NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.
Krzysztof Krakowski (Collegio Carlo Alberto & University of Turin) will present the paper “Violence Against Politicians, Negative Campaigning, and Public Opinion: Evidence from Poland” (joint with Juan S. Morales and Dani Sandu).
Registration: till noon of January 26, link to video-conference will be sent up to 5 p.m.
Abstract:
It is commonly viewed that violence against politicians increases support for the victim’s party. We revisit this conjecture drawing on evidence from an assassination of an opposition politician in Poland. First, we analyze engagement with Twitter content posted by opposition and government politicians using a difference-in-differences framework. Second, we use a public opinion survey collected in the days around the attack, and compare party preferences of respondents interviewed just before and respondents interviewed just after the attack. Our results reveal decreased support for the victim’s (opposition) party relative to support for the government. To explain this finding, we show that the opposition antagonized the public by engaging in negative campaigning against the government over their politician’s assassination. Content analysis of tweets and news media confirms that citizens punished the opposition for their negative campaigning after the violence. Tentative evidence suggests that these effects could have had long-run political consequences.