Research
Publications and Book Chapters
Information and Ranked Choice Voting, Theodoros Ntounias
Election Law Journal: Rules Politics and Policy
Does ranked choice voting (RCV) change the information search behavior of voters? The answer to this question is important in the context of the proposed benefits of RCV, which I argue are conditional on voters broadening their information search. Results of a nationally diverse survey sample experiment indicate that voters do not adapt their information search and retention behaviors, nor do they spend more cognitive effort in the process of voting.
Blurring the Clarity of Political Communication, Theodoros Ntounias, Christina J. Schneider, and Robert Thomson
Book chapter in Promises Made, Promises Kept?: Democratic Politics in a Globalized World by Christina J. Schneider and Robert Thomson, published by Cambridge University Press.
Work in Progress
Cutting Off the Respirator: Aspiring Autocrats and Subnational Autonomy, Theodoros Ntounias
Dissertation Project
Recent scholarship has increasingly argued that when countries face democratic erosion at the hands of aspiring autocrats, one of the most important bulwarks against backsliding is local government. However, the degree to which resilience can manifest at the subnational level is dependent on the ability of local officials to effectively use fiscal resources, in order to convince voters of their competence and build their power. I argue that aspiring autocrats target local revenue independence, reducing the autonomy of their opponents while increasing the resources at the disposal of their allies. I focus on the case of democratic erosion in Poland (2015-2023), presenting extensive descriptive evidence of horizontal reductions in local autonomy, but also of an opportunity structure for selective attacks on opposition municipalities. To investigate causally, I use data on municipal finances and electoral results to conduct a close elections regression discontinuity design. I find a significant effect of electing an aspiring autocrat government-aligned mayor over their opponent, on municipal level measures of autonomous revenue and decentralization, indicating that copartisans are shielded from horizontal reductions in local autonomy. This paper presents a contribution to the literature on democratic resilience, but also to the wider literature on fiscal decentralization and local government autonomy, by establishing how aspiring autocrats take advantage of subnational fiscal policy to erode democracy.
Globalization and Political Ambiguity, Theodoros Ntounias, Christina J. Schneider, and Robert Thomson
Working paper available courtesy of the UC IGCC here
Despite the centrality of promissory representation in the study of democracy, we know little about how concerns about voters’ retrospective evaluation of political parties’ ability to keep campaign promises affects the form of promissory representation by political parties. We argue that political parties rely on strategic ambiguity during election campaigns to evade sanctioning by voters in future elections. We analyze the effects of globalization on strategic ambiguity of 44 political parties in 293 English language party platforms across six countries between 1970 and 2019, and find robust support for our expectations.
Climate Change and the Economic Geography of Political Conflict, Lisa Dellmuth, Evelina Jonsson, Theodoros Ntounias, Christina J. Schneider
Climate change poses a growing challenge to democracies, as the economic consequences of extreme weather events become increasingly severe. While prior research shows that climate-related disasters can erode support for incumbents, less is known about how they reshape broader patterns of political competition. We argue that the electoral impact of climate disasters depends on whether voters experience them as sources of economic grievance. Where individuals bear significant economic losses, they are more likely to punish incumbents and shift support to populist parties that frame such failures as evidence of elite neglect. By contrast, green parties do not benefit from grievance-driven reactions. Their gains instead reflect issue-based realignments in wealthier, urban, and institutionally secure regions, where disasters heighten climate salience without undermining faith in the political system. We test these claims using novel subnational data on insured disaster losses and electoral outcomes from 273 regions in 25 European countries (1990–2020).
Private Welfare in the Workplace and Support for Social Insurance, John S. Ahlquist, Theodoros Ntounias
There is a long-standing argument that public welfare and social insurance crowds out private savings and charity. There is also a newer set of arguments that private resources (home equity, credit) may dampen voters’ support for public insurance programs and redistributive taxation. We investigate the “substitution hypothesis” in the context of a novel set of workplace mutual aid arrangements–Employee Hardship Funds (EHFs). EHFs enable employers to distribute emergency cash to their workers using donations pooled from employees themselves. Hundreds of major US firms now operate these programs. We use three original surveys—including two matched to workers at specific employers with EHFs and including experiments. We find that state-level generosity in the social safety net is unrelated to worker knowledge of and support for EHFs. Experimental manipulation of EHF salience among workers at two large retailers indicates that EHFs do not displace support for public unemployment insurance or government emergency aid, regardless of the generosity of the EHF program. EHFs, as a workplace mutual aid arrangement, and government social insurance programs appear unconnected in the minds of workers.
Labor Unions are not the ‘Bulwark of Democracy’, John S. Ahlquist, Theodoros Ntounias
In the face of contemporary democratic backsliding, are labor unions the “bulwark of democracy” that some have claimed? We decompose this into two analytically distinct phases: prevention and resistance. We argue that unions’ traditional market, associational, and social power has declined to the point where their preventative influence is quite weak. As market and associational power has declined, institutional power is vulnerable, even where union membership remains high. Empirically, we show that union density and coverage are uncorrelated with antidemocratic party vote shares across the OECD. In looking at resistance, we examine 11 episodes of 21st Century democratic backsliding. In none of those cases were existing labor unions key players in resisting democratic erosion. In some instances, major unions were willing to capitulate to or even collaborate with increasingly undemocratic governments. Unions are not currently a reliable bulwark against backsliding, although they can and should be important parts of broader pro-democracy coalitions.