Title of the thesis: In the name of whom? Assessing to what extent individual policy preferences translate into policy outcomes. My research project aims to verify to what extent the canonical principal–agent model is able to capture the essential relations among voters, political parties, governments and actual policy outcomes. Do citizens’ policy preferences significantly affect policy outcomes through the intercession of political parties or is party politics best described as a semi-autonomous and strategic élite behaviour? To answer this general question, I will focus on social and labour policies, described as the most conflict-ridden policy areas in modern-day welfare state. I will firstly combine a narrative literature review with an empirical meta-analysis in order to assess how often empirical researches confirm the role of political parties in shaping social policy outcomes and to verify whether partisan explanations are sensitive to measurement issues and methods. Then, I will develop at least three empirical chapters using survey data on western countries in the era of permanent austerity. First, I will test whether citizens' social and economic conditions shape their social policy preferences and whether such preferences consistently translate into vote choices at the election time. Second, I will verify if parties' long lasting ideological positions and electoral promises significantly affect governments’ social policy preferences. Finally, I will assess whether governments’ preferences correspond to consistent social policy outcomes. Testing this chain of responsiveness from individual social policy preferences to governments’ decision-making could be relevant both outside and inside the academia. Outside of the academia, it means testing (and hopefully falsify) the validity of common sentences such as: "Politicians are all the same", "There is no difference between Left and Right", "Voting is useless". Inside the academia, instead, this research project could be relevant because it is thought as a way to integrate electoral studies, party research and policy studies.
Research interests: Comparative politics, comparative social policies, quantitative methods, public policy analysis and evaluation.
Graduated from: University of Torino and University Lumière Lyon 2.
Degree: Master of Science in Government and Public Administration and Master of Science in History of economic theories.
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