Patrik Öhberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 4123566 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrik Öhberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrik |
| FAMILY NAME | Öhberg |
| SIGNATURE | ÖHBERG P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7433-8552 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 275 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
A bridge over sustainable water: Politicians’ perceptions about the preconditions for collective action
Sustainable water resource management is a core interest for all societies. As water systems are often common resources, the management of water systems requires coordinated action among actors along the water. For flowing water, a complication for coordination is upstream–downstream relations where what happens upstream affects downstream, but not the other way around. In this study we present results from a survey experiment with politicians in…
Are Personality Traits Related to Politicians’ Positions on Immigration
The political debates spurred on by rapidly growing immigrant populations in many countries have resulted in an extensive, and growing, scholarship that seeks to explain citizens' attitudes toward immigration. Yet, there is surprisingly an absence of research regarding the factors that correlate with political elites' positions on immigration. This study therefore seeks to address an important scholarly gap by exploring the factors that help to e…
The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness
We argue that policy expertise constrains the ability of politicians to act on voter preferences. Representatives with more knowledge and experience in a given domain have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, may lead politicians to discount opinions they disagree with, producing a distorted image of the electorate. Two experiments with Swedish politicians support this argument. First, officials are…
Misrepresentation and migration
In a representative democracy, politicians should either implement policies that voters want or policies that politicians believe are in voters long‐term interest, even if voters currently oppose them. The exact balance between these goals is debatable and politicians' policy engagement can tempt them to dismiss voters' preferences and resist information counter to their own policy position. In this paper, we discuss Sweden's generous migration p…
Election campaigns and the cyclical nature of emotions—How politicians engage in affective polarization
Do politicians get emotional during an election campaign? We examine the existence of changes in partisan in‐group favoritism and partisan out‐group hostility among political elites by evaluating the degree to which they fluctuate before, during and after election campaigns. The lack of elite level panel data has prevented scholars from studying the dynamics of politicians' emotions around the most emotionally intense political event in democraci…
Constituents Ask Female Legislators to Do More
We test whether constituents ask women representatives to do more. In partnership with Republican and Democratic state legislators in multimember districts, we conducted a field experiment in which the politicians sent a survey to their constituents, asking about the issues they should work on. It was randomized whether citizens were contacted by their male or female representative. We find that female legislators receive 14% more issue requests …
Gender, socio-political cleavages and the co-constitution of gender identities: A multidimensional analysis of self-assessed masculine and feminine characteristics
This study offers a multidimensional analysis of individuals’ self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics to better understand variation from more to less binary gender identities. Through gender’s co-constitution along with various social localities, we expect that a number of socio-political factors differentiate individuals’ gender identities through self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics. Using d…
Gender, socio-political cleavages and the co-constitution of gender identities: A multidimensional analysis of self-assessed masculine and feminine characteristics
Ethics in Elite Experiments: A Perspective of Officials and Voters
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
How do politicians respond to opinion polls? An experiment with Swedish politicians
Do politicians demand change if party support is slipping in opinion polls? If so, should a party change its program or just the way it communicates with voters? To investigate this, we conducted a survey experiment with 1236 Swedish politicians. We exposed them to a frame in which their party was losing in the polls, or a frame in which their party was gaining in the polls without using deception. Our results demonstrate that losing politicians …
The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness
Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Havin…
The Case for Non-Binary Gender Questions in Surveys
LGBTQ activists and academics advocate the use of non-binary gender categories to include individuals who identify as neither rigidly male nor rigidly female to reflect the increasing number of people who do not place themselves in these two conventional classes. Although some general-population surveys have begun using non-binary gender questions, research has not examined the consequences of using (or not) a question with non-binary gender cate…
Speaking truth to power: Political Advisers’ and Civil Servants’ Responses to Perceived Harmful Policy Proposals
How are civil servants and politically appointed advisers likely to respond to policy proposals that they believe will harm their countries severely even if they are legal? Based on the different loyalties and roles of political advisors (PA) and civil servants (CS), we hypothesise that (1) PAs are more likely to voice internally, (2) CSs are more likely to voice externally and (3) CSs in functionally politicised systems are more likely to stay s…
A sensitive question? The effect of an ethnic background question in surveys
Nearly half of European countries choose not to collect data on their citizens' ethnicity. One of the reasons is related to ethnic background being, potentially, a sensitive issue. We explore this social sensitivity in relation to questions asking about respondents' ethnic background through a survey experiment that compares two multicultural and liberal democracies with different traditions related to the collection of data on residents' ethnic …
The Party's View of Dyadic Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment in Sweden
When responding to citizens who make direct contact, politicians perform an act that matters not only to themselves and the contacting citizen, but also to colleagues within the party. This article studies whether some types of responsive behaviour are more accepted within the party than others. It also studies the circumstances that increase and decrease acceptability for party colleagues’ responsiveness. In a survey experiment, 1,660 Swedish po…
The role of gender in online campaigning: Swedish candidates’ motives and use of social media during the European election 2014
This study addresses politician’s motives and use of social media platforms for campaigning purposes from a gender perspective. The role of gender is tested using survey data on Swedish candidates and behavioral data from Twitter before, during, and after the 2014 European election. Our findings show gender-related patterns in how candidates assess the usefulness of social media as a campaign tool. Female candidates tend to value social media to …
Toe the line, break the whip: Explaining Floor Dissent in Parliamentary Democracies
This article analyses the drivers of individual dissent in floor voting in parliamentary regimes. It focuses on the effect of ideological heterogeneity in legislative parties on individual MPs' voting behaviour, as well as the different incentives caused by the differing consequences of defection and abstention. Combining individual-level survey and voting data from the Swedish Riksdag, neither of which is subject to selection bias, the study ove…
Reaching across the aisle: Explaining government–opposition voting in parliament
The divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in government–opposition voting has been left relatively unexplored. This is particularly the case for contextual variation in the extent to which parliamentary voting behaviour follows the government–opposition divide. This article attempts to explain levels of government–opposition voting by looking at three factors: first, t…
Party Representatives’ Adaptation to Election Results: Dyadic Responsiveness Revisited
Politicians’ dual responsibilities to respect their party and also be responsive to their constituents is surprisingly lacking in studies of representation. How do politicians—especially those who function in strong-party systems—individually respond to their constituents’ preferences? We make use of an original, large-scale survey of politicians and the recent success of the Sweden Democrats in the elections in Sweden to show that important adap…
Administrative Politicization or Contestability? How Political Advisers Affect Neutral Competence in Policy Processes
There is limited empirical research on the extent to which politicized recruitment of ministerial advisers affects the quality of the policy process. In this article we take a novel step by looking at two possible consequences of increased political recruitment for the policy process: administrative politicization and contestability. We deploy a Most Similar Systems comparison of Denmark and Sweden and include survey answers from 657 civil servan…
Does politics crowd out professional competence? The organisation of ministerial advice in Denmark and Sweden
The use of politically appointed ministerial advisors has increased noticeably in many Western countries, but we know little about how this development has affected the civil servants recruited on merit. The article asks whether political appointees accentuate or blur the line between politics and administration. Do political appointees take over political-tactical advice and leave policy advice to the permanent civil service, or do they cause pe…
Endurance at the Top: Gender and Political Ambition of Spanish and Swedish MPs
The gender gap in political ambition is an important explanation for the absence of women in legislative assemblies. However, previous research on this matter is limited by two facts: it is conducted mostly in the United States and does not pay much attention to cultural and institutional factors. In this article, we test the extent to which established mechanisms behind female politicians' career ambitions—such as differentiated political social…
Party-constrained Policy Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment on Politicians’ Response to Citizen-initiated Contacts
How do individual party representatives respond to direct policy requests from citizens when the requests go against the party’s position? In a survey experiment, 2,547 Swedish politicians are randomly assigned to scenarios in which citizens make contact to influence a political decision. Their willingness to respond to citizens’ policy requests is measured using six indicators that capture adaptive as well as communicative responsiveness. The re…
Testing the Impact of Political Generations: The Class of 94 and Pro‐feminist Ideas in the Swedish Riksdag
How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concep…
Party-constrained Policy Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment on Politicians’ Response to Citizen-initiated Contacts
How do individual party representatives respond to direct policy requests from citizens when the requests go against the party’s position? In a survey experiment, 2,547 Swedish politicians are randomly assigned to scenarios in which citizens make contact to influence a political decision. Their willingness to respond to citizens’ policy requests is measured using six indicators that capture adaptive as well as communicative responsiveness. The re…
Reaching across the aisle: Explaining government–opposition voting in parliament
The divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in government–opposition voting has been left relatively unexplored. This is particularly the case for contextual variation in the extent to which parliamentary voting behaviour follows the government–opposition divide. This article attempts to explain levels of government–opposition voting by looking at three factors: first, t…
Does politics crowd out professional competence? The organisation of ministerial advice in Denmark and Sweden
The use of politically appointed ministerial advisors has increased noticeably in many Western countries, but we know little about how this development has affected the civil servants recruited on merit. The article asks whether political appointees accentuate or blur the line between politics and administration. Do political appointees take over political-tactical advice and leave policy advice to the permanent civil service, or do they cause pe…
Toe the line, break the whip: Explaining Floor Dissent in Parliamentary Democracies
This article analyses the drivers of individual dissent in floor voting in parliamentary regimes. It focuses on the effect of ideological heterogeneity in legislative parties on individual MPs' voting behaviour, as well as the different incentives caused by the differing consequences of defection and abstention. Combining individual-level survey and voting data from the Swedish Riksdag, neither of which is subject to selection bias, the study ove…
Administrative Politicization or Contestability? How Political Advisers Affect Neutral Competence in Policy Processes
There is limited empirical research on the extent to which politicized recruitment of ministerial advisers affects the quality of the policy process. In this article we take a novel step by looking at two possible consequences of increased political recruitment for the policy process: administrative politicization and contestability. We deploy a Most Similar Systems comparison of Denmark and Sweden and include survey answers from 657 civil servan…
The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness
Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Havin…
Party Representatives’ Adaptation to Election Results: Dyadic Responsiveness Revisited
Politicians’ dual responsibilities to respect their party and also be responsive to their constituents is surprisingly lacking in studies of representation. How do politicians—especially those who function in strong-party systems—individually respond to their constituents’ preferences? We make use of an original, large-scale survey of politicians and the recent success of the Sweden Democrats in the elections in Sweden to show that important adap…
Ethics in Elite Experiments: A Perspective of Officials and Voters
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Endurance at the Top: Gender and Political Ambition of Spanish and Swedish MPs
The gender gap in political ambition is an important explanation for the absence of women in legislative assemblies. However, previous research on this matter is limited by two facts: it is conducted mostly in the United States and does not pay much attention to cultural and institutional factors. In this article, we test the extent to which established mechanisms behind female politicians' career ambitions—such as differentiated political social…
Constituents Ask Female Legislators to Do More
We test whether constituents ask women representatives to do more. In partnership with Republican and Democratic state legislators in multimember districts, we conducted a field experiment in which the politicians sent a survey to their constituents, asking about the issues they should work on. It was randomized whether citizens were contacted by their male or female representative. We find that female legislators receive 14% more issue requests …
The role of gender in online campaigning: Swedish candidates’ motives and use of social media during the European election 2014
This study addresses politician’s motives and use of social media platforms for campaigning purposes from a gender perspective. The role of gender is tested using survey data on Swedish candidates and behavioral data from Twitter before, during, and after the 2014 European election. Our findings show gender-related patterns in how candidates assess the usefulness of social media as a campaign tool. Female candidates tend to value social media to …
Testing the Impact of Political Generations: The Class of 94 and Pro‐feminist Ideas in the Swedish Riksdag
How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concep…
Speaking truth to power: Political Advisers’ and Civil Servants’ Responses to Perceived Harmful Policy Proposals
How are civil servants and politically appointed advisers likely to respond to policy proposals that they believe will harm their countries severely even if they are legal? Based on the different loyalties and roles of political advisors (PA) and civil servants (CS), we hypothesise that (1) PAs are more likely to voice internally, (2) CSs are more likely to voice externally and (3) CSs in functionally politicised systems are more likely to stay s…
Election campaigns and the cyclical nature of emotions—How politicians engage in affective polarization
Do politicians get emotional during an election campaign? We examine the existence of changes in partisan in‐group favoritism and partisan out‐group hostility among political elites by evaluating the degree to which they fluctuate before, during and after election campaigns. The lack of elite level panel data has prevented scholars from studying the dynamics of politicians' emotions around the most emotionally intense political event in democraci…
How do politicians respond to opinion polls? An experiment with Swedish politicians
Do politicians demand change if party support is slipping in opinion polls? If so, should a party change its program or just the way it communicates with voters? To investigate this, we conducted a survey experiment with 1236 Swedish politicians. We exposed them to a frame in which their party was losing in the polls, or a frame in which their party was gaining in the polls without using deception. Our results demonstrate that losing politicians …
The Case for Non-Binary Gender Questions in Surveys
LGBTQ activists and academics advocate the use of non-binary gender categories to include individuals who identify as neither rigidly male nor rigidly female to reflect the increasing number of people who do not place themselves in these two conventional classes. Although some general-population surveys have begun using non-binary gender questions, research has not examined the consequences of using (or not) a question with non-binary gender cate…
The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness
We argue that policy expertise constrains the ability of politicians to act on voter preferences. Representatives with more knowledge and experience in a given domain have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, may lead politicians to discount opinions they disagree with, producing a distorted image of the electorate. Two experiments with Swedish politicians support this argument. First, officials are…
A sensitive question? The effect of an ethnic background question in surveys
Nearly half of European countries choose not to collect data on their citizens' ethnicity. One of the reasons is related to ethnic background being, potentially, a sensitive issue. We explore this social sensitivity in relation to questions asking about respondents' ethnic background through a survey experiment that compares two multicultural and liberal democracies with different traditions related to the collection of data on residents' ethnic …
The Party's View of Dyadic Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment in Sweden
When responding to citizens who make direct contact, politicians perform an act that matters not only to themselves and the contacting citizen, but also to colleagues within the party. This article studies whether some types of responsive behaviour are more accepted within the party than others. It also studies the circumstances that increase and decrease acceptability for party colleagues’ responsiveness. In a survey experiment, 1,660 Swedish po…
Are Personality Traits Related to Politicians’ Positions on Immigration
The political debates spurred on by rapidly growing immigrant populations in many countries have resulted in an extensive, and growing, scholarship that seeks to explain citizens' attitudes toward immigration. Yet, there is surprisingly an absence of research regarding the factors that correlate with political elites' positions on immigration. This study therefore seeks to address an important scholarly gap by exploring the factors that help to e…
Gender, socio-political cleavages and the co-constitution of gender identities: A multidimensional analysis of self-assessed masculine and feminine characteristics
This study offers a multidimensional analysis of individuals’ self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics to better understand variation from more to less binary gender identities. Through gender’s co-constitution along with various social localities, we expect that a number of socio-political factors differentiate individuals’ gender identities through self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics. Using d…
Testing the Impact of Political Generations: The Class of 94 and Pro‐feminist Ideas in the Swedish Riksdag
How can one explain the transformation of elected assemblies like national parliaments? In this study it is argued that much can be gained from taking the assumption of political generations more seriously when trying to explain transformations of the political agenda – for example, of themes and topics brought up in the parliamentary process. More specifically, the article expands on previous research in three ways: first, it launches the concep…
Party-constrained Policy Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment on Politicians’ Response to Citizen-initiated Contacts
How do individual party representatives respond to direct policy requests from citizens when the requests go against the party’s position? In a survey experiment, 2,547 Swedish politicians are randomly assigned to scenarios in which citizens make contact to influence a political decision. Their willingness to respond to citizens’ policy requests is measured using six indicators that capture adaptive as well as communicative responsiveness. The re…
Administrative Politicization or Contestability? How Political Advisers Affect Neutral Competence in Policy Processes
There is limited empirical research on the extent to which politicized recruitment of ministerial advisers affects the quality of the policy process. In this article we take a novel step by looking at two possible consequences of increased political recruitment for the policy process: administrative politicization and contestability. We deploy a Most Similar Systems comparison of Denmark and Sweden and include survey answers from 657 civil servan…
Does politics crowd out professional competence? The organisation of ministerial advice in Denmark and Sweden
The use of politically appointed ministerial advisors has increased noticeably in many Western countries, but we know little about how this development has affected the civil servants recruited on merit. The article asks whether political appointees accentuate or blur the line between politics and administration. Do political appointees take over political-tactical advice and leave policy advice to the permanent civil service, or do they cause pe…
Endurance at the Top: Gender and Political Ambition of Spanish and Swedish MPs
The gender gap in political ambition is an important explanation for the absence of women in legislative assemblies. However, previous research on this matter is limited by two facts: it is conducted mostly in the United States and does not pay much attention to cultural and institutional factors. In this article, we test the extent to which established mechanisms behind female politicians' career ambitions—such as differentiated political social…
The role of gender in online campaigning: Swedish candidates’ motives and use of social media during the European election 2014
This study addresses politician’s motives and use of social media platforms for campaigning purposes from a gender perspective. The role of gender is tested using survey data on Swedish candidates and behavioral data from Twitter before, during, and after the 2014 European election. Our findings show gender-related patterns in how candidates assess the usefulness of social media as a campaign tool. Female candidates tend to value social media to …
Toe the line, break the whip: Explaining Floor Dissent in Parliamentary Democracies
This article analyses the drivers of individual dissent in floor voting in parliamentary regimes. It focuses on the effect of ideological heterogeneity in legislative parties on individual MPs' voting behaviour, as well as the different incentives caused by the differing consequences of defection and abstention. Combining individual-level survey and voting data from the Swedish Riksdag, neither of which is subject to selection bias, the study ove…
Reaching across the aisle: Explaining government–opposition voting in parliament
The divide between government and opposition is clearly visible in the way members of parliament vote, but the variation in government–opposition voting has been left relatively unexplored. This is particularly the case for contextual variation in the extent to which parliamentary voting behaviour follows the government–opposition divide. This article attempts to explain levels of government–opposition voting by looking at three factors: first, t…
Party Representatives’ Adaptation to Election Results: Dyadic Responsiveness Revisited
Politicians’ dual responsibilities to respect their party and also be responsive to their constituents is surprisingly lacking in studies of representation. How do politicians—especially those who function in strong-party systems—individually respond to their constituents’ preferences? We make use of an original, large-scale survey of politicians and the recent success of the Sweden Democrats in the elections in Sweden to show that important adap…
The Party's View of Dyadic Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment in Sweden
When responding to citizens who make direct contact, politicians perform an act that matters not only to themselves and the contacting citizen, but also to colleagues within the party. This article studies whether some types of responsive behaviour are more accepted within the party than others. It also studies the circumstances that increase and decrease acceptability for party colleagues’ responsiveness. In a survey experiment, 1,660 Swedish po…
Speaking truth to power: Political Advisers’ and Civil Servants’ Responses to Perceived Harmful Policy Proposals
How are civil servants and politically appointed advisers likely to respond to policy proposals that they believe will harm their countries severely even if they are legal? Based on the different loyalties and roles of political advisors (PA) and civil servants (CS), we hypothesise that (1) PAs are more likely to voice internally, (2) CSs are more likely to voice externally and (3) CSs in functionally politicised systems are more likely to stay s…
A sensitive question? The effect of an ethnic background question in surveys
Nearly half of European countries choose not to collect data on their citizens' ethnicity. One of the reasons is related to ethnic background being, potentially, a sensitive issue. We explore this social sensitivity in relation to questions asking about respondents' ethnic background through a survey experiment that compares two multicultural and liberal democracies with different traditions related to the collection of data on residents' ethnic …
How do politicians respond to opinion polls? An experiment with Swedish politicians
Do politicians demand change if party support is slipping in opinion polls? If so, should a party change its program or just the way it communicates with voters? To investigate this, we conducted a survey experiment with 1236 Swedish politicians. We exposed them to a frame in which their party was losing in the polls, or a frame in which their party was gaining in the polls without using deception. Our results demonstrate that losing politicians …
The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness
Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Havin…
The Case for Non-Binary Gender Questions in Surveys
LGBTQ activists and academics advocate the use of non-binary gender categories to include individuals who identify as neither rigidly male nor rigidly female to reflect the increasing number of people who do not place themselves in these two conventional classes. Although some general-population surveys have begun using non-binary gender questions, research has not examined the consequences of using (or not) a question with non-binary gender cate…
Gender, socio-political cleavages and the co-constitution of gender identities: A multidimensional analysis of self-assessed masculine and feminine characteristics
This study offers a multidimensional analysis of individuals’ self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics to better understand variation from more to less binary gender identities. Through gender’s co-constitution along with various social localities, we expect that a number of socio-political factors differentiate individuals’ gender identities through self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics. Using d…
Gender, socio-political cleavages and the co-constitution of gender identities: A multidimensional analysis of self-assessed masculine and feminine characteristics
Ethics in Elite Experiments: A Perspective of Officials and Voters
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button
Constituents Ask Female Legislators to Do More
We test whether constituents ask women representatives to do more. In partnership with Republican and Democratic state legislators in multimember districts, we conducted a field experiment in which the politicians sent a survey to their constituents, asking about the issues they should work on. It was randomized whether citizens were contacted by their male or female representative. We find that female legislators receive 14% more issue requests …
Misrepresentation and migration
In a representative democracy, politicians should either implement policies that voters want or policies that politicians believe are in voters long‐term interest, even if voters currently oppose them. The exact balance between these goals is debatable and politicians' policy engagement can tempt them to dismiss voters' preferences and resist information counter to their own policy position. In this paper, we discuss Sweden's generous migration p…
Election campaigns and the cyclical nature of emotions—How politicians engage in affective polarization
Do politicians get emotional during an election campaign? We examine the existence of changes in partisan in‐group favoritism and partisan out‐group hostility among political elites by evaluating the degree to which they fluctuate before, during and after election campaigns. The lack of elite level panel data has prevented scholars from studying the dynamics of politicians' emotions around the most emotionally intense political event in democraci…
A bridge over sustainable water: Politicians’ perceptions about the preconditions for collective action
Sustainable water resource management is a core interest for all societies. As water systems are often common resources, the management of water systems requires coordinated action among actors along the water. For flowing water, a complication for coordination is upstream–downstream relations where what happens upstream affects downstream, but not the other way around. In this study we present results from a survey experiment with politicians in…
Are Personality Traits Related to Politicians’ Positions on Immigration
The political debates spurred on by rapidly growing immigrant populations in many countries have resulted in an extensive, and growing, scholarship that seeks to explain citizens' attitudes toward immigration. Yet, there is surprisingly an absence of research regarding the factors that correlate with political elites' positions on immigration. This study therefore seeks to address an important scholarly gap by exploring the factors that help to e…
The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness
We argue that policy expertise constrains the ability of politicians to act on voter preferences. Representatives with more knowledge and experience in a given domain have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, may lead politicians to discount opinions they disagree with, producing a distorted image of the electorate. Two experiments with Swedish politicians support this argument. First, officials are…
Political science (24 works) · Law (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)