Liran Harsgor
University of Haifa, School of Political Sciences, Faculty Member
- I am an assistant professor (lecturer) at the School of Political Science in the University of Haifa. My main resear... moreI am an assistant professor (lecturer) at the School of Political Science in the University of Haifa. My main research interests are political behavior, public opinion, gender gaps in attitudes and voting, and electoral politics.
Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto (2017-2018). I completed my PhD in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2017.
See my personal website http://liran.harsgor.comedit
With global changes, large-scale natural hazards are more frequent and intense, posing a particular challenge for groups in conflict. Do these shared external threats influence group willingness to cooperate and assist the adversary, and... more
With global changes, large-scale natural hazards are more frequent and intense, posing a particular challenge for groups in conflict. Do these shared external threats influence group willingness to cooperate and assist the adversary, and how? The literature suggests inconsistent expectations, from increased intergroup cooperation, to exacerbated animosity, to no discernable impact. We explore this question in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a joint exogenous threat for both sides. Using multiple surveys and a conjoint experiment, we examine whether and how COVID-19 threat perceptions affected Jewish-Israeli preferences for collaborating with the Palestinians against the pandemic, including a novel exploration of concrete policy priorities. We find that greater COVID-19 threat perceptions have little effect on collaborative policy preferences, corroborating politics-as-usual arguments: support for out-group assistance, cooperation, and cost-sharing is polarized by ideological orientation. Our findings outline both constraints and opportunities for intergroup collaboration policies in conflicts facing joint outside challenges.
Research Interests:
Previous research has established that men are more likely to vote for populist radical right parties (PRRPs) than women. This article shows how cross-national and temporal variations in PRRPs’ electoral success interact with individuals’... more
Previous research has established that men are more likely to vote for populist radical right parties (PRRPs) than women. This article shows how cross-national and temporal variations in PRRPs’ electoral success interact with individuals’ risk propensity to affect this gender gap. We hypothesize that gender differences in the electoral support of PRRPs stem from disparities in risk-taking. We conceptualize risk in terms of two components, social and electoral, and demonstrate that women are more risk-averse regarding both. Our analysis is based on public opinion data from 14 countries (2002–16) combined with macrolevel data on PRRPs’ past parliamentary fortunes. To distinguish between the social and electoral components in risk-taking, we use the illustrative case study of Germany. Findings demonstrate that gender differences in risk-taking and, by implication, the differences between women’s and men’s responses to the electoral context are key to understanding the voting gender gap.
Research Interests:
The existing literature on vote switching – a major cause of electoral change – rarely discusses strategic incentives as motivating voters to switch parties between elections. We study how coalition-directed voting, a common type of... more
The existing literature on vote switching – a major cause of electoral change – rarely discusses strategic incentives as motivating voters to switch parties between elections. We study how coalition-directed voting, a common type of strategic voting in parliamentary democracies, affects vote switching. Utilizing an original three-wave online panel survey conducted in Israel in 2019–2020, we show that voters engage in formateur optimization and policy balancing: they switch their vote in order to affect the identity of the next formateur and desert a party they previously voted for if they believe it will not enter the next coalition. We also show that the perceived level of competition between potential formateurs moderates the effect of coalition expectations on vote switching. The paper highlights the importance of coalition and formateur considerations in electoral change and contributes to a better understanding of both coalition-directed voting and individual-level vote switching.
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Do evaluations of presidential candidates in the US affect the level of voter turnout? Voters' affections towards presidential candidates, we contend, can either stimulate or inhibit voter inclinations to turnout. Voters are more inclined... more
Do evaluations of presidential candidates in the US affect the level of voter turnout? Voters' affections towards presidential candidates, we contend, can either stimulate or inhibit voter inclinations to turnout. Voters are more inclined to turn out when they have positive feelings towards the candidate with which they identify because they want "their" candidate to win. But citizens may also be more likely to vote when they dislike the candidate of the party with which they do not identify. In that case, voters are motivated to prevent the candidate from being elected. Utilizing the American National Election Studies data for 1968-2020, the analysis finds that the likelihood of voting is affected by (a) the degree to which voters' affections towards the candidate differ from one another (having a clear-cut choice between options) and (b) the nature of the affections (negative or positive) towards both in-and out-party candidates.
Research Interests:
A large literature examines how citizens in violent conflicts react to the conflict's events, particularly violent escalations. Nevertheless, the temporal nature of these attitudinal changes remains under-studied. We suggest that... more
A large literature examines how citizens in violent conflicts react to the conflict's events, particularly violent escalations. Nevertheless, the temporal nature of these attitudinal changes remains under-studied. We suggest that popular reactions to greater violence are typically immediate but brief, indicating short-term emotional responses to physical threats. Over the longer term, however, public opinion is more commonly shaped by non-violent events signaling the adversary's perceived intentions, reflecting slower but deeper belief-updating processes. We support this argument using dynamic analyses of comprehensive monthly data from Israel spanning two full decades (2001–20). Rather than violence levels, we find that long-term changes in Jewish attitudes on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict follow non-violent events implying Palestinian preferences, particularly failed negotiations and out-group leadership changes. Our findings underscore the importance of public opinion&...
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The last decade has seen an expansion of party primaries as a means of selecting legislative candidates. Since primaries are rarely subsidized, well-resourced candidates have a considerable advantage, which has an impact on equality,... more
The last decade has seen an expansion of party primaries as a means of selecting legislative candidates. Since primaries are rarely subsidized, well-resourced candidates have a considerable advantage, which has an impact on equality, diversity and representation. This article focuses on the well-regulated legislative primaries in Israel, examining the gender gap in campaign expenditures, and its implication for the success of women candidates. The analysis is based on data regarding 365 candidates (97 women and 268 men) who competed in seven primary contests in three parties between 2008 and 2015. Our findings show that male candidates spend on average more than female candidates do. However, this difference is pronounced among new candidates only. Moreover, we find that men do better than women in terms of electoral success and that this electoral advantage is explained by the differences in campaign expenses and the share of incumbents between women and men.
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What does it mean for citizens in democracies to be represented? Does it even matter? Representation theories and studies have mostly emphasized the representatives, giving only limited attention to the represented. In this paper, we... more
What does it mean for citizens in democracies to be represented? Does it even matter? Representation theories and studies have mostly emphasized the representatives, giving only limited attention to the represented. In this paper, we address this lacuna by adopting Hanna Pitkin’s multidimensionality of representation and the act-for/stand-for tiered structure she posits, along with a reconceptualization of dyadic and collective representation as a matrix (rather than a dichotomy). We develop theoretically (and examine empirically) how citizens perceive all of Pitkin’s dimensions concurrently and their tiered structure at two points on the dyadic-collective matrix: representation by a politician/party and representation by the parliament. We develop a novel set of questions, based on in-depth interviews and designed to capture Pitkin’s theoretical concept of representation empirically among citizens. Utilizing the 2019-20 Israel National Election Studies, we find that citizens’ subje...
Research Interests:
Previous research has established that men are more likely to vote for populist radical right parties (PRRPs) than women. This article shows how cross-national and temporal variations in PRRPs' electoral success interact with individuals'... more
Previous research has established that men are more likely to vote for populist radical right parties (PRRPs) than women. This article shows how cross-national and temporal variations in PRRPs' electoral success interact with individuals' risk propensity to affect this gender gap. We hypothesize that gender differences in the electoral support of PRRPs stem from disparities in risk-taking. We conceptualize risk in terms of two components, social and electoral, and demonstrate that women are more risk-averse regarding both. Our analysis is based on public opinion data from 14 countries (2002-2016) combined with macro-level data on PRRPs' past parliamentary fortunes. To distinguish between the social and the electoral component in risk-taking, we use the illustrative case study of Germany. Findings demonstrate that gender differences in risk-taking and, by implication, the differences between women's and men's responses to the electoral context, are key to understanding the voting gender gap. Verification Materials The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures and analyses in this article are available on the American
Research Interests:
Permissibility of electoral systems and in particular the conversion of a plethora of voices in the electorate to the legislature is broadly considered to depend on the number of seats per district (district magnitude) in a country. Yet... more
Permissibility of electoral systems and in particular the conversion of a plethora of voices in the electorate to the legislature is broadly considered to depend on the number of seats per district (district magnitude) in a country. Yet the most prevalent electoral system in the democratic world, proportional representation with districts, is often characterized by an almost entirely overlooked variation: within the same country districts vary in their magnitude, sometimes by a factor of twenty. How does such variation affect permissibility of electoral systems? Drawing on a broad cross-section of democracies, we demonstrate that contrary to what the literature implicitly assumes, other things equal, a combination of large and small districts results in greater permissibility than a set of districts of similar magnitude. We find that where districts are of similar (different) magnitude the degree of permissibility is lower (higher) than that found by current literature.
To what degree have generational differences contributed to partisan changes in the American electorate, and what role did they play in the emergence of the gender gap in party identification? This paper sheds light on parallel and... more
To what degree have generational differences contributed to partisan changes in the American electorate, and what role did they play in the emergence of the gender gap in party identification? This paper sheds light on parallel and contradicting partisan trends among subgroups of the American electorate that affected the partisan gender gap over the past decades. By unpacking the gap by region, race, and generations, the analysis reveals that the effect of generational replacement on the gender gap varied in terms of size and direction between different subgroups. While in the South newer generations of white women diverged from the New Deal generation, consequently having a greater effect on the gender gap, in the rest of the country shifts among white men affected the gap to a greater extent than shifts among white women. Among African Americans, a decline in Democratic support was shown among newer generations of men, but less so among women. The findings highlight the importance of such political and historical contexts, and raise questions about the future of the partisan gender gap as the New Deal generation is replaced.