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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2018‒10‒15
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Carlsson, Magnus (Linnaeus University); Dahl, Gordon B. (University of California, San Diego); Rooth, Dan-Olof (Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | Far-right and far-left parties by definition occupy the fringes of politics, with policy proposals outside the mainstream. This paper asks how public attitudes about such policies respond once an extreme party increases their political representation at the local level. We study attitudes towards the signature policies of two radical populist parties in Sweden, one from the right and one from the left, using panel data from 290 municipal election districts. To identify causal effects, we take advantage of large nonlinearities in the function which assigns council seats, comparing otherwise similar elections where a party either barely wins or loses an additional seat. We estimate that a one seat increase for the far-right, anti-immigration party decreases negative attitudes towards immigration by 4.1 percentage points, in opposition to the party's policy position. Likewise, when a far-left, anti-capitalist party politician gets elected, support for a six hour workday falls by 2.7 percentage points. Mirroring these attitudinal changes, the far-right and far-left parties have no incumbency advantage in the next election. Exploring possible mechanisms, we find evidence that when the anti-immigrant party wins a marginal seat, they experience higher levels of politician turnover before the next election and receive negative coverage in local newspapers. These findings demonstrate that political representation can cause an attitudinal backlash as fringe parties and their ideas are placed under closer scrutiny. |
| Keywords: | political backlash, far-right and far-left parties, public attitudes |
| JEL: | D72 H70 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11759&r=soc |
| By: | Bigoni, Maria (University of Bologna); Bortolotti, Stefania (University of Cologne); Rattini, Veronica (University of Pittsburgh) |
| Abstract: | In an online experiment, we exploit the existing disparities in socio-economic status within an Italian city, to study how these differences correlate with preferences in strategic and non-strategic situations. Our findings indicate that participants living in an area characterized by a high socio-economic environment tend to trust more and are more inclined to reciprocate higher levels of trust, as compared to those coming from less wealthy neighborhoods. This behavioral difference is, at least in part, driven by heterogeneities in beliefs: subjects from the most affluent part of the city have more optimistic expectations on their counterpart's trustworthiness than those living in a lower socio-economic environment. By contrast, no significant differences emerge in other preferences: generosity, risk-attitudes, and time preferences. Finally, we do not find any systematic evidence of out-group discrimination based on neighborhood identity. |
| Keywords: | beliefs, discrimination, generosity, risk attitudes, time preferences, trust, trustworthiness |
| JEL: | C90 D31 D63 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11758&r=soc |
| By: | Simone Moriconi; Giovanni Peri; Riccardo Turati |
| Abstract: | In this paper we document the impact of immigration at the regional level on Europeans’ political preferences as expressed by voting behavior in parliamentary or presidential elections between 2007 and 2016. We combine individual data on party voting with a classification of each party's political agenda on a scale of their "nationalistic" attitudes over 28 elections across 126 parties in 12 countries. To reduce immigrant selection and omitted variable bias, we use immigrant settlements in 2005 and the skill composition of recent immigrant flows as instruments. OLS and IV estimates show that larger inflows of highly educated immigrants were associated with a change in the vote of citizens away from nationalism. However the inflow of less educated immigrants was positively associated with a vote shift towards nationalist positions. These effects were stronger for non-tertiary educated voters and in response to non-European immigrants. We also show that they are consistent with the impact of immigration on individual political preferences, which we estimate using longitudinal data, and on opinions about immigrants. Conversely, immigration did not affect electoral turnout. Simulations based on the estimated coefficients show that immigration policies balancing the number of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants from outside the EU would be associated with a shift in votes away from nationalist parties in almost all European regions. |
| JEL: | D72 I28 J61 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25077&r=soc |
| By: | Batista, Catia (Universidade Nova de Lisboa); Seither, Julia (Universidade Nova de Lisboa); Vicente, Pedro C. (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) |
| Abstract: | What is the role of international migrants and, specifically, migrant networks in shaping political attitudes and behavior in migrant sending countries? Our theoretical framework proposes that migration might change individual social identities and thus stimulate intrinsic motivation for political participation, while it may also improve knowledge about better quality political institutions. Hence, international migration might increase political awareness and participation both by migrants and by other individuals in their networks. To test this hypothesis, we use detailed data on different migrant networks (geographic, kinship, and chatting networks), as well as several different measures of political participation and electoral knowledge (self-reports, behavioral, and actual voting measures). These data were purposely collected around the time of the 2009 elections in Mozambique, a country with substantial emigration to neighboring countries – especially South Africa - and with one of the lowest political participation rates in the region. The empirical results show that the number of migrants an individual is in close contact with via regular chatting significantly increases political participation of residents in that village – more so than family links to migrants. Our findings are consistent with both improved knowledge about political processes and increased intrinsic motivation for political participation being transmitted through migrant networks. These results are robust to controlling for self-selection into migration as well as endogenous network formation. Our work is relevant for the many contexts of South-South migration where both countries of origin and destination are recent democracies. It shows that even in this context there may be domestic gains arising from international emigration. |
| Keywords: | international migration, social networks, political participation, information, diffusion of political norms, governance |
| JEL: | D72 D83 F22 O15 |
| Date: | 2018–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11777&r=soc |
| By: | Jakub Lonsky |
| Abstract: | Across Europe, far-right parties have made signi ficant electoral gains in recent years, posing aserious threat to the European integration process. Their anti-immigration stance is consideredone of the main factors behind their success. Yet, the causal evidence on how immigrationaffects far-right voting is still relatively scarce. Using data from Finland, this paper studiesthe effect of immigration on voting for the far-right Finns Party on a local level. Exploiting aconvenient setup for a shift-share instrument, I find that one percentage point increase in theshare of foreign citizens in municipality decreases Finns Party's vote share by 3.4 percentagepoints. A placebo test using pre-period data confi rms this effect is not driven by persistenttrends at the municipality level. The far-right votes lost to immigration are captured by the twopro-immigration parties. In addition, immigration is found to increase voter turnout while theprotest vote remains unaffected. Turning to potential mechanisms, the negative effect is onlypresent in municipalities with high initial exposure to immigrants. Moreover, I provide someevidence for welfare-state channel as a plausible mechanism behind the main result. |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pit:wpaper:6471&r=soc |
| By: | Nguyen Thi Thu Phuong (Centre for Analysis and Forecasting, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences); Laure Pasquier-Doumer (IRD, UMR DIAL, PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine) |
| Abstract: | Household business owners mainly rely on their social networks of strong ties to acquire resources in Vietnam. However, no consensus is found in the literature on the influence of strong ties on the performance of small firms in developing countries. Using an original set of qualitative data, this paper provides new evidence on the influence of social networks on household businesses by following a relational approach of the networks. It contributes to the literature by distinguishing the effects of social networks at different phases of the business cycle. It shows that, in the business creation process, strong ties are by far the preferred source of the initial capital as well as information supports. They shape the business at a small size and make it not adapted to rapid changes in the market demand and the technologies in the latter phase of business development. Weak ties are much less mobilized at the start of the business, but they provide a source of valuable information to create innovative businesses. The more the business grows, the higher is the strength of the weak ties. The study illustrates that the use of social networks, including the weak ties, should be understood to be embedded in family structures and local community contexts, with a set of duties and rights embedded in reciprocal relationships beyond not only the business interactions. Les entreprises informelles comptent principalement sur leurs réseaux familiaux pour acquérir des ressources au Vietnam. Cependant, aucun consensus ne se dégage de la littérature sur l’influence des liens forts sur la performance des petites entreprises dans le contexte des pays en développement. À l’aide d’un corpus d’entretiens original, cet article fournit un nouvel éclairage sur l’influence des réseaux sociaux dans le fonctionnement des petites entreprises. En suivant une approche relationnelle des réseaux, il contribue à la littérature en distinguant les effets des réseaux sociaux à des phases différentes du cycle de vie de l’entreprise. Il montre que les liens forts sont la source privilégiée pour obtenir le capital initial et les informations nécessaires dans le processus de création d’entreprise. L’usage des liens forts façonne l’entreprise en la conditionnant à une petite taille et la rendant inadaptée aux changements rapides de la demande et des technologies. Les liens faibles sont beaucoup moins mobilisés au début de l'entreprise, mais ils constituent une source d'informations précieuses pour créer des entreprises innovantes. Plus l'entreprise se développe, plus les liens faibles deviennent cruciaux. L’étude montre que l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux, y compris des liens faibles, est fortement incluse dans les structures familiales et les contextes communautaires locaux, qui supposent un ensemble de droits et de devoirs, notamment une réciprocité qui va au-delà des relations commerciales. |
| Keywords: | Social network, strength of ties, informal sector, Vietnam. |
| JEL: | L14 L26 O17 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dia:wpaper:dt201813&r=soc |
| By: | Amrit Amirapu; M Niaz Asadullah; Zaki Wahhaj |
| Abstract: | Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, thus preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migration - if they are wealthy enough to match with the desirable migrating grooms. Guided by a model in which women make marriage and migration decisions jointly, we hypothesize that marriage and labour markets will be inextricably linked by the possibility of marital migration. To test our hypotheses, we use the event of the construction of a major bridge in Bangladesh - which dramatically reduced travel time between the economically deprived north-western region and the industrial belt located around the capital city Dhaka - as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in migration costs. In accordance with our model's predictions, we find that the bridge construction induced marriage-related migration (not economic migration) among rural women, but only for those women coming from families above a poverty threshold. |
| Keywords: | migration; marriage markets; female labour force participation; gender norms |
| JEL: | J12 J16 J61 O18 R23 |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:1810&r=soc |