Research

In this project, we study the fundamental aspects of political selection in representative democracies mainly from an intra-party perspective. Political parties are key players in the democratic process of translating voters’ preferences into policies. The parties are not necessarily unitary actors, but its candidates may have conflicting interests and may differ in how well they represent the voters. INTRAPOL project aims to understand the role of insiders in representative democracy by carrying out a thorough analysis of how political parties operate, recruit their political personnel and connect to voters, and to study the policy effects of these choices.

INTRAPOL project consists of three work packages:

The first work package travels far to the past to the origins of the modern party system in Victorian England. We build a remarkable data set of real-life voting choice that is possible due to studying pre-secret-ballot era. This allows us to apply quasi-experimental designs study whether voters identify with parties or candidates. Are voters motivated by changes in their economic interests? How does the entry and exit of candidates affect the fortunes of the parties and voter flows between the candidates? What was the political geography of Victorian England?

The second work package studies the internal organization of parties by analyzing the objectives and role of party leaders and internal conflicts within parties by developing and estimate structurally an equilibrium model of party organizations. We test our model using both quasi-experimental and field experimental designs and data from modern UK.

Third work package uses The Finnish Defense Forces draft data on cognitive competence and personality traits to analyze their role in political selection and its policy effects using quasi-experimental research designs.