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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Cécile Couharde; Rémi Generoso; Michaël Guillossou |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether climate shocks are associated with electoral behavior beyond the counties in which they occur. The analysis covers 3, 069 counties in the contiguous United States across five presidential elections from 2008 to 2024. County-level election returns are combined with pre-election drought measured using the Palmer Z Index and with network exposure constructed from estimated county-to-county food flows in 2007. A model in which voters interpret drought through pre-existing partisan preferences predicts that the electoral association of drought becomes more favorable to the Democratic candidate as a county's historical Democratic vote share increases. The estimates are consistent with this prediction. Local drought is associated with lower Democratic two-party vote shares in historically Republican counties and higher shares in historically Democratic counties. Network drought exhibits the same sign-changing pattern, including where measured local drought is absent. The estimated relationships cross zero at historical Democratic vote shares of about 0.40 for local drought and 0.44 for network exposure. Directional exposure through suppliers versus buyers adds little explanatory power conditional on total network exposure. The network relationship is comparatively stable across alternative specifications. Turnout and party-vote results suggest that the pattern reflects changes in party-specific electoral support rather than a common change in aggregate participation across counties. |
| Keywords: | drought; food-flow networks; partisan heterogeneity; U.S. presidential elections |
| JEL: | Q54 D72 Q13 L14 R15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2026-21 |
| By: | Dan M. Bernhardt; Laurent Bouton; Stefan Krasa; Francesco Squintani |
| Abstract: | We propose a model of costly voting in a canonical spatial setting that reconciles key empirical features of electoral turnout. We integrate citizens with prosocial voting motives who realize higher payoffs from voting when (i) they expect more fellow supporters to vote, (ii) such votes collectively matter more for winning probabilities, and (iii) they care more about which candidate wins. We establish existence of Nash equilibria satisfying an additional condition that ensures equilibria correspond to those in a finite setting with many voters. We derive how electoral primitives—e.g., voter ideology, voting costs, elite polarization, expected closeness—affect outcomes such as turnout, turnout rates, and winning margins. We relate the predictions to empirical findings both from existing studies and our original data work. With all three prosocial motive components, our model reconciles the empirical regularities qualitatively and quantitatively; while existing models fail on multiple dimensions. |
| JEL: | D7 P0 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35723 |
| By: | Ottone, Nicholas |
| Abstract: | A long line of research has shown that door-to-door canvassing is a potent campaign tactic for increasing turnout and, in some cases, vote share. More recent work has theorized, however, that canvassing effects are largest in low-salience elections without party cues and concentrated among occasional voters canvassed closer to Election Day. In this research note, I test these theoretical expectations by examining the effect of canvassing in a February local election in Seattle for a housing-related ballot measure. Using a novel geo-coded dataset of seventy doorknocking campaigns over three months, I find that voters more proximate to canvassing operations were more likely to vote and that proximate precincts had a slightly higher vote share for the targeted ballot measure. Moreover, consistent with recent theorizing, I find that turnout effects were concentrated among targeted Democrats canvassed soon before the election. |
| Date: | 2026–08–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:u47s3_v1 |
| By: | Elliott Johnson (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Graham Stark (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Anna Thew (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Claire Hart (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Kathryn Mcewan (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Howard Reed (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Matthew Johnson (Northumbria University [Newcastle]); Daniel Nettle (IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod - DEC - Département d'Etudes Cognitives - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CdF (institution) - Collège de France - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Département de Philosophie - ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Northumbria University [Newcastle]) |
| Abstract: | Material insecurity predicts support for right-wing populist parties, leading some to conclude that ambitious progressive policy programmes are electorally unviable in contexts of widespread economic anxiety. Yet an alternative scholarly tradition holds that material insecurity should increase, not decrease, demand for redistribution and social insurance, which are at the core of progressive policy offers. This article makes two contributions. First, we present a single-item measure of subjective material insecurity, perceived risk of destitution, that is suitable for cross-sectional surveys. Second, drawing on a survey of 1, 988 UK adults conducted in January 2024, we test whether perceived risk of destitution predicts support for an unambiguously progressive policy programme across ten domestic policy areas, presented without party label. Perceived risk of destitution is robustly positively associated with support for the programme, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, prior voting behaviour and left–right self-placement. At the same time, it is negatively associated with faith in government, which partially suppresses the positive direct association with programme support. The findings are consistent both with the redistribution literature on welfare-state preferences, and with the populism literature on the political consequences of economic risk: material insecurity raises the demand for redistributive and progressive policies, but also the resonance of arguments for disrupting the current political class. |
| Keywords: | material insecurity, redistribution, policy preferences, populism, UK politics |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05735950 |
| By: | Michael Weintraub (Universidad de los Andes); Santiago Tobón (Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Financieras (CIEF) Escuela de Economía y Finanzas Universidad EAFIT) |
| Abstract: | Peace negotiations reshape the electoral stakes of armed groups and their communities. Using polling-table returns and armed-presence maps, we study Colombia’s 2026 presidential election. Municipalities associated with factions negotiating under paz total, whose warrant and extraction protections depended on the continuity of the incumbent left, shifted five to six percentage points toward it. These municipalities showed no comparable shift in 2018–2022 or the 2026 congressional election. The left nonetheless lost by a 0.98-percent margin. The effects concentrate in Nariño, the factions’ stronghold, and municipalities where monitoring organizations reported compulsory-voting practices. Our design cannot disentangle pressure from support. |
| Keywords: | Peace Negotiations; Armed Conflict; Elections; Organized Crime; Illegal Economies; Colombia |
| JEL: | D72 D74 K42 O17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000122:023627 |
| By: | Roshan Ghadamian (Institute for Regenerative Systems Architecture) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how Perennial Social Capital (PSC) reshapes political and institutional incentives across public-good systems. Existing work formalises PSC as a fourth capital class — zero-interest, non-liability, soft-repayable, indefinitely recyclable — but its political economy remains undertheorised. Using an institutional and public-choice framework, we analyse how PSC alters the distribution of budgetary authority, weakens fragility-based mechanisms of control, reduces dependency on discretionary grant power, changes donor psychology and enlarges institutional autonomy. PSC functions not only as a financial innovation but as a governance technology. That funding form shapes recipient autonomy is not new, and the sharper claim is about which lever is removed. A substantial literature establishes that donor restrictions constrain autonomy and that flexible funding strengthens capacity. But multi-year unrestricted funding removes the conditions and leaves the renewal decision exactly where it was: someone still decides whether the next tranche arrives, and anticipatory conformity requires only that the threat be unresolved — which renewal discretion guarantees however unrestricted the grant. â–¶ The claim here is that PSC can remove the renewal decision itself, which is a different intervention on the same dependency. âš ï¸ The claim is conditional and the condition is not yet met. A recycling pool re-allocates every cycle, so removing the decision requires the pool's allocation to be rule-bound rather than discretionary — and no paper in this programme yet specifies that rule. Absent it the lever is relocated rather than removed, which by the same standard is the worst case: an allocation governed by no stated rule is maximally unresolved. Two qualifications are carried throughout rather than conceded at the end. PSC attenuates scarcity, it does not abolish it; and it leaves the initial allocation of capital as political as it found it. |
| Keywords: | political economy, regenerative capital, public choice, institutional autonomy, philanthropic power, bureaucratic behaviour, fragility, capital architecture |
| JEL: | H50 H83 D72 D73 P16 H41 H61 L31 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:evk:wpaper:pe |
| By: | Rangan Gupta (Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield 0028, South Africa); Christian Pierdzioch (Department of Economics, Helmut Schmidt University, Holstenhofweg 85, P.O.B. 700822, 22008 Hamburg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Much significant recent research has shed light on how presidential pressure on the Federal Reserve affects key macroeconomic and financial variables. We contribute to this mushrooming research from a political-economy perspective. Specifically, we find, based on monthly data from 1980 to 2026, that the U.S. presidential pressure on the Federal Reserve predicts a lower subsequent presidential approval ratings. We derive this empirical finding by means of random forests, a machine-learning technique, that renders it possible to control for several important macroeconomic and financial variables. We find that the link between presidential pressure and subsequent presidential approval ratings is nonlinear and that the importance of presidential pressure on the Federal Reserve for presidential approval ratings has increased strongly during the first and second presidency of Donald J. Trump. |
| Keywords: | Skewness, Presidential approval ratings, Political pressure, Federal Reserve, Random forests |
| JEL: | D72 E40 E50 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pre:wpaper:202624 |
| By: | Loureiro Lopes, A.I.; Ortega, Alberto Lopez; van der Velden, Mariken Anna Catharina Geertruida |
| Abstract: | Corporations increasingly feature minority families in mainstream advertising, positioning themselves as inclusive civic actors. Yet whether audiences read such representation as ordinary marketing or as a political statement—and whether all minorities are read alike—remains unclear. We field a pre-registered survey experiment in the Netherlands (N≈1, 500), randomly exposing respondents to a supermarket advertisement depicting a control (white, heterosexual), Muslim, or same-sex family. Minority-family advertisements are perceived as substantially more political than the control and shift perceptions of the brand to the ideological left, both in abstract placement and in concrete party association. These effects are markedly selective: the Muslim-family advertisement is read as roughly twice as political as the same-sex advertisement, and is the only condition to lower purchase intention, and does so precisely through the perception that it is political. Issue attributions are domain-specific: the same-sex advertisement moves perceived brand support for LGBTQ+ rights, the Muslim advertisement perceived support for immigration—and, contrary to expectations, these reactions are broad rather than confined to right-wing consumers. The findings reveal a selective politicization of corporate inclusion, in which ethno-religious diversity is politicized and commercially penalized while sexual-orientation diversity is comparatively normalized. |
| Date: | 2026–08–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:yugqh_v1 |
| By: | Jackson, James; Larsen, Mathias |
| Abstract: | There is an ongoing debate amongst scholars as to whether democratic or authoritarian political systems are more effective in achieving climate policy outcomes. In this article, we follow the latter trend through the concept of eco-authoritarianism, proposing that it is the appropriate way to understand China’s approach to the green transition. Drawing on primary and secondary data on China’s electric vehicle (EV) transition, we make two contributions to the environmental politics literature. First, we go beyond the current high-level theorising of eco-authoritarianism by identifying political architecture, ambitions & priorities, and state capacity as key to applying the concept. Second, we provide an empirical account of China’s EV transition through these dimensions as core features of eco-authoritarianism, finding that they create policy durability – effective coordination of policies across the state apparatus, policy consistency over time, and market-shaping levels of policy support. |
| Keywords: | China;climate policy;eco-authoritarianism;eElectric vehicles;green transition;industrial policy |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–09–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140991 |