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Do Politicians Discriminate Against Constituents with an Immigration Background? Field Experimental Evidence from Germany

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Do Politicians Discriminate Against Constituents with an Immigration Background? Field Experimental Evidence from Germany
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RM7VAL
 
Creator Alizade, Jeyhun
Ellger, Fabio
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description The diversification of Western European electorates due to immigration raises the
question whether politicians discriminate against constituents with an immigrant
background. While ethnic distance can explain lower responsiveness to outgroup
constituents, shared partisanship might mitigate discrimination. We examine this issue
through an audit experiment with 1,522 MPs in fifteen German state legislatures. We
find that politicians are eleven percentage points less likely to respond to a
constituent’s email asking for a personal meeting if the sender has an immigrant
background (RI p-value < .001). Surprisingly, there is no difference in rates of
discrimination between leftist and rightist parties. We also find evidence that signalling
partisanship can mitigate the immigrant-background effect. Our findings imply that on
the dimension of responsiveness, politicians – on the right and the left – might hamper
rather than foster the political integration of immigrants.
 
Subject Social Sciences
 
Contributor Alizade, Jey