Elite Field Experiments to Explore Candidates Accountability and Bias

 

In an ongoing project that goes back to my Ph.D. dissertation in economics (Bologna University 2006), I analyze candidates’ behavior during the electoral campaign in representative democracies. The original field experiment, inspired by Putnam observational study on the responsiveness of Italian region, sent emails to candidates in the elections, to study if candidates were more responsive to decided or undecided voters. The seminal paper on the 2006 Italian election was one of the first to apply an email experiment in political science.

 

Then I conducted in 2008 a replication in Brazil. The resulting paper was published in the Brazilian Political Science Review.“Investigating Elite Behavior Through Field Experiments: do candidates answer more to core or swing voters?”.  Joint with Prof. F. Guimarães, Brazilian Political Science Review, v7(1) 2013.

 

More recently in collaboration with Amanda Driscoll, Feliciano Guimaraes and Gabriel Cepaluni we adapted the design to explore gender and class discrimination in the 2010 Brazilian election. The resulting paper has been published in AJPS. Prejudice, Strategic Discrimination, and the Electoral Connection: Evidence from a Pair of Field Experiments in Brazil. American Journal of Political Science.

News 2024

 

The PB Brazilian Census online phase is completed

 

I directed the first summer school on RCT at Southampton University

 

We helped deploy the Participedia Summer School in Cape Town

 

[Phoenix update] The partners have completed the evaluation 8 of the 11 Territorial Commissions of Codesign activities

 

C-BEAR won the Pippa Norris prize

 

[Phoenix update] We have finished the codesign of the pre/post surveys for the 11 Phoenix pilots

 

I got a bit of funding to redo the Brazilian PB Census

 

News 2023

 

[Phoenix update] Territorial Commissions of Codesigns are ongoing in 11 locations across Europe

 

I have got a bit of funding to assist the UK PB Network

 

We completed the Citizens' Assembly in Southampton

 

We did the first (at least I think it is the first) door knocking experiment applied to promote participation in a CA

 

In the fall I am on Sabbatical between Morocco, Italy and the UK

 

Demoplay project completed, we have a new version of EMPAVILLE!

 

Follow-up blog post in dialogic form with Kyle Redman in Deliberative Democracy Journal

 

Supporting Bologna CA evaluation coordination

 

The blog I wrote with Tiago Peixoto on Sortition and Representation has reached more than 5000 visualizations