Mevlüde Akbulut-Yüksel from Dalhousie University will present her paper entitled "Expressway to Votes: Infrastructure Projects and Voter Persuasion" on Wednesday, 18th of May. The seminar will take place between 11:45 and 13:00 at FASS 2034 and can be joined through the following link:
https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/8974991950
Title and abstract of the paper:
Expressway to Votes: Infrastructure Projects and Voter Persuasion
This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties can sway voters at scale in nascent electoral democracies. We collect novel data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, and use province-by-year variation in construction to show that votes for the AKP increased in response to the expressways. The estimates imply that the expressways increased the AKP’s vote share by 4.8 percentage-points—a third of the increase from 2002 to 2011. We provide evidence that the visibility and competence signaled by the expressway expansion, and not increased local economic growth, drove increased vote shares.
