In this page I summarize the scientific output and dissemination activity for my ERC Starting Grant, no. 852526, on "Behavioral Foundations of Populism and Polarization" (POPULIZATION). This grant will be active until July 2025.
Since the Great Recession of 2008, populist parties have scored major electoral successes around Europe. Nonetheless, the populist map of Europe has mixed colors: in some countries, voters rally behind right-wing parties promising closed borders while, in others, resentment towards rising inequality has fuelled left-wing movements; some other countries have been less susceptible to populist rhetoric. Why are populist parties more successful in some places (or times) compared to others? What makes right or left populism more prominent in some countries (or after certain crises)? This project tackles these questions with the tools of behavioral political economy, a blossoming field at the intersection of behavioral economics and political economy, which applies insights from cognitive psychology and methodologies from microeconomics to understand political behavior. I will address two fundamental issues that can shed light on the puzzling pattern of support for populism: the heterogeneity and time (in)stability of preferences and cognitive abilities; and the role of limited attention in shaping preferences and information processing. The combined output of these projects will greatly improve our understanding of European citizens' political preferences and how they affect economic and political outcomes.
Nunnari, Salvatore and Jan Zapal, A Model of Focusing in Political Choice, Journal of Politics, Forthcoming, Abstract
This paper develops a model of voters' and politicians' behavior based on the notion that voters focus disproportionately on and, hence, overweigh the policies in which politicians' platforms differ more. We introduce focusing in a model of electoral competition between differentiated candidates who invest resources to improve the quality of their policies in multiple common value issues. We show that voters' attention distortion leads to greater investment in policy development, greater platform differentiation (with politicians standing out in the policies they are more competent in), and greater investment in divisive policies. Finally, we show that focusing can contribute to explain puzzling stylized facts such as the entry of single-issue parties with no electoral chances or the inverse correlation between income inequality and redistribution.
Galasso, Vincenzo, Tommaso Nannicini, and Salvatore Nunnari, Positive Spillovers from Negative Campaigning, American Journal of Political Science, 2023, 67(1): 5–21, Online Appendix, Replication Data, Media: La Nación, Abstract
Negative advertising is frequent in electoral campaigns, despite its ambiguous effectiveness: negativity may reduce voters’ evaluation of the targeted politician but have a backlash effect for the attacker. We study the effect of negative advertising in electoral races with more than two candidates with a large scale field experiment during an electoral campaign for mayor in Italy and a survey experiment in a fictitious mayoral campaign. In our field experiment, we find a strong, positive spillover effect on the third main candidate (neither the target nor the attacker). This effect is confirmed in our survey experiment, which creates a controlled environment with no ideological components nor strategic voting. The negative ad has no impact on the targeted incumbent, has a sizable backlash effect on the attacker, and largely benefits the idle candidate. The attacker is perceived as less cooperative, less likely to lead a successful government, and more ideologically extreme.
Nichter, Simeon and Salvatore Nunnari, Declared Support and Clientelism, Comparative Political Studies, 2022, 55(13): 2178–2216, Supplementary Information, Replication Data, Abstract
Recent studies of clientelism predominantly focus on how elites use rewards to influence vote choices and turnout. This article shifts attention towards citizens and their choices beyond the ballot box. Under what conditions does clientelism influence citizens’ decisions to express political preferences publicly? When voters can obtain post-election benefits by declaring support for victorious candidates, their choices to display political paraphernalia on their homes or bodies may reflect more than just political preferences. We argue that various factors — such as the size of rewards and punishments, the competitiveness of the election, and whether multiple candidates employ clientelism — affect citizens’ propensity to declare support in response to clientelist inducements. Building on insights from fieldwork, formal analyses reveal how and why such factors can distort patterns of political expression observed dur- ing electoral campaigns. We conduct an experiment in Brazil, which predominantly corroborates predictions about declared support and clientelism.
Alos-Ferrer, Carlos and Michele Garagnani, Voting under Time Pressure, Judgment and Decision Making, 2022, 17(5): 1072–1093, Abstract
In a controlled laboratory experiment we investigate whether time pressure influences voting decisions, and in particular the degree of strategic (insincere) voting. We find that participants under time constraints are more sincere when using the widely-employed Plurality Voting method. That is, time pressure might reduce strategic voting and hence misrepresentation of preferences. However, there are no effects for Approval Voting, in line with arguments that this method provides no incentives for strategic voting.
Nunnari, Salvatore, Dynamic Legislative Bargaining with Veto Power: Theory and Experiments, Games and Economic Behavior, 2021, 126: 186–230, Abstract
In many domains, committees bargain over a sequence of policies and a policy remains in effect until a new agreement is reached. In this paper, I argue that, in order to assess the consequences of veto power, it is important to take into account this dynamic aspect. I analyze an infinitely repeated divide-the-dollar game with an endogenous status quo policy. I show that full appropriation by the veto player is the only stable policy when legislators are sufficiently impatient; and that, irrespective of legislators’ patience and the initial division of resources, there is always an equilibrium where policy eventually gets arbitrarily close to full appropriation by the veto player. In this equilibrium, increasing legislators’ patience or decreasing the veto player’s ability to set the agenda makes convergence to this outcome slower and the veto player supports reforms that decrease his allocation. The main predictions of the theory find support in controlled laboratory experiments.
Nunnari, Salvatore and Massimiliano Pozzi, Meta-Analysis of Distributional Preferences, Abstract
Revise and Resubmit at Economic Journal
We conduct an interdisciplinary meta-analysis to aggregate the knowledge from empirical estimates of distributional preferences reported from 1999 to 2023. First, we examine 297 estimates of sensitivity to inequality from 41 articles in economics, psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, which structurally estimate the Fehr and Schmidt (1999) model. Our analysis indicates that individuals are inequality averse: mean sensitivity to disadvantageous inequality is 0.533; mean sensitivity to advantageous inequality is, instead, 0.326; aversion to advantageous (disadvantageous) inequality is smaller (larger) in strategic environments. Second, we examine 98 estimates of altruism and attitude towards equity versus efficiency from 17 articles, which structurally estimate the Andreoni and Miller (2002) model. The mean individual has Cobb-Douglas preferences with a weight of around 1/3 on others' earnings. Finally, we do not find compelling evidence of selective reporting or publication bias in either case.
Guenther, Laurenz and Timo Freyer, Passive Inequality and the Dilemma of Meritocracy, Abstract
Revise and Resubmit at Experimental Economics
In meritocratic societies, inequality is considered just if it reflects factors within but not outside individuals' control. However, individuals often benefit differentially from other people's efforts. Such passive inequality is simultaneously just and unjust by meritocratic standards, confronting meritocrats with a dilemma. We conducted an experiment with a representative US sample to investigate how people deal with this dilemma. In the experiment, impartial spectators redistribute payments between pairs of individuals. We vary whether initial payments result from luck or effort and whether spectators redistribute between individuals who worked themselves or individuals who benefited from the work of real-life friends. Spectators treat inequality based on the efforts of individuals' friends as if individuals had worked themselves, and very different from inequality resulting from differential luck. This indicates that most people accept passive inequality if it is merited at some stage, which may explain opposition against redistributive policies.
Montanari, Giovanni and Salvatore Nunnari, Audi Alteram Partem: An Experiment on Selective Exposure to Information, Abstract
Revise and Resubmit at Journal of the Economic Science Association
We report the results of an experiment on selective exposure to information. A decision maker interested in learning about an uncertain state of the world can acquire information from one of two sources which have opposite biases: when informed on the state, they report it truthfully; when uninformed, they report their favorite state. A Bayesian decision maker is better off seeking confirmatory information unless the source biased against the prior is sufficiently more reliable. In line with the theory, subjects are more likely to seek confirmatory information when sources are symmetrically reliable. On the other hand, when sources are asymmetrically reliable, subjects are more likely to consult the more reliable source even when prior beliefs are strongly unbalanced and this source is less informative. Our experiment suggests that base rate neglect and simple heuristics (e.g., listen to the most reliable source) are important drivers of the endogenous acquisition of information.
Alos-Ferrer, Carlos, Michele Garagnani, and Jaume Garcia-Segarra, The Framing of Elections: Cooperation vs. Competition, Abstract
Revise and Resubmit at Social Choice and Welfare
We show that framing an election as a "competition" compared to "cooperation" reduces the chances that egalitarian alternatives will win under Plurality Voting, but not under Approval Voting. Individual voting behavior shows that the effect is mainly driven by voters who switch to their selfish payoff-maximizing alternatives under a competitive framework, but only when those are also payoff-efficient (in terms of the sum of payoffs for the group). This shift does not happen for voters whose payoff-maximizing alternatives are not payoff-efficient, or even if a majority of voters are better off under the payoff-efficient alternative. This suggests that voters are more likely to switch to selfish payoff-maximizing alternatives under a competitive frame if they can (self-)justify the switch in terms of the common good.
Nunnari, Salvatore, Eugenio Proto, and Aldo Rustichini, Cognitive Abilities and the Demand for Bad Policy, Abstract
Rational choice theories assume that voters accurately assess the outcomes of policies. However, many important policies—such as regulating prices and introducing Pigouvian taxation—yield outcomes through indirect or equilibrium effects that may differ from their direct effects. Citizens may underestimate these effects, leading to a demand for bad policy, that is, opposition to reforms that would increase welfare or support for reforms that would decrease it. This appreciation might be linked to cognitive functions, raising important research questions: Do cognitive abilities influence how individuals form preferences regarding policies, especially untried reforms? If so, what is the underlying mechanism? We use a simple theoretical framework and an experiment to show that enhanced cognitive abilities may lead to better policy choices. Moreover, we emphasize the crucial role of beliefs about other citizens' cognitive abilities. These findings have important policy implications as they suggest that educational programs developing cognitive skills or interventions increasing trust in others' understanding could improve the quality of democratic decision-making in our societies.
Benjamin Blumenthal and Salvatore Nunnari, Reciprocity and Democratic Accountability, Abstract
In this paper we introduce reciprocity concerns in a political agency model with symmetric learning about politicians' ability and moral hazard. Voters with reciprocity concerns are both prospective, i.e., seek to select competent politicians; and retrospective, i.e., reward fair actions and punish unfair ones. We focus on how electoral incentives induce politicians to exert effort (electoral control) and how voters remove incompetent politicians (electoral screening). We show that taking voters' reciprocity concerns into account has important normative implications, as increasing transparency about the incumbent's effort improves electoral control if and only if voters have sufficiently strong reciprocity concerns. Moreover, we show that reciprocity concerns can affect electoral screening, by affecting the competence threshold incumbents must clear to ensure reelection, generating incumbency advantages or disadvantages.
Guenther, Laurenz, Political Representation Gaps and Populism, Abstract
Populists are often defined as those who claim that they fill "political representation gaps" — differences between the policymaking by established parties and the "popular will." Research has largely neglected to what extent this claim is correct. I study descriptively whether representation gaps exist and their relationship with populism. To this end, I analyze the responses of citizens and parliamentarians from 27 European countries to identical survey policy ques- tions, which I compile and verify to be indicative of voting in referendums. I find that policymaking represents the economic attitudes of citizens well. However, I document that the average parliamentarian is about 1 standard deviation more culturally liberal than the national mean voter. This cultural representation gap is systematic in four ways: i) it arises on nearly all cultural issues, ii) in nearly all countries, iii) nearly all established parties are more culturally liberal than the national mean voter, and iv) all major demographic groups tend to be more conservative than their parliamentarians. Moreover, I find that demographic differences between voters and parliamentarians or lack of political knowledge cannot fully account for representation gaps. Finally, I show that right-wing populists fill the cultural representation gap.
Behler, Paul and Laurenz Guenther, Is History Repeating Itself? Populism in the Weimar Republic and Modern Germany, Abstract
The recent rise of far-right populist parties is often compared to the rise of Fascism in the 20th century which ended up destroying democratic institutions. This paper analyzes the abolition of the Weimar Republic by the Nazis from the perspective of populism and compares it to the rise of modern populism. We measure populism by analyzing the parliamentary speeches of parties from the Weimar Republic and modern Germany using an established dictionary method. Our main finding is that modern Germany follows a similar trajectory as the Weimar Republic. While the general level of populism was stable over time, both states saw a reversal in which parties were populist. In their early years, left-wing parties were the most populist while right-wing parties became the most populist later.
Choi, Andrew B., I'll Tell You Tomorrow: Committing to Future Commitments, Abstract
A principal wishes to promote an agent only if the state is good, and gradually receives private information about the state. The agent wants promotion but would rather leave than stay and fail promotion. The principal induces the agent to stay by committing today to tell the agent tomorrow about his chances of promotion the day after. The principal promotes the agent with some probability even after realizing early that the state is bad. The principal may commit not to lead the agent on. Our results apply to worker retention, relationship-specific investment, and forward guidance.