Introduction to Symposium: Experiments with Politicians: Ethics, Power, and the Boundaries of Political Science

Peter John; Florian Foos

doi:10.1177/14789299221075919

Introduction to Symposium: Experiments with Politicians: Ethics, Power, and the Boundaries of Political Science

Peter John^*, Florian Foos

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

This introduction sets out the context for this symposium, which is the discontent expressed by UK MPs and the Speaker of the House of Commons in March 2021 about a research project using e-mails from fictitious constituents to audit the responsiveness of legislators to constituent emails. The article reviews the research literature on experiments on politicians and summarises the debate in the academy about the ethical conduct of these randomised controlled trials. Contributors to the symposium defend and challenge approaches to carrying out these elite experiments, whether using fictitious identities, confederates, and/or partnerships with politicians, as well as refine a cost-benefit approach to the design of these studies.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	169-174
Number of pages	6
Journal	Political studies review
Volume	20
Issue number	2
Early online date	21 Feb 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221075919
Publication status	Published - 31 May 2022

Keywords

ethics
experiments
politicians

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10.1177/14789299221075919Licence: CC BY

Introduction to Symposium_JOHN_Publishedonline21February2022_GOLD VoR (CC BY)Final published version, 139 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Introduction to Symposium: Experiments with Politicians: Ethics, Power, and the Boundaries of Political Science

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