Miguel PereiraWashington University in St. Louis | WUSTL , Wash U · Department of Political Science
Miguel Pereira
Master of Arts
About
15
Publications
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Introduction
Miguel Pereira currently works at the Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis. His research focus on the links between citizens and their representatives, with a special penchant for experimental work. Research interests also include policy diffusion and gender politics.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (15)
We study how political elites and voters respond to intra-party reforms to promote transparency and ethical conduct. Evidence from a paired conjoint analysis from politicians and voters in Portugal and Spain.
To be responsive, politicians have to rely on beliefs about public will. Previous research suggests that perceptions of public opinion are often distorted. However, it remains unclear (1) why reelection-seeking officials misperceive public preferences and (2) how to mitigate these distorted beliefs. I argue that misperceptions result from unequal e...
Prior research suggests that partisanship can influence how legislators learn from each other. However, same-party governments are also more likely to share similar issues, ideological preferences and constituency demands. Establishing a causal link between partisanship and policy learning is difficult. In collaboration with a non-profit organizati...
A growing literature examines how historical institutions influence contemporary political attitudes and behavior. Recent work has argued that these studies need to properly account for spatial heterogeneity by incorporating regional fixed effects. Here, we discuss the theoretical and empirical obstacles that have to be addressed to properly incorp...
We explore the long-term political consequences of the Third Reich and show that current political intolerance, xenophobia, and voting for radical right-wing parties are associated with proximity to former Nazi concentration camps in Germany. This relationship is not explained by contemporary attitudes, the location of the camps, geographic sorting...
How do parties respond to public opinion shifts on the campaign trail? While a vast literature looks at ideological updating across elections, the dynamics of short-term responsiveness remain largely a black box. I argue that campaign rhetoric reflects parties' need to balance office and policy goals. Shifts in voter preferences alter the salience...
This article investigates how parties respond to polling results on the campaign trail. I argue that parties use pre-election polls as mobilization and fine-tuning devices. Opinion surveys that exceed expectations can be exploited to mobilize the party base. Disappointing polls, in turn, are publicly downplayed and criticized. However, this informa...
This paper explores how political scandals are discounted over time. Previous research has shown that voters respond disproportionately to recent economic conditions when evaluating incumbents. We argue that voters discount not only the performance of incumbents in office but also information about their personal character, largely due to accessibi...
We explore the role of partisanship in policy diffusion. Previous studies suggest that partisanship may influence the willingness of public officials to learn from the experience of their peers. Officials’ willingness to consider policies endorsed by copartisans can arise either because party labels are used as informational cues or simply due to c...
Incentivized experiments are frequently used to learn about individuals' social, political, and economic behavior. However, public officials and other individuals are sometimes barred from accepting payment for anything related to their position, so money cannot be used in experiments (e.g., Butler and Kousser 2015). We assess whether donations to...
One of the more important innovations in the study of how citizens assess the U.S. Supreme Court is the ideological updating model, which assumes that citizens grant legitimacy to the institution according to the perceived distance between themselves and the Court on a unidimensional ideological (liberal–conservative) continuum. Under this model, c...
Do voters behave strategically in local elections? Does democratic experience influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters’ capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behaviour accordingly? Using an original data set covering the complete democratic per...
One of the more important innovations in the study of how citizens assess the U.S. Supreme Court is the ideological updating model, which assumes that citizens grant legitimacy to the institution according to the perceived distance between themselves and the Court on a unidimensional ideological (liberal-conservative) continuum. Moreover, citizens...
It is said that voters behave strategically when their vote choice is based on expectations of the electoral outcome rather than on preferences. The practice of splitting the vote across two or more parties in simultaneous or non-simultaneous elections is often regarded a consequence of strategic voting behavior. In these elections, voters are aske...
Projects
Projects (2)
Political trust in democracies has dramatically declined to record figures (especially during the last decade). Levels of trust in political parties, national governments, and parliaments have consecutively shown the lowest scores in most citizen-based cross-national surveys carried out over the past two decades. A fall in political trust has coincided with an increase in scandals associated to the financial probity of parties, MPs and cabinet members. Much of this public disquiet is a result of the combination of both perceived poor standards of probity associated to these key institutional actors and a poor record in clarifying what those standards should be and how they ought to be enforced. Given the impact that the perceived decline in ethical standards in politics has on levels of trust and satisfaction with democracy, it becomes necessary to explore in detail where the boundaries of acceptable conduct for MPs, government officials, and parties lie, how the target-actors evaluate the reputational costs associated to their conduct, and how they go about mitigating those costs.
