Why are women and people of color underrepresented in U.S. politics? This article introduces strategic discrimination—when voters hesitate to support candidates due to fear of others objecting to their identity. Through three experiments, the author demonstrates that this phenomenon exists and significantly impacts real-world elections.
New research challenges conventional wisdom about political campaigns. By synthesizing evidence from both meta-analysis and nine original field experiments, this paper demonstrates that campaign contact has little persuasive effect on voters' candidate choices during general elections. Most studies find no impact at all - the average effect is effectively zero across 49 total field experiments. The exceptions to this pattern occur only under very specific circumstances: when candidates hold unusually unpopular positions or campaigns make extraordinary efforts targeting persuadable voters, and even then early persuasion fades over time unless measured immediately before elections. This finding contributes significantly to ongoing debates about democratic accountability by suggesting political elites' attempts to influence voters may be less effective than commonly believed.
Many Americans consume ideologically aligned news, prompting proposals to encourage exposure to opposing outlets as a way to reduce polarization. Motivated reasoning theory, however, warns that confronting people with uncongenial information can backfire and deepen division. Drawing on the idea that sustained exposure to novel information can overcome motivated reasoning—and that partisan outlets on opposite sides often report different facts—this study tests whether regular consumers of one partisan source will learn and moderate when repeatedly exposed to the opposing outlet.
Can museums help heal divided societies—or do they risk reopening old wounds? This study assesses a transitional justice exhibit, Troubles and Beyond at the Ulster Museum, to understand whether museum encounters change how people perceive past violence or prefer it be addressed.
A pair of randomized interventions were implemented in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, to test whether empowering citizens changes how they interact financially with the state. One intervention provided information on statutory payment obligations; the other offered protection from abusive or opportunistic state officials.
A theory of activation: bureaucratic responsiveness depends on resources, representation, and recognition. Material investments and the inclusion of marginalized personnel often remain passive; they improve service only when institutional recognition—organizational dynamics that make a group visible and value efforts to meet their needs—activates them.
This study asks whether legislators change their votes when informed about an interest group’s size, economic importance and sectoral reach. Using a combination of a field experiment that randomized messages from a pro‑reform business organization, a survey experiment with lobbyists, and in‑depth interviews with senior political actors, the article tests whether informational cues about group characteristics increase legislators’ support. The contribution is a mixed‑methods, realistic test of cue‑based informational lobbying in a Brazilian setting, triangulating experimental and qualitative evidence without overclaiming generalizability.
Political parties struggle to recruit volunteers and to broaden the demographic makeup of activists. This research partnered with a major Dutch party to test whether outreach mode affects members’ willingness to sign up as volunteers. The central contribution is experimental evidence comparing personal phone calls that allowed members to voice opinions with emails, using two field experiments run before the 2021 national and 2022 municipal elections.
Religious messages are often assumed to be especially persuasive in highly religious countries. This expectation was tested in Zambia, an overwhelmingly Christian, youth‑skewed country, through a community‑collaborative intervention implemented just before national elections.
This study examines whether banks adjust willingness to onboard corporate clients based on risk and reward. Competing predictions from expected utility, behavioralist, and institutionalist accounts are evaluated using a global field experiment.
Authenticity is a cornerstone of democratic representation, but how do political candidates navigate its tension with strategic self-presentation? This study examines candidate authenticity across diverse contexts and methodologies. Using large-scale surveys alongside controlled field experiments testing voter reactions to candidate statements about personal characteristics, the research uncovers nuanced patterns in authentic political communication.
The study asks whether feedback systems in markets with information asymmetries work because trustworthy sellers self-select into markets with feedback, or because sellers change behaviour for reputational reasons. Using a field experiment on taxi rides, the authors present an experimental design intended to disentangle selection from reputation mechanisms and discuss the implications for policy on feedback mechanisms.
This study asks whether far‑right electoral victories change how street‑level bureaucrats treat minority service seekers, focusing on registration with general practitioners in Italian municipalities. It combines an audit-style field experiment that varied callers’ accents with a regression discontinuity design around close mayoral elections to compare responses in places where far‑right candidates narrowly won versus lost. The central contribution is evidence about whether electoral outcomes at the municipal level are associated with changes in bureaucratic impartiality in a concrete public-service interaction.
This study asks whether demand for clientelism among informal workers can be attenuated, and whether reducing that demand translates into support for programmatic alternatives. The authors ran an information experiment with firm owners ahead of Senegal’s 2022 local elections, at a moment when an upstart faction campaigned on programmatic reform. They report that reminding informal workers of their ability to coordinate reduced engagement with dominant clientelistic networks, but that shift generally led to political disengagement rather than mobilization for programmatic candidates.
This study asks how cross-border labor migration changes migrants’ redistribution preferences, comparing migrants themselves to their left-behind family members. Using a randomized intervention that facilitated labor migration from India to the Middle East, the authors test whether moving alters support for taxation and redistribution and explore mechanisms tied to economic gains, self-reliance, and expectations of upward mobility.
Existing research holds that socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals avoid information that highlights risk. An alternative expectation is proposed: when risks from global economic shocks become salient, some disadvantaged people—especially internal migrants—may be more motivated to learn about the distributional effects of those shocks.
A field experiment in South Africa shows that increasing the state's ability to locate households reduces citizens' readiness to take part in mob vigilantism.
This study asks whether community-level interventions raise tax compliance more effectively than individual-level approaches, and whether top-down enforcement or bottom-up quasi-voluntary strategies work better. The argument is that tax compliance should improve when interventions target communities rather than individuals, and that quasi-voluntary, community-based approaches may also reshape citizen–state relations.
This article asks whether a concentrated deliberative experience can produce lasting political effects. The case is "America in One Room," a national field experiment that brought together more than 500 randomly selected registered voters from across the United States to deliberate about five major national issues.
This innovative study examines how seemingly irrelevant events impact voting behavior through principles derived from Open Science methodology.
Exposure to high heat increases aggression. This study investigates a direct causal link between heat shocks and outgroup discrimination in Germany.
This study asks whether symbolic transitional-justice sites — specifically a museum dedicated to past human-rights abuses — can shift citizens’ attitudes. The authors report results from a field experiment conducted at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, tested on university students to measure whether a museum visit affects support for democratic institutions, rejection of repressive-period institutions, and support for restorative transitional-justice policies. The abstract frames effects as present across ideological priors and notes partial persistence up to six months after the visit.
This paper asks whether a town‑hall style, deliberative campaign—where candidates discuss platforms with small groups of citizens—causally affects voting in a congressional election. Using a randomized experiment run with two national parties in the Philippines, the authors estimate whether active, discussion‑based outreach changes parties' vote shares relative to standard, passive campaign approaches.
Individuals with criminal records face reduced engagement from college admissions offices. A nationwide US field experiment found these applicants receive about 5 percentage points fewer responses compared to those without records, yet race appears irrelevant to this outcome.
This research tests whether expanding formal taxation in a fragile state prompts citizens to demand a greater voice in government. The central claim is that bringing citizens into the tax base generates a measurable "participation dividend."
In political science, the relationship between material interests and identity politics has long been debated. This article examines how these seemingly distinct drivers are connected through the concept of linked fate.
Did politicians really win approval by aligning with voters' views, or do voters accept positions regardless of agreement or justification? We tested these core questions through innovative field experiments conducted with U.S. state legislators.
How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment