Research Karolin Soontjens

Abstract

The global climate crisis is the most compelling issue of our time. With temperatures rapidly rising, there is little time left for swift political action to mitigage future harm. Yet ample work has shown that climate change responses are largely inadequate, pointing to the role of electoral incentives preventing political actors from effectively dealing with the issue. This project breaks new ground by probing one key driver of climate change action, or inaction, namely the anticipation of electoral accountability by those in power. Concretely, I plan (1) to examine to what extent politicians anticipate accountability for climate change policies and (2) to measure whether these views are accurate. In addition, (3) I seek to explain why politicians hold these perceptions by looking at variation in expected electoral retribution or reward between politicians, parties, and different policy measures. Finally, the ultimate goal of this project is (4) to unravel the impact of accountability perceptions on climate change policy-making (4). To tackle these goals, the project relies on a unique combination of cross-national surveys and survey-exeriments with elected representatives, on in-depth interviews with climate change policy-makers and on a content analysis of policy documents. The findings of this project will give insight in whether, and under what circumstances, democracies can effectively deal with climate change, and with any other wicked problem for that matter.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Walgrave Stefaan
• Fellow: Soontjens Karolin

Research team(s)

• Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Politicians nowadays face the criticism of not being responsive towards citizens' demands, with as a classical though crucial example the recent populist uprisings. Citizens seem to believe that, even if they convey their preferences loud and clear, they are ignored by those who should represent them. One crucial guarantee of responsive politicians, lies in the threat of electoral reprisal: politicians are incentivized to do what citizens want because they want to retain in office. Politicians' desire to be reelected makes them presumably enact more congruent policies. In this project, I focus on this important mechanism, by examining politicians' beliefs about how and to what extent the congruence of their behavior with what citizens want, will have positive or negative electoral consequences. In strong contradiction with the centrality of this research question in the public debate, it has rarely come to the attention of academics. In this project, I address this gap with an in-depth study of politicians' so-called "accountability beliefs". First, I aim to conceptualize those accountability beliefs. Second, I examine accountability beliefs empirically by means of an extensive survey with politicians in three different countries. Third, I aim to explain those beliefs by leveraging differences between countries, parties, politicians and issues. Finally, by conducting a survey-embedded experiment, I investigate whether politicians' accountability beliefs affect their behavior.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Walgrave Stefaan
• Fellow: Soontjens Karolin

Research team(s)

• Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Politicians nowadays face the criticism of not being responsive towards citizens' demands, with as a classical though crucial example the recent populist uprisings. Citizens seem to believe that, even if they convey their preferences loud and clear, they are ignored by those who should represent them. One crucial guarantee of responsive politicians, lies in the threat of electoral reprisal: politicians are incentivized to do what citizens want because they want to retain in office. Politicians' desire to be reelected makes them presumably enact more congruent policies. In this project, I focus on this important mechanism, by examining politicians' beliefs about how and to what extent the congruence of their behavior with what citizens want, will have positive or negative electoral consequences. In strong contradiction with the centrality of this research question in the public debate, it has rarely come to the attention of academics. In this project, I address this gap with an in-depth study of politicians' so-called "accountability beliefs". First, I aim to conceptualize those accountability beliefs. Second, I examine accountability beliefs empirically by means of an extensive survey with politicians in three different countries. Third, I aim to explain those beliefs by leveraging differences between countries, parties, politicians and issues. Finally, by conducting a survey-embedded experiment, I investigate whether politicians' accountability beliefs affect their behavior.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Walgrave Stefaan
• Fellow: Soontjens Karolin

Research team(s)

• Media, Movements and Politics (M2P)

Project type(s)

• Research Project