Intra-party politics in the past and the present

Introduction

The INTRAPOL project aims to understand the processes that determine who gets elected into positions of political power and whether who is in power is important for citizens' welfare. A well-performing system is able to select competent and honest leaders who are representative of the citizens and who have the incentives or the will to make decisions to the benefit of the people.

Research Focus

We study these fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies from an intra-party perspective. We consider the party and its various actors as separate entities.

Objectives

We aim to understand the role of insiders in representative democracy by carrying out a thorough analysis of how political parties operate, connect to voters, organize their internal structure, and recruit their political personnel. Additionally, we study the policy effects of these choices.

Work Packages

Work Package 1

The first work package travels far into the past to the origins of the modern party system in Victorian England. We build a remarkable data set of real-life voting choices that is possible due to studying the pre-secret-ballot era. This allows us to apply quasi-experimental designs to study whether voters identify with parties or candidates.

Key research questions include:

1. Are voters motivated by changes in their economic interests?
2. How does the entry and exit of candidates affect the fortunes of the parties and voter flows between the candidates?
3. What was the political geography of Victorian England?

Work Package 2

The second work package studies the internal organization of parties by analyzing the objectives and role of party leaders and internal conflicts within parties. We develop and estimate structurally an equilibrium model of party organizations. We test our model using both quasi-experimental and field experimental designs and data from modern UK.

Work Package 3

The third work package uses The Finnish Defense Forces draft data on cognitive competence and personality traits to analyze their role in political selection and its policy effects using quasi-experimental research designs.