Benjamin Farrer

Encouraging Small Donor Contributions: A Field Experiment Testing the Effects of Nonpartisan Messages

We report the results of a field experiment conducted in New York City during the 2013 election cycle, examining the impact of nonpartisan messages on donations from small contributors. Using information from voter registration and campaign finance records, we built a forecasting model to identify voters with an above-average probability of donating. A random sample of these voters received one of four messages asking them to donate to a candidate of their choice. Half of these treatments reminded voters that New York Citys campaign finance program matches small donations with public funds. Candidates’ financial disclosures to the citys Campaign Finance Board reveal that only the message mentioning policy (in generic terms) increased donations. Surprisingly, reminding voters that matching funds multiplied the value of their contribution had no effect. Our experiment sheds light on the motivations of donors and represents the first attempt to assess nonpartisan appeals to contribute.

The electoral effects of the descriptive representation of ethnic minority groups in Australia and the UK

In this article we assess the electoral effects of the nomination of ethnic minority candidates. We argue that descriptive representation is an important factor in how parties in SMD systems establish their coalitions over multiple elections. We demonstrate this by showing that descriptive representation has a consistent effect on voting behavior, and thus that parties can rely on descriptive representation to win over specific segments of the voting population. Previous studies have been limited to single election years and single countries, but we collect original data from multiple election cycles in Australia and the UK to test our argument. We find that descriptive representation is consistently associated with a 10-percentage point bump in support from ethnic minority independents and Labour supporters. We conclude by highlighting the importance of this finding for party competition.

A theory of organizational choice Interest groups and parties as substitutable influence mechanisms

This article argues that niche party formation is only one of several substitutable strategies for niche activists seeking policy influence. Other organizational mechanisms are argued to be superior to political parties under certain institutional conditions. I introduce a formal model of how activists achieve policy influence by choosing to support the formation of whichever type of organization will optimally send a signal of electoral threat to mainstream politicians. Institutions determine the different access costs for the various organizational mechanisms that can be used to send this signal, and also determine the associated response costs to mainstream politicians of making concessions to different organizational mechanisms. Therefore under particular institutional circumstances that affect these two cost parameters, interest group entry may surpass party entry as the optimal strategy for activists. The predictions of the model are assessed via a nested logit model using cross-national survey data on how activists have allocated their individual support to different organizational mechanisms.

Connecting Niche Party Vote Change in First- and Second-Order Elections

Abstract Niche parties in European countries have struggled to win seats in national legislatures. Accounts of niche party development describe how attempts to win these seats often begin with second-order election campaigns for the European Parliament (EP) or a regional assembly. Strong second-order campaigns can signal that a party is locally competitive, which will help niche parties by reducing defections due to strategic voting in later first-order elections. In this paper, I argue that according to such accounts, improvements in second-order election results should be correlated with subsequent improvements in first-order election results in any given constituency. I also argue that the magnitude of this correlation can be compared across different types of second-order elections, to gauge how credible voters perceive these second-order signals of local viability to be. I find that only regional assembly election results, not EP election results, are consistently and statistically significantly correlated with national election results. This suggests that niche parties can only build their support through bottom-up rather than top-down means, and that EP election results cannot be used to predict how niche parties will perform at national elections.

An Experiment Assessing How Different Forms of Utility Inform the Choices of Environmental Activists

Existing research explains pro-environmental behavior as being motivated by personal values. In this article I extend this framework to examine not just the choice of whether to engage in pro-environmental behavior but also the choice between different pro-environmental behaviors. I argue that if several different pro-environmental behaviors all express the same personal values, and carry the same material costs, then individuals choose between them on the basis of their expected policy consequences. I report the results of a survey experiment showing that priming individuals to consider instrumental utility will cause over-reporting of some forms of environmental activism—those with the greatest expected policy impact. This prime will have no effect on over-reporting of other forms of activism. I conclude that instrumental utility is an important part of how individuals choose between types of pro-environmental political activism.

Explaining the nomination of ethnic minority candidates: how party-level factors and district-level factors interact

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explain the nomination of ethnic minority candidates for lower house elections. We argue that these nominations are explained by the incentives that different parties face in different districts. Center-left parties reap greater electoral rewards when they offer descriptive representation, and that they also experience fewer difficulties in recruiting ethnic minority candidates. Therefore we argue that center-left parties have a greater incentive and ability to make their nominations more responsive to district demographics. More specifically, our hypothesis is that district-level ethnic diversity will increase the probability that any party will nominate an ethnic minority candidate, but this increase will be greatest for center-left parties. We look at multiple elections in Australia, the UK, and the US, and find consistent evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Even when center-left and center-right parties are nominating similar overall numbers of ethnic minority candidates, center-left parties’ descriptive representation patterns are more closely connected to district demographics. We argue that this helps explain how descriptive representation effects political competition more broadly.

A global analysis of how losing an election affects voter satisfaction with democracy

In this article, we argue that a deeper understanding of citizen satisfaction with democratic elections requires a global perspective. Regional research found that a gap in satisfaction with democracy emerges after an election, between those who supported winning parties and those that did not, and also, crucially, that this gap can be reduced under proportional electoral institutions. In this article we argue instead that these theories of the winner–loser gap actually apply to only a narrow set of countries. We use a comprehensive global dataset to show that the predictions of this theory about the effects of proportional institutions are accurate for Western Europe, but not outside it. Beyond a small cluster of established democracies in Western Europe, the electoral environment is characterized by more fundamental uncertainty. This uncertainty alters the incentives created by proportional institutions. We conclude that the winner–loser gap and ‘losers’ consent’ are concepts that vary systematically around the world. We discuss the implications of this for democratic stability.

The political roots of domestic environmental sabotage

ABSTRACT In this paper, we demonstrate that when environmentalist niche parties compete in a given constituency over a number of elections, but continually fail to win seats, then environmental sabotage becomes more frequent in that constituency. When mainstream tactics fail, radical tactics are used more frequently. Using a new data-set on the success rates of all Green Party candidates in US states, we show that environmental sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices. This is true even when we control for other political expressions of environmentalism, such as interest group activity, and when we define ‘success’ through votes not seats. We discuss the implications of this for environmental politics, for social movements and democracy, and for political violence in the US.