The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next regular seminar, which will be held in Moscow (Krivokolenny Pereulok, 3, room 3-333) on June, 20 at 17-00 p.m. Licia Bobzien (Hertie School of Governance) will deliver a report “Regional redistribution and right-wing populist voting: an instrumental variable design”.

Counteracting right-wing populist voting by financially compensating those who have not benefited from recent economic developments is a popular political demand. This paper aims to causally test whether such compensation policies at a regional level aimed to reduce economic differences between regions can counteract right-wing populist voting in Germany. To do so, I use an instrumental variable approach interpreting the adjustments in the official population measures as a result of the German census in 2011 as an exogenous as-if random shock that had financial consequences for municipalities. To equalize living standards, financial resources between municipalities are redistributed within Germany. Redistribution of financial resources is dependent on the size of the population. Thus, the census results had direct financial consequences for the financial budget of municipalities if the census measures deviated from the official measures. This was the case for most municipalities. Following economic voting arguments, I propose the mechanism that inhabitants hold incumbents accountable for changes in the financial situation of the municipality; to penalize them, they vote for a non-establishment party. I estimate the within-municipality-effect of regional redistribution, instrumented by the unexpected change in the financial assignments due to the German census, on voting for Germany’s right-wing populist party (AfD) comparing the German federal election results of 2013 and 2017.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.

Videoconference with St. Petersburg office of the LCSR (room 303, 55-2, Sedova st.) will be provided. Guests from St. Petersburg are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Olesya Volchenko (ovolchenko@hse.ru) by 12 am of the seminar’s day.

Guests from Moscow are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Anastasia Ionova (aionova@hse.ru) by 12 am of the seminar’s day.