Alexander Fouirnaies
Biographic Data
| ID | 1076123 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Fouirnaies |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Fouirnaies |
| SIGNATURE | FOUIRNAIES A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7133-1769 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 328 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Can interest groups influence elections? Evidence from unions in Great Britain, 1900–2019
Unions sponsor electoral candidates around the world, yet little is known about the consequences of these arrangements. I study how union sponsorship affected the electoral prospect of British parliamentary candidates throughout the 20th century. I collect new data on the universe of union‐sponsored candidates. Employing a difference‐in‐differences design based on within‐candidate variation induced by the sponsorship institution and its abolishme…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
Extensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new da…
Do campaign contributions buy favorable policies? Evidence from the insurance industry
To learn about the effects of corporate campaign contributions, we study the potential influence of the insurance industry in US state politics. The insurance industry is one of the biggest players in state politics, and we have collected new data on objective measures of the industry's performance in each state over time. We exploit within-state changes in campaign finance regulations which can significantly restrict the ability of corporate con…
Do Newspapers Benefit Incumbents? Evidence from Denmark 1849−1915
Scholars have long been interested in how the media shapes electoral accountability, but most of the existing empirical evidence suffers from endogeneity issues. Exploiting the inflow of newspapers engendered by the abolition of censorship in Denmark, this paper studies how newspapers affect the advantages enjoyed by members of parliament. I collect a new dataset on parliamentary candidates (1849-1915) and link them to the complete universe of lo…
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
A classic question about democratic elections is how much they are able to influence politician behavior by forcing them to anticipate future reelection attempts, especially in contexts where voters are not paying close attention and are not well informed. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term…
How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Elections? Evidence from the United Kingdom 1885-2019
In more than half of the democratic countries in the world, candidates face legal constraints on how much money they can spend on their electoral campaigns, yet we know little about the consequences of these restrictions. I study how spending limits affect UK House of Commons elections. I contribute new data on the more than 70,000 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1885 to 2019, and I document how much money each candidate spent, h…
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
In many democracies, parties use primary elections to nominate candidates. Primaries may help select quality candidates, but they can expose flaws and offend losing candidates’ supporters. Do divisive primaries help or harm parties in the general election? Existing research is mixed, likely because of issues of selection and omitted variables. We address these issues by studying southern US states with runoff primaries—second-round elections that…
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We …
How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees
Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political p…
When Are Agenda Setters Valuable
Why do industries donate money to legislative campaigns when roll‐call votes suggest that donors gain nothing in return? I argue that corporate donors may shape policy outcomes by influencing powerful agenda setters in the early stages of lawmaking. On the basis of a new data set of more than 45,000 individual state legislator sessions (1988–2012), I document how agenda control is deemed valuable to legislators and groups seeking influence on pol…
The Majority-Party Disadvantage
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of…
English Bacon
The literature on distributive politics suggests that politicians have incentives to engage in targeted spending especially in decentralized political systems with weak parties and candidate-centered elections. We argue that in centralized political systems with party-centered elections parties use intergovernmental transfers to advance their electoral fortune via performance spillovers across different levels of government. On the basis of a new…
The Financial Incumbency Advantage
In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent's party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as …
Representation and district magnitude in plurality systems
The Financial Incumbency Advantage
In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent's party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as …
How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees
Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political p…
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
A classic question about democratic elections is how much they are able to influence politician behavior by forcing them to anticipate future reelection attempts, especially in contexts where voters are not paying close attention and are not well informed. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term…
When Are Agenda Setters Valuable
Why do industries donate money to legislative campaigns when roll‐call votes suggest that donors gain nothing in return? I argue that corporate donors may shape policy outcomes by influencing powerful agenda setters in the early stages of lawmaking. On the basis of a new data set of more than 45,000 individual state legislator sessions (1988–2012), I document how agenda control is deemed valuable to legislators and groups seeking influence on pol…
English Bacon
The literature on distributive politics suggests that politicians have incentives to engage in targeted spending especially in decentralized political systems with weak parties and candidate-centered elections. We argue that in centralized political systems with party-centered elections parties use intergovernmental transfers to advance their electoral fortune via performance spillovers across different levels of government. On the basis of a new…
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We …
The Majority-Party Disadvantage
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of…
How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Elections? Evidence from the United Kingdom 1885-2019
In more than half of the democratic countries in the world, candidates face legal constraints on how much money they can spend on their electoral campaigns, yet we know little about the consequences of these restrictions. I study how spending limits affect UK House of Commons elections. I contribute new data on the more than 70,000 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1885 to 2019, and I document how much money each candidate spent, h…
Representation and district magnitude in plurality systems
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
In many democracies, parties use primary elections to nominate candidates. Primaries may help select quality candidates, but they can expose flaws and offend losing candidates’ supporters. Do divisive primaries help or harm parties in the general election? Existing research is mixed, likely because of issues of selection and omitted variables. We address these issues by studying southern US states with runoff primaries—second-round elections that…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
Extensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new da…
Do campaign contributions buy favorable policies? Evidence from the insurance industry
To learn about the effects of corporate campaign contributions, we study the potential influence of the insurance industry in US state politics. The insurance industry is one of the biggest players in state politics, and we have collected new data on objective measures of the industry's performance in each state over time. We exploit within-state changes in campaign finance regulations which can significantly restrict the ability of corporate con…
The Financial Incumbency Advantage
In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of incumbency on campaign contributions in the U.S. House and state legislatures. In both settings, incumbency causes approximately a 20–25 percentage-point increase in the share of donations flowing to the incumbent's party. The effect size does not vary with legislator experience and does not appear to depend on incumbent office-holder benefits. Instead, as …
Representation and district magnitude in plurality systems
English Bacon
The literature on distributive politics suggests that politicians have incentives to engage in targeted spending especially in decentralized political systems with weak parties and candidate-centered elections. We argue that in centralized political systems with party-centered elections parties use intergovernmental transfers to advance their electoral fortune via performance spillovers across different levels of government. On the basis of a new…
The Majority-Party Disadvantage
Dominant theories of legislative organization in the U.S. rest on the notion that the majority party arranges legislative matters to enhance its electoral fortunes. Yet, we find little evidence for a short-term electoral advantage for the majority party in U.S. state legislatures. Furthermore, there appears to be a pronounced downstream majority-party disadvantage. To establish these findings, we propose a technique for aggregating the results of…
How Do Interest Groups Seek Access to Committees
Concerns that interest groups use their financial resources to distort the democratic process are long‐standing. Surprisingly, though, firms spend little money on political campaigns, and roughly 95% of publicly traded firms in the United States have never contributed to a political campaign. Do interest groups seek political access through their modest contributions, or are these contributions only a minor and forgettable part of the political p…
When Are Agenda Setters Valuable
Why do industries donate money to legislative campaigns when roll‐call votes suggest that donors gain nothing in return? I argue that corporate donors may shape policy outcomes by influencing powerful agenda setters in the early stages of lawmaking. On the basis of a new data set of more than 45,000 individual state legislator sessions (1988–2012), I document how agenda control is deemed valuable to legislators and groups seeking influence on pol…
How Newspapers Reveal Political Power
Political science is in large part the study of power, but power itself is difficult to measure. We argue that we can use newspaper coverage—in particular, the relative amount of space devoted to particular subjects in newspapers—to measure the relative power of an important set of political actors and offices. We use a new dataset containing nearly 50 million historical newspaper pages from 2,700 local US newspapers over the years 1877–1977. We …
How Divisive Primaries Hurt Parties
In many democracies, parties use primary elections to nominate candidates. Primaries may help select quality candidates, but they can expose flaws and offend losing candidates’ supporters. Do divisive primaries help or harm parties in the general election? Existing research is mixed, likely because of issues of selection and omitted variables. We address these issues by studying southern US states with runoff primaries—second-round elections that…
Do Newspapers Benefit Incumbents? Evidence from Denmark 1849−1915
Scholars have long been interested in how the media shapes electoral accountability, but most of the existing empirical evidence suffers from endogeneity issues. Exploiting the inflow of newspapers engendered by the abolition of censorship in Denmark, this paper studies how newspapers affect the advantages enjoyed by members of parliament. I collect a new dataset on parliamentary candidates (1849-1915) and link them to the complete universe of lo…
How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures
A classic question about democratic elections is how much they are able to influence politician behavior by forcing them to anticipate future reelection attempts, especially in contexts where voters are not paying close attention and are not well informed. We compile a new dataset containing roughly 780,000 bills, combined with more than 16 million roll-call voting records for roughly 6,000 legislators serving in U.S. state legislatures with term…
How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Elections? Evidence from the United Kingdom 1885-2019
In more than half of the democratic countries in the world, candidates face legal constraints on how much money they can spend on their electoral campaigns, yet we know little about the consequences of these restrictions. I study how spending limits affect UK House of Commons elections. I contribute new data on the more than 70,000 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1885 to 2019, and I document how much money each candidate spent, h…
Do campaign contributions buy favorable policies? Evidence from the insurance industry
To learn about the effects of corporate campaign contributions, we study the potential influence of the insurance industry in US state politics. The insurance industry is one of the biggest players in state politics, and we have collected new data on objective measures of the industry's performance in each state over time. We exploit within-state changes in campaign finance regulations which can significantly restrict the ability of corporate con…
Decomposing the source of the gender gap in legislative committee service
Extensive research on gender and politics indicates that women legislators are more likely to serve on committees and sponsor bills related to so-called “women's issues.” However, it remains unclear whether this empirical regularity is driven by district preferences, differences in legislator backgrounds, or because gendered political processes shape and constrain the choices available to women once they are elected. We introduce expansive new da…
Can interest groups influence elections? Evidence from unions in Great Britain, 1900–2019
Unions sponsor electoral candidates around the world, yet little is known about the consequences of these arrangements. I study how union sponsorship affected the electoral prospect of British parliamentary candidates throughout the 20th century. I collect new data on the universe of union‐sponsored candidates. Employing a difference‐in‐differences design based on within‐candidate variation induced by the sponsorship institution and its abolishme…
Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Legislature (7 works) · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies (7 works) · Public economics (7 works) · Business (6 works)