Javier Muñoz
Biographic Data
| ID | 98925 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Javier Muñoz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Javier |
| FAMILY NAME | Muñoz |
| SIGNATURE | MUÑOZ J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universitat de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2078-4047 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 728 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
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 …
Mitigating the Nimby effect on renewable energy
Turnout, Family, and Gender Norms
This article investigates the historical process through which women mobilized at the ballot box and caught up with men's high voting turnout. The authors employ a unique set of official electoral data in Sweden collected between 1921 and 1960, recording all eligible voters' participation by gender, occupational group, and marital status. Although, in line with standard models of turnout, women's individual resources mattered, the authors show ho…
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…
Voters rally around the incumbent in the aftermath of terrorist attacks
Research on the political consequences of terrorism often finds a rally around the flag effect: terrorist attacks, as other types of threats, tend to produce spikes in popularity and support for the incumbent, as citizens turn to those in power seeking protection. Most research, however, is based on single case studies that analyze very salient attacks from international terrorist organizations. Even if these studies are well identified, the ques…
Double-Edged Bullets
Terrorism often seeks to impact democratic politics. This article explores how it can influence the electoral fortunes of the incumbent. Existing research is contradictory. Models of retrospective voting predict a negative impact, as terrorism is detrimental to voters' welfare. However, the well-known ‘rally around the flag’ effect suggests otherwise: following a terrorist attack, voters often cling to the incumbent. We reconcile these arguments …
Postural Balance and Gait Parameters of Independent Older Adults
Postural balance and gait are important factors in the functional status of older people; however, few studies have addressed differences by sex. The objective of this study was to analyze the postural balance and temporal−spatial parameters of gait in independent older adults by sex. A cross-sectional study was conducted. Thirty-eight independent older women (69 ± 5 years), and 33 men (71 ± 5 years) were evaluated. The postural balance test with…
Do they really care? Social desirability bias in attitudes towards corruption
Direct estimates based on election returns show that corruption is mildly punished at the polls. A large majority of survey respondents, however, often tend to state that they do not like corruption and will not support corrupt politicians. This has been interpreted as a product of social desirability bias: interviewees prefer to report socially accepted attitudes (rejection of corruption) instead of truthful responses (intention to vote for thei…
The Catalan Syndrome? Revisiting the Relationship Between Income and Support for Independence in Catalonia
The surge in support for independence in Catalonia (Spain) has received much political, journalistic, as well as academic attention. A popular account of the Catalan case stresses the allegation that motives relating to fiscal selfishness are behind the independence movement. The evidence presented in support of this argument is the positive correlation between income and support for independence. Some scholars, such as Thomas Piketty, even talk …
Inferring party positions across issue dimensions
In this article, we argue that voters use party positions on an issue dimension as a heuristic device to locate parties on other dimensions on which they have less information about. We confirm our argument by fielding two survey experiments in a context with two distinct issue dimensions: the left-right and national dimensions in Catalonia. We find that the position of a hypothetical (but plausible) candidate on a national dimension exerts a gre…
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…
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…
Unexpected Event during Survey Design
An increasing number of studies exploit the occurrence of unexpected events during the fieldwork of public opinion surveys to estimate causal effects. In this paper, we discuss the use of this identification strategy based on unforeseen and salient events that split the sample of respondents into treatment and control groups: the Unexpected Event during Survey Design. In particular, we focus on the assumptions under which unexpected events can be…
Immigration and Support for Social Policy
A growing body of research suggests that immigration undermines native support for the welfare state. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship and the possible moderating effects of institutions remain inconclusive. In this study, we identify via survey experiments how means-tested programs and targeted spending exacerbate the negative effect of immigration on public support for redistribution. Our findings suggest that different institut…
If a fight starts, watch the crowd
Social movements often face tactic diversification. In otherwise nonviolent movements, some groups or radical flanks may resort to violent actions such as street rioting. This article analyzes the impact that these violent episodes can have on popular support for the movement as a whole. To estimate the causal effect of violence, it exploits an unexpected riot outbreak that occurred during the fieldwork of a face-to-face survey in Barcelona in Ma…
Show Me Your Friends
Recent studies of coalition-directed voting suggest that what political parties say during a campaign can influence voter perceptions of the likelihood of certain coalitions and that this, in turn, may foster strategic voting in multiparty systems. Here, we expand this argument, and show that pre-election coalition signals also have the potential to influence voter perceptions of the parties themselves. By revealing their coalition preferences, p…
Why do voters forgive corrupt mayors? Implicit exchange, credibility of information and clean alternatives
Corruption cases have limited electoral consequences in many countries. Why do voters often fail to punish corrupt politicians at the polls? Previous research has focused on the role of lack of information, weak institutions and partisanship in explaining this phenomenon. In this paper, we propose three micro-mechanisms that can help understand why voters support corrupt mayors even in contexts with high information and strong institutions: impli…
Spectral damage model for lighted museum paintings
Economic expectations and support for secession in Catalonia
Support for independence from Spain has sharply increased in recent years in Catalonia. According to all available evidence, public opinion has shifted from an overwhelmingly pro-autonomy position to an increasingly pro-independence stance. How can we explain such widespread support for secession in a democratic context? Traditionally, national identity has been regarded as the main explanatory factor, but recent accounts tend to underline the ef…
The dark side of proportionality
Accounting for internal variation in nationalist mobilization
Between S eptember 2009 and A pril 2011, around one‐half of the C atalan municipalities held unofficial referendums on independence from S pain, in which more than 800,000 citizens took part. However, the participation rates were unevenly distributed across C atalonia. In this paper, using an original data set, we aim to respond to two relevant questions: first, why in some municipalities the referendum took place and in others it did not occur. …
Turning a Blind Eye
This article considers how partisanship conditions attitudes toward corruption. Stirred by the puzzle of why corruption does not seem to have the electoral consequences we would expect, it explores whether party supporters are more tolerant toward corruption cases when they affect their own party. The partisan-bias hypothesis is confirmed by a survey experiment carried out in Spain, a country where a number of corruption scandals have been recent…
Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union
Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher le…
State-level Politics and Regional Electoral Competition
On 27 May 2007, the eighth series of ‘autonomous’ elections was held in the 13 Spanish autonomous communities (ACs) that hold their elections on the same day (Spain is officially divided into 17 au
From National-Catholicism to Democratic Patriotism? Democratization and reconstruction of national pride
Attachment to the nation is often seen as a stable attitude that provides a 'reservoir of diffuse support' for a country, beyond any specific institutional setting. However, I argue that certain, deep, social and political changes in a country may imply a reconstruction of nationhood, that should modify the social bases of support for the nation. I test this hypothesis in the Spanish case, by tracing the changes in the impact of ideology, religio…
Turning a Blind Eye
This article considers how partisanship conditions attitudes toward corruption. Stirred by the puzzle of why corruption does not seem to have the electoral consequences we would expect, it explores whether party supporters are more tolerant toward corruption cases when they affect their own party. The partisan-bias hypothesis is confirmed by a survey experiment carried out in Spain, a country where a number of corruption scandals have been recent…
Unexpected Event during Survey Design
An increasing number of studies exploit the occurrence of unexpected events during the fieldwork of public opinion surveys to estimate causal effects. In this paper, we discuss the use of this identification strategy based on unforeseen and salient events that split the sample of respondents into treatment and control groups: the Unexpected Event during Survey Design. In particular, we focus on the assumptions under which unexpected events can be…
Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union
Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher le…
Economic expectations and support for secession in Catalonia
Support for independence from Spain has sharply increased in recent years in Catalonia. According to all available evidence, public opinion has shifted from an overwhelmingly pro-autonomy position to an increasingly pro-independence stance. How can we explain such widespread support for secession in a democratic context? Traditionally, national identity has been regarded as the main explanatory factor, but recent accounts tend to underline the ef…
Accounting for internal variation in nationalist mobilization
Between S eptember 2009 and A pril 2011, around one‐half of the C atalan municipalities held unofficial referendums on independence from S pain, in which more than 800,000 citizens took part. However, the participation rates were unevenly distributed across C atalonia. In this paper, using an original data set, we aim to respond to two relevant questions: first, why in some municipalities the referendum took place and in others it did not occur. …
Why do voters forgive corrupt mayors? Implicit exchange, credibility of information and clean alternatives
Corruption cases have limited electoral consequences in many countries. Why do voters often fail to punish corrupt politicians at the polls? Previous research has focused on the role of lack of information, weak institutions and partisanship in explaining this phenomenon. In this paper, we propose three micro-mechanisms that can help understand why voters support corrupt mayors even in contexts with high information and strong institutions: impli…
If a fight starts, watch the crowd
Social movements often face tactic diversification. In otherwise nonviolent movements, some groups or radical flanks may resort to violent actions such as street rioting. This article analyzes the impact that these violent episodes can have on popular support for the movement as a whole. To estimate the causal effect of violence, it exploits an unexpected riot outbreak that occurred during the fieldwork of a face-to-face survey in Barcelona in Ma…
From National-Catholicism to Democratic Patriotism? Democratization and reconstruction of national pride
Attachment to the nation is often seen as a stable attitude that provides a 'reservoir of diffuse support' for a country, beyond any specific institutional setting. However, I argue that certain, deep, social and political changes in a country may imply a reconstruction of nationhood, that should modify the social bases of support for the nation. I test this hypothesis in the Spanish case, by tracing the changes in the impact of ideology, religio…
Immigration and Support for Social Policy
A growing body of research suggests that immigration undermines native support for the welfare state. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship and the possible moderating effects of institutions remain inconclusive. In this study, we identify via survey experiments how means-tested programs and targeted spending exacerbate the negative effect of immigration on public support for redistribution. Our findings suggest that different institut…
Show Me Your Friends
Recent studies of coalition-directed voting suggest that what political parties say during a campaign can influence voter perceptions of the likelihood of certain coalitions and that this, in turn, may foster strategic voting in multiparty systems. Here, we expand this argument, and show that pre-election coalition signals also have the potential to influence voter perceptions of the parties themselves. By revealing their coalition preferences, p…
Double-Edged Bullets
Terrorism often seeks to impact democratic politics. This article explores how it can influence the electoral fortunes of the incumbent. Existing research is contradictory. Models of retrospective voting predict a negative impact, as terrorism is detrimental to voters' welfare. However, the well-known ‘rally around the flag’ effect suggests otherwise: following a terrorist attack, voters often cling to the incumbent. We reconcile these arguments …
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…
Inferring party positions across issue dimensions
In this article, we argue that voters use party positions on an issue dimension as a heuristic device to locate parties on other dimensions on which they have less information about. We confirm our argument by fielding two survey experiments in a context with two distinct issue dimensions: the left-right and national dimensions in Catalonia. We find that the position of a hypothetical (but plausible) candidate on a national dimension exerts a gre…
Depolarization in the 2005 Autonomous Elections in the Basque Country
In this paper, we present the facts and results of the 2005 autonomous election in the Basque Country. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level and the main reasons behind the apparent stability of the polarized multiparty system and its ideological basis. We finally discuss the implications of the results for the political system at Basque and Spanish levels
The dark side of proportionality
The 2005 Autonomous Election in Galicia
In this paper, the results of the 2005 autonomous election in Galicia are analyzed. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level explain the main reasons behind the defeat of the Popular Party after 16 years of absolute majority in the Galician Parliament and discuss its implications for the political system at the Galician and Spanish levels
The Catalan Syndrome? Revisiting the Relationship Between Income and Support for Independence in Catalonia
The surge in support for independence in Catalonia (Spain) has received much political, journalistic, as well as academic attention. A popular account of the Catalan case stresses the allegation that motives relating to fiscal selfishness are behind the independence movement. The evidence presented in support of this argument is the positive correlation between income and support for independence. Some scholars, such as Thomas Piketty, even talk …
State-level Politics and Regional Electoral Competition
On 27 May 2007, the eighth series of ‘autonomous’ elections was held in the 13 Spanish autonomous communities (ACs) that hold their elections on the same day (Spain is officially divided into 17 au
The Autonomous Elections of 1 November 2006 in Catalonia
In this paper, we present the facts and results of the 2006 autonomous election in Catalonia. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level and the main reasons behind the stability and change in the electoral behaviour. We finally discuss the implications of the results for the political system at Basque and Spanish levels
Mitigating the Nimby effect on renewable energy
Voters rally around the incumbent in the aftermath of terrorist attacks
Research on the political consequences of terrorism often finds a rally around the flag effect: terrorist attacks, as other types of threats, tend to produce spikes in popularity and support for the incumbent, as citizens turn to those in power seeking protection. Most research, however, is based on single case studies that analyze very salient attacks from international terrorist organizations. Even if these studies are well identified, the ques…
Spectral damage model for lighted museum paintings
The 2005 Autonomous Election in Galicia
In this paper, the results of the 2005 autonomous election in Galicia are analyzed. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level explain the main reasons behind the defeat of the Popular Party after 16 years of absolute majority in the Galician Parliament and discuss its implications for the political system at the Galician and Spanish levels
Depolarization in the 2005 Autonomous Elections in the Basque Country
In this paper, we present the facts and results of the 2005 autonomous election in the Basque Country. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level and the main reasons behind the apparent stability of the polarized multiparty system and its ideological basis. We finally discuss the implications of the results for the political system at Basque and Spanish levels
The Autonomous Elections of 1 November 2006 in Catalonia
In this paper, we present the facts and results of the 2006 autonomous election in Catalonia. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level and the main reasons behind the stability and change in the electoral behaviour. We finally discuss the implications of the results for the political system at Basque and Spanish levels
From National-Catholicism to Democratic Patriotism? Democratization and reconstruction of national pride
Attachment to the nation is often seen as a stable attitude that provides a 'reservoir of diffuse support' for a country, beyond any specific institutional setting. However, I argue that certain, deep, social and political changes in a country may imply a reconstruction of nationhood, that should modify the social bases of support for the nation. I test this hypothesis in the Spanish case, by tracing the changes in the impact of ideology, religio…
State-level Politics and Regional Electoral Competition
On 27 May 2007, the eighth series of ‘autonomous’ elections was held in the 13 Spanish autonomous communities (ACs) that hold their elections on the same day (Spain is officially divided into 17 au
Institutional trust and multilevel government in the European Union
Does trust in national institutions foster or hinder trust in the institutions of the European Union (EU)? There is no agreement in the literature on popular support for the EU about the direction of the relationship between trust in national and European institutions. Some scholars argue that both will be positively related, others have proposed the opposite hypothesis: low levels of trust in national institutions will lead citizens to higher le…
Accounting for internal variation in nationalist mobilization
Between S eptember 2009 and A pril 2011, around one‐half of the C atalan municipalities held unofficial referendums on independence from S pain, in which more than 800,000 citizens took part. However, the participation rates were unevenly distributed across C atalonia. In this paper, using an original data set, we aim to respond to two relevant questions: first, why in some municipalities the referendum took place and in others it did not occur. …
Turning a Blind Eye
This article considers how partisanship conditions attitudes toward corruption. Stirred by the puzzle of why corruption does not seem to have the electoral consequences we would expect, it explores whether party supporters are more tolerant toward corruption cases when they affect their own party. The partisan-bias hypothesis is confirmed by a survey experiment carried out in Spain, a country where a number of corruption scandals have been recent…
The dark side of proportionality
Economic expectations and support for secession in Catalonia
Support for independence from Spain has sharply increased in recent years in Catalonia. According to all available evidence, public opinion has shifted from an overwhelmingly pro-autonomy position to an increasingly pro-independence stance. How can we explain such widespread support for secession in a democratic context? Traditionally, national identity has been regarded as the main explanatory factor, but recent accounts tend to underline the ef…
Why do voters forgive corrupt mayors? Implicit exchange, credibility of information and clean alternatives
Corruption cases have limited electoral consequences in many countries. Why do voters often fail to punish corrupt politicians at the polls? Previous research has focused on the role of lack of information, weak institutions and partisanship in explaining this phenomenon. In this paper, we propose three micro-mechanisms that can help understand why voters support corrupt mayors even in contexts with high information and strong institutions: impli…
Spectral damage model for lighted museum paintings
Show Me Your Friends
Recent studies of coalition-directed voting suggest that what political parties say during a campaign can influence voter perceptions of the likelihood of certain coalitions and that this, in turn, may foster strategic voting in multiparty systems. Here, we expand this argument, and show that pre-election coalition signals also have the potential to influence voter perceptions of the parties themselves. By revealing their coalition preferences, p…
Immigration and Support for Social Policy
A growing body of research suggests that immigration undermines native support for the welfare state. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship and the possible moderating effects of institutions remain inconclusive. In this study, we identify via survey experiments how means-tested programs and targeted spending exacerbate the negative effect of immigration on public support for redistribution. Our findings suggest that different institut…
If a fight starts, watch the crowd
Social movements often face tactic diversification. In otherwise nonviolent movements, some groups or radical flanks may resort to violent actions such as street rioting. This article analyzes the impact that these violent episodes can have on popular support for the movement as a whole. To estimate the causal effect of violence, it exploits an unexpected riot outbreak that occurred during the fieldwork of a face-to-face survey in Barcelona in Ma…
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…
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…
Unexpected Event during Survey Design
An increasing number of studies exploit the occurrence of unexpected events during the fieldwork of public opinion surveys to estimate causal effects. In this paper, we discuss the use of this identification strategy based on unforeseen and salient events that split the sample of respondents into treatment and control groups: the Unexpected Event during Survey Design. In particular, we focus on the assumptions under which unexpected events can be…
The Catalan Syndrome? Revisiting the Relationship Between Income and Support for Independence in Catalonia
The surge in support for independence in Catalonia (Spain) has received much political, journalistic, as well as academic attention. A popular account of the Catalan case stresses the allegation that motives relating to fiscal selfishness are behind the independence movement. The evidence presented in support of this argument is the positive correlation between income and support for independence. Some scholars, such as Thomas Piketty, even talk …
Inferring party positions across issue dimensions
In this article, we argue that voters use party positions on an issue dimension as a heuristic device to locate parties on other dimensions on which they have less information about. We confirm our argument by fielding two survey experiments in a context with two distinct issue dimensions: the left-right and national dimensions in Catalonia. We find that the position of a hypothetical (but plausible) candidate on a national dimension exerts a gre…
Postural Balance and Gait Parameters of Independent Older Adults
Postural balance and gait are important factors in the functional status of older people; however, few studies have addressed differences by sex. The objective of this study was to analyze the postural balance and temporal−spatial parameters of gait in independent older adults by sex. A cross-sectional study was conducted. Thirty-eight independent older women (69 ± 5 years), and 33 men (71 ± 5 years) were evaluated. The postural balance test with…
Do they really care? Social desirability bias in attitudes towards corruption
Direct estimates based on election returns show that corruption is mildly punished at the polls. A large majority of survey respondents, however, often tend to state that they do not like corruption and will not support corrupt politicians. This has been interpreted as a product of social desirability bias: interviewees prefer to report socially accepted attitudes (rejection of corruption) instead of truthful responses (intention to vote for thei…
Double-Edged Bullets
Terrorism often seeks to impact democratic politics. This article explores how it can influence the electoral fortunes of the incumbent. Existing research is contradictory. Models of retrospective voting predict a negative impact, as terrorism is detrimental to voters' welfare. However, the well-known ‘rally around the flag’ effect suggests otherwise: following a terrorist attack, voters often cling to the incumbent. We reconcile these arguments …
Mitigating the Nimby effect on renewable energy
Turnout, Family, and Gender Norms
This article investigates the historical process through which women mobilized at the ballot box and caught up with men's high voting turnout. The authors employ a unique set of official electoral data in Sweden collected between 1921 and 1960, recording all eligible voters' participation by gender, occupational group, and marital status. Although, in line with standard models of turnout, women's individual resources mattered, the authors show ho…
Political science (24 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Economics (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (15 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Democracy (8 works)