Publications
Publications
Political Geography 100, 2023.
DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102778
ABSTRACT: Rising support for the radical right has become a hallmark of the current political landscape. A lot of attention has been devoted to the reasons influencing individual voting decisions, with some progress in understanding within-country variation in the vote. But these studies usually assume that perceptions coincide with objective reality. This article addresses this shortcoming, using quantitative text analysis and spatial econometrics to show that local narratives – sometimes more than contextual statistics – can drive spatial differences in the populist vote. Taking Spain as an example, I train a machine learning algorithm to determine the prevalence of given news topics across the national territory based on how many related articles local newspapers published on Twitter in the year before the last national election. I then use spatial econometric techniques to link these results to local divergences in support for the radical right party VOX. The analysis sheds some light onto the economic anxiety - cultural backlash - geography of discontent debate. The empirical evidence supports the notion that narratives about economic anxiety and regional gaps matter, but also shows that narratives about separatism played a key role in the rise of the radical right in Spain.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10, 232 (2023).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01691-1
ABSTRACT: We designed and administered an online survey experiment to 444 educators in a large social sciences university in the United Kingdom to evaluate their perceptions on the effectiveness of online teaching methods. We find that a nudge, designed to inform educators about the benefits of online teaching, does not improve the personal evaluations of educators in our sample (ntreat = 142, ncontrol = 142) about this new mode of teaching. Overall, most respondents in our sample report being comfortable with online teaching methods and think this form of teaching can continue to have some positive impact. Nonetheless, they do not favour any further online transition away from traditional modes of teaching. Online teaching is largely perceived by a majority of these educators to negatively affect student well-being and their overall university experience. We call for more experimental research in higher educational settings to evaluate the role of edunudges in improving the uptake of online teaching tools.
ABSTRACT: Since at least the mid-2000s, young Spanish workers have encountered a paradox: despite having invested in university degrees, they report persistently low wages, a condition that appears exacerbated by recent economic crises. This paper investigates the evolution of wage inequality among university-educated individuals in Spain. The analysis reveals pronounced wage disparities by age, with older educated workers earning substantially more than their younger counterparts, even after controlling for labor market experience. Notably, these disparities predate the 2008 financial crisis, discarding it as a potential culprit. Within-group wage inequality has intensified over time, particularly among younger graduates, a trend that appears to be driven by an oversupply of tertiary-educated workers relative to the demand for high-skilled labor. The findings underscore the need for policies that address the economic challenges faced by younger generations, emphasizing the need to align educational outcomes with labor market demands.
ABSTRACT: This paper revisits the classical question of whether unemployment leads to anti-system voting. Cross-country studies attempting to link unemployment to radical right support have found mixed results, ranging all the way from positive to negative. I argue that this `puzzle' occurs because unemployment shocks need not favor one side of the political spectrum; they simply enable the appearance of populist narratives. These narratives are especially likely to differ when economic shocks disproportionately affect distinct population groups. In other words, different unemployment shocks allow for diverse brands of populism, but political polarization itself depends on political supply. I outline how these mechanisms have played out in the case of Spain. In this context, I focus on the importance of the composition of unemployment: using an instrumental variable approach, I show that, in line with party narratives, increases in industrial unemployment caused support for the radical right, while rising shares of first-time unemployed individuals favored the radical left.