My research is in the field of comparative politics and political economy, with a focus on legislative and policy-making institutions. I am currently working in three substantive areas. First, I study the inclusion of stakeholders and experts in the governmental policy-making process and the role of contestation in the policy process. Second, I study how different types of communication (such as deliberation vs. purely informative communication) affect the likelihood of pro-social collective decisions. Third, I study the development of formal and informal institutions used to negotiate agreement during the policy-making process. In each of these areas, I use rational choice and behavioral models, statistical analysis, qualitative methods, and laboratory experiments to tease out mechanisms and uncover causal relationships at the micro level. My research has been published in both political science and economics journals. More recently, I am working on experiments related to ranked choice vote elections.
My dissertation examines whether governments can build broad consensus on policy by soliciting advise from independent commissions of experts and stakeholders. The dissertation uses the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) method, in which a formal model is used to generate empirical implications, which are then tested.
I have published results from my data in a SNS (Centre for Business and Policy Studies) policy brief (SNS Research Brief 59 ) and in an article in Scandinavian Political Studies. The political implications of the research have been discussed in a debate article and editorial in the Svenska Dagbladet (third largest daily in Sweden) (SvD debate article Oct 10 2019 SvD Editorial Nov 25 2019). I blog irregularly on Swedish politics on Australian Outlook, the national online showcase of Australian Institute of International Affairs for high-quality analysis and commentary on international affairs.
You can find my Google Scholar page and CV below.
Kira Pronin - Ph.D. in Political Science 