Federico Tabellini

Thesis Title: Anonymity in political representation: building a theory.

The academic literature that addresses anonymity and its effects on politics in democratic societies has focused almost exclusively on the anonymity of common citizens and voters, taking the public status of political candidates as an unchangeable constant. The public nature of political candidates, however, is in tension with the widespread belief, among citizens, that voters should vote not for candidates but rather for the political ideas and projects they represent, or at most for the candidates' status as members of a particular minority or social category. Drawing on the methods of political theory and studies of democratic institutional design, my overall goal is to ask whether democracy and anonymity can be bed-fellows beyond the limited implementation of anonymity at the ballot boxes. More specifically, my research project concerns the notion of anonymity of representation (i.e. the degree of identifiability – or lack thereof – of a political candidate to voters), and aims to answer two interconnected research questions:

1. What are the potential implications of the enforcement of different forms and degrees of anonymity of representation (through institutional reforms and/or legal constraints) for the resilience of liberal-democratic institutions and the quality of political candidates and electoral processes?

2. Should we enforce some forms and degrees of anonymity of representation in electoral processes?

Biography

Before starting my PhD at the University of Warwick, I worked extensively on topics related to the global ecological crisis, both as a writer and an activist. This work led to two academic publications and a book focusing on the challenges of the transition to a sustainable steady-state economy (Tabellini, F., A Future History of the 21st Century, 2020). I hold two Master's degrees, one in Sociology and one in Linguistics, and a bachelor's degree in Politics. Among other experiences, I worked as a teacher of Italian in Spain and China, and I worked in Brussels with a local NGO on issues related to youth policies and digital democracy.

Publications

Tabellini, F., A Future History of the 21st Century, 2020

Political Science and International Relations

Warwick

2023 Cohort, +3

Federico.Tabellini@warwick.ac.uk 

Supervisory Team

Michael Saward

Tom Parr