research
working papers
- When Institutionalized Minority Exclusion Legitimizes Hate Crimes: The Case of the Nomad Camps in ItalyTim Lars Allinger(Available upon request)
Open hostility and hate crimes against immigrants and other minority groups have seen a drastic increase throughout Europe in recent years. However, under which conditions citizens perceive it as legitimate to publicly reveal their xenophobic views and violently attack members of minority groups remains largely unclear. I argue that institutions signal what treatment of minorities is socially accepted, playing a key role in shaping citizens’ behavior toward these groups. Specifically, individuals experiencing the institutionalized exclusion of a disliked minority group in their local environment should perceive intolerant behavior as less stigmatized and act more likely upon their prejudiced attitudes in consequence. I focus on the so-called nomad camps in Italy, which are institutionalized mono-ethnic camps for Sinti and Roma, of whom some have lived there for more than 40 years until today, isolated from Italian mainstream society. I combine information on the geo-locations of all 150 official nomad camps with unique hate crime data on the municipality level. I identify the causal effect by exploiting the exogenous exposure of adjacent municipalities, looking at spatial spillover effects combined with an instrumental variable approach. I provide evidence that closeness to the nomad camps has led to a systematic increase in hate crimes against people with a migration background. Importantly, not only the camp inhabitants but also other immigrant groups, including people with an African or Asian background, face a higher level of hate and physical attacks close to the nomad camps. My findings have important implications for all societies facing increasing hostility towards minority groups and looking for ways to counteract this trend.
- Taking Without Giving: When Winning an Election Reduces Citizens’ Support for Partisan Surrogate RepresentationTim Lars Allinger
Should elected politicians represent their own voters or all citizens, regardless of who they voted for? Though a fundamental question in representative democracies, we lack insights into citizens’ perspectives on this tension despite their essential role in democratic stability and legitimacy. I argue that while there is generally strong support for the idea that an elected politician should represent all citizens in their constituency (partisan surrogation), this support diminishes markedly due to self-interested considerations once citizens find themselves on the winning side of an election. Relying on a regression discontinuity design in close district races across three German national elections, I present quasi-experimental evidence in line with this argument. The findings indicate that many citizens expect partisan surrogation when losing without being willing to concede that to others upon an election victory. This highlights the need for a more dynamic perspective when studying citizens’ expectations of the representative system.
- How Citizens Perceive Others: The Role of Social Norms for Democracies
Generations of political scientists seek to understand the relationship between citizens’ democratic values and democratic stability. The key premise of this research tradition is that democratic societies live on a “social consensus” over a set of democratic values; a democratic norm. Yet, until today scholarship has neither carefully theorized the role of nor measured the social nature of this consensus. Building on research in social psychology, we conceptualize democratic norms as social norms: citizens may think that most people in democracies support its institutions (descriptive norm) and also that one ought to do so (injunctive norm). We then measure these perceptions across 14 countries using nationally representative surveys. We find that citizens have a strong perception of social democratic norms; however, mostly on abstract forms of support. Using a vignette experiment we also reveal that respondents’ preferences are conditional on their perception of social norms. Our research has important implications for research on democracy showcasing the role social norms play to craft democratic support in our societies.
- The housing crisis on social media: Housing markets and the subnational diversification of policy supplyDenis Cohen, Andreas Küpfer, and Tim Lars Allinger
Political research shows an increasing interest in the political repercussions of subnational heterogeneity in housing markets. Whereas the effects on voters’ preferences and behaviors receive increasing attention, effects on parties’ policy supply remain understudied. Integrating theories of party competition with literatures on intra-party politics and dyadic representation, we argue that MPs in territorial representation systems seek to strategically diversify their housing policy supply in response to housing market contexts in the districts they represent. In doing so, MPs avoid ‘direct confrontation’ with their national parties and instead use ‘selective emphasis’: They do not openly oppose the party line but emphasize (tone down) their parties’ stance where doing so is electorally (in)opportune. To test our argument, we study German MPs’ housing-related policy communication on Twitter. Using a novel approach for legislator-level position and salience estimation in conjunction with original characterizations of local housing markets in terms of rent-to-income ratios, we find both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence in support of our argument. Our findings deepen our understanding of the political effects of housing markets and highlight new research potentials for the study of representation and subnational party competition.
work in progress
- Can Populist Parties Increase Electoral Turnout? The Case of the M5S Movement in Italy
- Social Desirability Bias as Substance and Not Nuisance
- Pro-Democratic Norms Against Undemocratic Behavior
- Talking without saying anything: The electoral consequences of parties’ ambiguous policy positionsTim Lars Allinger