Publications

Elite Cues and Non-compliance Dickson, Zachary P. and Sara B Hobolt American Political Science Review (2024) Article | PDF | Supplementary Materials | Replication
Abstract

As political leaders increasingly use social media to speak directly to voters, the degree to which elite cues influence public behavior is of great importance. In this paper, we study the effects of elite cues on non-compliant behavior during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on a series of controversial tweets sent by US President Donald Trump calling for the ``liberation’’ of Minnesota, Virginia and Michigan from state and local government COVID-19 restrictions. Leveraging the fact that Trump’s messages referred to three specific US states, we adopt a generalized difference-in-difference approach relying on spatial and temporal variation to identify the causal effects of the targeted cues. Our analysis finds that the President’s messages led to an increase in movement, a decrease in adherence to stay-at-home restrictions, and an increase in arrests of white Americans for crimes related to civil disobedience. These findings highlight the capacity of political elites to motivate non-compliant and even criminal behavior.

The Effects of COVID-19 Infection on Opposition to COVID-19 Policies: Evidence from the U.S. Congress Dickson, Zachary P. and T. Murat Yildirim Political Communication (2024) Article | PDF | Replication
Abstract Elites’ skepticism of scientific consensus presents a formidable challenge in addressing critical issues like climate change and global pandemics. While extensive research has explored the capacity of events related to these challenges to act as “exogenous shocks,” motivating the general public to reassess their risk perceptions, our understanding of how elites similarly respond to such shocks remains limited. In this article, we investigate whether COVID-19 infections influenced US lawmakers’ support for COVID-19 containment measures, focusing on expressed opposition to COVID-19 policies on social media and in press releases throughout the first two years of the pandemic. Employing a staggered difference-in-difference design and matrix completion methods, our analysis reveals that COVID-19 infections caused a reduction of approximately 30% in legislators’ expressions of opposition to COVID-19 policies on social media. These findings underscore that elites are indeed responsive to policy shocks – even in highly polarized contexts – when they are personally affected by an issue.
The Gender Gap in Elite-Voter Responsiveness Online Dickson, Zachary P. Perspectives on Politics (2024) Article | PDF | Replication
Abstract The extent to which women’s descriptive representation furthers the substantive representation of women have been demonstrated in countless contexts. Yet, we know less about how female representatives act as individuals to respond to the changing priorities of the electorate. In this article, I examine representatives’ dynamic responsiveness to public issue priorities in the United States and United Kingdom. After combining hundreds of repeated public opinion surveys asking voters about their issue priorities, I train a large language model to classify the universe of representatives’ social media messages on Twitter to the same issues. Findings of the analysis illustrate that women’s issue priorities receive less attention from representatives in aggregate in both countries, that female representatives are more responsive than their male colleagues to women’s priorities in both countries, and that a gender gap similarly exists in responsiveness to men’s issue priorities, with women leading the way in both countries. Results provide further evidence of the link between descriptive and substantive representation and suggest that women representatives may even go beyond furthering ``women’s interests’’ by displaying greater dynamic responsiveness in a broad sense.
Going against the Grain: Climate Change as a Wedge Issue for the Radical Right Dickson, Zachary P. and Sara B Hobolt Comparative Political Studies (2024) Article | PDF | Replication
Abstract Political parties often mobilise issues that can improve their electoral fortunes by splitting existing coalitions. We argue that by adopting a distinctively adversarial stance, radical right-wing parties have increasingly politicised climate change policies as a wedge issue. This strategy challenges the mainstream party consensus and seeks to mobilise voter concerns over green initiatives. Relying on state-of-the-art multilingual large language models, we empirically examine nearly half a million press releases from 76 political parties across nine European democracies to support this argument. Our findings demonstrate that the radical right’s oppositional climate policy rhetoric diverges significantly from the mainstream consensus. Survey data further reveals climate policy scepticism among voters across the political spectrum, highlighting the mobilising potential of climate policies as a wedge issue. This research advances our understanding of issue competition and the politicisation of climate change.

Working Papers

Public Service Delivery and Support for the Populist Right Dickson, Zachary P., Sara B Hobolt, Catherine E de Vries and Simone Cremaschi

Working draft
Media: The Guardian
Slides: EPSA 2024

Abstract The rise of the populist right is extensively studied, yet relatively little attention has been paid to how the delivery of core public services may drive voter support for such parties. Given that public services are often the primary means through which citizens interact with the state, declining public service performance has the potential to create grievances that reduce trust in established political parties while increasing the appeal of anti-establishment populist parties. We examine this empirically in the British context, focusing on one the core aspects of public service provision in the UK – the publicly-funded National Health Service (NHS). We argue that reduced public health service performance has caused an increase support for populist right parties. Combining government administrative panel data on the closure of local health care facilities – General Practitioner (GP) practices – with fine-grained geo-spatial panel data on public preferences and voting intention from multiple sources, we apply a staggered difference-in-differences design to show support for our argument. Our findings illustrate the corrosive effects of declining public service performance, revealing decreased public satisfaction with public health care, decreased patient experiences in areas affected by GP practice closures, and increased support and feelings of closeness to populist right parties. Heterogeneous treatment effects show that immigration and increased registrations of migrants at local GP practices exacerbate the link between declining public service delivery and propensity to vote for the populist right. Our findings contribute to the literature on the rise of the populist right, demonstrating the role of public service delivery in driving support for populist parties, especially in local areas undergoing rapid demographic change.
Benchmarking Support for Climate Action Dickson, Zachary P., Sara B Hobolt, Toni Rodon, Heike Kluver, and Theresa Kuhn
Abstract Climate change is one of the greatest collective action problems we face as a society. Yet, the costs associated with reducing carbon emissions to address the changing climate continues to constrain the degree to which governments and voters make necessary changes. In this project, we study the conditions that induce voters to accept higher costs for collective climate action. Specifically, we are interested in how benchmarking the relative vulnerability to climate change and the relative costs associated with climate change policies vis-à-vis other nations influence support for costly collective climate action in international organizations. Using a visual survey experiment fielded across all 27 European Union nations following the 2024 European Parliament elections, we examine the degree to which relatively vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change and relative contribution to related costs shape voters’ support for costly climate change policies.
Elite Legislators and Unequal Representation in the UK Dickson, Zachary P. PDF | OSF
Abstract Studies identifying inequality in political representation in liberal democracies have become increasingly common. Yet, the extent to which this deficit is driven by the social class of elected representatives remains unclear. In this article, I study the effects of social class on legislative responsiveness in the United Kingdom by utilizing MPs’ attendance at one of the two Oxbridge universities – Oxford and Cambridge – as an encompassing proxy for social class. After combining 284 repeated public opinion surveys and classifying the universe of MPs’ questions and motions in the House of Commons from 2015-2023, I present evidence from multiple designs and estimation strategies that suggests that social class indeed constrains responsiveness. The results quantify unequal responsiveness in the United Kingdom and contribute to the literature on inequality in political representation.

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