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“The Poetics of the Sharing Economy” analyzes the conflict between two rival paradigms of social value – the paradigm of monetary capital vs. the paradigm of infinitely shareable public goods – in the works of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Milton, and Locke. The aim of this project is to uncover the now neglected history of a fundamental conceptual clash that not only played a decisive role in the elaboration of modern liberalism, but which has also once again emerged as an urgent problem in the world of twenty-first century digital information capitalism.The idea that certain goods are infinitely shareable – "the more I give to thee, / The more I have" (Romeo and Juliet) – was a recurrent motif in the works of Shakespeare and Milton. Although this motif has resurfaced in recent social scientific work on the sharing economy of the open-source software movement, it has not yet received any of the sustained scholarly attention needed to explicate its import in the context of early modern poetic, political, and economic theory. As well as filling this significant gap in early modern literary scholarship, this dissertation also highlights the important contribution that criticism of Shakespeare and Milton can make to our attempts to get to grips with the fundamental moral and political dilemmas of the age of digital “surveillance capitalism” and “algorithmic governance”.

Using an online survey experiment with a diverse sample of U.S. adults, I investigate whether individuals are more or less likely to engage with political content when it is presented in the form of video, audio, or text (either a conventional news article or a detailed transcript of the video’s content).

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This investigates whether greater racial and gender representation increases the perception of IO legitimacy. We examine this relationship through a survey experiment of American citizens' response to an investigation of U.S. refugee policy by a fact-finding team sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aftermath of the 2018 Central American refugee crisis along the Mexico-U.S. border. We hypothesize that greater gender and racial representation at UNHCR fact-finding panel increases perceptions of procedural legitimacy and improve legitimacy perceptions in situations where substantive legitimacy might be lacking.

This paper examines the efficacy of class-size reductions as a strategy to improve pupils’ learning outcomes in India. It uses a credible identification strategy to address the endogeneity of class-size, by relating the difference in a student’s achievement score across subjects to the difference in his/her class size across subjects. Pupil fixed effects estimation shows a relationship between class size and student achievement which is roughly flat or non-decreasing for a large range of class sizes from 27 to 51, with a negative effect on learning outcomes occurring only after class size increases beyond 51 pupils. The class-size effect varies by gender and by subject-stream. The fact that up to a class-size of roughly 40 in science subjects and roughly 50 in non-science subjects, there is no reduction in pupil learning as class size increases, implies that there is no learning gain from reducing class size below 40 in science and below 50 in non-science. This has important policy implications for pupil teacher ratios (PTRs) and thus for teacher appointments in India, based on considerations of cost-effectiveness. When generalised, our findings suggest that India experienced a value-subtraction from spending on reducing class-sizes, and that the US$3.6 billion it spent in 2017-18 on the salaries of 0.4 million new teachers appointed between 2010 and 2017 was wasteful spending rather than an investment in improving learning. We show that India could save US$ 19.4 billion (Rupees 1,45,000 crore in Indian currency) per annum by increasing PTR from its current 22.8 to 40, without any reduction in pupil learning.

How does policy-relevant information change citizens’ policy attitudes? Though giving numerical information about social conditions has been found, at times, to change policy attitudes, why it works (or doesn’t) is poorly understood. I argue new or corrective information may not translate into policy-attitude change in part because it fails to instill a sense of need for change. Perceived problem seriousness, an affect-laden judgment about the acceptability of the status quo, may therefore be an important psychological mechanism through which information changes people’s minds. To perceive a problem, conditions must seem worse than they ought to be. Previous research, however, presents numerical information without a point of reference from which citizens can base their judgments. By contextualizing facts with reference points from the past (time) as well as other countries (space), four survey experiments show that numerical information about a range of social problems can change policy attitudes by first changing their perceived seriousness.

Immigrants are routinely seen as less "deserving" of access to social protection than natives. This experiment investigates whether inducing people to take the perspective of immigrants and empathize with their struggles - a form of de-biasing - can reduce the deservingness gap between immigrants and natives.

Welfare chauvnism is the attitude that immigrants are by default less "deserving" of access to social protection than natives. This experiment investigates whether welfare chauvnism is driven by ethnocentrist stereotypes: Beliefs that immigrants have more negative attributes (lazy, unintelligent,...) and fewer positive ones (hard-working, intelligent) than natives.

Zugleich: Dissertation, Universität Kassel, 2022. Diese Publikation wurde unter dem Titel »Gefühlspolitische Selbst-Bildung. Untersuchungen zwischen Kritik und Gefühl« als Dissertationsschrift am Fachbereich 05 Gesellschaftswissenschaften der Universität Kassel eingereicht und angenommen., Gefördert durch den Publikationsfonds der Universität Kassel. Die Veröffentlichung dieser Publikation wird durch die Hans-Böckler-Stiftung gefördert.

The end of the Cold War catalysed a range of civil wars and separatist conflicts that battled for government control around the globe. Most of them were resolved through peace agreements which led rebels to lay down their arms and adopt political strategies to pursue their goals. A primary challenge for any resistance or liberation movement is how to win legitimacy and support from the population. This thesis is a case study on the transformation of the Sudan People Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) from a liberation movement to a political party and, later, government. It provides a context-specific understanding and analysis of how the liberation movement garnered legitimacy by tapping into local and international support in the liberation war. The analysis uses legitimacy as the optic for exploring the historical narrative and process-tracing to unearth multifaceted and interactive mechanisms, and strategies facilitating the liberation movement’s quest to consolidate domestic and international legitimacy during the period of struggle. The study employs a theoretical framework focusing on the concept of legitimacy as developed by Max Weber and other scholars. The theoretical approach expands the application of the term ‘legitimacy’ by including concepts such as revolutionary ideology, and performance, or eudaemonic legitimacy. Revolutionary ideology plays a vital role in helping a liberation movement to garner support and political legitimacy from the population during a conflict. It also arises through the invocation of universal values such as freedom, equality, and social justice democracy. Equally important is performance or eudaemonic legitimacy, which is measured by the ability of a former liberation movement to fulfil its revolutionary promises in the aftermath of (violent) conflict. Such a process entails the fulfilment and deliverance of ideals of liberation earlier promised during a struggle period. The promises may include the provision of security, public goods, and welfare to the citizens. However, in comparison to motives, objectives and aspirations of the SPLM/A during the liberation war against the central government in Khartoum, key findings on SPLM/A’s trajectory from a rebel movement to a government in the post-conflict period are not encouraging. The optimism, the hard-won jubilation, and the revolutionary legitimacy that catapulted the SPLM/A to power and the subsequent secession and independence in July 2011 quickly began to wane. The study found that SPLM/A’s legitimacy in the post-CPA and independence period continues to decline, and the South Sudanese do not enjoy the fruits of the liberation struggle. The findings also indicate that the SPLM/A is stuck in a political limbo: it retains many traits of a liberation movement, while its free ride during the CPA-mandated interim period en route to forming South Sudan’s first government has in effect worked against its aspiration to transform into a legitimate political party.

Zugleich: Dissertation, Universität Kassel, 2022. This work was submitted as dissertation to the Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel under the title “Analysing determinants, patterns of interaction, and performance of polycentric water governance in Spain”., Gefördert durch den Publikationsfonds der Universität Kassel

This is a discussion of the case of Alice Sebold and Anthony Broadwater. Sebold accused Broadwater of rape. He ws sentenced to 28 years in prison. Ultimately his conviction was vacated, but only after his term had ended. The article summarizes the issues (discussed by Rachel Aviv in an article in The New Yorker, and Sebold's book Lucky). It reflects upon the moral issues involved in the case, and how one can escape from the moral traps involved.

Cities are critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a consequence, cities are increasingly considered policy actors of global relevance. However, there is a wide range of policy issues considered under the umbrella of urban sustainable development (USD) such as biodiversity protection, circular economies, education, transportation, or poverty reduction. Given this wide range of USD, our research seeks to analyze whether residents' USD preferences align with the priorities of existing USD policy plans. To this end, we examine the preferences of 5,800 residents across eight systematically selected European cities – Antwerp, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Lisbon, Manchester, Marseille, Milan, and Valencia - through an original, preregistered survey experiment. Participants were asked to rate randomly composed USD policy plans out of 17 identified potential USD policy issues. In parallel, we analyzed 167 actual existing USD policy plans from the same cities. Our findings indicate a significant discrepancy between residential USD preferences and the cities' pursued USD policy plans. While the USD policy plans predominantly prioritize USD policy issues like education, biodiversity, transportation, and urban green spaces, residents expressed preferences for issues tied directly to their basic and everyday needs such as cost of living, public health, poverty, and unemployment. This democratic discrepancy underscores the importance of securing basic human needs as integral parts of USD.

Studies in the humanities are increasingly incorporating methods from information theory, which are based on dynamics in word usage and measures of relative entropy. This paper uses windowed relative entropy to thematic text representations to generate signals that capture information novelty and resonance and, aggregated on the actor-level, shed light on the innovators of the past. Comparing early modern chronicles and twentieth-century parliamentary debate we aim to investigate several dimensions of innovation in historical language records.

This hands-on half-day tutorial aims to explore the potential of the ParlaMint corpora – openly available collections of parliamentary records, which are uniformly sampled, annotated and rich in individual speaker and institutional group metadata. We show how the resource facilitates research into specific European parliaments and allows for transnational comparisons.

This paper presents systems to extract measures for legislators' engagement and absence during committee meetings and the stance and affiliation of non-lawmakers making public comments. We propose a system to track the affiliation of organizations in public comments and whether the organizational representative supports or opposes the bill.

Text of Podcast (Stocktonafterclass), This is a summary of the Trump Indictment document related to the Mara-Lago documents case. It discusses the context for the prosecution, some history of espioinage cases, and some legal complications with the prosecution.

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Indonesia boasts a lively influencer scene. These influencers promote various products and messages, including political messages, to their followers for commercial gain, and have been particularly active during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Influencers in Indonesia are potentially subject to state regulation, particularly via the controversial Electronic Transactions and Information Law (ITE Law) which criminalizes digital communications that “breach morality,” defame the good name of another, or spread misleading information resulting in consumer losses. In addition, influencers face a risk of community-led regulation, via an online backlash, should they transgress perceived moral boundaries. In this article, we present and analyze a series of case studies where influencer behavior has attracted regulatory responses. These cases illustrate the interactions among regulatory actors and also where and how the lines for acceptable influencer moral standards of behavior are being drawn.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to greater societal divides based on alignment with vaccine mandates and social distancing requirements. This paper briefly lays out the experiences of individuals in Aotearoa New Zealand related to public health messaging.Adults in Aotearoa New Zealand participated in a mixed-methods study involving a survey (n=1,010 analysed results) and then semi-structured interviews with a subset of surveyed participants (38 participants). Results were thematically analysed.Participants highlighted two key areas related to public health messaging, these related to message consistency and the impact of messaging on wellbeing. Conclusions and public health implications: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and further disrupts health service delivery and normal societal functioning, forward planning is needed to deliver more targeted messaging.

Research on the gap between science and policymaking and the barriers to utilizing science in policy remains controversial, since previous research methods have dominated data collection with perceived participant responses. This approach makes research findings applicable to particular contexts, particular participants, and particular times but cannot be generalized. We used a computational model to analyse linguistic text data from two communities and compared the results with self-reported research findings. The outcomes support that scientists and policymakers have their own linguistic characteristics, with scientists in the medical field preferring jargon and policymakers’ language containing public satisfaction pressures. Language representation also validates the existence of barriers in the use of science.

PurposeThis paper aims to extend the traditional conceptualization of localization, which has largely focused on recruitment, by examining “employability” and “retention” as crucial determinants of localization success.Design/methodology/approachUsing survey data from local (Emirati) employees in private sector organizations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the authors develop a holistic model of localization and test the relationships between stereotypes, organizational socialization, employability and retention outcomes, using Smart-PLS.FindingsAmong the main findings are the significant influence of stereotypes on organizational socialization (OS) experiences of Emirati employees, with a negative relationship between “work ethics stereotypes” and perceptions of OS experiences. Strong evidence is also found for the indirect effects of OS experiences on retention of Emirati employees, mediated by employability.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the literature on localization by examining the relationships between key variables not examined together in previous research. In terms of limitations, the cross-sectional nature of the study prevents the identification of direction of causality among these relationships. Since employee integration, as part of localization efforts, is a gradual process, future research should include longitudinal studies.Practical implicationsEmployability has emerged as a significant challenge for organizations and governments working to implement successful localization initiatives. This study’s findings highlight several opportunities for organizational and governmental policy interventions to support successful localization.Originality/valueThe authors’ holistic model extends localization literature by providing evidence for the role of stereotypes and employability as key constructs to be examined along with OS experiences and retention.

A questionnaire-based project examining links between misogyny, authoritarian attitudes, and environmental attitudes

The University of Michigan-Dearborn has a Legacy Lecture series in which retiring professors can deliver a talk reflecting upon their life, their career, their teaching, their research. This was my Legacy Lecture (March 30, 2023).

Why do political elites in resource-wealthy autocracies and hybrid regimes pursue regulatory liberalization at certain moments, but not others? Within academic debates over the beneficial or deleterious effects of resource wealth, scholars have used quantitative methods to evidence a resource curse through a positive relationship between oil rents and the regulation of private enterprise. This dissertation charts a departure from this received wisdom using a paired, qualitative comparison of the politics of corporate regulation within the largest oil producers in Africa and the Middle East—Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Drawing from a broader array of legal and bureaucratic reforms, and considering their heterogeneous implementation, I demonstrate that oil rents have played a crucial role in facilitating the liberalization of business creation regulations in the 21st century. Without the necessary oil rents to placate diverse threats to regime stability, particularly during the 2014-2016 oil price downturn, liberalization was inhibited. I term this the rent-conditional reform (RCR) theory. Before applying the RCR theory to the case countries, I explore the politics of corporate regulation within the two cases in historical perspective. Drawing from archival documents, this dissertation illustrates the distinct but parallel politicization of corporate regulation in the 20th century. While corporate regulation was politicized through the introduction of a Western-origin corporate code in Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, it was conversely politicized in Nigeria in the late 1980s through the first indigenous reform of the country’s corporate code. Moreover, I forge a theory of interest groups in Nigerian politics to explain the cross-class, cross regional collective action in the corporate regulatory reform and administration processes. Employing interviews with political elites, entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, I build upon these historic analyses to apply the RCR theory to the two cases before, during, and after the 2014-16 oil downturn. Using process-tracing, I argue that crumbling elite cohesion during the downturn disincentivized corporate regulatory liberalization in Nigeria, while the threat of popular unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring provided a parallel disincentive in Saudi Arabia during the same period. Together, the distinct causal processes across the two cases illustrate the applicability of the rent-conditional reform theory across diverse contexts of natural resource rent volatility.

This paper presents a comparative analysis on the historical process of nation-building in Romania and Ukraine, highlighting the role of state and non-state actors and the path taken by both countries that led them to the current day situation. This comparison will explore the role of socio-cultural prerequisites in each country’s transition, specifically civil society and social movements., {"references":["Aliyev, H. (2017). When Informal Institutions Change. University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/mpub.8772004","Andrukhovych, Y. (2020). The Festival Age: Origins of a Phenomenon. IWMpost 126: Democracy in Question. Retrieved from IWMpost.","Bădescu, G., & Uslaner, E. (2004). Civil Society Development and Democratic Values in Romania and Moldova. East European Polity and Societies, 18(2).","Baker, S. (2006). Changing times. The countries in transition in Eastern Europe. Sustainable Development, 186-210.","Barany, Z. D. (2004, January). NATO's Peaceful Advance. 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Does Ukraine Have a History? Slavic Review, 54(3), 658-673. doi:10.2307/2501741","Zayarnyuk, A. (2005). Obtaining History: The Case of Ukrainians in Habsburg Galicia, 1848–1900. In Austrian History Yearbook (pp. 123-124). Cambridge University Press."]}

Although the growth of social media has changed the way employees communicate at work, our understanding of the related workplace dynamics, particularly in public organizations, is still embryonic. This study fills these research gaps by testing hypotheses, drawn from social cognitive theory and social capital theory, using two sets of data on social media usage patterns and workplace practices among public employees. Our survey data ( n = 1,360) analysis revealed that most respondents (more than 72%) spent at least an hour per day on social media while at work, for both work- and non-work-related purposes. Furthermore, public employees with higher levels of social media competence (technical understanding and impact assessment) were more likely to report effective collaboration and seek assistance when needed. The results of scenario-based randomized survey experiment ( n = 600) show that the perceived fairness of social media-related termination decisions (or “get dooced”) was influenced by the presence of an explicit workplace social media policy.

Knowledge from past disasters can inform and support recovery, yet these insights are not always readily accessible to recovery practitioners. To bridge this gap, effective collaboration is needed to produce practical, evidence-based resources. This was the focus of the Recovery Capitals (ReCap) project, a collaboration between researchers and practitioners across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

​​Debt burdens have increased dramatically across Europe following both the Eurozone economic crisis and COVID-19 pandemics. Calls for austerity are beginning to emerge to reduce sovereign debt levels. Will austerity limit investment in military spending? Or will security budgets escape austerity pressures as the threat environment grows more dangerous? In this paper, we draw on recent studies of fiscal politics that probe public opinion over the preferred debt consolidation plans. By and large, these studies find that cuts to military spending are the most politically popular option to reduce sovereign debt. While these studies suggest that military spending is vulnerable in an era of high debt burdens, it is unclear how sensitive these preferences are when the survey environment provides information about security threats in addition to priming respondents about economic concerns. Towards this end, we examine if the preference for military spending cuts in the presence of high debt burdens persists when there is a salient national security threat. We field an original and nationally representative survey experiment in Italy that examines how manipulating perceptions of external threats conditions preferences for military spending cuts when respondents are confronted with fiscal tradeoffs necessitated by high sovereign debt obligations.

This is a nationally-representative survey that seeks to examine whether quantitative evidence or expert analysis can correct misinformed beliefs about President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his son Bongbong Marcos.

What do we mean when we talk about feminism? In recent years, the world has experienced not only the rise of feminist movements and the salience of women’s issues but also a counter-wave against them. Yet, research systematically studying public opinion towards women's movements and feminism, as well as the differences among cohorts, remains surprisingly scarce. This paper sheds light on the understanding of feminism by conducting a survey experiment in Spain, where feminism and backlash against it have been prominent on the public agenda since 2018. Specifically, by manipulating the label used to present feminism, we test the extent to which this term has negative connotations among the public, particularly focusing on socialization and cohort effects. Complementary to this, we explore the meanings of feminism by analyzing an open-ended survey question through content and text analysis. The paper contributes to the present literature by showing the specific emotions and symbols that citizens attach to their ideas about feminism and its role in society.

The project involves surveying three groups of international relations professionals 1) international relations scholars; 2) former senior foreign policy professionals who served across three U.S. presidential administrations; and 3) international relations focused professionals at major U.S.-based think tanks. These surveys include one survey experiment in addition to a series of questions generating observational data. Before describing the hypotheses and responding to other questions in the pre-registration, we first describe our work on “shadow topics”, which will assist readers in understanding our question responses throughout this pre-registration. Members of my research lab (the Political Violence Lab) and I are engaged in an extensive study of “shadow topics”. These are broadly defined as international issues that involve significant (human, environmental, etc.) cost or significant benefit (or expectations of significant cost or benefit) that foreign affairs professionals otherwise deem highly important but that have, for one reason or another, tended to receive minimal attention amongst major news media outlets. The task of identifying such topics is complicated by an unknown-unknowns dynamic insomuch as we seek to identify those issues that are, by definition, largely unreported (by the major news media, at least). To identify such topics, we are presently engaged in semi-structured interviews with current/former professionals from across the United Nations system; many major international non-governmental organizations; foreign affairs think tanks; major philanthropic organizations; foreign country embassies based in Washington DC; amongst other organizations. We have completed approximately 150 interviews as of the date of this submission, and interviewees have highlighted a variety of "shadow topics". Examples include: the consequences of "period poverty"; patterns of elderly abuse around the world; the environmental consequences of bottom trawling; the harmful effects of in-door cooking with biofuels; the loss of indigenous languages; and the costs of lack of road signs/signals, to name just some. In this project, we explore whether news article previews (designed to mirror article previews displayed on major news media websites) on “shadow topics” can be framed in a manner that increases the likelihood of readers engaging with them.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues past its second year, public health experts from various levels of government have been central to global efforts to contain the pandemic. Experts from local, national, and international institutions have all played important roles in providing information and advice on the coronavirus, recommended behaviors, and overall concerns in dealing with this public health emergency. As the pandemic has become increasingly politicized in a number of countries, these experts have also become more controversial to varying degrees (Singh 2020, O’Shea and Ueda 2021). Whether the public trusts public health experts has implications for the effectiveness of mitigation efforts, and understanding why some experts may be more trusted than others could contribute to more successful public health messaging and policy implementation. This study aims to measure how and why public health experts at the local, national, and international levels are more or less effective at securing public support for COVID-19 related public health policies.

Despite the devastation caused by COVID-19, there has been a significant amount of resistance to getting vaccinated and following other COVID-19 mitigation measures. Many of these policies have also become politically polarized, with people increasingly unwilling to listen or engage with those advocating for a different approach to the pandemic. Since a lack of individual compliance reduces the effectiveness of COVID-19 public health measures, it is of interest to researchers and policymakers to understand how support for these measures can be increased. One strategy that has been shown to be effective at changing attitudes toward difficult issues is perspective-taking, where people are encouraged to reflect on the perspective of others who are different from them (Adida et al 2018; Broockman and Kalla 2016). Perspective-taking can facilitate attitudinal change by encouraging empathy for the other’s situation. This survey experiment tests whether a perspective-taking exercise about the negative consequences of neighbors’ careless behaviors during the pandemic can increase support for policies designed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

This is a follow-up study of the project ``Normalization of Censorship.'' In this project, I ask why a majority of the Chinese public support government censorship. I argue that the range of censorship targets extends beyond politically threatening content such as government criticism and collective action. A substantial proportion of censorship in China targets seemingly harmless non-political content such as entertainment, culture, and advertisement. As a consequence, public perception of censorship shifts. When citizens frequently encounter censorship of non-political content, they are less likely to view censorship as suppression of political opposition. Rather, censorship becomes viewed as a normal government policy that regulates both political speeches and non-political content. The follow-up study has two objectives: (1) to replicate the results in the previous experiment and provide support for the main hypotheses; (2) to provide support for the additional hypotheses and distinguish the normalization theory from alternative explanations. To test these hypotheses, I plan to conduct an online survey experiment. In the experiment, I will ask respondents to read some social media posts during which I manipulate the censorship signal they receive. After that, I will measure their support for the censorship apparatus, the regime, censorship of political content, and censorship of non-political content.

Working with the Shasta County Registrar of Voters, we test the impact of local voters receiving a mailed postcard from their Elections Office. The goal of this study is to assess how increasing operational transparency changes voter trust in elections, their election officials, and elections office. Specifically, we varied whether voters received a postcard and the topic of it. Postcards described the vote by mail process, vote by mail security measures, voter file security measures, or election workers.

A novel survey experiment fielded in the Philippines to test the effects of state naming and shaming.

A global shortage of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic has raised difficult questions about how vaccines should be distributed, placing the issue at the center of much political debate (Kavanagh et al. 2021). COVAX was established as an institution to oversee the equitable distribution of vaccines, but it has not been able to follow through on its mission to facilitate that in the context of COVID-19 (Erondu and Singh 2021). Wealthy countries with vaccines have prioritized their own domestic political considerations, and bilateral relations have also featured strongly in decisions about where to send vaccines. Without more equitable distribution, the SARS-CoV-2 has continued to mutate in countries with low vaccination rates, prolonging the pandemic (Wouters et al. 2021). Because domestic political pressures have limited the willingness of political leaders to share vaccines globally (Kavanagh et al. 2021), this study experimentally tests two strategies for increasing popular support for giving vaccines to foreign countries. First, it assesses whether public opinion becomes more supportive of sharing vaccines following cueing of fairness and equity concerns in vaccine distribution. Second, it assesses whether public opinion becomes more supportive when equitable vaccine distribution is framed as a matter of self-interest for wealthy countries because it will reduce the likelihood of dangerous coronavirus mutations.

What role does gender play for status politics and recent successes of radical right parties? In this study, I assess whether the increasing political representation of women evokes a social status threat among men. A survey experiment is used to identify the effect of manipulating perceptions of women’s political power on individuals’ political attitudes. Reactions are expected to differ according to the depiction of gender equality in representation as either strongly increasing or as stagnating. In addition, reactions to the treatment are expected to differ among male and female respondents. The survey is fielded in Germany.

This study employs a field survey experiment with randomized vignette treatments to explore how perceived urban bias in climate policy reduces support among rural residents for solar energy expansion.

Elite sport and elite sport success is often regarded as one of the sources for national cohesion and high levels of national pride, however, its direct link is rarely experimentally analysed using survey experiments. Instead prior research relies on quasi-natural experimental or longitudinal data (e.g. Elling et al., 2014; Gassmann et al., 2020). Using a survey experiment, we explore how references to sport events might affect national chauvinism and national identity. For comparison we use success in culture as another non-political event. We conduct our study with Ukrainian citizens, in a context of heightened national chauvinism and national identity, due to the ongoing war with the Russian Federation (Rating Group 2022). Due to the war context, our study presents a very conservative check of the effects of sport success on nationalistic attitudes and national identity. Ukraine represents an interesting case for studying the link between sports and national identity and national chauvinism. As a former republic of the Soviet Union, sport was increasingly used to enhance the legitimacy of the socialist regime. Second, Ukraine is rarely included in respective analyses. Ukraine is not covered within the ISSP dataset that is frequently used for analyzing this relationship with longitudinal data. Our survey experiment satisfies multiple calls for future research by taking a national focus and investigating culturally important sport events (Storm and Jakobsen 2020) – in the case of Ukraine boxing and football. By construction, our survey experiment also covers a granular time period (Shibli et al. 2021). Our estimates are thus a rather conservative test of the relationship between national sport sucess and national identity/chauvinism. We use domain-related pride as a manipulation check for the items. Elling, A., Van Hilvoorde, I., & Van Den Dool, R. (2014). Creating or awakening national pride through sporting success: A longitudinal study on macro effects in the Netherlands. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 49(2), 129–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690212455961 Gassmann, F., Haut, J. & Emrich, E. (2020). The effect of the 2014 and 2018 FIFA World Cup tournaments on German national pride. A natural experiment. Applied Economics Letters, 27(19), 1541-1545. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2019.1696448 Rating Group (2022). Seventeenth national survey: Identity. Patriotism. Values (August 17-18, 2022). https://ratinggroup.ua/en/research/ukraine/s_mnadcyate_zagalnonac_onalne_opituvannya_dentichn_st_patr_otizm_c_nnost_17-18_serpnya_2022.html, accessed at 24.01.2023. Shibli, S., Ramchandani, G., & Davies, L. (2021). The impact of British sporting achievements on national pride among adults in England. European Sport Management Quarterly, 21(5), 658-676. https://doi.org/10.1080/16184742.2021.1916553 Storm, R. K., & Jakobsen, T. G. (2020). National pride, sporting success and event hosting: An analysis of intangible effects related to major athletic tournaments. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 12(1), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2019.1646303

Nearly 8 million poeple have fled Ukraine since February, 2022, with an addition 6 million people to be displaced internally. In this experiment, we study how those that fled the countriy (il)legimately are perceived by Ukrainians.

How does attribution of extreme weather events to different causes shape political behavior and public opinion? The severity and frequency of extreme weather events has increased significantly in recent years, and politicians and elites blame many different actors for the devastating impacts of these events. We focus on wildfires, which have complex attribution patterns: individuals may blame climate change, the government, and/or communities/individuals for increased fire risks, among other causes. With an incentivized survey experiment we evaluate the impact of randomly assigned attribution frames (climate change, government ineptitude, victims’ lack of preparedness) on contributions to wildfire relief, policy preferences (mitigation vs. adaptation vs. relief), and support for mandates targeting different actor groups (individuals/communities, public officials, corporations). The online survey targeted respondents in states with high wildfire exposure in the American West (CA, OR, WA, NV, AZ, CO) and was fielded during November 2021-January 2022. We test pre-registered hypotheses that donations will be higher when respondents contribute as part of a public good rather than through individual donations, as well when we attribute wildfire severity to climate change or the government. However, we expect contributions to relief will erode when wildfire damages are attributed to the victims’ own poor preparedness. Additional analyses evaluate the relationships between attribution in media coverage, wildfire exposure and spatial proximity to fires, and public opinion towards climate change and drought policies. Our findings shed light on the interaction of climate change attribution and extreme weather exposure for political behavior and public opinion.

People often agree that speech has consequences, but they disagree on the kinds of consequences that should happen to a speaker. To explore the range of what's seen as appropriate, we conducted a pilot with 119 self-identified liberals and conservatives in November 2022. Participants were shown 16 offensive statements, supposedly posted by someone on a social media platform. For each statement, participants were shown 16 different negative consequences, ranging from criticism to judicial consequences, and asked to select all of the consequences that they consider to be appropriate for the speaker. In this project, we will attempt to replicate the pilot findings in a larger sample and extend them by also sampling self-identified moderates.

This survey experiment examines hiring decisions during the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

The first stage of a ‘theory-building’ project, IFPL involves new empirical research to explore mass and elite responses to political leaders’ performance of representation. Traditional studies reflect and reproduce hegemonic masculinities. Who counts as a leader, what counts as leadership, and how leaders make decisions assume and reify traits, dispositions, actions and performances, and a reactively autonomous mode of decision making, associated with elite men. Feminist accounts suggest alternative possibilities, distinct from homo economicus, marked instead by an ‘ethics of care’, and a decision-making mode of relational autonomy (Sjoberg 2006). In exploring links between leadership and representation in respect of sex/gender and race/ethnicity, we begin to assess the empirical viability of an explicitly intersectional feminist conception of political leadership. We base our experiment in the existing literature suggesting that descriptive representation in relation to gender and ethnicity exists and that leadership perceptions are gendered with perceived masculine vs. feminine traits. We argue that the link with substantive representation is complex. Do we reward or penalize leaders that advocate issues that do not comply with gender and/or racial expectations? Conducted in partnership with YouGov, the survey-based experiment will identify public opinion regarding patterns of representation and perceptions of leadership to determine the extent to which they are moderated by and/or interact with affective representation.

This online experiment will test for whether psychological reactance exists toward an adjectival term about immigrants. In particular, I would like to see in which demographic groups in the U.S. population the term "undocumented immigrant", "unauthorized immigrant" and "illegal immigrant"is associated with different kinds of opinions about immigrants.

Research into negative campaigning has produced mixed results regarding its effects on mobilization – like voting and other kinds of participation – and system-supporting attitudes – like political efficacy, political trust, and satisfaction with democracy. In this project we aim to describe how these effects (1) differ between the effects of civil and uncivil negative campaigning by ingroup and outgroup parties, and (2) depend on the way negative campaigning affects citizens’ meanings of voting. In terms of meanings of voting, we distinguish between positive meanings of voting (e.g., voting to express support or to reward a party), negative meanings of voting (e.g., voting to express aversion or to punish a party), and non-meanings of voting (e.g., voting as meaningless, as difficult, or as a non-consequential act). We study this during the campaign of the 2022 United States midterm elections. In an online survey, we ask questions about campaign perceptions (positive, negative, dirty), meanings of voting (positive, negative, anti), voting intention, political participation, political efficacy, political trust, and satisfaction with democracy. This is a replication of a study we did in the 2022 Hungarian elections.

Research into negative campaigning has produced mixed results regarding its effects on mobilization – such as electoral participation, but also regarding other forms of political participation – and system-supporting attitudes – such as political efficacy, political trust, and satisfaction with democracy. In this project, we aim to describe how these effects (1) differ between different types of campaigns, i.e. positive, negative and dirty campaigning, by ingroup and outgroup parties, and (2) how they ultimately influence citizens’ meanings of voting. Three categories are distinguished here: positive meanings of voting (e.g., voting to express support or to reward a party), negative meanings of voting (e.g., voting to express aversion or to punish a party), and anti-meanings of voting (e.g., voting as meaningless, as difficult, or as non-consequential). We investigate these questions during the campaigns of the 2022 US midterm elections. In an online survey, we first tell participants that we they will be part of a short exercise regarding political campaigning. We then conduct an experiment in which we expose participants to two mock political advertisements by one of the two major parties. As is common in the field, the advertisements vary between the source of the messages (Republican Party / Democratic Party), and between 1) positive campaign messages (focusing on the party’s policy stance), 2) negative campaign messages (focusing on the policy stance of the opponent in a civil manner) and 3) dirty campaign messages (focusing on the policy stance of the opponent in an uncivil manner). The topics of the two advertisements are kept constant between conditions, and concern issues where the main US political parties are polarized both in terms of positioning and salience: abortion and immigration. The order of the two topics is randomized.

Growing economic inequality has been characterized as one of the main challenges of our time with pervasive consequences for social cohesion, growth, and political polarization (Winkler et al. 2019; Nolan et al. 2014; Piketty, Saez, & Zucman, 2016). Despite the rampant inequality, there is no evidence of growing public demand and action for equality and wealth redistribution (Piff et al 2018; Mijs 2019; Brady 2004). Arguably, this divergence between the rising levels of inequality and the low public support and action for wealth redistribution represents a paradox especially from the perspective of less affluent groups of the society who are harmed by the unequal distribution of resources. One prominent explanation for this inequality paradox is that high and persisting levels of optimism about the chances for social mobility combined with the belief that effort and talent lead to social success (meritocracy) reduce willingness to support redistributive public policies (Manza and Brooks 2020; Mijs 2019). Evidence from surveys that focus on cross-country variation in the popularity of mobility and meritocratic beliefs corroborate this view by showing that the prospect of upward mobility (POUM) and the belief in meritocracy go hand in hand with high inequality tolerance and low public support for redistribution (Shariff et al. 2016; Benabou & Ok, 2001; Manza & Brooks, 2020; Cojocaru 2014; Lameris et al. 2020; Alesina & La Ferrara, 2005; Alesina, Stancheva, 2018; Reeskens & van der Meer 2019). In turn, the reduced public support for redistribution determines policy outcomes (e.g., reduced social welfare and no progressive taxation) through majority voting and other forms of civic engagement. Intriguingly, the belief in meritocracy and the perceived POUM across countries bear no relationship to the actual social mobility and worker’s productivity (i.e., how much effort actually pays off) in these countries (Alesina and Angeletos 2005). More remarkably, despite the persistent popular belief in social mobility that characterizes the last three decades (Manza and Brooks 2020), evidence shows that many countries are rigidly immobile (Davidai & Gilovich, 2015; Kraus & Tan, 2015). For instance, in OECD countries it would take on average five generations for people of low socioeconomic status to reach the average income of their countries (OECD: A broken social elevator, 2018). These discrepancies suggest that the subjectively perceived POUM do not always reflect the actual level of social mobility. This “ideological” explanation of the inequality paradox highlights the potential causal role of beliefs about POUM in reducing support for wealth or income redistribution and ultimately leading to the perpetuation and widening of economic inequality. An alternative approach to the inequality paradox recognizes that the possible actions that the public can take against the problem of inequality are not always successful and, more importantly, are not limited to non-costly support for redistribution that is expressed through voting. In a well-functioning democracy, citizens from different social groups can also engage in less institutionalized actions such as demonstrations, strikes, petitions, boycotts, and new social movements of the digital age to demand equality of opportunities (Ekman & Amna 2012; Bezouw et al. 2019). These forms of civic engagement often have financial, opportunity or reputational costs that may hinder individual chances to move up the social ladder (Barrett 2015; Olson et al. 1989; Klandermans & Oegema, 1987; Klandermans, 2004). Furthermore, even when these demands and actions, including voting, are popular, they do not always lead to the desired outcome since governments and policy makers do not respond symmetrically to all popular demands. Recent evidence from many countries (even rich democracies) around the world has shown that policymakers respond predominantly to the preferences of rich citizens but not at all (or even negatively) to the preferences of poor citizens (Gilens 2005; 2012; Bartels 2008; 2016b; Gilens and Page 2014; Hufe & Peichl 2019). This dynamic may in turn lead to low electoral turnout, eroding public confidence in the institutions of representative democracy, and a growing trend in political cynicism and political apathy, especially for disadvantaged groups (Loveless 2013; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995; Amna and Ekman 2013; Barnes et al., 1979; Rose, 1980; Huntington, 1981; Lipset and Scheider, 1983; Dalton, 1988, 1999; Nye, 1997; Pharr and Putnam, 2000; Torcal, 2006). It is worth noting that this political inequality has profound implications in domains such as wealth and income redistribution where rich and poor citizens express very different views. In light of these critical points, we propose an alternative explanation for the inequality paradox. Although disadvantaged members of the society often recognize the unfairness of wealth distribution (Brandt et al. 2020) and the limited chances for social mobility (Alesina et al. 2018), due to structural factors, they lack the power to enact meaningful change through collective action (Gilens 2005; 2012; Bartels 2008; 2016b; Gilens and Page 2014; Hufe & Peichl 2019). Therefore, instead of a collective reaction to the unfair and high levels of inequality, people prefer to hope and strive for individual mobility within this unfair system (van der Toorn 2015; Benabou and Tirole 2006). Present study In light of these two distinct explanations of the inequality paradox, the main aim of the present study is to create an experimental setting where the combined causal effects of these two factors can be tested. Specifically, we investigate whether and to what extent high POUM in the absence of actual mobility and/or the low efficacy of collective action to reduce inter-group inequality can cause a reduction in people’s tendency to engage in collective action and an increase in people’s tendency to strive for individual mobility or opt for a passive strategy of political inaction. To address this question, we will employ an experimental approach that allows causal inferences about how socio-structural factors can shape the level and stability of economic inequality. Unlike previous experimental studies that examined economic inequality at the interpersonal level, we will focus on inter-group inequality and embed it in a context of individual social mobility and collective action to reduce inter-group inequality. These changes reflect our intention to better resemble the real-life context into which individuals make decisions in response to the growing levels of inequality. Instead of focusing on non-costly self-reported measures such as the support for redistribution, the present study measures to what extent people engage in costly collective action that may hinder one’s chances for individual mobility (i.e., competing strategies). The reason for such an operationalization of collective action is twofold. First, in democratic societies, an effort to change the level of inter-group economic inequality would only be successful through various forms of collective action suggesting that problems related to public good provision (e.g., free riding) may be critical in this regard. Second, social mobility as an integral aspect of modern meritocratic societies crucially affects motivations related to how people respond to economic inequality. A large body of literature suggests that the anticipation of and intention for individual mobility often undermine the motivation for collective action (Chipeaux et al. 2017; Tausch et al. 2015; Lameris et al. 2020) suggesting that individual mobility and collective action are perceived as - and often really are - opposing strategies. Third, many forms of civic engagement and collective action have significant financial, opportunity, and reputational costs (Jetten et al. 2017; Barrett 2015). In a competitive setting, these costs may undermine one’s chances for individual mobility (Olson Marcur 1989). Therefore, unlike previous studies that operationalized collective action in a socio-structural vacuum, we create negative links between collective action, individual mobility, and inaction strategies by introducing opportunity costs that are associated with the adoption of all strategies. Given that many Western modern societies are characterized by low levels of actual social mobility, we also aimed to investigate whether and to what extent the perceived high prospects of social mobility are updated in the absence of actual mobility. We thus believe that the aforementioned modifications substantially increase the ecological validity of our experimental design.