Project description
A closer look at decisions behind the vote and policies
In an ideal world, elected officials would represent their constituents, be competent and work to improve the welfare of the citizens. The ERC-funded INTRAPOL project will study these fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies from an intra-party perspective. The findings will shed light on how political parties operate, connect to voters, organise their internal structure and recruit political personnel, and how all these matter for policy. Firstly, INTRAPOL will study voting in the pre-secret-ballot era of Victorian England. Next, it will study the internal organisation of parties by analysing the objectives and the role of party leaders as well as internal conflicts within parties. Finally, the project will study the role of cognitive competence and personality traits in political selection and the resulting policy effects.
Objective
The INTRAPOL project aims to understand the processes that determine who get elected into positions of political power and whether who is in power is important for citizens’ welfare. A well-performing system is able to select competent and honest leaders who are representative of the citizens’, and who have incentives or the will to make decisions to the benefit of the people. We study these fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies from an intra-party perspective. We consider the party and its various actors as separate entities. We aim to understand the role of insiders in representative democracy by carrying out a thorough analysis of how political parties operate, connect to voters, organize their internal structure, and recruit their political personnel, and to study the policy effects of these choices. The first work package travels far to the past to the origins of the modern party system in Victorian England. We build a remarkable data set of real-life voting choice that is possible due to studying pre-secret-ballot era. This allows us to apply quasi-experimental designs study whether voters identify with parties or candidates. Are voters motivated by changes in their economic interests? How does the entry and exit of candidates affect the fortunes of the parties and voter flows between the candidates? What was the political geography of Victorian England? The second work package studies the internal organization of parties by analyzing the objectives and role of party leaders and internal conflicts within parties by developing and estimate structurally an equilibrium model of party organizations. We test our model using both quasi-experimental and field experimental designs and data from modern UK. Third work package uses The Finnish Defense Forces draft data on cognitive competence and personality traits to analyze their role in political selection and its policy effects using quasi-experimental research designs.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC)Host institution
20014 Turku
Finland