The Department of Political Science invites you to the project presentations by 1st PhD students, Political Economy Track
Vlad Surdea-Hernea, Doctoral candidate in Political Science—Political Economy track
Individual beliefs, socio-economic values, and support for a carbon tariff: Experimental evidence from Germany.
Abstract: The European Union plans to introduce a fully-operational carbon tariff by 2026, a policy that would tax imports based on their carbon footprint. This paper will study how individual beliefs about salient socio-economic values shape preferences for such a tariff. To this end, I leverage original data from an experimental survey fielded in Germany, which considers the effect of five values: freedom, equality, sustainability, patriotism, and morality. The experiment exposes respondents to randomly assigned treatments formatted as pieces of information resembling a newspaper article. Each treatment is framed and worded to reflect a different socio-economic value, which allows me to isolate each causal effect. Furthermore, by inducing variation in the value of the carbon tariff respondents are asked about in the survey, I assess the role of self-interest in molding individual preferences. I estimate this effect using a regression discontinuity design. Finally, I evaluate whether political economy constraints associated with the German Länder moderate the previously determined causal effects.
Anastasiia Soboleva, Doctoral candidate in Political Science, Political Economy Track
How they persist? Autocrats, patronage, and status quo
Abstract: Success with which autocrats manage to secure the status quo remains a puzzling issue in research, and as the political economy suggests, cooptation becomes one of the crucial ways toward regime resilience. However, since polities are multi-actor settings while resources are not infinite, the leader is essentially faced with a choice of optimal rent distribution conducive to stability. Drawing on the logic of the selectorate theory (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), the present work theorizes how a leader forms an authoritarian coalition out of population groups by directing rents to ones and imposing the burden of market distortion on others. (This game focuses on the selectorate formation, leaving the dynamics within the elite, i.e. leader plus her winning coalition, for a separate game.) Thus, given group characteristics – size, economic contribution, level of income, vulnerability to propaganda – as well as an exogenous economic shock affecting the budget constraint, the leader chooses a distributive policy with a specific amount of private goods directed to the elite, club goods directed to selectorate groups, and the rest for pubic goods. After the sets of supporters and dissenters are defined based on the redistribution results, the dissenters may stay silent, in which case the status quo ensues, or else rebel, with an outcome of a rebellion settled by Nature.
Gulsun Alca, Doctoral candidate in Political Science, Political Economy Track
The Impact of Refugee Exposure on Voting Behavior in Turkey
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the Turkish government has adopted an “open door” policy and the number of Syrian refugees has increased dramatically. Currently, Turkey has been the largest hosting country by receiving more than 3.7 million refugees. The majority of refugees have been mainly settled in the provinces of the southeastern region closed to Syrian border whereas many of them have moved to big cities in other regions. The refugee intensity in the provinces varies significantly ranging from 74% in Kilis to 0.04% in Artvin. This paper will study the impact of massive refugee inflow on voting behavior of Turkish citizens. Considering the significant variation in the share of refugees both across provinces and over time, I would like to use a difference-in-differences approach by comparing the national and local electoral results between 2011 and 2019 in provinces with high and low refugee population density before and after the inflow of refugees. Unlike previous studies analyzing the effects of immigrants on electoral success of extreme right-wing parties, this study aims to extend the literature by examining the electoral outcomes of entire political spectrum consisting of the vote share of four major political parties. Moreover, by using data obtained from a field survey on the perceptions of local citizens towards Syrian refugees and voting preferences of natives, I will analyze the mechanisms shaping citizens’ attitudes towards refugees.
For the Zoom link, please, email <polsci@ceu.edu>.