Politicians under Radical Uncertainty (RADIUNCE): How Uncertain Phenomena Influence Political Elites’ Behavior

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From pandemics and economic crises to artificial intelligence, today’s politicians face many phenomena that are characterized by uncertainty. Some of this uncertainty is resolvable and can be removed with better information or knowledge. Other uncertainty, conversely, is radical and cannot.

The RADIUNCE project examines how politicians—such as ministers, parliamentarians, and local politicians—respond to different types of uncertain phenomena. Do they for example avoid the uncertain phenomenon, use rules of thumb (like equating COVID-19 with the flu), or adopt a comprehensive approach aimed at reducing the uncertainty? Despite the prominence of uncertainty, surprisingly little is known about politicians’ responses to uncertainty and what drives them.

Understanding politicians’ responses to different types of uncertain phenomena is urgent. Avoiding the phenomenon can for example cost lives, oversimplification can lead to flawed decisions, and a comprehensive approach is time consuming and likely ineffective when uncertainty is radical in nature. To address the lack of comparative data, the RADIUNCE project collects at-a-distance and direct data from politicians in four countries with different opportunities and constraints of responding to uncertainty: Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, between 1996 and 2024. It adopts a multimethod approach, including computational and qualitative text analyses, interviews survey experiments, and Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the project examines when and why responses differ across countries, politicians, and time.

The outcome will be a new theory of political behavior that puts different types of uncertainty center stage, which is key for furthering our understanding of the functioning of representative democracies.

Researchers

  • Prof. Barbara Vis (project leader)
  • Ella MacLaughlin
  • Olaf van der Veen
  • Naara Ulmke
  • Dr. Sjors Overman
  • Dr. Lisanne de Blok
  • Dr. Marija Aleksovska

Duration

This project will run from February 2023 - February 2028.

Contact and website

For more information you can contact the project leader prof. Barbara Vis: b.vis@uu.nl. 

Or go to the project website: