Which decision‐making arrangements generate the strongest legitimacy beliefs? Evidence from a randomised field experiment

How can democracies satisfy citizens' demands for legitimate decision making? This article reports findings from a randomised field experiment designed to mimic decision making in large‐scale democracies. Natural collectives of individuals with a shared history and future (high school classes) were studied. They were asked to make a decision about how to spend a sum of money under arrangements imposed by the researchers and distributed randomly across classes. Within this setting, empirical support for three ideas about legitimacy enhancing decision‐making arrangements is tested: participatory constitution‐making; personal involvement in the decision‐making process; and fairness in the implementation of arrangements. Throughout the analyses it was found that personal involvement is the main factor generating legitimacy beliefs.     

Do opportunistic snap elections affect political trust? Evidence from a natural experiment

Snap elections, those triggered by incumbents in advance of their original date in the electoral calendar, are a common feature of parliamentary democracies. In this paper, I ask: do snap elections influence citizens’ trust in the government? Theoretically, I argue that providing citizens with an additional means of endorsing or rejecting the incumbent – giving voters a chance to ‘have their say’ – can be interpreted by citizens as normatively desirable and demonstrative of the incumbent's desire to legitimise their agenda by (re)-invigorating their political mandate. Leveraging the quasi-experimental setting provided by the coincidental timing of the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May's, shock announcement of early elections in April 2017 with the fieldwork for the Eurobarometer survey, I demonstrate that the announcement of snap elections had a sizeable and significant positive effect on political trust. This trust-inducing effect is at odds with the observed electoral consequences of the 2017 snap elections. Whilst incumbent-triggered elections can facilitate net gains for the sitting government, May's 2017 gamble cost the Conservative Party their majority. Snap elections did increase political trust. These trust-inducing effects were not observed symmetrically for all citizens. Whilst Eurosceptics and voters on the right of the ideological spectrum – those most inclined to support the incumbent May-led Conservative government in 2017 – became more trusting, no such changes in trust were observed amongst left-wing or non-Eurosceptic respondents. This study advances the understanding of a relatively understudied yet not uncommon political phenomenon, providing causal evidence that snap elections have implications for political trust.     

Where is vote buying effective? Evidence from a list experiment in Kenya

Vote buying is common in democracies around the world. Yet relatively little is known about the conditions in which vote buying is an effective campaign strategy, in part because vote buying is challenging to measure. This paper examines the local economic and social conditions in which vote buying influences the behavior of voters in Kenya. I combine data from a nationally representative list experiment conducted after Kenya's 2007 elections with highly disaggegrated census data about local economic and social conditions. While 7 percent report that vote buying influenced their vote when asked directly, the list experiment finds that 23 percent were influenced. I find mixed evidence and statistically weak evidence that vote buying is more effective in the local areas where parties should be best able to monitor voters. Vote buying is, however, most effective where voters lack access to information about politics. I discuss the implications of the results for literature on vote buying, clientelism, and electoral accountability.     

Does inconvenience explain low take‐up? Evidence from unemployment insurance

Application inconvenience is one popular explanation for why many individuals do not receive the social benefits for which they are eligible. Applications take time and some individuals may decide that the financial benefits do not outweigh these time costs. This paper investigates this explanation using cross‐state variation in administrative changes that made applying for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits substantially more convenient over the past decade. We find that the introduction of phone‐ and Internet‐based claiming did not have an appreciable impact on overall UI take‐up, nor did it lead to a shift toward recipients that are higher income or likely to be receiving the maximum benefit amount. These findings are inconsistent with a time‐ and transaction‐cost explanation for low take‐up, since remote UI claiming is less time intensive. This suggests that reducing application barriers alone may not be an effective tool for increasing program participation. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Does Election Day weather affect voter turnout? Evidence from Swedish elections

Does rainfall during the Election Day reduce voter turnout? Previous research shows that in the US one inch of rain reduces turnout with about one percentage point. We turn to the Swedish context in order to test whether rainfall on Election Day have the same impact in a high turnout context. We move beyond previous research by testing the impact of GIS-interpolated rainfall on three different datasets that allows us to view the issue both from a wide time frame as well as with high precision as for turnout measures: (a) aggregate turnout data for Sweden's 290 municipalities, (b) individual level data from the Swedish National Election Study and (c) data from a register-based survey on voter turnout. In none of the three datasets do we find robust negative effects of rain.     

Does electoral competition affect politicians’ trade policy preferences? Evidence from Japan

This study examines the effect of electoral competition on politicians’ trade policy preferences using candidate observations from the House of Representatives in Japan’s 2012 general election. The study clarifies the effects of constituency size and the electoral strength of constituencies on candidates’ political stances. The empirical results provide evidence that politicians’ preferences for trade policy are sensitive to electoral pressure, but their reactions differ depending on the characteristics of each constituency. The results reveal that for a broad constituency with a large concentration of agricultural workers, election candidates are more likely to support protectionism than their counterparts running in a narrow constituency. For city district election candidates, electoral strength measured by the vote margin significantly affects their trade policy preferences. Candidates in close elections are more likely to be protectionist than candidates elected by a substantial majority, suggesting that electoral pressures deter politicians from supporting trade liberalization.     

Do constitutions matter? Evidence from a natural experiment at the municipality level

This paper asks if it does matter for taxes and government spending whether the mayor is elected (and recalled) by direct election or by the municipal council. It thus contributes to the economic literature on the impact of constitutions on economic outcomes. The effects are identified based on reforms of the municipal constitutions that were exogenous from the point of view of the municipalities in content and timing: each year, quasi-randomly selected groups of municipalities introduced the new constitution. This setup helps overcome endogeneity and identification issues that are common to many studies in the field using country level data. Using a new panel dataset of the 686 municipalities in three German states, this paper shows that direct mayoral election and recall through referendum only (as opposed to election and recall through the municipal council) reduce tax rates and increases spending on government employees.     

What Do Right‐to‐Work Laws Do? Evidence from a Synthetic Control Method Analysis

Using the case study of Oklahoma and a recently developed econometric technique, we examine the impact of right‐to‐work (RTW) laws on state‐level labor market outcomes. Our results show that the passage of RTW laws in Oklahoma decreased private sector unionization rates. Several other state outcomes including total employment rate and private sector average wages, on the other hand, were not affected by RTW laws. The findings for the private sector generally carry over to the manufacturing sector.     

Does legislative turnover adversely affect state expenditure policy? Evidence from Indian state elections

The effect of legislative turnover on the size and composition of government expenditures in Indian states over the 1980?C2000 period is examined. The paper finds that excessive turnover in Indian state elections results in inefficient government expenditure policy. First, the higher the turnover, the larger the government size. Second, excessive turnover affects the allocative efficiency of government expenditures by skewing the composition of government spending toward pure consumption and away from more productive investment expenditures. Third, the effect of turnover on fiscal policy is not linear; public consumption expenditure is convex in turnover, while public investment expenditure is concave in turnover.     

Can Political Inequalities Be Educated Away? Evidence from a Large‐Scale Reform

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. We utilize a difference‐in‐difference strategy to analyze how a large school reform launched in Sweden in the 1950s, which lengthened schooling and postponed tracking, affected the likelihood of individuals with different family backgrounds to run for public office. The data come from public registers and pertain to the entire Swedish population born between 1943 and 1955. The empirical analysis provides strong support for the view that improved educational opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds can be an effective means to reduce the social bias of elected assemblies.     

Do impersonal mobilisation methods work? Evidence from a nationwide Get-Out-the-Vote experiment in England

While face-to-face mobilisation has a demonstrable effect on voter turnout, a series of field experiments show that impersonal methods, such as telephoning and direct mail, are less effective. This paper provides a new test of the effectiveness of telephone and direct mail on voter turnout, which uses a large nationally representative Get-Out-the-Vote two-wave field experiment. We find that impersonal methods are more effective, though the magnitude depends on electoral context. Moreover, these effects accumulate both within and across elections as voters are exposed to multiple contacts. However this is an incremental and cumulative process, not the product of synergy.     

Can governments use Get Out The Vote letters to solve Europe’s turnout crisis? Evidence from a field experiment

Declining levels of turnout are a problem in European elections. Are Get Out The Vote campaigns the solution to the problem? While many studies have investigated such campaigns in the US, little is known about their effect in Europe. The article presents a field experiment in which encouragement to vote in an upcoming Danish election is delivered to more than 60,000 first-time voters using direct personal letters. Eight different letters are designed, based on the calculus of voting and prospect theory. The sample is randomly divided into treatment groups or the control group. Using validated turnout, small positive effects of receiving a letter on turnout are found, with little difference across letters. The letters mostly mobilised voters with a low propensity to vote and thus increased equality in participation. In sum, while letters have some effect, they are not likely to be a panacea for solving Europe’s turnout challenges.     

What Levels of Racial Diversity Can Be Achieved with Socioeconomic‐Based Affirmative Action? Evidence from a Simulation Model

This paper investigates to what extent socioeconomic status (SES)‐based affirmative action in college admissions can produce racial diversity. Using simulation models, we investigate the racial and socioeconomic distribution of students among colleges under the use of race‐ or SES‐based affirmative action policies, or targeted, race‐based recruitment policies. We find, first, that neither SES‐based affirmative action nor race‐targeted recruiting on their own produce levels of racial diversity achieved by race‐based affirmative action. However, the two policies in combination, although likely expensive, may yield racial diversity comparable to race‐based affirmative action. Second, the use of affirmative action policies by some colleges reduces the diversity of similar‐quality colleges without such policies. Third, the combination of SES‐based affirmative action and race recruiting results in fewer academically‐overmatched Black and Hispanic students than under race‐based affirmative action, but the schools that use both also see a reduction in the academic achievement of enrolled students.     

Can decision transparency increase citizen trust in regulatory agencies? Evidence from a representative survey experiment

Decision transparency is often proposed as a way to maintain or even increase citizen trust, yet this assumption is still untested in the context of regulatory agencies. We test the effect of transparency of a typical decision tradeoff in regulatory enforcement: granting forbearance or imposing a sanction. We employed a representative survey experiment (n = 1,546) in which we test the effect of transparency in general (providing information about a decision or not) and the effect of specific types of transparency (process or rationale transparency). We do this for agencies supervising financial markets, education, and health care. We find that overall decision transparency significantly increases citizen trust in only two of the three agencies. Rationale transparency has a more pronounced positive effect only for the Education Inspectorate. We conclude that the overall effect of decision transparency is positive but that the nature of the regulatory domain may weaken or strengthen this effect.     

Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For‐Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment

This paper reports results from a resume‐based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for‐profit colleges. For‐profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives, such as public community colleges, being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young job applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for‐profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all.     

Does online voting change the outcome? Evidence from a multi-mode public policy referendum

Do online and offline voters differ in terms of policy preferences? The growth of Internet voting in recent years has opened up new channels of participation. Whether or not political outcomes change as a consequence of new modes of voting is an open question. Here we analyze all the votes cast both offline (n = 5.7 million) and online (n = 1.3 million) and compare the actual vote choices in a public policy referendum, the world's largest participatory budgeting process, in Rio Grande do Sul in June 2014. In addition to examining aggregate outcomes, we also conducted two surveys to better understand the demographic profiles of who chooses to vote online and offline. We find that policy preferences of online and offline voters are no different, even though our data suggest important demographic differences between offline and online voters.     

Does the number of parties to place affect the placement of parties? Results from an expert survey experiment

Expert surveys are frequently used in comparative politics to measure the ideological locations of political parties. However, it is possible that increasing the number of parties to place systematically biases results as experts try to fit more actors onto a common space. We test this possibility with an experiment embedded in an “expert” survey – with graduate students serving as our pool of experts to ensure an adequate sample size – by varying the number of parties to be placed in the United Kingdom and Germany. We find some tendency for the variance of Labor and SPD placements to diminish when more parties are present, and for SPD placements to move toward the center given more parties. However, we find no consistent evidence that the number of parties systematically affects mean or median party placements. Our results support the reliability of expert surveys as an indicator of party ideology.     

Does the pass‐through of exchange rate and globalization validate the rockets and feathers hypothesis in Nigeria? Evidence from a nonlinear model

The rapid shift in trade policy towards greater openness is theoretically presumed to leave domestic prices vulnerable to the change in exchange rate. This study investigates not only the asymmetric pass‐through of exchange rate but also globalization to consumer price inflation (CPI) in Nigeria and determines whether the pass‐through is consistent with the rockets and feathers hypothesis. Using the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model and the monthly data from 1986 M01–2015 M12, the results provide evidence that the pass‐through of exchange rate and globalization is asymmetric with depreciation and negative shocks to globalization exerting a higher pass‐through—a result that validates the rockets and feathers hypothesis. The results further suggest that the asymmetric pass‐through of exchange rate and globalization is elastic in the long run except for the positive shocks to exchange rate while in the short run, it is inelastic except for the negative shocks to globalization. Overall, the pass‐through, in the long run, is higher compared to the pass‐through in the short run.     

Does Administrative Burden Influence Public Support for Government Programs? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Research indicates that administrative burden influences the behaviors and views of clients and potential clients of government programs. However, administrative burden may also shape mass attitudes toward government programs. Taking a behavioral public administration approach, the authors consider whether and how exposure to information about administrative burden embedded within eligibility-based programs influences citizen favorability toward those programs. It is hypothesized that if information about the existing screening mechanisms is highlighted and made salient, this will lead to greater approval of eligibility-based programs. This expectation is evaluated using a survey experiment that explores administrative burden in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The evidence shows that being exposed to information about administrative burden increases favorability toward TANF and its recipients, though these effects are conditional on party identification. The results provide insight into a potential consequence of administrative burden, showing the way in which information regarding burden can shape citizens’ support for eligibility-based programs.     

What drives the polarisation and moderation of opinions? Evidence from a Finnish citizen deliberation experiment on immigration

In the study of deliberation, a largely under‐explored area is why some participants polarise their opinion after deliberation and why others moderate them. Opinion polarisation is usually considered a suspicious outcome of deliberation, while moderation is seen as a desirable one. This article takes issue with this view. Results from a Finnish deliberative experiment on immigration show that polarisers and moderators were not different in socioeconomic, cognitive or affective profiles. Moreover, both polarisation and moderation can entail deliberatively desired pathways: in the experiment, both polarisers and moderators learned during deliberation, levels of empathy were fairly high on both sides, and group pressures barely mattered. Finally, the low physical presence of immigrants in some discussion groups was associated with polarisation in the anti‐immigrant direction, bolstering longstanding claims regarding the importance of presence for democratic politics.