research
journal articles
- Who Should Politicians Represent? How Winning an Election Influences Citizens’ Views on RepresentationTim Lars Allinger(Just Accepted at The Journal of Politics)
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.
working papers
- Do Exclusionary Policies Increase Hate Crimes? Evidence from the Nomad Camps in ItalyTim Lars Allinger(Available upon request)
Hostility and hate crimes against immigrants and ethnic minorities are a persistent problem, which have surged again across Europe in recent years. Yet, the role of state policies in shaping such violence remains understudied. I argue that exclusionary policies targeting minority groups can legitimize hostility, increasing hate crimes not only against the targeted group but also against other minorities. To test this, I examine Italy’s nomad camps – institutionalized, mono-ethnic settlements for Sinti and Roma – using municipality-level hate crime data. Leveraging spatial spillover effects combined with an instrumental variable approach, I show that proximity to these camps increases hate crimes against individuals with a migration background. Notably, this effect extends beyond camp residents, suggesting a broader shift in intolerant actions rather than mere opportunity-driven violence. These findings highlight the consequences of exclusionary policies and underscore the state’s role in shaping intergroup relations, with implications for policymaking in societies grappling with rising anti-minority violence.
- Is this my Last Resort? Understanding Public Support for Hate Crimes against RefugeesTim Lars Allinger(Available upon request)
Violent attacks against refugees remain a pervasive problem – also because they enjoy notable public support, especially among far-right voters. Yet little is known about the political conditions under which anti-refugee grievances escalate into support for such violence. I argue that this support is not only driven by hostility toward refugees but also by perceptions of political unresponsiveness. Specifically, individuals are more likely to endorse violence when refugee policies are perceived as overly permissive and non-violent efforts as having failed previously, making violence appear as a last resort. To test this, I fielded a preregistered vignette experiment with 2,356 far-right voters in Germany, the group most susceptible to such violent appeals. The experiment independently varied local refugee policy and prior citizen protest, and then measured respondents’ endorsement of an attack on a refugee home. The findings confirm the argument: support for violence increases in response to permissive policies, but only when preceded by protest. The results have important implications for understanding how institutional behavior can shape public support for violence in polarized and migration-challenged democracies.
- 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 covering 31% of the world’s population. 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.
- Can Social Desirability Be Manipulated in Online Surveys?
Social scientists have long debated the extent to which social desirability bias affects online survey responses. We argue that the most promising way to measure it is through a global manipulation at the survey’s outset. If effective, this approach allows researchers to (1) isolate social desirability from confounders, (2) verify manipulation success, and (3) assess effects across multiple outcomes. Using well-powered survey experiments in the United States and Denmark, both on online access panels and a student convenience sample, we provide the most comprehensive test of this approach to date. Our findings show this method is unreliable: some treatments fail to induce perceptions of being observed, while others succeed but do not alter responses known to be affected by social desirability bias. These results challenge existing approaches and suggest researchers should prioritize specific inferential goals over a universal solution. We conclude with recommendations for alternative methods.
- Democratic Transgressions Embedded in Reality
Research on citizens and democratic backsliding has skyrocketed over the past decade. Most of this research has focused on why citizens might tolerate hypothetical undemocratic behavior carried out in the abstract by hypothetical actors. We present a theoretical framework and use a two-wave panel survey from six challenged democracies (the United States, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and India) to assess the consequences of this approach. In the first wave, we develop an alternative survey instrument based on real-world democratic transgressions and compare support for such transgressions to typical hypothetical behaviors. In the second wave, we construct an intervention to compare how easily support for real-world transgressions is moved vis-à-vis support for hypothetical transgressions. Our results show that support for real-world undemocratic behaviors is substantially higher but also easier to intervene against. Prior research may simultaneously have underestimated both support for undemocratic behavior and the prospects of intervening against it.
work in progress
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- Social norm interventions increase resistance to real-world anti-democratic elite behavior
- Can Populist Parties Increase Electoral Turnout? The Case of the M5S Movement in Italy