Saad Gulzar, New York University

DateJanuary 11, 2017

Time12:30pm to 2:00pm

Location
4357 Bunche Hall 

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Abstract:What motivates people to seek political office? What role does the social context play in the candidacy decision? In a field experiment, we increase the salience of personal reasons for running for political office – such as gaining respect and status – or social reasons for running – such as the ability to help others. We do this by making appeals to a random subset of the community in one-on-one private meetings or in village-level public meetings. Our results show that, first, making any appeal to run greatly increases the probability of candidacy. Second, compared to a neutral private or public meeting, where personal or social reasons are not mentioned, highlighting social reasons to run increases candidacy, while making personal reasons salient reduces candidacy. Significantly, these effects are only observed when appeals are made in a public meeting, leading to the conclusion that the social dimensions of the candidacy decision are particularly important.Full paper can be found here

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