Essays on the political economy of democracy

Essais d’économie politique de la démocratie

Edgard Dewitte ()
Additional contact information
Edgard Dewitte: ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: This thesis seeks to advance our understanding of individual political behavior in Western democracies, through the construction and quantitative analysis of large historical databases.The first chapter examines the historical determinants of climate change beliefs in the United States. It shows that the progressive building, during the 19th and 20th centuries, of economic identities related to the oil & gas industry, today contributes to persistent levels of climate change denial.The second chapter investigates the drivers of individual political engagement, through the case of small campaign contributions. Building the first systematic database on the subject, we show that, during the 2006-2020 period in the U.S., small donors are on average more representative of the voting-age population than large donors, and that their behaviors differ significantly: they contribute to more visible, out-of-state candidates, and are more sensitive to campaign advertisements.The third chapter studies how campaign spending has influenced voting decisions over the last 160 years in the U.K.. It shows that, although the amounts spent on candidates' campaigns have decreased dramatically since 1880, the correlation between these expenditures and the votes they received has in fact increased, and that this is in part linked to the introduction of new information technologies (such as local radio and the Internet) and to changes in candidates' campaign strategies.

Keywords: Political behavior; Climate change beliefs; Campaign finance; Electoral campaigns; Comportements politiques; Croyances au changement climatique; Financement politique; Campagnes électorales (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-14
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Economics and Finance. Institut d'études politiques de Paris - Sciences Po, 2023. English. ⟨NNT : 2023IEPP0015⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:tel-04285092

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().