Essays in political economy

Abstract

In my thesis, I focus on the relationship between the citizen and the state. The first chapter explores how enfranchised immigrants affect politicians’ behaviour. I study the unique UK context, where immigrants from Ireland and the Commonwealth have voting rights in all elections immediately upon arrival, but these rights are not accorded to other immigrants. I analyse how politicians discuss immigration using text analysis of the universe of speeches in the UK parliament and how MPs vote on immigration bills between 1972 and 2011. I find that politicians exposed to higher enfranchised immigration spend more time in the parliament discussing issues that affect immigrants positively, yet they vote to increase immigration restrictions. The second chapter examines the causal relationship between messages from political leaders and voters’ receptivity to them. We study this question using the 2019 national election in India, where Prime Minister Modi’s speeches focused on his aggressive response to deadly attacks on soldiers. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that the vote share of the PM’s incumbent party increased by 4.6 percentage points in the home constituencies of dead soldiers. Text analysis of PMs’ speeches reveals that only deaths referenced by him affect public opinion. The third chapter studies how election designs can influence the degree of effective decentralization. Voters in decentralized democracies make voting decisions in multiple elections across tiers, often on the same day. We estimate the importance of cognitive costs shaping voters’ decision-making processes, final decisions, and electoral outcomes across tiers. We show that simultaneous elections increase political parties’ salience among voters and increase straight-ticket voting with minimal effects on turnout, and no effect on candidate selection. Consequently, the likelihood of the same political party winning constituencies in both tiers increases by 21.6%