhania, Deepak; Subedi, Apurva |
| Abstract: | How does wartime rebel governance shape post-conflict institutions? We study this in Nepal, where the Maoist People's War (1996–2006) dismantled a 240-year caste-based monarchy and ended with Maoists entering democratic politics. During the conflict, Maoists established sub-national ``People’s Governments" that administered justice, collected taxes, and delivered local services. Using a spatial regression-discontinuity design, we show that exposure to People's Governments increased political knowledge and participation especially among historically marginalized indigenous groups (Janajatis). Exposure also reshaped party institutions and inter-party competition: candidate-selection committees in more exposed areas have 26 percent more Janajati members who, drawing on novel implicit-attitude data, exhibit less pro-upper caste bias. Non-Maoist parties' Janajati nomination rates nearly double in fully exposed areas, consistent with competition for newly mobilized voters. Nearly two decades on, local governments in exposed areas score 0.2–0.3 standard deviations higher on state capacity indices and receive 13 percent more in conditional federal grants. These findings show that when rebel groups enter competitive democratic politics, wartime governance institutions can — through citizen mobilization, party gatekeeping, and cross-party competition — enable a more inclusive and capable post-war state. |
| Keywords: | Conflict; Political selection; State capacity; Institutions; Nepal |
| JEL: | D72 O17 H11 D73 O12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21532 |
| By: | Elodie Andrieu (Paris School of Economics); Olimpia Cutinelli-Rendina (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg) |
| Abstract: | How do firms build their political influence? We shed light on the complementarity between firms electoral campaign contributions and their lobbying activity through three stylized facts. Firms lobby committees where they have contributed to legislators' campaigns; contributions are highly persistent, even after committee reassignments; and firms follow reassigned legislators onto new lobbying topics. We exploit these facts to construct a shift-share instrument for lobbying expenditures in which political connections are defined by persistent campaign contributions and exposure is measured at the legislator-firm level through predetermined contribution shares. We validate the instrument by showing that reassignments have no effect on connected firms that do not lobby, and that future contributions carry no predictive power. Our IV estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in lobbying raises sales by around 1.1 percent and capital expenditures by 1.4 percent for publicly traded U.S. firms over the period 2000-2016. |
| Keywords: | lobbying ; campaign contributions. |
| JEL: | D72 P40 L11 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lar:wpaper:2026-05 |
| By: | Fetzer, Thiemo (University of Warwick); Hensel, Lukas (University of Peking); Roth, Christoper (University of Cologne); Hannah Zillessen (KU Leuven) |
| Abstract: | Democracies can sustain disagreement over outcomes, but they are harder to sustain when citizens also perceive the governing norms of political contestation as settled along partisan lines. We study this problem in the context of Brexit and experimentally vary truthful information about how much Leave and Remain supporters agree with, and how uncertain they are about, the appropriateness of a second referendum. We find that uncertainty matters more than agreement: respondents become more willing to donate to and tweet for campaigns on either side of the referendum question when they learn that others, especially members of their own political camp, are more uncertain about the norm. The pattern is strongest for support for the norm position that is less popular within one’s own political camp, while private beliefs about the norm and about Brexit itself barely move. These findings are more consistent with reduced conformity pressure and higher perceived returns to political expression than with private-belief updating, and they suggest that information about uncertainty can generate a meaningful form of depolarization in democratic engagement even when underlying outcome preferences remain largely unchanged |
| Keywords: | Uncertainty, Norms, Social Image, Political Participation JEL codes: D81, D83 P11 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1616 |
| By: | Albers, Thilo Nils Hendrik; Kersting, Felix; Reiske, Monique |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the political consequences of debt deflation in interwar Germany. Debt deflation arises when falling prices increase the real burden of pre-existing nominal liabilities. We study this mechanism in the agricultural sector, where farmers had accumulated substantial nominal debt before 1929. In the face of collapsing agricultural prices and falling revenues, the high nominal interest burden made this debt unsustainable. To isolate the political effect of this shock, we exploit pre-crisis differences in agricultural debt and product mix across counties to construct a measure of debt deflation intensity. Our main finding is that rural debt deflation substantially increased support for the Nazi party, reflecting substitution away from agrarian and conservative parties. A one-standard-deviation increase in exposure explains a fifth of one standard deviation in the Nazi party vote share rise between 1928 and 1932. The effect persists after controlling for income shortfalls, unemployment, and austerity, indicating that debt deflation drove radicalization independently of concurrent channels. A counterfactual exercise suggests that without debt deflation, the Nazi party's national vote share would have been insufficient to prevent less extreme parties from forming a majority coalition against it, rendering rural debt deflation a plausibly necessary condition for Hitler's rise to power. |
| Keywords: | Debt deflation; Political extremism; Weimar Germany; Nazi party |
| JEL: | N14 N54 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21487 |
| By: | Brey, Bjorn; Cefala, Edoardo; García-Peñalosa, Cecilia |
| Abstract: | Gender equality and economic growth have historically tended to move together yet identifying causal effects has been difficult. This paper uses data on the support for female suffrage in Switzerland in order to explore the impact of technology adoption on gender norms. We argue that the early adoption of electricity was conducive to local economic development, which in turn led to more egalitarian views on gender. To identify causality, we exploit geographic differences in the potential to generate electricity from waterpower. Our results show that early electricity adoption (by the 1910s) had a lasting impact on municipality vote shares in support of female suffrage in the ground-breaking 1959 referendum. We complement this finding with Cantonal referendums on female voting rights and federal electoral results to show that higher support for female political participation is observed in the data since the 1920s. We then examine how technology may have shaped gender attitudes and find that increased educational investment explains part of the shift. Fertility appears to respond to changing gender norms and reinforce them, but is unlikely the key mechanism in the causal chain. |
| Keywords: | Technological change |
| JEL: | J16 N33 O14 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21271 |
| By: | Gonzalez, Felipe; Prem, Mounu |
| Abstract: | We study the economic effects of a large nationalization program using newly assembled firm-level data from Chile under Salvador Allende (1970–73). Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that nationalization substantially reduced firm performance and international business activity relative to comparable private firms. Return on assets fell sharply and importing activity declined, with negative effects concentrated in manufacturing, while firms in strategic and natural resource sectors were largely unaffected. We also document lower electoral support for the incumbent coalition in more exposed municipalities. Overall, nationalization generated sizable and uneven economic costs with significant political consequences. |
| Keywords: | Nationalization; State-owned enterprises; Firm performance |
| JEL: | L33 N36 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21353 |
| By: | Carattini, Stefano; Matter, Ulrich; Roesti, Matthias |
| Abstract: | The ability of private interests to influence the political process is an important topic in economics and political science. While some of these efforts appear as campaign finance and lobbying expenditures in the official record, private interests may also engage in “covert†influence through media capture. In this paper, we systematically examine whether and to what extent corporations in the United States with an interest in slowing climate action, such as Big Oil companies, might have used corporate advertisement in media outlets as a strategic tool to align such outlets’ coverage with their views. We find that advertising spending by such actors (i) increases during election periods and (ii) implies both lower and more skeptical-leaning coverage of climate change and climate policy. |
| Keywords: | Lobbying; Advertising; Media capture; Climate policy |
| JEL: | D72 D83 L82 Q54 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21489 |
| By: | Doepke, Matthias; Foerster, Hanno; Hannusch, Anne; Tertilt, Michèle |
| Abstract: | During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women's labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men's desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory's predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence. |
| JEL: | D13 D72 D78 E24 J12 J16 N30 O10 O43 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21284 |
| By: | Koch, Christian; Tyran, Jean-Robert |
| Abstract: | Radical Right (RR) political parties have become increasingly radicalized on immigration across many developed countries. We study whether exposure to slanted (i.e., one-sided) news shifts policy views of RR voters on immigration in Austria. In an online experiment, participants received slanted news about the effects of immigration on the welfare state. We find that anti-immigration news further radicalizes RR voters by reinforcing extreme policy views, while slanted pro-immigration news has no de-radicalizing effect. Surprisingly, balanced news — presenting both sides — reduces radicalization. We show that balanced news coverage increases trust, thereby increasing RR voters’ receptiveness to opposing viewpoints. |
| JEL: | C90 D72 F22 H30 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21474 |
| By: | Peveri, Julieta; Tricaud, Clemence |
| Abstract: | Does female leadership reduce corruption? We study this question using close mixed-gender elections in Brazilian municipalities over two decades and multiple measures of corruption: budget-based predicted corruption scores, audit irregularities, and legal sanctions. We find no evidence that electing a woman mayor affects corruption. This null result holds across time periods, mayor characteristics, and the electoral cycle. We only detect a negative effect in the small subsample of municipalities randomly audited in early terms, which coincides with a sharp imbalance in incumbency. Because incumbency directly impacts corruption, these previously documented effects likely reflect the impact of incumbency rather than gender. |
| Keywords: | Gender; Corruption |
| JEL: | D72 D73 J16 H11 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21568 |
| By: | Gersbach, Hans; Kravchenko, Egor; Martinelli, Cesar |
| Abstract: | We study how new information technologies affect democratic decision-making in a Condorcet model with costly information acquisition. Voters endogenously choose whether to become informed. Technological change alters both information costs and signal precision, with nontrivial effects on equilibrium participation and collective accuracy. Lower information costs can reduce information acquisition and collective accuracy only when the electorate is odd, a phenomenon we call the odd-electorate paradox. Under uniqueness of equilibrium, however, lower costs increase participation and improve collective accuracy when initial information acquisition is sufficiently low. Improvements in signal quality need not increase equilibrium information acquisition and may even reduce collective accuracy through equilibrium responses. In large electorates, the fraction of informed voters converges to zero, while the number of informed voters converges to a Poisson distribution. Democratic accuracy may therefore rest on sparse expertise and socially aggregated information. |
| Keywords: | epistemic democracy; Costly information acquisition; Voting; Majority rule; Pivotality; equilibrium participation; Artificial intelligence |
| JEL: | D72 D83 C72 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21534 |
| By: | María Cadaval-Sampedro; Santiago Lago-Peñas; Xoaquín Fernández-Leiceaga; Alejandro Domínguez-Lamela |
| Abstract: | How do citizens evaluate complex public policies when information is limited, and responsibility attribution is unclear? This paper examines the causal impact of source cues on attitudes toward subnational fiscal policies and the extent to which political alignment conditions citizens’ responses. Using an original survey of 1, 501 adults in Galicia (Spain) we implement two randomized survey experiments that vary the attribution of identical policy statements across technocratic and partisan sources. The experiments cover two policy domains that differ in complexity and opinion crystallization: policy evaluation for improving public spending efficiency and a reform of the regional fiscal framework. Results show that source cues significantly shape opinion formation, primarily by reducing uncertainty and activating partisan reasoning. Their effects are modest when citizens hold well-defined prior preferences but become substantially stronger in complex and unfamiliar policy domains. Moreover, responses are systematically conditioned by political alignment: individuals are less supportive of proposals associated with opposing parties and more supportive when the same proposals are endorsed by their preferred party. These findings provide new evidence on the role of source cues as mechanisms of uncertainty reduction and preference formation in multilevel governance settings. |
| Keywords: | Source cues, Motivated reasoning, Partisanship, Survey experiments, Fiscal federalism, Public opinion |
| JEL: | D72 D83 H77 D91 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–06–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ida:wpaper:wp2613 |
| By: | Folke, Olle; Rickne, Johanna |
| Abstract: | First-generation immigrants face a seniority ceiling that limits their political incorporation as candidates and officeholders. Career ladders that require qualification time in lower positions create structural barriers for this group. We use linked data from Swedish electoral ballots and administrative records to examine this idea. A novel identification strategy isolates the effect of seniority-based promotion structures from immigrant-specific disadvantages by comparing immigrants’ incorporation patterns to those of internal movers — native-born Swedes who relocate between municipalities. The seniority ceiling explains about half of the immigrant-native gap in holding political positions and almost the entire gradient of worsening incorporation at higher levels. We find strong selection effects at both the individual and group level. The seniority ceiling restricts incorporation at higher career steps for those with fewer opportunities to accumulate qualification time: those who arrived more recently or at older ages. |
| Keywords: | Political careers |
| JEL: | D02 H10 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21461 |
| By: | Emre Kurt (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, and Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy); Ege Asutay (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) |
| Abstract: | Populist movements claim to represent an undifferentiated ‘people’, yet every redistributive instrument they enact selects a subset to receive its benefits. This paper uses Italy’s two back-to-back pension reforms as a stress test of that within-people contradiction. The technocratic Fornero Reform (2011) and the populist Quota 100 Reform (2019) share an institutional environment but follow opposite political logics, the second reversing the first. Using SHARE data for 2011–2022, we identify causal effects from age-based thresholds in a difference-in-differences design with individual fixed effects. Quota 100 raises eligible individuals’ retirement probability by 5.1 percentage points, and the response is 12.5 percentage points smaller for women than men, whereas the Fornero effect is delayed and more even across genders. The gender asymmetry survives alternative outcomes, narrower age windows, and pre-COVID restrictions. When a populist coalition redistributes, it reaches the part of the people whose careers satisfy the eligibility design, in keeping with the coalition’s familialism, while younger workers bear the cost through pay-as-you-go financing. The findings move research on populist incumbency from how it damages institutions to who benefits, and clarify the contrasting distributional logics of technocratic and populist governance. |
| Keywords: | Pensions, populism, retirement policy, gender inequality |
| JEL: | D72 H55 J26 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–07–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2026-008 |