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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Denter, Philipp; Ginzburg, Boris |
| Abstract: | Political agents often attempt to influence elections through "troll farms" that flood social media platforms with messages from fake accounts that emulate genuine information. We study the ability of troll farms to manipulate elections. We show that such disinformation tactics is more effective when voters are otherwise well-informed. Thus, for example, societies with high-quality media are more vulnerable to electoral manipulation. |
| Keywords: | Fake News, Disinformation, Troll Farms, Elections, Social Media, Information Aggregation, Fact-Checking |
| JEL: | D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2021–09–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:109634&r= |
| By: | Jonas Jessen; Daniel Kuehnle; Markus Wagner |
| Abstract: | Habit formation theory and the transformative voting hypothesis both imply that voting has downstream consequences for turnout and political involvement. Although several studies have applied causal research designs to study this question, the long-run evidence is extremely limited, especially for potentially transformative effects. We jointly examine the short- and long-term impact of earlier voting eligibility on subsequent turnout and political involvement using rich panel data from the UK. Exploiting the eligibility cut-off for national elections within a regression discontinuity design, our precise estimates document a short-run increase in voting–for those able to vote earlier–alongside a contemporaneous increase in several measures of political involvement. However, we show that these short-term effects fade away quickly and do not translate into permanent changes in turnout propensity or political involvement. Our results imply that, in a setting with low institutional barriers to vote, the transformative effects of voting are short-lived at most. |
| Keywords: | Habit formation, transformative voting hypothesis, voter turnout, political involvement, regression discontinuity |
| JEL: | D01 D70 D72 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1973&r= |
| By: | Bayerlein, Michael |
| Abstract: | This article answers the question of why certain European mainstream parties have changed their policy positions on the GAL-TAN (Green/Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist) dimension in recent years. I argue that these changes can be explained through the electoral success of new right-wing populist parties and the ideological proximity of conservative mainstream parties towards these parties. These arguments were tested with econometric models of mainstream parties’ policy positions in 11 Western European democracies between 2002 and 2019. The results indicate that mainstream parties chase the other “populist zeitgeist” by changing their policy positions on the GAL–TAN dimension in response to the electoral success of right-wing populist parties. Mainstream parties respond to this threat by closing the distance to these parties on the GAL–TAN dimension. However, this responsiveness is largely constrained to conservative mainstream parties. The findings have important implications for understanding mainstream party responsiveness towards rivalling right-wing populist parties. |
| Keywords: | populism,electoral competition,spatial analysis,political parties,GAL-TAN dimension |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkie:240403&r= |
| By: | Luigi Guiso; Massimo Morelli; Tommaso Sonno; Helios Herrera |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that the financial crisis was a watershed in the burst of populism both on the demand side (voters behaviour) and on the supply side (political parties behaviour). On the demand side, we provide novel results on the causal effect of the financial crisis on trust, turnout and voting choices via its effects on voters economic insecurity. Economic insecurity peaks during the financial crisis and extends to segments of the population untouched by the globalization and robotization shocks. To establish causality, we use a pseudo-panel analysis and instrument the economic insecurity of different cohorts leveraging on a new methodology designed to highlight the different sensitivity to financial constraints for people in different occupations. On the supply side, we trace from manifestos the policy positions of old and new parties showing that the supply of populism had the largest jump right after the financial crisis. The size of the jump is largest in countries with low fiscal space and for parties on the left of the political spectrum. We provide a formal rationalization for the key role of fiscal space, showing how the pre-financial crisis shocks enter the picture as sources of a shrinking fiscal space. |
| Keywords: | Demand and Supply of Populism; Financial Crisis; Fiscal Space; Age-Earning Profiles |
| JEL: | D72 D78 D14 H30 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp20166&r= |