IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v43y2017i1p44-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A field experiment on ethnic discrimination among local Swedish public officials

Author

Listed:
  • Per Adman
  • Hanna Jansson

Abstract

This study presents an innovative field experiment exploring ethnic discrimination in contacts between local public officials and members of Swedish society. Using a correspondence study design, fictitious individuals with Arabic- and Swedish-sounding names contacted Swedish municipalities via email, asking questions about access to preschools. The findings indicate disadvantageous treatment of individuals with Arabic-sounding names in terms of the informal tone of the replies, as Swedish-sounding names were replied to in a friendlier, more welcoming way. Regarding the more formal aspects of the emails – i.e., whether they were replied to at all and the questions posed were directly answered – no statistically significant signs of discrimination emerge (although differences were of some substantial size, to the disadvantage of Arabic-sounding names). Still, informal disadvantageous treatment is sufficient cause for concern and noteworthy in the case of Sweden, considering its reputation as being egalitarian, immigration friendly and democratically well functioning.

Suggested Citation

  • Per Adman & Hanna Jansson, 2017. "A field experiment on ethnic discrimination among local Swedish public officials," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 44-63, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:43:y:2017:i:1:p:44-63
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2016.1244052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2016.1244052
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2016.1244052?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ali Ahmed & Mats Hammarstedt, 2020. "Ethnic discrimination in contacts with public authorities: a correspondence test among Swedish municipalities," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(17), pages 1391-1394, October.
    2. Crawfurd, Lee & Ramli, Ukasha, 2020. "Discrimination by Politicians against Religious Minorities: Experimental Evidence from the UK," SocArXiv tc42s, Center for Open Science.
    3. Adman, Per & Larsson Taghizadeh, Jonas, 2020. "Public officials’ treatment of minority clients," Working Paper Series 2020:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    4. Mikula, Stepan & Montag, Josef, 2023. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment on Ethnic and Socioeconomic Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 16218, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Michael Rochlitz & Evgeniya Mitrokhina & Irina Nizovkina, 2020. "Bureaucratic Discrimination in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Russia," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2010, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.
    6. Štěpán Mikula & Josef Montag, 2022. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment in the Czech Republic," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2022-01, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.

    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:taf:flgsxx:v:43:y:2017:i:1:p:44-63. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/flgs .

    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.