Francesc Amat
Biographic Data
| ID | 4374921 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francesc Amat |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francesc |
| FAMILY NAME | Amat |
| SIGNATURE | AMAT F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1374-4207 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
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 …
Pandemics meet democracy
How did the COVID-19 outbreak affect citizens’ democratic preferences? Were the changes persistent or temporary? We track a representative sample of Spanish citizens before, during, and after the pandemic, with eight survey waves from January 2020 to January 2024. We compare democratic attitudes before and after the pandemic with individual fixed effects models. We identify a sharp increase in preferences for technical rather than ideological pol…
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…
Institutional Commitment Problems and Regional Autonomy
This article examines what constitutional arrangements are more likely to facilitate the transfer of effective decision-making power to the regional level. We show that certain constitutional arrangements can result in institutional commitment problems between regional minority and national majority groups, which in turn influence levels of regional autonomy across regions. Specifically, we examine how the depth and scope of decentralization depe…
Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the Covid-19 crisis in Spain
The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Re…
Democracy under High Inequality
Contrary to the view that inequality reduces turnout, political participation among low-income voters is higher in democracies with high levels of inequality and intermediate levels of state capacity. We address this puzzle by analyzing the link between political mobilization and spending decisions at different levels of inequality and state capacity. Under high inequality and low levels of capacity, parties find it optimal to mobilize low-income…
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…
The Legislative Dynamics of Political Decentralization in Parliamentary Democracies
We investigate how particular configurations of national parliaments affect the dynamics of political decentralization in parliamentary democracies. Recent research has emphasized the impact of structural determinants on levels of decentralization across countries. However, we argue that decentralization processes are endogenous to legislative bargaining by political parties. Our main hypothesis is that, ceteris paribus, the greater the legislati…
Party Competition and Preferences for Inter-regional Redistribution in Spain
The main contribution of the article is to highlight the fact that preferences for inter-regional redistribution in Spain are crucially shaped by the dynamics of party competition. First, I show that it is not regional income but the saliency of the second dimension of party politics that drives preferences for regional redistribution. Second, I analyse whether the relationship between partisan attitudes and redistributive preferences is conditio…
The Legislative Dynamics of Political Decentralization in Parliamentary Democracies
We investigate how particular configurations of national parliaments affect the dynamics of political decentralization in parliamentary democracies. Recent research has emphasized the impact of structural determinants on levels of decentralization across countries. However, we argue that decentralization processes are endogenous to legislative bargaining by political parties. Our main hypothesis is that, ceteris paribus, the greater the legislati…
Party Competition and Preferences for Inter-regional Redistribution in Spain
The main contribution of the article is to highlight the fact that preferences for inter-regional redistribution in Spain are crucially shaped by the dynamics of party competition. First, I show that it is not regional income but the saliency of the second dimension of party politics that drives preferences for regional redistribution. Second, I analyse whether the relationship between partisan attitudes and redistributive preferences is conditio…
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…
Democracy under High Inequality
Contrary to the view that inequality reduces turnout, political participation among low-income voters is higher in democracies with high levels of inequality and intermediate levels of state capacity. We address this puzzle by analyzing the link between political mobilization and spending decisions at different levels of inequality and state capacity. Under high inequality and low levels of capacity, parties find it optimal to mobilize low-income…
Institutional Commitment Problems and Regional Autonomy
This article examines what constitutional arrangements are more likely to facilitate the transfer of effective decision-making power to the regional level. We show that certain constitutional arrangements can result in institutional commitment problems between regional minority and national majority groups, which in turn influence levels of regional autonomy across regions. Specifically, we examine how the depth and scope of decentralization depe…
Party Competition and Preferences for Inter-regional Redistribution in Spain
The main contribution of the article is to highlight the fact that preferences for inter-regional redistribution in Spain are crucially shaped by the dynamics of party competition. First, I show that it is not regional income but the saliency of the second dimension of party politics that drives preferences for regional redistribution. Second, I analyse whether the relationship between partisan attitudes and redistributive preferences is conditio…
The Legislative Dynamics of Political Decentralization in Parliamentary Democracies
We investigate how particular configurations of national parliaments affect the dynamics of political decentralization in parliamentary democracies. Recent research has emphasized the impact of structural determinants on levels of decentralization across countries. However, we argue that decentralization processes are endogenous to legislative bargaining by political parties. Our main hypothesis is that, ceteris paribus, the greater the legislati…
Pandemics meet democracy. Experimental evidence from the Covid-19 crisis in Spain
The COVID-19 outbreak poses an unprecedented challenge for contemporary democracies. Despite the global scale of the problem, the response has been mainly national, and global coordination has been so far extremely weak. All over the world governments are making use of exceptional powers to enforce lockdowns, often sacrificing civil liberties and profoundly altering the pre-existing power balance, which nurtures fears of an authoritarian turn. Re…
Democracy under High Inequality
Contrary to the view that inequality reduces turnout, political participation among low-income voters is higher in democracies with high levels of inequality and intermediate levels of state capacity. We address this puzzle by analyzing the link between political mobilization and spending decisions at different levels of inequality and state capacity. Under high inequality and low levels of capacity, parties find it optimal to mobilize low-income…
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…
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…
Institutional Commitment Problems and Regional Autonomy
This article examines what constitutional arrangements are more likely to facilitate the transfer of effective decision-making power to the regional level. We show that certain constitutional arrangements can result in institutional commitment problems between regional minority and national majority groups, which in turn influence levels of regional autonomy across regions. Specifically, we examine how the depth and scope of decentralization depe…
Pandemics meet democracy
How did the COVID-19 outbreak affect citizens’ democratic preferences? Were the changes persistent or temporary? We track a representative sample of Spanish citizens before, during, and after the pandemic, with eight survey waves from January 2020 to January 2024. We compare democratic attitudes before and after the pandemic with individual fixed effects models. We identify a sharp increase in preferences for technical rather than ideological pol…
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 …
Economics (8 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Law (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Democracy (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political Systems and Governance (4 works) · Decentralization (3 works)