IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0324542.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Politicians’ email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections

Author

Listed:
  • Ekkehard A Köhler
  • Marius D May

Abstract

First-time voters hold polarized views on migrant issues. Few is known about how politicians react to this peculiar phenomenon in democracies. This paper studies whether rational behavior drives political elites’ response behavior in a RCT email responsiveness study. We contacted 1554 candidates for the German Bundestag shortly before the 2021 election and asked about their stance on dual citizenship. We went into the field as first-time voting high-school students and varied their stances on dual citizenship, migration backgrounds and genders. Introducing a theoretical framework based on the single-policy task model and supplementing it with costly persuasion, we are able to disentangle and test for partisanship and opportunism. Our main results are as follows: First, both partisanship and opportunism explain the candidates’ response behavior. Second, candidates exert more effort if they disagree with a voter than if they agree with a voter.

Suggested Citation

  • Ekkehard A Köhler & Marius D May, 2025. "Politicians’ email communication with voters: A field experiment for the 2021 Bundestag elections," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(7), pages 1-18, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0324542
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0324542
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0324542
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0324542&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0324542?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini, 2007. "Bureaucrats or Politicians? Part I: A Single Policy Task," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 169-179, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Galletta, Sergio, 2017. "Law enforcement, municipal budgets and spillover effects: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Italy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 90-105.
    2. Groll, Thomas & O’Halloran, Sharyn & McAllister, Geraldine, 2021. "Delegation and the regulation of U.S. financial markets," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    3. Elliott Ash & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2015. "Intrinsic Motivation in Public Service: Theory and Evidence from State Supreme Courts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4).
    4. Katherine Casey & Rachel Glennerster & Edward Miguel & Maarten Voors, 2023. "Skill Versus Voice in Local Development," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(2), pages 311-326, March.
    5. Donato Masciandaro, 2020. "Covid-19 Helicopter Money, Monetary Policy And Central Bank Independence: Economics And Politics," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 20137, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    6. Ferraz, Claudio & Finan, Frederico S., 2008. "Motivating Politicians: The Impacts of Monetary Incentives on Quality and Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 3411, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Tinghua Yu, 2021. "Intrinsic Motivation, Office Incentives, and Innovation," BCAM Working Papers 2106, Birkbeck Centre for Applied Macroeconomics.
    8. Calmfors, Lars, 2015. "The Roles of Fiscal Rules, Fiscal Councils and Fiscal Union in EU Integration," Working Paper Series 1076, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    9. Binswanger, Johannes & Prüfer, Jens, 2012. "Democracy, populism, and (un)bounded rationality," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 358-372.
    10. Graziano Abrate & Federico Boffa & Fabrizio Erbetta & Davide Vannoni, 2018. "Voters’ Information, Corruption, and the Efficiency of Local Public Services," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-22, December.
    11. Donato Masciandaro & Riccardo Russo, 2022. "Central Banks and Climate Policy: Unpleasant Trade–Offs? A Principal–Agent Approach," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 22181, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    12. Ruben Enikolopov, 2011. "Are Bureaucrats Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?," Working Papers w0165, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    13. Galina Zudenkova, 2015. "Political cronyism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(3), pages 473-492, March.
    14. Khemani,Stuti & Chaudhary,Sarang & Scot,Thiago, 2020. "Strengthening Public Health Systems : Policy Ideas from a Governance Perspective," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9220, The World Bank.
    15. Calogero Guccio & Domenico Lisi & Ilde Rizzo, 2019. "When the purchasing officer looks the other way: on the waste effects of debauched local environment in public works execution," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 205-236, September.
    16. Masciandaro, Donato, 2022. "Independence, conservatism, and beyond: Monetary policy, central bank governance and central banker preferences (1981–2021)," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    17. Ernesto Calvo & Gergely Ujhelyi, 2012. "Political Screening: Theory and Evidence from the Argentine Public Sector," Working Papers 201303201, Department of Economics, University of Houston.
    18. Frisell, Lars & Roszbach, Kasper & spagnolo, giancarlo, 2008. "Governing the Governors: A Clinical Study of Central Banks," Working Paper Series 221, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    19. Gabriele Gratton & Barton E. Lee, 2023. "Drain the Swamp: A Theory of Anti-Elite Populism," Discussion Papers 2023-02, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    20. Branko Boskovic, David P.Byrne, Arvind Magesan, 2012. "Herding Among Bureaucrats," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1158, The University of Melbourne.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0324542. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.