Jonne Bartus Kamphorst awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study the lasting effects of economic experiences on political attitudes

The Center for Socio-Political Data (CDSP) and the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) are delighted to announce that Jonne Kamphorst, Assistant Professor at both centres, has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project « Losing Beats Winning: Symmetry and Asymmetry in the Effects of Economic Experiences on Anti-Establishment Attitudes » (SYMECO).

Awarded by the European Research Council, these grants support early-career researchers developing particularly ambitious and innovative scientific projects. 

The project will examine how positive and negative economic experiences have lasting effects on political attitudes and behaviour. Starting in January 2027 and running for five years, the project will be based at the CDSP. A team including a postdoctoral researcher in computational social science and a doctoral-level research assistant will be recruited.

The lasting effects of economic experiences on political attitudes

In many democracies, negative economic experiences (job loss, falling income or the decline of a region) are associated with the rise of anti-establishment parties. But is an improvement in economic conditions enough to reverse these political effects? 

With SYMECO, Jonne Kamphorst will test the hypothesis of an asymmetry in political reactions: a negative economic experience could have effects that are both stronger and longer lasting than a positive experience of the same magnitude. The project will therefore seek to determine if these effects persist once economic conditions improve. 

A comparative and interdisciplinary research project 

Sitting at the crossroads of the study of political behaviour, economics, cognitive psychology and computational social science, SYMECO will combine several methods and fields of research. 

The project will study regions in Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United States in order to analyse the effects of economic recovery on voting and electoral turnout. Survey experiments will also be carried out in these four countries as well as France, and panel data will be analysed for the United-Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. Finally, simulations using generative agents founded on large language models (LLMs) will make it possible to explore the long-term consequences of these dynamics for support for democracy, and the role of public policy can play in mitigating their effects. 

This research will help shed light on the role of public policy and social welfare systems in mitigating the political effects of economic shocks. 

Research at the intersection of CDSP and CEE expertise

As Assistant Professor at both the CDSP and the CEE, Jonne Kamphorst works on contemporary political divisions and draws in particular on quantitative methods and large language models in his social science research. 

SYMECO thus builds on the complementary expertise of the CEE in the comparative study of political behaviour and dynamics, and of the CDSP in data production and analysis. Over five years, the project will deepen our understanding of the lasting effects of economic experiences on political behaviour, and more broadly, on democratic dynamics.