ERC - PARTICIPATE - LEGAL INFORMATION

Presentation and objectives of the research

The research project, PARTICIPATE, is supported and financed by the European Research Council and is led by Julia Cagé, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics of Sciences Po (the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and Institut d’études politiques de Paris).

The goal of PARTICIPATE is to develop a comprehensive approach to the study of campaign finance, information and influence, using new individual-level data and investigating recent changes in participation behaviors. What are the motives behind small campaign contributions? Does tax policy affect political giving? Why are so few politicians from the working class and can this change? What is the ability of the media to induce citizens to make electoral decisions they would not make if reporting were unbiased? While there is evidence at the macro level on the flow of money in elections, news consumption, or the extent of charitable giving, relatively little is known at the micro level, e.g. on individual-level behaviours such as the motivations of small donors, the tax-price elasticity of political donations, or the exposure to competing information flows. PARTICIPATE will help fill this gap. By providing groundbreaking evidence on new forms of participation, it will lead to the reassessment of influential theories of special interest groups and policy formation. One distinguishing feature of the proposal is to combine comprehensive individual-level datasets and the use of computer sciences tools (such as natural language processing techniques and machine learning).

PARTICIPATE will advance the existing research in three steps. First, I will propose a unified analysis of political contributions. This will include a groundbreaking assessment of the importance of small campaign donations, and a combined study of charitable giving and political contributions investigating the impact of tax policy on donations. Fundraising success can lead to the emergence of new candidates. I will then consider citizens’ decision to run for elections, and investigate the role played by network in political selection. Finally, given the importance of media organizations in shaping participation, I will study the changing patterns of information propagation and political influence.

Data source / providers :

Project 1a: A new approach to small campaign contributions:

• Small campaign contributors in the US, contributing through the ActBlue platform, between 2004 and 2020,  and the Revenue Property Commissioner dataset.

Project 1b: A combined study of charitable giving and political contributions:

• French income and wealth tax payers between 2007 and 2018 (fiscal data accessed through CASD).

Project 2: Running for elections? A network approach to political participation:

• Candidates running at General Elections in the UK between 1880 and 2020 (from The Times Guides to the House of Commons).

Project 3: Media power: information acquisition and political influence:

• a/ Online content produced by all general information French news media (from OTMedia developed at the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel; no personal data).
• b/ And a representative sample of Tweets (captured at INA through the use of Twitter APIs).

Data controller : Department of Economics of Sciences Po (the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and Institut d’études politiques de Paris) and CNRS.

Legal basis :  Research for public interest ( GDPR art. 6.1.e)

Researchers part of the research team and data recipients with Julia Cagé:

Project 1a.        Vincent Pons (Harvard Business School),

Laurent Bouton (Georgetown University),

Edgard Dewitte (PhD student, Sciences Po Paris, Department of Economics)

Project 1b.         Malka Guillot (ETH Zürich);

Project 2.        Edgard Dewitte (PhD student, Sciences Po Paris, Department of Economics)

Project 3.        Nicolas Hervé (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel),

Béatrice Mazoyer (Sciences Po Paris, Medialab)

Risk for participants  and research methodology :

• The research implies no legal nor administrative restrictions introduced over the data subjects. For any question, data subjects can be informed about;
• The research methodology does not enable profiling for commercial, politic or marketing purposes nor any purpose which could be considered as an invasion of privacy by data subject;
• Sciences Po is committed to ensure the respect of the European and French data protection principles by its current and future employees, researchers or eventual processors associated with the data. Data protection measures and safeguards are taken by Sciences Po to prevent abuse or unlawful access or transfer;
• Further information about the public interest mission of Sciences Po is provided on its website, and the specific website of the Department of Economics of Sciences Po;
• No specific risks for the rights and freedoms of data subjects have been identified.

Data storage :

• Project 1a  : Harvard Business School (USA; Following the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union of the 16th July 2020, case C-311/18, the country meets a non adequate level of European data protection standards (ie. GDPR)
• Project 1b, 2, 3  : On premise in France or within the European Union (Sciences Po or partners’ storage infrastructures)

Data archive and duration : The data will be treated until 2025 in the Sciences Po current archives (until publication), then during 20 years, in a proper and sufficient manner for obtaining minimized, secured and definitely anonymized dataset. The data may also be stored in an European research repository (Open Science).

In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, any person will be able to access their data, as well as remove it if possible. To do so, send an email to julia.cage@sciencespo.fr. In case of difficulty, please contact the Sciences Po Data Protection Officer [email protected]. If your question is not answered properly, you can address a complaint to the French data protection authority (the CNIL).