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on Positive Political Economics |
| By: | Thomas Groll; Sharyn O'Halloran |
| Abstract: | We develop a theory of distributive competition under redistricting that explains both electoral outcomes and the equilibrium allocation of policy benefits by endogenizing voter pivotality. In a multi-district model with primaries, general elections, and group-targeted transfers, districting shapes political influence through two channels: a selection channel for descriptive representation (who wins office) and a competition channel for substantive representation (who receives policy benefits). District composition alters candidate matchups, shifting voter responsiveness and political leverage, and each channel alone yields distinct predictions about whether packing or cracking voters is optimal. For minority voters, the welfare effects of districting depend on electoral leverage, preferences over descriptive versus partisan representation, primary rules, and competitiveness. The channels align on packing when minorities are electorally weak and value descriptive representation, and align on cracking when minorities are electorally pivotal and prioritize partisan outcomes. When the channels diverge, or when endogenous feedback reshapes electoral leverage, minority welfare can be nonmonotonic in voter concentration. Our results identify when majority-minority districts enhance minority welfare and when dispersion strengthens political influence. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2604.01340 |
| By: | Torun Dewan (Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science); Christopher Kam (Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia); Jaakko Meriläinen (Department of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics); Janne Tukiainen (Department of Economics, University of Turku) |
| Abstract: | To what extent did class shape political behavior during early democratization and industrialization, and did class voting reflect economic interests or durable political identities? We use newly collected individual-level panel data from open-ballot elections in the nineteenth-century England—around 130, 000 recorded vote choices linked to voters’ occupations across elections—to provide evidence on the class-basis of voting. Voting was strongly structured by occupation: skilled workers and the petite bourgeoisie disproportionately supported Liberals and their free-trade agenda, while the gentry, farm workers, and unskilled workers leaned Conservative. Exploiting within-voter mobility, we show that these alignments reflected durable political identities rather than contemporaneous economic interests: Although socially mobile voters resemble their destination class in cross-sectional comparisons, within-voter estimates show that individuals did not systematically change their vote choice when their class changed. Class-based political alignments were thus behaviorally durable at the individual level, even though the Industrial Revolution profoundly transformed society. |
| Keywords: | Class-based voting, economic voting, poll books, socialization, social mobility, voting behavior |
| JEL: | D72 N33 N93 P00 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tkk:dpaper:dp179 |
| By: | Dey, Subhasish (University of Warwick); Natarajan, Vidhyarth (Independent Researcher); Sahoo, Soham (Indian Institute of Management Bangalore) |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the debate on identity politics by examining whether the religious composition of voters predicts electoral outcomes. Using assembly constituency-level data from six elections in West Bengal, India, between 2011 and 2024, we study how the Muslim population share relates to party performance. We show that religious composition becomes a much stronger correlate of electoral outcomes in the later period (from 2016 onwards): constituencies with higher Muslim shares increasingly align with the incumbent Trinamool Congress (TMC), while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) consolidates support in constituencies with lower Muslim shares. We also document heterogeneity within predominantly Hindu constituencies. Economically vulnerable areas – proxied by higher shares of marginal agricultural labourers – remain relatively more supportive of the TMC, while better-off agricultural constituencies shift towards the BJP. Together, the results suggest that West Bengal’s recent electoral realignment reflects both strengthening religious polarisation and an interaction between identity-based mobilisation and material considerations, with implications for political competition and accountability in democracies. |
| Keywords: | religion, electoral-outcome, TMC, BJP, West Bengal, India |
| JEL: | D72 Z12 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18475 |
| By: | Scholz, Tobias; Wigger, Leo |
| Abstract: | The parliamentary elections held in Bangladesh on 12 February 2026 marked a turning point in the country's recent history. In August 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had served for a total of 20 years, with one interruption, was removed from office. An interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus subsequently took power. Following two years of political uncertainty, it succeeded in organising elections that were procedurally sound. Bangladesh's political system has thus demonstrated a considerable degree of institutional resilience. At the same time, the election outcome raises new questions regarding the future of democratic pluralism in the country. The decisive election victory of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) means that one of the country's two historic political family dynasties will remain at the helm of government. The Muslim fundamentalist camp gained vote share, which could negatively impact the role of women in society as well as complicate Bangladesh's renewed rapprochement with neighbouring India. |
| Keywords: | Bangladesh, India, European Union (EU), parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Muhammad Yunus, Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), role of women, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, National Citizen Party (NCP) |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:339642 |
| By: | Valentino Larcinese; Alberto Parmigiani |
| Abstract: | Does higher income inequality increase political inequality by raising the political influence of rich donors? We attempt to answer this question by providing evidence of the effects of a policy-induced rise in income inequality on the concentration of campaign contributions in the US. Using a novel dataset at the Census tract level we show that the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which disproportionately benefited wealthy taxpayers, caused a spike in individual contributions, predominantly from donors at the top of the income distribution. The effect was similar for both parties and unrelated to the recipients' ideology or office sought. For members of Congress, the effect was larger for legislators that voted in favour of the tax bill and for candidates likely to be well-connected or from privileged backgrounds. We also find that an increase in disposable income is more likely to induce political donations when the donor and the recipient share a similar social background. Taken together, our results suggest that the effects of tax policy extend beyond the economic domain, with implications for the distribution of political influence through campaign contributions. |
| Keywords: | income inequality, political inequality, political influence, taxation, campaign finance |
| JEL: | D72 H24 D31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12574 |
| By: | Brunella Bruno and Immacolata Marino |
| Abstract: | The People’s Party is the only major populist movement in American history that was quickly reabsorbed by mainstream parties. We study the main trigger of its rise— technological disruption from railroad expansion—and discuss its dissolution in light of the conceptual framework we develop and test empirically. We construct a novel county-level measure of Technological Disruption Exposure (TDE) that captures the change in competitive pressure each county faced from all other counties, driven by railroad-induced reductions in transportation costs between 1870 and 1890. TDE positively predicts People’s Party vote share in the 1894 congressional elections: a one standard deviation increase raises Populist support by nearly 3 percentage points. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect is concentrated in counties with high crop specialization—where competitive vulnerability translates into concentrated losses. A commitment-politics framework organizes these patterns: railroads reduced the probability of being a market winner in high-TDE counties, where voters shifted from discretionary to commitment politicians. The 1890s episode is uniquely informative because, unlike today, there was fiscal and institutional room to rebuild trust: mainstream parties credibly adopted Populist demands, and the movement dissolved. Today those conditions do not hold—which may explain why modern populism has proven more persistent. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp26269 |
| By: | Julia Cagé; Guilhem Cassan; Francesca R. Jensenius |
| Abstract: | Information conveyed through news media influences political behavior. But to what extent are media markets themselves shaped by political determinants? We build a novel panel dataset of newspaper markets in India from 2002 to 2017 to measure the impact of changes in apportionment on the development of the news industry over time. We exploit the announcement of an exogenous change in the boundaries of electoral constituencies (the 2008 delimitation) to causally identify the relationship between the (future) apportionment of news markets and the change in the number and circulation of newspapers. Using an event-study model and a staggered Difference-in-Differences approach, we show that markets that faced an increase in representation experienced a significant rise in both circulation and the number of titles per capita. News and current affairs newspapers respond more to this increase. Furthermore, we document various dimensions of heterogeneity and show in particular that the magnitude of the estimated effects is larger in places with a relatively low level of newspaper and political competition prior to the 2008 delimitation. |
| Keywords: | newspapers, media, India, malapportionment, political representation, redistricting, delimitation |
| JEL: | L82 D72 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12576 |
| By: | Christiane Buschinger (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany); Markus Eyting (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany); Florian Hett (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany); Judd Kessler (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA) |
| Abstract: | How does polarization — as measured by mistreatment of political rivals — spread? In an online experiment, participants choose between splitting financial resources equally or discriminating against a supporter of the opposing political party. We vary the information subjects receive about others’ choices and justifications for discrimination. Exposure to extreme justifications for discrimination increases discrimination — particularly in a polarized environment, when many others are already discriminating — and it leads participants to adopt more extreme justifications themselves. Our findings suggest a self-reinforcing dynamic that may fuel polarization: Exposure to extreme statements increases polarization and the prevalence of extreme reasoning. |
| Keywords: | political polarization, peer effects, justifications, outgroup discrimination, social norms |
| JEL: | C9 D01 D9 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2602 |
| By: | Douwenga, Brian; van Ham, Carolien; Kloosterhof, Lotte; Lehr, Alex (Radboud University) |
| Abstract: | Although rising economic inequality is linked to declining support for democracy in multiple theoretical arguments and the public discourse alike, the empirical evidence for their linkage is mixed. We identify five main theoretical approaches that link economic inequality to democratic support, which are based on, respectively, : a) performance evaluations, b) the redistributive function of democracy, c) political inequalities, d) social and psychological dysfunctions, and e) fairness and expectations. We argue that while the majority of these arguments indeed predict some negative effect of inequality on democratic support, they can also reasonably be interpreted to imply that 1) long-term trends in inequality have consequences that are distinct from those of contemporaneous observations of inequality, 2) effects of inequality may not be linear, but rather increasing in the level of inequality, and 3) the impact of changes in inequality over time may depend on the level of inequality. We test these predictions using country-level data running from 1990 to 2022. Given the inconsistency of prior evidence, and the high degree of model-dependence implied by the choice of included countries, the choice of measurements of economic inequality, and the choice of measurements of democratic support, we compare our estimates across a range of country sample and inequality measurements, and between democratic support and democratic satisfaction. We find no evidence for long-term trend effects or non-linear effects of inequality, nor do we find evidence that the effect of changes inequality are dependent on the level of inequality. We do find reasonably robust evidence for a negative within-country effect of contemporaneous levels of income inequality on democratic support. Higher average income inequality also appears correlated with lower average democratic support, but we are unable to rule out that this is a spurious effect, in particular with respect to confounding due to difference in GDP. |
| Date: | 2026–03–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4kjhn_v2 |
| By: | Enrico Rubolino; Enrico Rubolino |
| Abstract: | Declining civic engagement increasingly strains welfare state institutions. This paper asks whether civic values can be shaped through early educational investments. I study Tax and School, a large-scale program implemented in Italian primary and secondary schools to promote fiscal and civic responsibility. Exploiting staggered cross-municipality adoption, I find that exposure increases students' intrinsic motivation for rule compliance and reduces antisocial behaviors, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged contexts. These student-level responses gradually aggregate into community-level outcomes: exposed municipalities later exhibit higher voter turnout and stronger support for redistributive policies. Survey evidence points to belief updating about the value of public goods and the role of government in mitigating inequality as a central mechanism. Counterfactual simulations imply that scaling the program could attenuate the secular decline in voter turnout. |
| Keywords: | civic capital, civic education, tax morale, political participation |
| JEL: | I21 H26 D72 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12575 |