We ask whether major crises, that expose citizens to institutional failures, can be catalysts for engagement in actions aimed at improving those same institutions. We consider the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, which substantially increased citizens’ exposure to corruption in the healthcare sector. Using state-level variation in peak COVID-19 daily case-loads in India and quasi-random participation in an online survey (March–July 2021), we elicit support for health-sector accountability through individuals’ willingness to engage in an NGO campaign advocating transparency in healthcare. Comparing respondents surveyed before and after their state’s COVID-19 peak, we find that exposure to the most acute phase of the pandemic is associated with a greater engagement in low-cost anti-corruption civic actions post-peak. This change coincides with heightened awareness of the social problem, more optimistic beliefs about others’ willingness to act along with increased risk tolerance.
The relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and redistributive preferences remains a contested issue at both the theoretical and empirical levels. This paper contributes to the literature by ex amining the causal effect of immigration from culturally distant origin countries on the native population's preferences for redistribution, employing a difference-in-differences identification strategy. We exploit the European refugee crisis of 2015-2016 as a natural experiment, leverag ing cross-regional variation in asylum seeker inflows to identify whether exposure to large-scale forced migration attenuated native support for redistributive policies. Under the Progressive's Dilemma hypothesis, one would expect a significant erosion of redistributive preferences in re gions experiencing pronounced migration inflows. Our estimates, however, provide no support for this prediction: the estimated coefficients are either statistically indistinguishable from zero or marginally positive. These findings are robust across a range of alternative specifications. Taken together, our results challenge the Progressive's Dilemma hypothesis and suggest that ethnic ho mogeneity does not constitute a necessary precondition for the sustainability of European-style welfare state arrangements.
Although pioneering research suggested that proportional elections are better for women’s outcomes than plurality rules, research scholarship is accumulating growing evidence that this relationship depends on specific rules. We look at the impact of electoral rules on female participation in local legislative bodies using quasi-experimental variation in electoral systems in Poland. Below an exogenous population threshold, a mix of first-past-the-post and block vote was applied. Above the threshold, the system was open-list proportional representation. We find little difference between plurality and proportional elections on average. Furthermore, we find that voters chose women less often than men from the same ticket, even under block vote, i.e., when they could have supported all candidates from a chosen party, and even after controlling for the candidates’ incumbency status, position on the ticket, and age. Our results point to the limited and heterogeneous effects of electoral systems.
This paper studies the Confucian clan from a gender perspective. We propose that families integrate into the clan for risk sharing at the cost of adopting its patriarchal values and arrangements, which confine women to the private sphere. Using nationally representative survey data from China and an instrumental variable approach, we find that the Confucian clan is associated with substantially greater gender conservatism and with a distinct choice set for men and women, including earlier female marriage, son preference, gender disparities in human capital, and a traditional division of labor in the household and the labor market. Furthermore, the presence of the Dibao program, a minimum livelihood guarantee in China, is associated with a weaker link between the clan and gender conservatism, as well as reduced son preference, suggesting that formal insurance reduces families’ dependence on the clan and thereby erodes its gender prescription.
