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Does party competition affect political activism?
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Hager, Anselm, Hensel, Lukas, Hermle, Johannes and Roth, Christopher (2020) Does party competition affect political activism? Working Paper. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick. Department of Economics. Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) (1278). (Unpublished)
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Official URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w...
Abstract
This paper studies the decision of party supporters to join political campaigns. We present a framework that incorporates supporters’ instrumental and expressive motives and illustrates that party competition can either increase or decrease party activism. To distinguish between these competing predictions, we implemented a field experiment with a European party during a national election. In a seemingly unrelated party survey, we randomly assigned 1,417 party supporters to true information that the canvassing activity of the main competitor party was exceptionally high. Using unobtrusive, real-time data on party supporters’ canvassing behavior, we find that treated respondents are 30 percent less likely to go canvassing. To investigate the causal mechanism, we leverage additional survey evidence collected two months after the campaign. Consistent with affective accounts of political activism, we show that increased competition lowered party supporters’ political self-efficacy, which plausibly led them to remain inactive.
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||
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Subjects: | J Political Science > JC Political theory J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Political participation, Political activists , Elections , Political campaigns | ||||
Series Name: | Warwick economics research papers series (WERPS) | ||||
Publisher: | University of Warwick. Department of Economics | ||||
Place of Publication: | Coventry, UK | ||||
ISSN: | 0083-7350 | ||||
Official Date: | July 2020 | ||||
Dates: |
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Number: | 1278 | ||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Description: | This paper also appears as CRETA Discussion Paper No. 488. |
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