The Comparative Politics Seminar Series in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute is a venue for the presentation of work in progress by scholars from across the subfield of comparative politics.
It usually takes place on Thursdays from 17:00 to 18:30 at Seminar Room 2, in Badia Fiesolana (Fiesole). See below or sync the calendar for the exact location for each meeting. See previous events.
The series is organized by Elias Dinas, Simon Hix, and Filip Kostelka, Sascha Riaz, with support by Paloma Abril Poncelaand Carmen Ramirez Folch.
Thursday 23 January 2025 | Seminar Room 2
Ethnic minorities and democratic support
Ethnicity and democracy are generally expected to be at odds with each other. However, studies rarely engage with the democratic preferences and minorities and fail to consider democracy as a multifaceted concept, combining majoritarian decision-making with counter-majoritarian rights protection. This project argues that ethnic minorities view democracy in light of their position within the polity. Their democratic preferences are not unidimensional, but rather depend on the specific aspect of democracy. The project investigates four core tenets of democracy: electoral democracy, liberal democracy, social rights, and people rule; as well as three oppositions to democracy: populism, illiberalism, and authoritarianism. The project demonstrates that minorities differ in their focus on distinct aspects of democracy. Minorities with a more precarious association to the majority-dominated state – eastern European historical minorities and western European Muslims – are particularly concerned about liberal democracy and social rights, while being more hesitant about electoral and popular democracy. Minorities more rooted within the existing state – western European historical minorities – show lower concern for democracy in general.
Thursday 13 February 2025 | Seminar Room 2
Processing Economic Signals: Voter Responses to Growth, Unemployment, Inflation and Stock Markets
Economic voting theory suggests that voters reward incumbents for strong economic performance and punish them for weak performance. However, this view often ignores the multidimensional nature of the economy. Hence, we lack systematic evidence about how voters simultaneously process multiple economic signals. This study provides a comprehensive examination of how voters respond to four key economic dimensions: growth, unemployment, inflation, and stock markets. We develop a theoretical framework distinguishing between different types of economic reasoning: macroeconomic, egotropic, sociotropic, and distributive reasoning. We first use descriptive data from OECD countries to understand the economy’s dimensionality and analyze survey data from national election studies to assess the impact on economic evaluations. Finally, we present findings from survey experiments conducted in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, tailored to analyze the impact of the four economic dimensions in an ideal information setting. Our results reveal interesting patterns in how voters process economic information. Voters can discern relationships between economic dimensions and their effects on personal and economic circumstances, and distributional outcomes. Subsequently, all four signals independently affect preferences for economic policy and voting intentions. Inflation emerges as a dominant factor, shaping personal and national economic evaluations. Our findings challenge traditional approaches to economic voting by exploring how voters integrate multiple economic signals. By emphasizing the multidimensionality of economic signals, we highlight implications for democratic accountability.
Thursday 27 February 2025 | Seminar Room 2
Violent Civilian Agency. The logic of civilian-to-civilian killings: insights from the Korean War.
The concept of violent civilian agency in wartime remains largely unexplored. Challenging the prevailing view of civilians as passive victims or bystanders of violence, we propose a theory of pre-emptive civilian killings to explain the motive, timing, and location of incidents where civilians proactively turn to violence against each other during conflicts. Our argument suggests that civilian-on-civilian violence primarily occurs in areas where locals have collaborated with occupying military forces. Specifically, collaborators may engage in preemptive killings of non-collaborators to prevent whistleblowing but also prevent victims’ revenge, especially as invading forces retreat and rival armed groups advance. We empirically test this theory using geocoded event data from the Korean War (1950–1953), focusing on civilian violence patterns surrounding the North Korean troops’ abrupt retreat, ordered by Kim Il-sung. Our findings reveal a significant increase in pre-emptive civilian killings following the retreat, particularly in regions with high levels of prior collaboration. This study makes three key contributions: it highlights the concept of violent agency among civilians, theorizes the conditions under which such agency emerges, and empirically tests these ideas using novel data. By shedding light on civilian behaviour in war, our work reveals how specific incentives and opportunities can lead civilians to become active perpetrators of violence against one another.
Thursday 20 March 2025 | Sala Belvedere
Social movements and public opinion in the United States
Recent social movements stand out by their spontaneous nature and lack of stable leadership, raising doubts on their ability to generate political change. This article provides systematic evidence on the effects of protests on public opinion and political attitudes. Drawing on a database covering the quasi-universe of protests held in the United States, we identify 14 social movements that took place from 2017 to 2022, covering topics related to environmental protection, gender equality, gun control, immigration, national and international politics, and racial issues. We use Twitter data, Google search volumes, and high-frequency surveys to track the evolution of online interest, policy views, and vote intentions before and after the outset of each movement. Combining national level event studies with difference-in-differences designs exploiting variation in local protest intensity, we find that protests generate substantial internet activity but have limited effects on political attitudes. Except for the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, which shifted views on racial discrimination and increased votes for the Democrats, we estimate precise null effects of protests on public opinion and electoral behaviour.
Thursday 27 March 2025 | Seminar Room 2
Designing the Holocaust: Quantitative description of the radicalisation of anti-Jewish violence in 1941
Who devised the Holocaust and decided on its implementation? Most historians agree that the Holocaust originated during the invasion of the Soviet Union, before the Conference in Wannsee in January 1942. While Hitler’s responsibility is not put into question, scholars do disagree about the exact place, time and authorship of the genocide. This article systematically describes the violence committed in 1941 by Nazi Germany and their collaborators during the invasion of the USSR. Drawing on information from interviews with Holocaust witnesses meticulously conducted by an NGO Yahad-In Unum, I classify the violence experienced by the Jews by its degree, intent and perpetratorship. In line with existing historical literature, in 1941, I find considerable heterogeneity between the degree of violence with major, swiftly committed killings concentrated in contemporary Lithuania, some parts of Ukraine and Moldova. Conversely, large swaths of today’s territories of Belarus and Galicia in Ukraine did not experience mass killings until after the Wannsee Conference. A new and surprising finding relates to the lack of violence: while scholars believe that the fate of the Soviet Jews was “sealed” already in 1941, it turns out that the majority of localities did not experience any violence until after the Wannsee Conference. In sum, a few entrepreneurial commanders started devising especially sadistic, large-scale shootings already in July 1941. Those must have gained approval of the Nazi leadership and were implemented across the entire controlled territory from 1942 onwards, at the same time as Jews of Central and Western Europe started being transported to extermination camps.
Thursday 10 April 2025 | Seminar Room 2
Local Elites and Regime Stability. Lessons from Anti-Communist Resistance in Post-World War II Poland
Regime changes are common around the world. How do newly-established regimes interact with old regime elites? While pre-existing elites can directly challenge the new regime, their human and social capital may also bolster governance, indirectly reducing resistance against new authorities. We study foreign-imposed regime change in post-WWII Poland, tracing the impact of local Polish elites, including nobility, intellectuals, and army officers, on opposition to the Soviet-backed communist regime. We exploit plausibly random variation in Polish officers’ wartime deployment and imprisonment for causal identification. While most officers in Nazi captivity survived, those in Soviet captivity largely perished. Leveraging differences in officers’ wartime experiences, we find that municipalities with more surviving local elites experienced fewer Solidarno´s protests in the 1980s. Historical evidence suggests that surviving elites enhanced local economic development and public services, easing grievances against the communist regime. The economically beneficial effects of elite survival can be traced to this day.
Friday 24 October 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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Thursday 08 May 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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Thursday 22 May 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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Thursday 29 May 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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Thursday 05 June 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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Thursday 12 June 2025 | Seminar Room 2
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