Toni Rodon
Biographic Data
| ID | 173302 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toni Rodon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Toni |
| FAMILY NAME | Rodon |
| SIGNATURE | RODON T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat Pompeu Fabra |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0546-4475 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 556 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Affective, but not ideological, polarization increases tolerance for undemocratic behavior
Over the last years, there have been frequent claims that democracy may be endangered by polarization, which has the potential to push voters and elites to embrace undemocratic practices and hence pave the way for democratic backsliding. But what is more decisive to generate tolerance to such practices: ideological or affective proximity? This article examines the effect of ideological vis-à-vis affective polarization on support for undemocratic …
Public support for climate policies
Securing public support for climate policies remains a major challenge. Citizens’ perceptions of the costs, benefits, and distributive consequences of these policies are key factors shaping their attitudes, yet how these dimensions interact remains insufficiently understood. This question is addressed through two experimental studies in Spain. Study 1 embeds a vignette experiment in two surveys to analyse how exposure to the costs or benefits of …
Could you please repeat it? The effect of language, and language variety on trust in multinational settings
Conditional hospitality? How applicants’ backgrounds shape host support for refugees
Public attitudes toward hosting foreign populations are shaped by a complex interplay of legal status, ethnic-religious background, and geographic proximity. This study examines these dynamics in the Catalan context within Spain, leveraging a randomized survey experiment conducted in late 2022. Respondents were randomly assigned to consider refugees from Ukraine or Syria and economic migrants from Belarus or Jordan, with settlement options either…
The Limits of Alarm
Does exposure to information on future climate scenarios shape public acceptance and willingness to pay for climate mitigation? This article addresses this question using two vignette experiments embedded in two different surveys in Spain to causally examine how exposure to information about future alternative climate scenarios affects an individual’s commitment to climate efforts. The findings show that such exposure has no significant effect on…
Electoral and partisan consequences of sovereignty referendum outcomes
What are the electoral consequences of winning a sovereignty referendum? While some argue that these referendums increase the electoral power of pro-sovereignty parties or even put in motion a slippery slope towards more (radical) demands, others sustain that sovereignty-related referendums are a “once in a generation” event, decrease the salience of territorial politics and hence the electoral appeal of pro-decentralisation parties. We put these…
The political effects of communicative interventions during crises
Can communicative interventions by the government influence political trust and increase public compliance during crises? This study examines the impact of a televised speech by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using an unexpected‐events‐during‐survey‐design, we find that the speech led to a 7‐percentage point increase in trust in the federal government and up to a 25‐percentage point decrease in citizens' mo…
Unpacking the rural–urban divide
Benchmarking pandemic response
Does the EU’s performance compared to neighboring countries influence public support? Using a benchmarking approach, we argue that people compare their country’s performance within the EU to that of a non-EU country, shaping their attitudes. The COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2020 provides an ideal test case, as governments launched vaccination programs at different speeds. The UK began weeks before EU countries, allowing us to examine its impact on…
UnfAirbnb! The Effect of Short-Term Letting on Electoral Behaviour
Over the last few years, short-term lets or home sharing have radically changed the dynamics of mass tourism and triggered disruptive consequences for civic, social and economic life. While lucrative for some, it has also impacted the character of different urban areas, creating significant changes to the local economy and often triggering citizens’ discontent. While previous works have focused on the economic and urban effects of short-term lett…
The Impact of Holocaust Survivors' Testimonies and Politicians' Framings on Political Attitudes in Germany
How do politicians' framings of the need to remember the past shape contemporary political attitudes? This research note addresses this question by focusing on the case of the memory of the Holocaust in Germany. We conduct a survey experiment in which respondents are confronted with a testimony by a Holocaust survivor on its own or by that testimony followed by an excerpt from a speech by a politician either emphasizing the need to remember the p…
The youth gender gap in support for the far right
Data de publicació electrònica: 24-03-2025
Closed borders, closed minds? Covid‐related border closures, EU support and hostility towards immigrants
Do border closures affect political attitudes? While a large body of research has discussed the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on nationalism and outgroup hostility, much less is known about how one of the main policy responses to stop the virus, closing the national borders, has impacted political attitudes. We argue that the sudden and unprecedented closures of national borders in the COVID‐19 crisis decreased EU support and increased hostili…
Where has everyone gone? Depopulation and voting behaviour in Spain
In many European countries, people increasingly leave rural or small municipalities to live and work in urban or metropolitan environments. Although previous work on the ‘left behind’ places has examined the relationship between the rural–urban divide and vote choice, less is known about how depopulation affects electoral behaviour. Is there a relationship between experiencing a loss in population and support for the different parties? We investi…
Democracy or discord? how citizens judge contested party leadership races
Working For Democracy
What factors contribute to closing the turnout gender gap after female enfranchisement? In the wake of franchise expansion, we test whether being a poll officer—and hence being exposed to election management—boosted the politicisation and mobilisation of women. In the context of the Spanish Second Republic (1931–1939), we exploit a lottery that assigned recently enfranchised women to be poll officers in the first election women were allowed to vo…
The Spanish 2023 general elections
The 2023 Spanish general election was a snap election called unexpectedly by the PM Pedro Sánchez the day after the local and regional elections in May 2023. Turnout was higher than expected (66.6%) and the result confirmed the high degree of multi-dimensional polarisation in Spanish society. Right-wing parties improved their position: the mainstream conservative PP increased its support mainly at the expense of Ciudadanos and the far-right VOX. …
Geographies of EU dissatisfaction
This article examines whether the spatial segregation of immigrant groups conditions the relationship between the share of migrants and attitudes towards EU integration. Do varying degrees of clustering of migrants in space diminish, mitigate or exacerbate the effect of immigration on EU attitudes? We combine data from the European Social Survey with fine-grain spatial segregation measures captured by the D4I project across four European Union co…
El sesgo de participación en el sistema electoral español
La manipulación del sistema electoral español por parte de las elites que condujeron la transición política ha sido demostrada en numerosos estudios. Esta manipulación pasa por la existencia de un gran número de circunscripciones de baja magnitud y su interacción con la desviación del prorrateo, la fórmula de Hondt y, sobre todo, el efecto de varianza de las magnitudes del distrito. En este artículo se introduce un nuevo sesgo no estudiado hasta …
El comportamiento electoral del votante en la mediana y las "paradojas" de la competición política española
Centrándonos en el análisis de las elecciones españolas de 2000, 2008y 2011, en este artículo ofrecemos tres contribuciones a la literaturasobre la competición electoral desde una óptica downsiana. En primerlugar, ofrecemos una respuesta a lo que constituyen según el modelode voto por proximidad básico, tres paradojas de la competiciónelectoral española. En segundo lugar, damos más cuerpo teórico yempírico a las propuestas ya realizadas de integr…
A bitter victory and a sweet defeat
This article examines the outcome of the July 2023 election in Spain. Despite the right- and far-right bloc winning a higher share of the votes, the two main incumbent parties on the left (PSOE and Sumar) defeated the odds and returned to government thanks to a post-election agreement with six other parties, including the Catalan pro-independence political formations. We show how coordination in the left bloc was important in shaping the outcome.…
A río revuelto, ganancia de conservadores
En los últimos años, los partidos políticos se han lanzado a por el voto de la llamada España vacía. Una parte de España, donde la despoblación reciente ha sido acusada, reparte como mínimo 79 escaños en el Congreso de los Diputados y se ha convertido en un gran activo electoral. ¿Pero cuál es la relación entre la despoblación y el voto? ¿La pérdida de población ha conllevado que algunos partidos hayan ganado o perdido votos? ¿O la abstención ha …
The Burden of a Violent Past
This letter studies the impact of past violence and repression on current territorial preferences in a contemporary democracy. Does a violent past lay the grounds for pro-secessionist preferences, or does it lead individuals to cling on to the territorial status quo? We study whether exposure to the events of the Spanish Civil War and its immediate aftermath made people more or less likely to support Catalan secession from Spain. Our analysis emp…
The scars of violence and repression on founding elections
Do violence during a civil war and its aftermath leave a mark on political behaviour? In this article I study how violence perpetrated by the left and repression by the right during and after the Spanish Civil War shaped vote choice and turnout in 1977, in the first legislative election after a 40 year dictatorship. I argue that the effect of repression travels over time when actions are perpetrated by clearly identifiable antagonistic actors. By…
Affective and Territorial Polarisation
What is the effect of affective polarisation on vote choice? Despite the growing interest in affective polarisation, scholars still do not fully understand the relationship between partisan affective polarisation and political behaviour. Crucially, most existing studies have assumed, often by default, that affective polarisation mainly occurs along a single politicised partisan identity. This article addresses the hitherto neglected relationship …
Playing to the Gallery
Research has shown that emotions matter in politics, but we know less about when and why politicians use emotive rhetoric in the legislative arena. This article argues that emotive rhetoric is one of the tools politicians can use strategically to appeal to voters. Consequently, we expect that legislators are more likely to use emotive rhetoric in debates that have a large general audience. Our analysis covers two million parliamentary speeches he…
Podemos and Ciudadanos Shake up the Spanish Party System
With a very high unemployment rate but at the first stage of a timid economic recovery, Spain held regional and local elections in May 2015. The election results showed the fall of traditional parties and the emergence of new forces and citizens' platforms, which increased the fragmentation of the party system. The PP (Partido Popular – Popular Party) continued to be the most voted-for party but post-election agreements brought the left to power …
A Scrutiny of the Linz-Moreno Question
In this research note we delve into the Linz-Moreno question—one of the most employed measures of national and regional identity in political science—by analzsing three different assumptions that the indicator relies upon: First, we test whether this instrument captures a negative linear trend between identities. Second, we examine whether the Linz-Moreno question also captures identity intensity. Third, we focus on the middle-identity category a…
Cross-cutting issues and electoral choice. EU issue voting in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum
As political competition is becoming increasingly multi-dimensional in Europe, voters often face the challenge of choosing which issues matter most to them. The European integration issue presents a particular difficulty for voters, since it is not closely aligned to the left-right dimension. We test the impact of the EU issue in the first parliamentary election following the UK's divisive Brexit referendum. We argue that while the EU issue was s…
When the context matters
Word on the Street
Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix
The 2015 Catalan Election
This paper examines the context, campaign and main determinants of how Catalans voted in the 2015 regional election. The elections were exceptional because the incumbent and the remaining Catalan nationalist parties framed the contest as a de facto referendum on secession. In this paper we scrutinise whether attitudes towards independence affected vote choice and whether they eclipsed other traditional significant vote-driving factors such as the…
Beyond Identities
Support for decentralization has generally been considered an outcome derived from the existence of regional or subnational identities. A recent complementary explanation has highlighted the role of politics to create regionally orientated support. We combine these two explanations by studying what determines the support for decentralization in Spain, an almost unique case where these two approaches can be tested. Using a hierarchical model, we s…
The Spanish electoral cycle of 2019
In 2019 alone, Spanish citizens went to the polls at least four times – two general elections, European elections, local elections and, for some, regional elections. Moreover, in the 2016–19 legislature, the country witnessed a successful vote of no confidence that replaced a Conservative prime minister with a Socialist one; experienced an important constitutional crisis over the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence; observed the emergence for…
Risk Aversion, Gender, and Constitutional Change
Independence movements are today present in several stateless territorially concentrated nations, irrespective of their level of self-government. Among advanced industrial democracies, the stronger secessionist movements are found in Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (Keating 1996; Sorens 2005). In the absence of a secession clause in their respective constitutions, a broad array of political parties and civil society groups h…
Contact with immigrants in times of crisis
Contact theory and threat group theory offer contradictory hypothesis regarding the effect of contact with immigrants. Does contact reduce or increases negative attitudes towards immigration? This article integrates both approaches and tests the effect of contact towards immigrants when different contexts are considered. We investigate the effect of the economic environment and the immigrant group size on modifying attitudes towards immigration i…
Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy
Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross‐national s…
The dog that didn't bark
This paper explores the relationship between the economic turmoil generated by the Great Recession and the increase of secessionism in different regions of Western countries. Some authors have stressed that the Great Recession triggered profound changes in political attitudes and preferences and, in the context of a conflict between the centre and the periphery, fuelled secessionism as a radical shift of the institutional setup. Nevertheless, oth…
Domestic contestation of the European Union
A constitution will not be enough. It can only set democratic processes in motion, processes into which it will then have to put down roots (...) A European party system will take shape only to the e
Do All Roads Lead to the Center? The Unresolved Dilemma of Centrist Self-Placement
Why do people locate themselves on the center? Despite being the most popular position of the left–right axis and playing an important role in party competition, centrist location is still a mystery. This article groups together and investigates the hypotheses behind this crucial position and reveals the motives of centrist self-location in 21 European countries. The empirical analysis reveals a novel insight of importance to ideological self-pla…
Affective and Territorial Polarisation
What is the effect of affective polarisation on vote choice? Despite the growing interest in affective polarisation, scholars still do not fully understand the relationship between partisan affective polarisation and political behaviour. Crucially, most existing studies have assumed, often by default, that affective polarisation mainly occurs along a single politicised partisan identity. This article addresses the hitherto neglected relationship …
When the kingmaker stays home
After reviewing the theoretical underpinnings behind the ‘conventional wisdom’ that voters on the left abstain more, this article critically assesses the traditional approach of the so-called ideological bias on turnout. By compiling a new large dataset (197 country elections in Europe), this paper shows that centrist abstention is higher than leftist or rightist abstention. The analysis reveals that a society’s ideological turnout bias reflects …
The Spanish 2023 general elections
The 2023 Spanish general election was a snap election called unexpectedly by the PM Pedro Sánchez the day after the local and regional elections in May 2023. Turnout was higher than expected (66.6%) and the result confirmed the high degree of multi-dimensional polarisation in Spanish society. Right-wing parties improved their position: the mainstream conservative PP increased its support mainly at the expense of Ciudadanos and the far-right VOX. …
From Political Mobilization to Electoral Participation
This article examines the process of electoral mobilization that follows the extension of voting rights to low-income citizens. We take advantage of a historically unique panel data set of official registers that includes individual voting roll calls as well as individual demographics of almost 25,000 electors in Barcelona in the 1930s, matched with relevant precinct-level socioeconomic, political, and geographical data. We show that voting was d…
Explaining Policy Position Choice of Europarties
While Europarties have received increasing attention in recent years, little is known about how they arrive at common policy positions, given their strong internal ideological heterogeneity. In order to explain position formation within Europarties, this article argues that national parties compete with each other in an attempt to upload their own policy positions to their Europarty. The article hypothesizes that their ability to succeed in these…
The youth gender gap in support for the far right
Data de publicació electrònica: 24-03-2025
The long-term impact of the location of concentration camps on radical-right voting in Germany
Of all atrocities committed by state actors in 20th century Europe, the systematic killings by Nazi Germany were arguably the most severe and best documented. While several studies have investigated the impact of the presence of concentration camps on surrounding communities in Germany and the occupied territories in terms of redistribution of wealth and property, the local-level impact on voting behaviour has not yet been explored. We investigat…
Beaten ballots
What is the effect of violence on political mobilization? Taking the repression-mobilization nexus debate as a starting point, we study the effects of police interventions on political participation, focusing on the Spanish police crackdown on Catalonia's independence referendum on 1 October 2017. We analyze the effect of police actions on turnout using detailed aggregate data, as well as a survey conducted a few days after the referendum. The tw…
Frozen or malleable? Political ideology in the face of job loss and unemployment
To what degree do people adjust their political ideology in response to job loss? To answer this question, we draw on Dutch panel data over the period 2007-2016, paying special attention to the potential moderating role of various personal circumstances. We find that, on average, job loss triggers a leftward ideological response. Although small in size, this shock effect persists when people remain unemployed or find new employment, yet in the lo…
How Fair Is It? An Experimental Study of Perceived Fairness of Distributive Policies
How do people evaluate fairness of redistributive policies when redistribution is considered multidimensional? We estimate the effect of distributive policies on the top- and bottom-income groups, as well as the effects of general wealth, social mobility, and origin of wealth on people's perceived fairness of the policies. Findings reveal that policies that encourage upward social mobility and an increase in general wealth and reward effort and u…
Beyond Identities
Support for decentralization has generally been considered an outcome derived from the existence of regional or subnational identities. A recent complementary explanation has highlighted the role of politics to create regionally orientated support. We combine these two explanations by studying what determines the support for decentralization in Spain, an almost unique case where these two approaches can be tested. Using a hierarchical model, we s…
Explaining Policy Position Choice of Europarties
While Europarties have received increasing attention in recent years, little is known about how they arrive at common policy positions, given their strong internal ideological heterogeneity. In order to explain position formation within Europarties, this article argues that national parties compete with each other in an attempt to upload their own policy positions to their Europarty. The article hypothesizes that their ability to succeed in these…
Do All Roads Lead to the Center? The Unresolved Dilemma of Centrist Self-Placement
Why do people locate themselves on the center? Despite being the most popular position of the left–right axis and playing an important role in party competition, centrist location is still a mystery. This article groups together and investigates the hypotheses behind this crucial position and reveals the motives of centrist self-location in 21 European countries. The empirical analysis reveals a novel insight of importance to ideological self-pla…
Contact with immigrants in times of crisis
Contact theory and threat group theory offer contradictory hypothesis regarding the effect of contact with immigrants. Does contact reduce or increases negative attitudes towards immigration? This article integrates both approaches and tests the effect of contact towards immigrants when different contexts are considered. We investigate the effect of the economic environment and the immigrant group size on modifying attitudes towards immigration i…
Word on the Street
Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix
Risk Aversion, Gender, and Constitutional Change
Independence movements are today present in several stateless territorially concentrated nations, irrespective of their level of self-government. Among advanced industrial democracies, the stronger secessionist movements are found in Belgium, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (Keating 1996; Sorens 2005). In the absence of a secession clause in their respective constitutions, a broad array of political parties and civil society groups h…
Un passeig pel saló dels passos perduts
Fa anys que el debat territorial ocupa un lloc preeminent en les discussions polítiques del nostre país i tant la ciutadania com la classe política s’han vist immerses en un debat intens. El procés sobiranista a Catalunya, però també les reivindicacions d’altres territoris, han sacsejat la qüestió nacional i territorial i han obligat els partits a moure fitxa en les seves propostes per a acomodar les diferents demandes plurinacionals i de descent…
Podemos and Ciudadanos Shake up the Spanish Party System
With a very high unemployment rate but at the first stage of a timid economic recovery, Spain held regional and local elections in May 2015. The election results showed the fall of traditional parties and the emergence of new forces and citizens' platforms, which increased the fragmentation of the party system. The PP (Partido Popular – Popular Party) continued to be the most voted-for party but post-election agreements brought the left to power …
The 2015 Catalan Election
This paper examines the context, campaign and main determinants of how Catalans voted in the 2015 regional election. The elections were exceptional because the incumbent and the remaining Catalan nationalist parties framed the contest as a de facto referendum on secession. In this paper we scrutinise whether attitudes towards independence affected vote choice and whether they eclipsed other traditional significant vote-driving factors such as the…
A Scrutiny of the Linz-Moreno Question
In this research note we delve into the Linz-Moreno question—one of the most employed measures of national and regional identity in political science—by analzsing three different assumptions that the indicator relies upon: First, we test whether this instrument captures a negative linear trend between identities. Second, we examine whether the Linz-Moreno question also captures identity intensity. Third, we focus on the middle-identity category a…
Un passeig pel Saló dels Passos Perduts
Decentralisation and regional cabinet size
This article explores under what conditions regional governments tend to have larger or smaller cabinets. The main contention is that cross-regional variation in cabinet size is partly explained by the dynamics set up by the multilevel system of government, mainly territorial decentralisation, multilevel government (in)congruence or the existence of nationally distinct regions. The hypotheses are tested with a new and original dataset built upon …
When the kingmaker stays home
After reviewing the theoretical underpinnings behind the ‘conventional wisdom’ that voters on the left abstain more, this article critically assesses the traditional approach of the so-called ideological bias on turnout. By compiling a new large dataset (197 country elections in Europe), this paper shows that centrist abstention is higher than leftist or rightist abstention. The analysis reveals that a society’s ideological turnout bias reflects …
Mind the Protest Gap
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When the context matters
The long-term impact of the location of concentration camps on radical-right voting in Germany
Of all atrocities committed by state actors in 20th century Europe, the systematic killings by Nazi Germany were arguably the most severe and best documented. While several studies have investigated the impact of the presence of concentration camps on surrounding communities in Germany and the occupied territories in terms of redistribution of wealth and property, the local-level impact on voting behaviour has not yet been explored. We investigat…
The dog that didn't bark
This paper explores the relationship between the economic turmoil generated by the Great Recession and the increase of secessionism in different regions of Western countries. Some authors have stressed that the Great Recession triggered profound changes in political attitudes and preferences and, in the context of a conflict between the centre and the periphery, fuelled secessionism as a radical shift of the institutional setup. Nevertheless, oth…
The Effects of Autocratic Characteristics on Public Opinion toward Democracy Promotion Policies
Does the level of public support for democracy promotion policies vary with the characteristics of potential autocratic targets? We conduct an experimental study with a conjoint design on a sample of 1,464 US citizens that manipulates several core characteristics of potential autocratic targets. We then compare citizens’ preferences with the cross-national evidence testing the determinants of democracy promotion success. We find that respondents …
Domestic contestation of the European Union
A constitution will not be enough. It can only set democratic processes in motion, processes into which it will then have to put down roots (...) A European party system will take shape only to the e
The Spanish electoral cycle of 2019
In 2019 alone, Spanish citizens went to the polls at least four times – two general elections, European elections, local elections and, for some, regional elections. Moreover, in the 2016–19 legislature, the country witnessed a successful vote of no confidence that replaced a Conservative prime minister with a Socialist one; experienced an important constitutional crisis over the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence; observed the emergence for…
How Fair Is It? An Experimental Study of Perceived Fairness of Distributive Policies
How do people evaluate fairness of redistributive policies when redistribution is considered multidimensional? We estimate the effect of distributive policies on the top- and bottom-income groups, as well as the effects of general wealth, social mobility, and origin of wealth on people's perceived fairness of the policies. Findings reveal that policies that encourage upward social mobility and an increase in general wealth and reward effort and u…
From Political Mobilization to Electoral Participation
This article examines the process of electoral mobilization that follows the extension of voting rights to low-income citizens. We take advantage of a historically unique panel data set of official registers that includes individual voting roll calls as well as individual demographics of almost 25,000 electors in Barcelona in the 1930s, matched with relevant precinct-level socioeconomic, political, and geographical data. We show that voting was d…
Cross-cutting issues and electoral choice. EU issue voting in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum
As political competition is becoming increasingly multi-dimensional in Europe, voters often face the challenge of choosing which issues matter most to them. The European integration issue presents a particular difficulty for voters, since it is not closely aligned to the left-right dimension. We test the impact of the EU issue in the first parliamentary election following the UK's divisive Brexit referendum. We argue that while the EU issue was s…
Domestic Contestation of the European Union
Negative Shocks and Political Parties’ Territorial Demands
Why do political parties set an extreme or a more moderate position on the territorial dimension? Despite previous works have paid recent interest on the dynamics of the political competition on the territorial dimension, we know much less about the factors that lead to a centrifugal or a centripetal party competition on the same dimension. In this article, we offer a new way of understanding it: we argue that parties’ policy position on the dece…
Political science (52 works) · Politics (41 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (35 works) · Economics (34 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (32 works) · Political economy (32 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (18 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (15 works)