Raising awareness of harassment against politicians

Experimental evidence on the democratic consequences from four European democracies
DIPAS Workshop 2025

Søren Damsbo-Svendsen
Karina Kosiara-Pedersen

September 23, 2025

Motivation

  • Growing knowledge about costs and risks of harassment to politicians and candidates
    • also direct implications (e.g., stress, behavior, protection, exits)
    • ultimately broader implications: democratic representation
    • experimental/causal evidence sparse, especially with citizens
  • RQ: How do citizens respond to increased awareness about harassment of politicians?
  • Preregistered survey experiment
    • large sample (n = 8,899) with four European countries
    • treatments: true harassment stories
    • outcomes: political (dis)engagement and attitudes on harassment and democracy
  • Implications of increasing awareness could be bad
    • if citizens are deterred from considering entering/engaging in politics
    • or if harassment awareness causes cynicism, backlash, apathy

Design

  • New multinational preregistered survey experiment
  • n = 8,899
    • Denmark: n = 5,008 (YouGov)
    • Germany: n = 1,519 (Prolific)
    • United Kingdom: n = 1,515
    • France: n = 857
  • Treatment
    • real stories about (Danish) politicians’ experiences with harassment
    • read and evaluate 5 harassment stories
    • stimulus sampling design with random draw from 55 curated, paraphrased stories
    • judge stories on three dimensions

Flowchart

How the treatment looks


  • 1 of 4 politician gender-age categories (randomized)

  • Story


  • Judgment on three dimensions: seriousness, justifiableness, harmfulness


Repeats five times

Outcomes

  1. Perceived prevalence of harassment
  2. Personal risk perception
  3. Harassment attitude I: attention (‘talking abt harassment is abt getting attention’)
  4. Harassment attitude II: hard tone (‘should have known about the hard tone in politics’)
  5. Harassment attitude III: inevitable (‘harassment is an inevitable part of politics’)
  6. Satisfaction with democracy
  7. Willingness to engage in six political activities (additive index)
  8. Willingness to run for office in the future (main outcome, pretest)

Results

Effects on perceived prevalence and risk (1-2)

  • 4.7 %-points increase in perceived prevalence
  • 4.8 %-points increase in personal risk perception

Effect on harassment attitudes (3-5)

  • 4.6 %-point decrease in belief that politicians’ harassment stories are about getting attention
  • 3.6 %-point decrease in belief that politicians should have known about hard tone
  • 1.7 %-point decrease in belief that harassment is inevitable

Effect on satisfaction with democracy (6)

  • 1.1 %-point decrease in general satisfaction with democracy (p = 0.040)

Effect on political engagement

Main hypothesis: People become politically disengaged and less likely to run for office when they hear stories about harassment against politicians

Effect on political engagement

Main hypothesis: People become politically disengaged and less likely to run for office when they hear stories about harassment against politicians

  • No decline in civic engagement (7)
  • Instead, 1.8 %-points increase (e.g., contact politician, demonstrate, sign petition, political SoMe post)
  • Uneven effects → not very robust

Effect on political engagement

Main hypothesis: People become politically disengaged and less likely to run for office when they hear stories about harassment against politicians

  • No average decline in willingness to run for office in the future (p = 0.851)
  • However, this (null) effect is heterogeneous
  • Different for likely and unlikely future candidates →

Effect on political engagement of likely candidates

Main hypothesis: People become politically disengaged and less likely to run for office when they hear stories about harassment against politicians

  • Some citizens are more likely than others to consider a political career
  • Arguably more consequential what the (conditional) effects are
    among more likely candidates
  • Categorize citizens as ‘likely candidates’ using two approaches:
    1. create an additive index from
      (a) political interest, (b) partisanship, (c) internal efficacy, (d) external efficacy
    2. measure willingness to run pre-treatment
  • ~16 percent (1/6) categorized as ‘likely candidates’ with both approaches
  • Analyze conditional effects among likely candidates

Effect on political engagement of likely candidates

  • Statistically significant negative interaction (p = 0.019) with conditional effects:
    • 2.0 %-points decrease for high index values
    • 3.9 %-points decrease for high reported pre-tests
    • Null for the unlikely categories
  • In sum, evidence that harassment in politics does in fact
    scare away the most likely future candidates

Conclusions

  • What are the effects of raising awareness about politicians’ harassment experiences?
  • For citizens from four European democracies, it causes:
    • higher harassment risk perception
    • higher acknowledgement and lower acceptance
    • more civic engagement
    • arguably good outcomes, but …
  • Citizens are also potential candidates of the future
    • no average impact on citizens’ willingness to run for office (arguably good)
    • but harassment clearly affects more likely candidates
    • modest conditional effect around -2-4 %-points
    • potential candidates on the margin are likely important for representation

Thank you