What triggers public concern about immigration? Although substantial research has investigated public attitudes toward immigration, less work has been done on its political salience. This study utilizes survey experiments with Colombians to investigate the drivers of both valence and salience concerning Venezuelan immigration. Employing experimental vignettes, the study explores the effects of different styles of rhetorical framing, specifically contrasting moderate anti-immigration framing with strong anti-immigration rhetoric, on attitudes about the salience and valence of immigration. First, we find that rhetoric that leads to more negative (positive) views on immigration also heightens (lessens) its perceived importance, suggesting a previously unacknowledged challenge for mobilizing political support for immigration. Second, strong anti-immigration messaging, akin to the style of rhetoric used by many contemporary populists, is highly effective in influencing opinions. Alarmingly, this rhetoric has broad effectiveness, even among people who did not hold negative views of immigration at baseline.

The conventional view holds that incumbents expand transfers to allied or swing constituencies to increase their vote shares. I contrast the prevalent electoral competition explanation and propose a theory based on the historical left-right political conflict. I argue that the distinct promises of the left motivate right-wing incumbents to expand social transfers to left-wing constituencies. I posit that this strategy aims to hinder support for the left by demobilizing rather than winning over left-leaning supporters. Using a continuous difference-in-difference research design with data from Colombia, I show that the right-wing government expanded a welfare program in left-leaning constituencies. Additional tests suggest that this expansion followed a demobilization rather than a persuasion strategy. This research contributes to the understanding of distributive politics by highlighting the role of ideological distance between political contenders and the timing of social policy distribution in response to the leftist threat.

The political economy states instability and uncertainty negatively affect employment and investment. While violent protests create economic uncertainty and political instability, we know little about how economic elites respond to such events—most existing scholarship focuses on the impact of protests on political elites and public opinion. I argue that economically driven violent protests signal diminished state capacity and increased economic hardship. Violence creates fear and costs to elites, who lean on the signaling effect of protesters’ extreme behavior, coordinate their response through business associations, and decide to concede by creating jobs because they fear further unrest and future changes in the distribution of political power. I test this theory in Colombia and find that labor demand increases in municipalities exposed to violent protests, not among those exposed to nonviolent ones. Qualitative research validates the theorized mechanism. Results suggest that economic elites are responsive to redistributive demands expressed through extra-electoral means.

When and why do wealthy individuals support redistributive policies? Under standard political economy models, preferences for redistribution are a function of objective material conditions. The partisanship literature, on the contrary, argues that partisan identification is the driver of redistributive preferences. We move beyond this dichotomy to argue that the ideology of the government enacting redistribution is a key factor explaining support for redistribution among the wealthy. Through survey experiments during the 2022 Colombian presidential election, we find that the wealthy are more likely to support redistribution under a right-wing government and expect redistribution under the Right to be more efficient and less likely to generate instability. We demonstrate that the ideological composition of our sample does not drive our results and find heterogeneous preferences across respondents’ ideological positions. Importantly, the Right diminishes expectations of macroeconomic instability in both right- and left-wing wealthy. These findings illustrate the micro-foundations of right-wing redistribution.

Many studies have found that pandemics heighten anti-immigrant attitudes among host citizens. Yet, most of these studies were done in Global North countries where migrants are likely to differ from host citizens in terms of race, religion, and ethnicity. Within the Global South, migrants and hosts are more likely to share these characteristics. Do pandemics spark the same anti-immigrant sentiment in these contexts? Further, pandemics often bring economic restrictions and job loss, making it difficult to untangle concerns over disease from economic concerns. We examine the case of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, who share many characteristics with host citizens, before and during COVID-19. Additionally, the Colombian government implemented a strict lockdown for several months, allowing us to focus on the economic effects of the pandemic. Using a panel experimental survey of 374 Colombians, supplemented by 550 new respondents at endline, we find no evidence that exposure to COVID-19 changes attitudes, even if respondents were directly affected. However, those who did not lose their jobs viewed Venezuelan migration more positively at endline.