Comparative Politics

B01 - Workshop: Experiments on Intergroup Relations

Date: May 30 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location: Classroom - CL 305 Room ID:15701

Joint Session / Séance conjointe : with Political Behaviour/Sociology

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jason Roy (Wilfrid Laurier University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Melanee Thomas (University of Calgary)

Do Quebecers Have Double Standards About Quebec's Right to Secession?: Jean François Daoust (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: In The Authoritarian Specter, Altemeyer (1996) provides empirical evidence that people with high scores on the right-wing authoritarianism scale tend to adopt particular cognitive behaviors. One of these features is that right-wing authoritarians are more likely to show double standards. An experiment conducted in Manitoba about Quebec’s right to secession supports this trend (Altemey er 1996). One group received a question about the province’s right to leave the rest of the country, while the other group received a question on Ukraine’s right to secession. Inspired by the methodology, we conduct a similar experiment using Quebecers as subjects. We assess Quebecers' level of authoritarianism and whether they have double standards about Quebec’s right to secession. We conduct our experiment with political science undergraduate students at the University of Montreal using an online randomized survey. One group will receive a question on Quebec's right to secession while the other will receive a question on Nunanavik’s right to leave the Quebec province.

The Self-Reinforcing Effects of Political Identity Based Norms: Erik Kimbrough (Chapman University), de Rooij de Rooij (Simon Fraser University)
Abstract: When choosing how to vote, individuals consider the expectations of the political groups with which they identify. These expectations are social norms, shared beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior for members of the identity group, and individuals’ choices reflect trade-offs between adherence to these norms and their other preferences. Using an incentivized lab experiment, we show that when individuals pay a personal cost as a consequence of avoiding a group norm violation, they subsequently view the norm as stronger and become more willing to punish/reward others with the same identity for violating/complying with the norm than if they did not experience such a cost. Further, such individuals view other norms of the identity as stronger. In this way, costly compliance with a norm may have a reinforcing effect on the norms of one’s identity.

Property Rights and Trust: Daniel Rubenson (Ryerson University), Peter Loewen (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Institutions matter for trust. A long literature suggests that individuals are more likely to be trusting of others when they regularly interact with strangers in the context of market integration and a rule of law. Fundamental to such interactions is the assurance of private property. Despite this long literature, causal identification of the effects of property-enforcing institutions has proven very difficult. We overcome this in our paper. We first develop a theory of property rights and trust, arguing that predation will be lower in the presence of property rights, thereby increasing trust. We test our theory using a field experiment in which groups of Mongolian herders are randomly assigned exclusive use rights to large plots of grazing land. We find support for our theory. Generalized trust is higher among those in the treatment group. Herders who were exogenously placed in a condition of property rights have odds of being trusting some 30% higher than those who are in the status quo common use land condition in the months after receiving their property. By the time of the conference, we will have data four years on from implementation, allowing for a test of more long term effects.