Merete Bech Seeberg

Tak!

Thank you so much for the invitation @gofosu.bsky.social and @carlmc.bsky.social!

I am happily settled in at the @lsegovernment.bsky.social and looking forward to presenting joint work with @aarslew.bsky.social on Thursday. Please join us for the talk either in London or online.

In my article ”What Can We Learn about the Effects of Democracy Using Cross-National Data?”, I show that low statistical power presents an obstacle to learning about cross-national differences. A thread below: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The super election year is ending, with many winners and losers.

Our new @thejop.bsky.social paper, (@henrikseeberg.bsky.social, @martinbaekgaard.bsky.social ) asks: How do winning and losing candidates see elections?

Spoiler: Losers are more concerned about fairness.
Link: doi.org/10.1086/734240

2-4 Associate Professors in Political Science | FINN.no AboutThe University of Oslo is Norway's oldest and highest ranked educational and research institution with 28 000 students and 7000 employees in abroad range

We are hiring at @statsvitenskap.bsky.social : 2-4 tenured positions (if/when you qualify, you can apply for promotion to full prof.). Open to all subfields of political science.

I am of course biased, but this is a fantastic department, socially & academically!

www.finn.no/job/fulltime...

Publication alert - now online @thejop.bsky.social: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Stort tillykke, Ashraf!

CfP: The Migration & Ethnicity Workshop @aarhusuni.bsky.social 📣 Coming to Aarhus for a shorter/longer stay Feb-June 2025 and wanting to present work-in-progress to our lively and supportive environment of migration and ethnicity ppl? Get in touch to get a spot in the workshop! poliscisky migcitsky

Take away: Gender campaigns can work. But the positive effect on willingness to vote for women is stronger, when campaigns stress women's capabilities and electoral viability! Informing voters about gender discrimination may cue voters consider women less viable candidates.

This suggests that it may indeed be the information about discrimination that reduces voters’ views of women as viable candidates and depresses the effect of the classic gender campaign relative to the alternative, which focuses on progress rather than discrimination.

Analyzing respondents free-text answers, compared to the progress video, voters who watch the discrimination video are more likely to recall information about women needing help and encouragement, and less likely to recall information about women being capable politicians.

Campaigns – also those including information about discrimination - increase voters’ willingness to support women. However, the effect of a campaign message about the progress of women in politics is stronger than a campaign message stressing the discrimination faced by women.

Using randomized exposure to campaign videos with a conjoint experiment and text analysis of 2,200 respondents’ answers to open-ended questions, we find positive effects of all types of campaign messages.

Instead, we suggest using messages that stress women candidates’ electoral viability and political successes by highlighting their progress in politics. To test this, we work with one of the longest-running gender campaigns, Malawi’s 50:50 campaign.

We argue that if voters have incentives to support viable candidates, the typical gender campaign, informing voters about gender discrimination against women and the struggles of women in politics, can undercut support for women because it cues voters’ to think that women are not viable candidates.

(PDF) Messages matter: How voter education campaigns affect citizens’ willingness to vote for women PDF | Governments and organizations around the world pour money into campaigns designed to increase female political representation, including voter... | Find, read and cite all the research you need ...

Can we convince voters to support women in elections via voter education campaigns? Or do such campaigns risk suppressing support for women candidates? New paper with @gofosu.bsky.social and Michael Wahman forthcoming in @thejop.bsky.social: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Today at 1 pm in the speaker series on Democracy and Development, we have an exciting visit by @ascharpf.bsky.social who will give a talk on "Dictatorships and their Corporate Enablers". The talk is open to everyone who finds themself in Aarhus today!

It was a pleasure. Congratulations Pauline!

Are political institutions persistent? A large literature on the long-term effects of precolonial African institutions assumes as much. But so far, we lacked quantitative evidence for this.

In our new PSRM paper, @carlmc.bsky.social and I investigate this... doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

polisky

We look forward to welcoming you in Aarhus!

Delighted that my paper Young People Punish Undemocratic Behavior Less Than Older People is now conditionally accepted at @bjpols.bsky.social.

I show what the title suggests using a large amount of survey experimental evidence. Thread below.

In our new APSR article Hikaru Yamagishi, Stuart Bramwell, and I show that democracy is an important driver of women’s inclusion in government. Yet, we also show that it is experience with democracy that matters since it takes time to create an even playing field. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Tillykke med det, Anne! Den opgave er jeg meget tryg ved, at du varetager!