Rodrigo Praino
Biographic Data
| ID | 4127717 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rodrigo Praino |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rodrigo |
| FAMILY NAME | Praino |
| SIGNATURE | PRAINO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Flinders University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9151-7707 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 147 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Can Donald Trump Shape the Outcome of Elections Abroad? Unraveling and Comparing the “Trump Effect” in the 2025 Canadian and Australian Federal Elections
Objective This research investigates the salience of Donald Trump as a political issue and determinant of vote choice in the 2025 Canadian and Australian federal elections. Both countries held federal contests within 5 days of each other, and multiple news outlets and experts labeled them “anti‐Trump” elections. While center‐left incumbents secured upset re‐election wins in both countries, the actual importance of Donald Trump in shaping these ou…
Is there a prototype leader look? Evidence from the photos of Chinese local leaders
The ‘Implicit Intelligence’ of artificial intelligence. Investigating the potential of large language models in social science research
Researchers in ‘hard' science disciplines are exploring the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for advancing research in their fields. Their colleagues in ‘soft' science, however, have produced thus far a limited number of articles on this subject. This paper addresses this gap. Our main hypothesis is that existing Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models (LLMs) can closely align with human expert assessments in special…
Young voters, older candidates and policy preferences: Evidence from two experiments
Recent elections around the world have seen young voters come out in large numbers to support young leaders running for office, such as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern in October 2020. At the same time, however, young voters have shown strong support for relatively older candidates such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States. While the former is consistent with the descriptive representation literature, the la…
Does Martialization Contribute to Australia’s Right-Wing Extremism? Implications of an Analysis of the General Social Survey
Concept review on right-wing extremism (RWE) holds that authoritarianism, nationalism and anti-democracy are the values that most strongly correlate. Evidence suggests these views are prevalent among military veterans. In this paper we test the hypothesis that individuals that are subjected to martialization are more likely to hold RWE values than other individuals. Using the General Social Survey, which permits the operationalization of authorit…
The Electoral Consequences of Scandals: A Meta-Analysis
As the number of scandals involving politicians in office rises worldwide, the number of studies dedicated to analysing these scandals and their consequences rises as well. In this article, we try to summarise this emerging literature focusing on quantitative studies that use scandal as an independent variable to model its influence on politicians’ electoral results. The analysis finds that scandal-ridden politicians tend to get fewer votes at th…
What Are Good‐Looking Candidates, and Can They Sway Election Results
Objective In this article, we address two major gaps in the understanding of the relationship between candidate attractiveness and electoral success. With the assistance of the Victoria Police Criminal Identification Unit in Melbourne, Australia, we show how good‐looking candidates look like by building the faces of six “ideal candidates” in terms of physical attractiveness. Utilizing our “ideal candidates,” we then investigate whether candidate …
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Do Attractive Politicians Get a ‘Break’ When They are Involved in Scandals
Does Corruption Follow Opportunity? A Study of the U.S. Congress
Ninety three of the 1,818 people who served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1972 and 2012 were investigated for corruption by the Ethics Committee. Eighteen were acquitted and 75 suffered consequences (reprimand/payback/resignation/conviction). Detailed analysis of the data shows that the longer one is in Congress, the more likely is the chance of corruption. In addition, the more powerful one is in Congress, the more likely is the c…
The Career Length and Service of Female Policymakers in the US House of Representatives
Various studies have outlined the institutional (e.g. the existence of quota laws and the electoral system type of a country) and non-institutional factors (e.g. the political culture of a country) that account for variation in women’s representation, in general, and, in more detail, the low representation of women in the US Congress. However, no study has, so far, compared the Congressional career paths of men and women in order to understand wh…
Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs
While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritaria…
Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives
Objective In this article we show that physical attractiveness matters as a heuristic device for uninformed voters but not for politically savvy voters. Methods Drawing on a two‐step experiment, we first ask over 100 students to rank the physical attractiveness of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Second, we create a treatment and a control group comprising each of 1,200 research different subjects. We ask the first group to indica…
Looking Good or Looking Competent? Physical Appearance and Electoral Success in the 2008 Congressional Elections
A whole array of studies has shown that the physical appearance of candidates running for elective office matters. However, it is unclear whether attractiveness or perceived competence is the source of such electoral advantage. In addition, the gender of candidates might interact with perceptions of physical appearance. With the help of Canadian student coders and through the use of a web-based survey, we measure the threefold link between physic…
The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections: Incumbents, Challengers, and Voters
Objective We have two goals. First, we investigate both the short‐ and long‐term electoral impact of involvement in scandals on reelection margins of incumbents in U.S. congressional elections. Second, we evaluate the impact of scandals on district‐level turnout. Methods We model the impact of involvement in a political scandal on incumbents’ electoral margins in the election cycle in which the scandal comes to light, as well as in future electio…
The Italian Vote Abroad: Electing from Afar
With the passing of recent landmark legislation, Italy is now among the few countries in the world that allow citizens living abroad to elect their own representatives to the national Parliament. This unique situation provides an opportunity to investigate several interesting questions about political participation and representation. This work argues that, given the lack of official Italian party structure in foreign countries, a new type of inf…
Tempus Edax Rerum: Measuring the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives
Many studies provide valuable insight on the electoral incumbency advantage; however, little work provides insight or an organized theory for how such an advantage develops for career politicians. We develop such a theory, arguing that to understand the incumbency advantage at the time of an electoral victory, it is necessary to consider the length of each specific congressional career. We find that the total share of the incumbent vote received …
Tempus Fugit, Incumbency Stays: Measuring the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. Senate
This article evaluates the incumbency advantage in the U.S. Senate. We argue that existing methods utilized to measure this advantage are suboptimal to gauge the concept in the Senate. After testing and highlighting the weaknesses of some of these methods, we present an alternative way to measure the incumbency advantage based on the number of electoral victories or terms spent in office. We test the impact of this new measure on candidates' reel…
The Incumbency Advantage in the US Congress: A Roller-Coaster Relationship
While every student in American politics knows that the incumbency advantage grew post-1965, it is less clear as to whether or not this growth has been sustainable throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Focusing on the last three decades, we show that the electoral margins of sitting members of the House of Representatives have not linearly grown over the past 60 years. On the contrary, the constant increase in incumbents' vote shares between the…
The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections: Incumbents, Challengers, and Voters
Objective We have two goals. First, we investigate both the short‐ and long‐term electoral impact of involvement in scandals on reelection margins of incumbents in U.S. congressional elections. Second, we evaluate the impact of scandals on district‐level turnout. Methods We model the impact of involvement in a political scandal on incumbents’ electoral margins in the election cycle in which the scandal comes to light, as well as in future electio…
Looking Good or Looking Competent? Physical Appearance and Electoral Success in the 2008 Congressional Elections
A whole array of studies has shown that the physical appearance of candidates running for elective office matters. However, it is unclear whether attractiveness or perceived competence is the source of such electoral advantage. In addition, the gender of candidates might interact with perceptions of physical appearance. With the help of Canadian student coders and through the use of a web-based survey, we measure the threefold link between physic…
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Do Attractive Politicians Get a ‘Break’ When They are Involved in Scandals
Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs
While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritaria…
Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives
Objective In this article we show that physical attractiveness matters as a heuristic device for uninformed voters but not for politically savvy voters. Methods Drawing on a two‐step experiment, we first ask over 100 students to rank the physical attractiveness of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Second, we create a treatment and a control group comprising each of 1,200 research different subjects. We ask the first group to indica…
Tempus Edax Rerum: Measuring the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives
Many studies provide valuable insight on the electoral incumbency advantage; however, little work provides insight or an organized theory for how such an advantage develops for career politicians. We develop such a theory, arguing that to understand the incumbency advantage at the time of an electoral victory, it is necessary to consider the length of each specific congressional career. We find that the total share of the incumbent vote received …
What Are Good‐Looking Candidates, and Can They Sway Election Results
Objective In this article, we address two major gaps in the understanding of the relationship between candidate attractiveness and electoral success. With the assistance of the Victoria Police Criminal Identification Unit in Melbourne, Australia, we show how good‐looking candidates look like by building the faces of six “ideal candidates” in terms of physical attractiveness. Utilizing our “ideal candidates,” we then investigate whether candidate …
The Career Length and Service of Female Policymakers in the US House of Representatives
Various studies have outlined the institutional (e.g. the existence of quota laws and the electoral system type of a country) and non-institutional factors (e.g. the political culture of a country) that account for variation in women’s representation, in general, and, in more detail, the low representation of women in the US Congress. However, no study has, so far, compared the Congressional career paths of men and women in order to understand wh…
Tempus Fugit, Incumbency Stays: Measuring the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. Senate
This article evaluates the incumbency advantage in the U.S. Senate. We argue that existing methods utilized to measure this advantage are suboptimal to gauge the concept in the Senate. After testing and highlighting the weaknesses of some of these methods, we present an alternative way to measure the incumbency advantage based on the number of electoral victories or terms spent in office. We test the impact of this new measure on candidates' reel…
The Electoral Consequences of Scandals: A Meta-Analysis
As the number of scandals involving politicians in office rises worldwide, the number of studies dedicated to analysing these scandals and their consequences rises as well. In this article, we try to summarise this emerging literature focusing on quantitative studies that use scandal as an independent variable to model its influence on politicians’ electoral results. The analysis finds that scandal-ridden politicians tend to get fewer votes at th…
Does Corruption Follow Opportunity? A Study of the U.S. Congress
Ninety three of the 1,818 people who served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1972 and 2012 were investigated for corruption by the Ethics Committee. Eighteen were acquitted and 75 suffered consequences (reprimand/payback/resignation/conviction). Detailed analysis of the data shows that the longer one is in Congress, the more likely is the chance of corruption. In addition, the more powerful one is in Congress, the more likely is the c…
Young voters, older candidates and policy preferences: Evidence from two experiments
Recent elections around the world have seen young voters come out in large numbers to support young leaders running for office, such as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern in October 2020. At the same time, however, young voters have shown strong support for relatively older candidates such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States. While the former is consistent with the descriptive representation literature, the la…
The Incumbency Advantage in the US Congress: A Roller-Coaster Relationship
While every student in American politics knows that the incumbency advantage grew post-1965, it is less clear as to whether or not this growth has been sustainable throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Focusing on the last three decades, we show that the electoral margins of sitting members of the House of Representatives have not linearly grown over the past 60 years. On the contrary, the constant increase in incumbents' vote shares between the…
Does Martialization Contribute to Australia’s Right-Wing Extremism? Implications of an Analysis of the General Social Survey
Concept review on right-wing extremism (RWE) holds that authoritarianism, nationalism and anti-democracy are the values that most strongly correlate. Evidence suggests these views are prevalent among military veterans. In this paper we test the hypothesis that individuals that are subjected to martialization are more likely to hold RWE values than other individuals. Using the General Social Survey, which permits the operationalization of authorit…
The Italian Vote Abroad: Electing from Afar
With the passing of recent landmark legislation, Italy is now among the few countries in the world that allow citizens living abroad to elect their own representatives to the national Parliament. This unique situation provides an opportunity to investigate several interesting questions about political participation and representation. This work argues that, given the lack of official Italian party structure in foreign countries, a new type of inf…
The Italian Vote Abroad: Electing from Afar
With the passing of recent landmark legislation, Italy is now among the few countries in the world that allow citizens living abroad to elect their own representatives to the national Parliament. This unique situation provides an opportunity to investigate several interesting questions about political participation and representation. This work argues that, given the lack of official Italian party structure in foreign countries, a new type of inf…
Tempus Edax Rerum: Measuring the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives
Many studies provide valuable insight on the electoral incumbency advantage; however, little work provides insight or an organized theory for how such an advantage develops for career politicians. We develop such a theory, arguing that to understand the incumbency advantage at the time of an electoral victory, it is necessary to consider the length of each specific congressional career. We find that the total share of the incumbent vote received …
Tempus Fugit, Incumbency Stays: Measuring the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. Senate
This article evaluates the incumbency advantage in the U.S. Senate. We argue that existing methods utilized to measure this advantage are suboptimal to gauge the concept in the Senate. After testing and highlighting the weaknesses of some of these methods, we present an alternative way to measure the incumbency advantage based on the number of electoral victories or terms spent in office. We test the impact of this new measure on candidates' reel…
The Incumbency Advantage in the US Congress: A Roller-Coaster Relationship
While every student in American politics knows that the incumbency advantage grew post-1965, it is less clear as to whether or not this growth has been sustainable throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Focusing on the last three decades, we show that the electoral margins of sitting members of the House of Representatives have not linearly grown over the past 60 years. On the contrary, the constant increase in incumbents' vote shares between the…
The Lingering Effect of Scandals in Congressional Elections: Incumbents, Challengers, and Voters
Objective We have two goals. First, we investigate both the short‐ and long‐term electoral impact of involvement in scandals on reelection margins of incumbents in U.S. congressional elections. Second, we evaluate the impact of scandals on district‐level turnout. Methods We model the impact of involvement in a political scandal on incumbents’ electoral margins in the election cycle in which the scandal comes to light, as well as in future electio…
Looking Good or Looking Competent? Physical Appearance and Electoral Success in the 2008 Congressional Elections
A whole array of studies has shown that the physical appearance of candidates running for elective office matters. However, it is unclear whether attractiveness or perceived competence is the source of such electoral advantage. In addition, the gender of candidates might interact with perceptions of physical appearance. With the help of Canadian student coders and through the use of a web-based survey, we measure the threefold link between physic…
Blinded by Beauty? Physical Attractiveness and Candidate Selection in the U.S. House of Representatives
Objective In this article we show that physical attractiveness matters as a heuristic device for uninformed voters but not for politically savvy voters. Methods Drawing on a two‐step experiment, we first ask over 100 students to rank the physical attractiveness of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives. Second, we create a treatment and a control group comprising each of 1,200 research different subjects. We ask the first group to indica…
Physical attractiveness, voter heuristics and electoral systems: The role of candidate attractiveness under different institutional designs
While existing studies have shown that more attractive candidates running for office have an electoral advantage, very little has been written on how this advantage relates to different institutions. We theorise that formal institutions mediate the positive effect from which attractive candidates benefit. More in detail, we focus on the type of electoral system, hypothesising that physical attractiveness plays a more important role in majoritaria…
Does Corruption Follow Opportunity? A Study of the U.S. Congress
Ninety three of the 1,818 people who served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1972 and 2012 were investigated for corruption by the Ethics Committee. Eighteen were acquitted and 75 suffered consequences (reprimand/payback/resignation/conviction). Detailed analysis of the data shows that the longer one is in Congress, the more likely is the chance of corruption. In addition, the more powerful one is in Congress, the more likely is the c…
The Career Length and Service of Female Policymakers in the US House of Representatives
Various studies have outlined the institutional (e.g. the existence of quota laws and the electoral system type of a country) and non-institutional factors (e.g. the political culture of a country) that account for variation in women’s representation, in general, and, in more detail, the low representation of women in the US Congress. However, no study has, so far, compared the Congressional career paths of men and women in order to understand wh…
What Are Good‐Looking Candidates, and Can They Sway Election Results
Objective In this article, we address two major gaps in the understanding of the relationship between candidate attractiveness and electoral success. With the assistance of the Victoria Police Criminal Identification Unit in Melbourne, Australia, we show how good‐looking candidates look like by building the faces of six “ideal candidates” in terms of physical attractiveness. Utilizing our “ideal candidates,” we then investigate whether candidate …
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Do Attractive Politicians Get a ‘Break’ When They are Involved in Scandals
Does Martialization Contribute to Australia’s Right-Wing Extremism? Implications of an Analysis of the General Social Survey
Concept review on right-wing extremism (RWE) holds that authoritarianism, nationalism and anti-democracy are the values that most strongly correlate. Evidence suggests these views are prevalent among military veterans. In this paper we test the hypothesis that individuals that are subjected to martialization are more likely to hold RWE values than other individuals. Using the General Social Survey, which permits the operationalization of authorit…
The Electoral Consequences of Scandals: A Meta-Analysis
As the number of scandals involving politicians in office rises worldwide, the number of studies dedicated to analysing these scandals and their consequences rises as well. In this article, we try to summarise this emerging literature focusing on quantitative studies that use scandal as an independent variable to model its influence on politicians’ electoral results. The analysis finds that scandal-ridden politicians tend to get fewer votes at th…
Is there a prototype leader look? Evidence from the photos of Chinese local leaders
The ‘Implicit Intelligence’ of artificial intelligence. Investigating the potential of large language models in social science research
Researchers in ‘hard' science disciplines are exploring the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for advancing research in their fields. Their colleagues in ‘soft' science, however, have produced thus far a limited number of articles on this subject. This paper addresses this gap. Our main hypothesis is that existing Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models (LLMs) can closely align with human expert assessments in special…
Young voters, older candidates and policy preferences: Evidence from two experiments
Recent elections around the world have seen young voters come out in large numbers to support young leaders running for office, such as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern in October 2020. At the same time, however, young voters have shown strong support for relatively older candidates such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States. While the former is consistent with the descriptive representation literature, the la…
Can Donald Trump Shape the Outcome of Elections Abroad? Unraveling and Comparing the “Trump Effect” in the 2025 Canadian and Australian Federal Elections
Objective This research investigates the salience of Donald Trump as a political issue and determinant of vote choice in the 2025 Canadian and Australian federal elections. Both countries held federal contests within 5 days of each other, and multiple news outlets and experts labeled them “anti‐Trump” elections. While center‐left incumbents secured upset re‐election wins in both countries, the actual importance of Donald Trump in shaping these ou…
Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (6 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works)