Intra-party politics in the past and the present

Project Information

INTRAPOL

Grant agreement ID: 101045239

DOI

10.3030/101045239

EC signature date 17 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2027

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 533 887,00

EU contribution

€ 1 533 887,00

Coordinated by

TURUN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INTRAPOL (Intra-party politics in the past and the present)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

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. We study these fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies from an intra-party perspective. The first work package concerns the origins of the modern party system in Victorian England and digitizes a novel data set of elector level pre-secret ballot vote choices. Using it, we study, for example, whether voters identify with parties or candidates and the determinants of vote choice. The second work package studies the internal organization of parties by analyzing theoretically and empirically the objectives and role of party leaders and parties’ internal conflicts. 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.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first work package, we have made significant advances in the poll book digitization process. We have currently digitized 135 000 voter-election year observations on vote choice from 87 parliamentary elections and 29 constituencies between 1832-1868. This is about 70% of the total amount we expect to get. We mostly have to digitize by hand with some help from various software. Creating these data is one of the main contributions of the whole project. Moreover, we have gotten access to 1851 and 1861 UK census data and are able to link them to about 25% of poll book voters in elections held close to those years. We have also started to examine adding other information to these data, such as textual material (speeches and newspapers) and contextual factors (rail roads). We have also use the data to study the effects of changing occupation on changing vote choice and the effects of candidate exit on vote choice. These 2 articles are not published yet. We have also outlined plans for 2 other articles.

In the second work package, we have finished writing the main theoretical model of the work package studying intra-party political selection and delegation of candidate recruitment. We have a pre-print available, but the paper is not yet published in a journal so it is not listed as output yet. We have also made progress with the related empirical analysis that studies leadership’s recruitment delegation choices using David Cameron’s A-list data. We have also worked on three very related theoretical models on intra-party politics. They were not detailed in the original research proposal, but study the same type of questions. One is published a Journal of Public Economics, another at Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics and the third one is at a pre-print stage. We have also worked on planning a new field experiment to replace the one originally planned that fell through.

In the third work package, the main paper with the Finnish defence force data on political selection is ready and conditionally accepted to the Journal of the European Economic Association (not yet listed in the output). We are working on several extensions and follow-ups.

We are also conducted some work on related political economy topics not listed in the original research proposal including voting experiments (AJPS publication) and analysis of parliamentary speech data (LQS publication).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In work package one, creating individual level real voting from Victorian England is unique both from the data content and temporal perspective, and facilitates novel historical and social science research of the era. When ready, the data will be made publicly available.

In work package two, the theoretical contributions offer novel insight into intra-party politics, political selection, candidate recruitment, delegation and sharing of power and resilience of democracy.

In the third work package, our article is to first to detail how psychological traits influence political selection and policy outcomes.