TRENDS: Toward a Separate Ethics of Political Field Experiments

Abstract

In this article, I develop a critical view of the development and state of research ethics in political science. The central problem is that political scientists have inappropriately followed the lead of clinical biomedical research ethics in thinking about their own designs. Specifically I argue that the focus on institutional and group decision-making contexts distinctive to political research presents normative problems not well-addressed by clinical biomedical approaches. First, I make the case that research ethics as it has been conceived won’t capture all that might be wrong in political research designs because some of the potential harms/wrongs will be to political norms and institutions and thus will violate political (although not individual ethical) rights/values/and so on. Second, I rebut the challenge that principles of justice and equipoise standard to biomedical research ethics might be suitable for political research. And third, I argue that political theorists and philosophers must involve themselves in empirical political science research ethics if we are to effectively communicate the stakes of these research designs to practitioners, consumers, funders, and editors who remain steeped in the norms of biomedical research ethics.

Can We Reduce Deception in Elite Field Experiments? Evidence from a Field Experiment with State Legislative Offices

“…Although real students contacted their actual representatives, they did so for the sole purpose of a study and not to request a necessary service. As Whitfield (2019) argues, requesting unnecessary service may shift legislative actor’s limited time away from unmeasured activities (e.g., studying legislation) to measured activities (e.g., constituency service).…”

“…I focus on elite correspondence audit studies, as they are often the point of focus when discussing the use of deception in elite field experiments (Carlson 2020; Findley, Nielson, and Desposato 2016; Naurin and Öhberg 2019; Whitfield 2019), but the general points made here can be generalized to the broader elite experimentation literature (Grose 2014). This article focuses on political elite 1 correspondence audit studies because they present ethical concerns beyond those present in non-elite audit studies.…”

“…This article focuses on political elite 1 correspondence audit studies because they present ethical concerns beyond those present in non-elite audit studies. Namely, elite correspondence audit studies pose the potential to harm the representation process by misallocating legislative resources (Whitfield 2019).…”

“…Leeper (2019) proposes that the decline of survey response rates among elites in the last decade or so (Fisher and Herrick 2013) may be due to correspondence audit studies, and similar studies, polluting the subject pool. Whitfield (2019) voices a related concern that field experiments may undermine representation by shifting time away to measurable, but perhaps less important, actions. While constituency service, which is used as a broad measure of representation by elite correspondence audit studies (Mendez and Grose 2018), is an important aspect of representation, some legislators represent their constituents through other channels such as focusing on policy making (Fenno 2003) or interceding with bureaucracies on their constituents’ behalf (Ritchie 2018).…”

Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities

“…This study received IRB approval, but it is essential to discuss the ethics of our experiment given its use of deception. There is growing concern about field experiment ethics because of their use of deception, cost on unknowing subjects, and potential harm to the democratic process (Landgrave, 2020;Whitfield, 2019).…”