CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Hamrák, Bence |
|---|---|
| Title | Persuasion Or Loyalty: The Effects Of Elite Communication On The Electoral Sanctioning Of Corruption - A Survey Experiment in Hungary |
| Summary | Abstract: This thesis offers a novel approach to the study of co-partisan biases in the electoral sanctioning. Prior research repeatedly showed the moderator role of partisanship on the sanctioning behavior of voters, however, no studies have looked at yet why voters use these biases in the first place. The thesis asks the question of whether voters attenuate their sanctioning of co-partisan politicians to answer loyalty-based calls of their partisan identity, or because partisanship offers a channel for persuasion. Exploiting the heterogeneity of elite communication, the study contrasts the limiting effects of simple co-partisan cues to co-partisan elite persuasions on the sanctioning of corruption. The evidence for either alternative - loyalty-based sanctioning or demand for persuasion - could have important implications for voter behavior and democratic accountability. A vignette-based survey experiment was designed to offer a first test of the hypothesized effects in Hungary in the context of political corruption at the local level. Although the multiple analytical strategies (OLS, 2SLS regression) do not offer clear results because of the unforeseen high rate of non-compliance in the experiment, the exposure of these challenges provides a potentially rewarding methodological and theoretical insight for the future research on the topic. Keywords: electoral sanctioning, party cues, elite persuasion, corruption, Hungary, survey experiments |
| Supervisor | Simonovits, Gábor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/hamrak_bence.pdf |
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