Abstract
This doctoral thesis consists of three self-contained essays on recent evolutions of democracies.
“How do Voters and Parties Respond to the Radical Right?” explores the rise of the radical-right party in France. When radical-right candidates run for office, they influence voters’ decisions to vote or not, but also whom to vote for. The author documents how radical-right candidates boost turnout rates by mobilizing their supporters. She also shows how the winning probabilities of each party are strongly affected by whether or not a radical-right candidate is in the race.
“Starting Young: How Age Limits Shape Political Participation” focuses on the widening age gap between the Swedish population and its politicians. Specifically, the essay looks at early political participation as a way to improve the representation of young people in politics. Indeed, the authors find that holding age constant, first-time participants in an election are much less likely to become politicians than second-time participants.
“Rules vs. Discretion in Allocating Labor Union Financial Investigations” examines the consequences of the spread of algorithmic approaches to governance. Using machine learning techniques, the authors document that, in the specific setting studied, following rule-based allocations of resources most often leads to worse performance than following the discretion of bureaucrats.