The rise of populism in advanced economies: blame it on globalisation?

Protectionism and isolationism have been growing throughout the world, in what became known as the backlash against globalisation. Using newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies and global trade data, Italo Colantone, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Piero Stanig analyse voting behaviour and track trade policy interventions. They write that international trade is not the only factor causing the upheaval. Society must manage the distributional consequences of structural change in a more inclusive way

The rise of populism in advanced economies: blame it on globalisation?

Protectionism and isolationism have been growing throughout the world, in what became known as the backlash against globalisation. Using newly assembled data for 23 industrialised, advanced democracies and global trade data, Italo Colantone, Gianmarco Ottaviano, and Piero Stanig analyse voting behaviour and track trade policy interventions. They write that international trade is not the only factor causing ... Continue

Voting for Tomorrow: Climate Change, Environmental Concern and Green Voting

In the past decade, the world has witnessed increased climate change impacts with many countries experiencing more frequent and more severe climate extremes. With public support being fundamental in scaling up climate action, here, we analyze the impact of exposure to climate extremes on environmental concern and Green voting for a large panel of European countries. Combining high-resolution climatological data with regionally aggregated and harmonized information on environmental concern (42 Eurobarometer surveys, 2002-2019, 34 countries) and European Parliamentary electoral outcomes (7 elections, 1990-2019, 28 countries) at the subnational level, we find a significant and sizeable effect of temperature anomalies, heat episodes and dry spells in the previous 12 months on green concern and voting. The effects differ significantly by region and are most pronounced in regions with a cooler Continental or temperate Atlantic climate, and weaker in regions with a warmer Mediterranean climate. The relationship is moderated by regional GDP suggesting that climate change experience increase public support for climate action only under favorable economic conditions. By empirically documenting the important role of contextual influences and regional differences on green concern and voting, our findings have important implications for the current efforts to promote and implement climate actions in line with the Paris Agreement

Climate change experiences raise environmental concerns and promote Green voting

Public support is fundamental in scaling up actions to limit global warming. Here, we analyse how the experience of climate extremes influences people’s environmental attitudes and willingness to vote for Green parties in Europe. To this end, we combined high-resolution climatological data with regionally aggregated, harmonized Eurobarometer data (34 countries) and European Parliamentary electoral data (28 countries). Our findings show a significant and sizeable effect of temperature anomalies, heat episodes and dry spells on environmental concern and voting for Green parties. The magnitude of the climate effect differs substantially across European regions. It is stronger in regions with a cooler Continental or temperate Atlantic climate and weaker in regions with a warmer Mediterranean climate. The relationships are moderated by regional income level suggesting that climate change experiences increase public support for climate action but only under favourable economic conditions. The findings have important implications for the current efforts to promote climate action in line with the Paris Agreement

Information Gatekeeping and Media Bias

We develop a model to study the political economy implications of information gatekeeping, i.e., a policy of granting access only to friendly media outlets and denying access to critical ones. While an incumbent prefers positive bias, granting access improves her re-election probability only if coverage is sufficiently credible in the eyes of the public. Information gatekeeping can induce a quid pro quo relationship: media provides coverage with positive bias in exchange of future access, thereby affecting electoral outcomes in favor of incompetent incumbents. The degree of access media enjoy increases with competence of incumbents over those issues under public focus