Ethics in Elite Experiments: A Perspective of Officials and Voters

Experimental research using politicians as subjects has become increasingly important to the field of political science (for overviews see Costa 2017; Desposato 2016; Grose 2014).During recent years, elite experiments have allowed scholars to gain insight into notoriously sensitive areas, such as politicians' prejudices related to gender and race (Broockman 2013; Butler and Broockman 2011; McClendon 2016); the effects of campaign contributions on policy makers' behavior (Kalla and Broockman 2015); and politicians' personal responsiveness to public opinion (Butler, Karpowitz, and Pope 2012; Butler and Nickerson 2011; Öhberg and Naurin 2016).The rise of experimental studies using elite subjects has instigated within-the-field thoughts on research practices and ethics (see Loewen, Rubenson, and Wantchekon 2010; McClendon 2012).The pool of politicians is small and recruiting elite subjects to experiments is one of the foremost challenges for the field to solve.In a note on political science experiments in the journal Science, James N. Druckman and Arthur Lupia specifically raise the importance of elites' participation in political science experiments: Yet, important challenges persist in expanding the domain of experimental political science.One such challenge is that typical experimental subjects often lack the experience needed to act 'as if' they were professional legislators; yet, legislators themselves are often reluctant to participate in experiments as subjects.(2012, 1178) This research note takes on the challenge to clarify politicians' own perceptions of elite experiments.We make use of a research infrastructure in Sweden which gives regular access to large samples of politicians via online panel surveys.Recently, these surveys have introduced experimental designs and at the same time triggered curiosity about how the politicians actually regard the idea of being the subject of experiments.We believe that some of the lessons learned are of interest also to others in the field, hence this note.We here use a research design which compares politicians' and citizens' perceptions of research ethics in general, and of elite political science experiments in particular.More specifically, we try to estimate whether politicians differ systematically from citizens in their views on research ethics surrounding elite experiments and we identify variation in perceptions of elite experiments within the group of politicians. Politicians' and Citizens' Perceptions of Ethical Problems in Elite ExperimentsTo give a background to the study: It is a commonly held belief in studies using elite experiments that politicians are less sensitive to experimental designs than ordinary citizens because they are