Fact-Insensitiveness and Electoral Alignment Across WEIRD Societies

Abstract

The central claim that justifies this research stems from the existing gap in the comparative politics literature linking the alignment approach and the rising spread of misinformation, conceptualized as fact-insensitiveness. Additionally, three other factors play a significant role in carrying out this specific research project. Firstly, although there are comprehensive datasets on electoral systems and other country-relevant variables for democracy studies, such as Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), or The Electoral Knowledge Network (ACE), they lack the instrumental variables necessary to measure fact-insensitiveness or electoral alignment. Additionally, these datasets are agnostic to recent scholarship, pointing to the existence of psychological differences across populations derived from their distinct historical trajectories. Secondly, the exceptional nature of the COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to assess fact-insensitiveness through proxies of high fidelity that correspond to individual decision-making. Instead of deploying surveys or experimental designs, the nature of the pandemic has left every individual with the individual capacity to make a personal choice around a specific topic: vaccinations and COVID-19 restrictions. Thirdly, the empirical findings derived from this research will...