Once in office, politicians propose policies aimed at maintaining the
support of their constituencies. This form of political activism
increases with polity size – i.e., the number of politicians in
government – but it may clash with capacity constraints, leading to a
congestion effect whereby politicians’ plans are not enacted in
practice. With novel data on Italian municipalities, we estimate the
causal effect of polity size on a battery of planned and actual budget
outcomes. We leverage a reform that introduced a new temporary
population threshold where polity size changed discontinuously and
estimate local treatment effects with a difference-in-discontinuities
design. We document a congestion effect. Municipalities with larger
polities have a larger planned budget which does not translate
into a larger actual budget. The congestion effect decreases
when bureaucratic capacity is high, proving how administrative capacity
can be a binding constraint for politicians’ behavior.
A Costly Commitment: Populism, Government Performance, and the Quality
of Bureaucracy
We study the consequences of populism for economic performance and the
quality of bureaucracy. When voters lose trust in representative
democracy, populists strategically supply unconditional policy
commitments that are easier to monitor for voters. When in power,
populists try to implement their policy commitments regardless of
financial constraints and expert assessment of the feasibility of their
policies, worsening government economic performance and dismantling
resistance from expert bureaucrats. With novel data on more than 8,000
Italian municipalities covering more than 20 years, we estimate the
effect of electing a populist mayor with a close-election regression
discontinuity design. We find that the election of a populist mayor
leads to smaller repayments of debts, a larger share of procurement
contracts with cost overruns, higher turnover among top bureaucrats –
driven by forced rather than voluntary departures – and a sharp decrease
in the percentage of graduate bureaucrats.
A Dynamic Measure of Bureaucratic Reputation: New Data for New Theory
2022, American Journal of Political Science
Bureaucratic reputation is one of the most important concepts used to
understand the behaviour of administrative agencies and their
interactions with multiple audiences. Despite a rich theoretical
literature discussing reputation, we do not have a comparable measure
across agencies, between countries, and over time. I present a new
strategy to measure bureaucratic reputation from legislative speeches
with word-embedding techniques. I introduce an original dataset on the
reputation of 465 bureaucratic bodies over a period of forty years, and
across two countries, the US and the UK. I perform several validation
tests and present an application of this method to investigate whether
partisanship and agency politicisation matter for reputation. I find
that agencies enjoy a better reputation among the members of the party
in government, with partisan differences less pronounced for independent
bodies. I finally discuss how this measurement strategy can contribute
to classical and new questions about political-administrative
interactions.
Under Review
The Shift to Commitment Politics and Populism: Theory and Evidence
We show that the decline in voters’ trust in government induces a shift
to commitment politics, whereby politicians are evaluated against their
promises rather than on their ability to recognize optimal policies in
different states of the world. We show that the phenomena typically
associated with populism, including anti-elitism and aversion to
experts, bureaucrats and courts, are a rational consequence of the shift
to commitment politics. Cognitive complexity and dis-information
exacerbate voters’ distrust, hence increasing the demand for
commitments. We provide evidence for the shift to commitment politics in
the U.S., both on the demand side (voters) and on the supply side
(political candidates).
Digging Up Trenches: Populism, Selective Mobility, and the Political
Polarization of Italian Municipalities
We study the effect of local exposure to populism on net population
movements by citizenship status, gender, age and education level in the
context of Italian municipalities. We present two research designs to
estimate the causal effect of populist attitudes and politics.
Initially, we use a combination of collective memory and trigger
variables as an instrument for the variation in populist vote shares
across national elections. Subsequently, we apply a regression
discontinuity design to estimate the effect of electing a populist mayor
on population movements. We establish three converging findings. First,
the exposure to both populist attitudes and policies, as manifested by
the vote share of populist parties in national election or the
closeelection of a new populist mayor, reduces the attractiveness of
municipalities, leading to larger population outflows. Second, the
effect is particularly pronounced among young, female, and highly
educated natives, who tend to relocate across Italian municipalities
rather than internationally. Third, we do not find any effect on the
foreign population. Our results highlight a foot-voting mechanism that
may contribute to a political polarization in Italian municipalities.
Age Gaps Between Political Leaders and the Public Can Undermine
Satisfaction with Democracy
Many democracies elect political leaders who are substantially older
than the public. This pattern has raised concerns that age gaps will
weaken confidence in democratic representation, thereby reducing support
for democracy. We find that this concern is warranted, documenting
consistent evidence that age gaps undermine satisfaction with democracy
in one’s own country, and weaker evidence that age gaps reduce general
support for democracy. Analysis of legislator age data from dozens of
democracies shows that support for democracy is lower where age gaps are
higher. Observational and experimental analysis from original surveys in
Italy, South Korea, and the United States further establishes that
people are less satisfied with democracy when they believe politicians
are too old, and that exposure to information about age gaps undermines
confidence in democratic representation and performance. With a conjoint
experiment, we provide additional evidence that age gaps can weaken
evaluations of representational quality, but less so than gender gaps.
Results are similar across age cohorts, suggesting that age gaps
constitute a general challenge to democratic satisfaction rather than
fueling intergenerational conflict over democracy.
Group membership plays a crucial role in political conflict, with
candidates frequently using group appeals to mobilize voters. However,
the factors influencing candidates’ decisions to employ such appeals
remain insufficiently understood. This study develops an argument rooted
in the notion that candidates selectively deploy group appeals to
maximize electoral returns and introduces a novel method for detecting
group appeals in text, which is applied to the universe of tweets posted
by U.S. House candidates between 2012 and 2021. This study reports three
findings. First, candidates’ group membership and their district’s
demographic composition are strongly associated with the frequency of
group appeals. Second, protest events associated with specific groups
increase appeals to those groups. Third, except for young voters, there
is limited evidence that these appeals enhance turnout intentions. These
findings offer new insights into how politicians strategically engage
underrepresented groups in the electorate, contributing to our
understanding of identity-based political mobilization.
Working Papers
Bureaucratic Information in Congress
Bureaucratic agencies produce a wealth of information that can be used
by politicians when making policies. However, little is known about the
extent to which members of Congress rely on bureaucratic information and
what factors they consider when they do so. I introduce a novel measure
of politicians’ reliance on bureaucratic information which uses natural
language processing to extract and analyze bureaucratic information used
by members of Congress in congressional speeches, newsletters, and
social media. I find that members make greater use of information coming
from ideologically similar bureaucracies, especially in floor speeches
and during legislative hearings. Leveraging the Supreme Court’s decision
in Seila Law vs. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – which curtailed
the independence of the CFPB – as a shock to the independence to the
bureau, I find that members’ reliance on the information produced by the
CFPB drops as a result of the court’s decision to. Statutory features
insulating agencies from political control sharply increase members’
reliance on bureaucratic information. These findings have implications
for theories of separation of powers and for the use of evidence in
policy-making.
Work in Progress
A New Language-Based Measure of Bureaucratic Ideology
Oversight Performed: Congressional Control of the Bureaucracy at the
Extensive and Intensive Margins
Previously Titled: Selective Oversight
Campaign Contributions and Self-Reports: How Accurate Are Survey
Responses Regarding Donation Behavior?
We examine federal agencies’ responsiveness to multiple principals,
focusing on the President, House Appropriations Committee members, and
oversight committees. Utilizing a novel dataset of 2.17 million tweets
from 94 agencies posted between 2010 and 2022, matched with 2.5 million
tweets from members of Congress and presidents, we employ stance
detection methods to classify tweets mentioning agencies as supportive,
opposing, or neutral. Our findings reveal that agencies are highly
responsive to supportive mentions, particularly from the President,
resulting in a significant increase in Twitter activity. Conversely,
agencies are less responsive to criticism. Using an event-study design,
we show that when criticized by the President, agencies shift their
focus to policy issues, indicating a reputation-maximizing strategy.
This study underscores the unique role of social media in modern
bureaucratic politics, where real-time signals from political principals
significantly influence agency behavior and communication strategies.