POLS PIRSS Seminars Series

The politics of issues: party competition and citizens' support for governments

The strategic choices in parties' competition on political issues
Anna Ludovica Vinelli 
(NASP-Unimi, Ph.D Candidate)

Immigration and Far-Right Government Support
Kostantin Bogatyrev
(Bocconi University, Ph.D Candidate)

Discussant
Luca Pinto (University of Bologna)
Riccardo Ladini (University of Milan)

13 June 2024, h.14.30
Seminar Room Conservatorio & online
Via Conservatorio 7 - Milan 

Abstracts

Anna Ludovica Vinelli | The strategic choices in parties' competition on political issues
Starting from literature, the study elaborates on the strategies that parties use when they compete on issues. In particular, it develops a model to analyze the interaction between two competing parties through a game theory approach. It takes into account the opportunities and the constraints that shape parties' decisions as well as the effect of such decisions on each other behavior and, also, on electoral outcomes. It shows consequences and costs of attacking a party as well as the incentives to respond or not. Different hypotheses derived from the model portray the various possible scenarios to test what drives parties' actions and reactions. Thus, the study aims at contributing to unveil the dynamics behind parties' strategies and to understand their effect on democratic elections.

Kostantin Bogatyrev | Immigration and Far-Right Government Support
How do citizens evaluate far-right governments in office? I conduct a survey experiment to study how immigration affects the support for a far-right government. The experiment, embedded in a representative survey of 2055 individuals in Italy, exposes different respondent groups to information regarding the government's pledges and outcomes in immigration and economic growth. Drawing upon the literature, I find evidence that under the far right in office, citizens react negatively to non-attainment of pledged immigration outcomes. No heterogeneous treatment effects w.r.t. political views are evident, as the effect is neither more nor less pronounced among those who consider immigration important, people with left, right or far-right attitudes and among far-right party voters. By examining the dynamics between policy pledges, outcomes, and voter responses, this research sheds light on the evaluation of far-right governments by the electorate.

This seminar is part of the POLS Political Institutions & Regimes (PIRSS) Seminar Series
(Organizing Committee: Andrea Cassani, Tamara Grechanaya, Andrea Pedrazzani)

For an overview of the PhD Political Studies Seminar Series, click HERE