Photo: Jaakko Meriläinen
Associate Professor · Political Science
Sirus H. Dehdari
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
Studying political economy, radical right parties, identity formation, and political participation.
Photo: Jaakko Meriläinen
Associate Professor · Political Science
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
Studying political economy, radical right parties, identity formation, and political participation.
I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, and an affiliate of the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies at Uppsala University. I hold a PhD in economics from the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University.
My research sits at the intersection of political economy and political behavior. I study the causes and consequences of radical right voting — examining how economic conditions, labor market dynamics, and intergroup relations shape political attitudes and party support. A parallel strand of my work investigates political participation and civic integration: how major life events and institutional contexts affect individuals' democratic engagement, and how immigrant groups incorporate politically over time. A third line of research explores the formation of regional and national identities, and how historical encounters with the state leave lasting imprints on collective attachments and preferences for self-governance.
I rely primarily on Swedish administrative data and quasi-experimental designs — including natural experiments, regression discontinuity, and panel methods — to establish causal estimates. My work has been published in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative Political Studies, among others.
International Migration Review, 60(1), pp. 337–357
International Migration Review, 60(1), pp. 337–357
We study how age at arrival shapes the long-run political integration of immigrants using Swedish electoral data from three elections (1994, 2010, and 2018). Exploiting within-family variation through a sibling design that controls for shared background, we find that immigrants who arrived in early childhood (ages 0–5) are approximately 5–10 percentage points more likely to vote in national elections as adults compared to siblings who arrived in early adolescence. The effect is partially persistent over the life cycle, pointing to the formative importance of early civic socialization and schooling for immigrant political incorporation.
An extensive literature links the rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties to immigration. We argue that another demographic trend is also significant: emigration. The departure of citizens due to internal and international emigration is a major phenomenon affecting elections via two complementary mechanisms. Emigration alters the composition of electorates, but also changes the preferences of the left behind. Empirically, we establish a positive correlation between PRR vote shares and net-migration loss at the subnational level across Europe. A more fine-grained panel analysis of precincts in Sweden demonstrates that the departure of citizens raises PRR vote shares in places of emigration and that the Social Democrats are the principal losers from emigration. Elite interviews and newspaper analyses explore how emigration produces material and psychological grievances on which populists capitalize and that established parties do not effectively address. Emigration and the frustrations it generates emerge as important sources of populist success.
British Journal of Political Science, 54(3), pp. 712–729
Faced with rising levels of cross-border migration, many countries have extended local voting rights to non-citizen residents. However, empirical evidence indicates that voter turnout among non-naturalized immigrants is lower when compared to citizens. This raises the question of how to explain this difference. A common answer is that the low turnout rates of non-citizen residents are primarily due to the socio-economic composition of this group and the challenges involved in adapting to a new political system. An alternative but less discussed possibility is that the low turnout concerns the nature of the elections. Hence, we examine whether the turnout of non-citizens is hampered because they are only allowed to partake in local elections. Based on a regression discontinuity design (RDD) using Swedish administrative data, we find that turnout could increase by 10–20 percentage points if the voting rights of non-citizens were extended to the national level.
American Political Science Review, pp. 1293–1308
The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered effect of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. First, drawing on Swedish populationwide data, we use the differential timing of divorces in relation to general elections to generate more credible estimates of the causal effect of divorce on turnout. Second, although we find that both sexes are adversely affected by divorce, we show that the effect is much more pronounced for men. Specifically, the long-term effect is almost twice as large for men. Finally, we use these data to show that the gendered effect of divorce is mainly driven by asymmetrical spousal mobilization due to higher levels of turnout among women.
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 14(1), pp. 261–292
We study how more negative historical exposure to the actions of nation-states—like war, occupation, and repression—affects the formation of regional identity. The quasi-exogenous division of the French regions Alsace and Lorraine allows us to implement a geographical regression discontinuity design at the municipal level. Using measures of stated and revealed preferences, we find that more negative experiences with nation-states are associated with a stronger regional identity in the short, medium, and long run. This is linked to preferences for more regional decision-making. Establishing regional organizations seems to be a key mechanism to maintaining and strengthening regional identity.
This paper studies the effects of economic distress on support for radical right parties. Using Swedish election data, I show that one layoff notice among low-skilled native-born workers increases, on average, support for the Swedish radical right party the Sweden Democrats by 0.17–0.45 votes. The relationship between layoff notices and support for the Sweden Democrats is stronger in areas with a high share of low-skilled immigrants and in areas with a low share of high-skilled immigrants. These findings are in line with theories suggesting that economically distressed voters oppose immigration as they fear increased labor market competition. In addition, I use individual-level survey data to show that self-reported unemployment risk is positively associated with voting for the Sweden Democrats among low-skilled respondents while the opposite is true for high-skilled respondents, echoing the aggregate-level findings.
American Political Science Review, pp. 1159–1174
How does an increased presence of immigrants in the workplace affect anti-immigration voting behavior? While cooperative interactions between natives and immigrants can reduce intergroup prejudice, immigrant coworkers might be regarded as a threat to native-born workers’ labor market position. We combine detailed Swedish workplace data with precinct-level election outcomes for a large anti-immigration party (the Sweden Democrats) to study how the share of non-Europeans in the workplace affects opposition to immigration. We show that the share of non-Europeans in the workplace has a negative effect on support for the Sweden Democrats and that this effect is solely driven by same-skill contact in small workplaces. We interpret these results as supporting the so-called contact hypothesis: that increased interactions with minorities can reduce opposition to immigration among native-born voters, which, in turn, leads to lower support for anti-immigration parties.
Electoral Studies, Volume 90, 102817
Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutional remedies for the problem of unequal turnout. Scholars have, however, raised concerns that making voting more convenient may actually lead to a less representative electorate. We contribute to this debate by leveraging large-scale Swedish registry data to analyze persons expecting a child around the time of the election. Our results indicate that politically engaged high-status voters are more likely to use the opportunity to vote in advance when faced with the risk of not being able to vote on election day. Given the large number of obstacles to election-day voting that individuals face throughout life, it is therefore conceivable that efforts to make voting more convenient and less costly for citizens may in the end lead to less representative electorates.
Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy , Volume 3(1), pp. 1-21
Why do some populist parties thrive while others fail or split? Is it possible for populists to maintain anti-establishment nature while being in a coalition with the mainstream parties? We study the populist Finns Party that split while being part of a coalition government. The splinter party Blue Reform retained its part in government and most of the experienced political personnel, yet it failed in the next election while the rump party remained popular. Leveraging rich data on electoral candidates and voters, we explore various potential drivers of the electoral persistence of populist parties: candidate quality, selection, office perks, and ideological motivations. Our results indicate that ideological proximity with voters and their demand for descriptive representation are keys for the electoral success of populist parties. This has implications for the political and policy consequences of including populists in government. In particular, our work highlights that there are limits on the electoral returns to ideological moderation, and that political experience and the perks of office alone do not guarantee populists’ survival.
Electoral Studies, Volume 71
If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by the same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the (aggregate) turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2–3%. Rich administrative register data reveal that people from higher socio-economic backgrounds, immigrants, women, older individuals, and people who have been less geographically mobile are less likely to selectively abstain.
PI: Kåre Vernby — co-applicants: Rafaela Dancygier, Moritz Marbach, David Laitin
PI: Karl-Oskar Lindgren — co-applicant: Henrik Andersson
PI: Jens Rydgren — co-applicant: Zeth Isaksson
PI: Annekatrin Deglow — co-applicant: Hanne Fjelde
PI: Hanne Fjelde — co-applicant: Annekatrin Deglow
Stockholm University
Graduate-level instruction in quantitative research methods for political scientists, covering causal inference, regression analysis, panel data, and applied econometrics.