How Information Affects Economic Policy Preferences

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In an age of mis- and disinformation, the papers on this panel underline that it is still important to understand how being exposed to simple but true information affects economic policy preferences. At the citizen end, democratic responsiveness is about citizens receiving information about the state of the world and updating their policy preferences accordingly. Politicians will go where the votes are, we conjecture, so changing mass policy preferences will often lead parties to offer attractive policy platforms in response. The four papers on this panel explore when economic preferences – both regulatory and redistributive – change, and when they remain stable, in response to new information.

The two papers by Häusermann et al. and Culpepper et al. consider how different sorts of informational treatments affect citizen preferences differently across multiple countries. Häusermann et al. manipulate the way in which policy benefits are presented, variously emphasizing distributive, societal or recognition effects. This allows them to determine the influence of this information on the tie between an individual's objective labor market risks and their subjective labor market preferences. Culpepper et al. use authentic media treatments to evaluate how three types of media coverage – on fairness, scandal, or political capture – affect specific and general regulatory preferences.

The two papers by Elkjaer et al. and by Fetscher and Rueda zoom in on the particular question of information and redistributive preferences. The former paper looks at inheritance taxes and how information about wealth (housing) inequality affects those preferences (it does not, they find). Fetscher and Rueda look at income inequality and find variations in how rich and poor respond differently to information about inequality.

All four papers use solid survey research experiments to advance our understanding of the role of information in affecting policy preferences.

Sub Unit

• Division 14: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Democracies

Individual Presentations

• Scandals, Regulation, and Media Coverage: The Role of Public Opinion - Pepper D. Culpepper, University of Oxford; Taeku Lee, Harvard University; Ryan Shandler

• How Perceived Distributive Effects Shape Labor Market Policy Support - Fabienne Eisenring, University of Zurich; Silja Haeusermann, University of Zurich; Reto Bürgisser, University of Zurich

• Why Is It So Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from England & Wales - Mads Andreas Elkjaer, University of Copenhagen; Ben William Ansell, University of Oxford; Laure Sarah Bokobza, Nuffield College, University of Oxford; Asli Cansunar, University of Washington; Matthias Haslberger, University of St. Gallen; Jacob Nyrup, University of Oslo

• For Richer & for Poorer: Perceptions of Inequality & Support for Redistribution - Verena Rebecca Fetscher, University of Hamburg; David Rueda, University of Oxford

Chair

• Pepper D. Culpepper University of Oxford

Discussant

• Michael J. Donnelly University of Toronto