More Money, Different Problems? Peoples’ Engagement with Politics during Good Economic Times (ECONENGAGE)
Short description
The project develops an original theory on how favorable economic conditions influence what people perceive as at stake in politics, and how this, in turn, affects the news they consume, their susceptibility to disinformation, and the strength of their political views. The project will also examine how people’s democratic attitudes are shaped when the economy is doing well.
ECONENGAGE is funded by an ERC Starting Grant.
Economic crises can create fertile ground for extremist politics, but we know far less about how a strong economy shapes people’s relationship to politics. Despite rising prosperity in many established democracies, populism, disinformation, and intergroup conflict continue to grow. The question, therefore, is whether a stronger economic climate also influences how people engage with politics and how strongly they uphold democratic norms.
ECONENGAGE addresses this research gap by developing and testing an original theory of how an economic upturn affects the quality of people’s political engagement. The starting point is the idea that when the economy improves, people’s perceptions of what is at stake in politics also change. The project, therefore, examines how better economic conditions influence people’s consumption of political information, their susceptibility to disinformation, and the firmness of their ideological commitments—factors that are all central to a well-functioning democracy. It also analyzes how people’s democratic attitudes are shaped in times of economic prosperity.
Method
The project is organized into four work packages:
- Mapping the criteria individuals use to define economic improvement, based on existing and newly collected survey data.
- Deepening the analysis of the theoretical mechanisms and developing testable hypotheses about how economic improvement influences people’s processing of political information and the degree of ideological anchoring.
- Testing these hypotheses using comparative survey data from OECD countries and three experiments in Sweden and the United Kingdom, two countries that differ markedly in their economic and political institutions.
- Examining the broader effects of economic improvement on what people perceive to be at stake in elections, their preferences for democratic decision-making rules, and their commitment to ideological pluralism.
ECONENGAGE will provide new tools for better understanding key global trends such as increasing disinformation and growing intergroup hostility, and will identify ways to ensure vibrant democratic engagement in both good and bad times.
