I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at the LSE, where I teach seminars for Introduction to Political Science (GV101). I completed my PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence in September 2024, and hold an MPhil in European Politics from the University of Oxford. I was also a Fulbright Fellow at Stanford University.
My research explores the origins and persistence of meritocratic beliefs in the face of growing inequality and declining social mobility. I use experimental methods to investigate public attitudes toward fairness and inequality, including housing inequality (motivated in no small part by the mess that is London housing). My research on this topic combines survey and Twitter data to trace how attitudes about the fairness of the economic system respond to increasing visible wealth inequality.
A second strand of my work looks at how different types of narratives shape political behaviour. In two projects, I examine how 1) historical memory and 2) collective capacity shape democratic attitudes and policy preferences. With Ludwig Schulze (EUI) and Joe Kendall (ETH), I study how framing Germany’s past from a perpetrator versus victim perspective influences authoritarian attitudes and support for the AfD. With Giuliano Formisano (Oxford), I investigate how narratives of collective capacity affect collective efficacy, and in turn action towards inequality.
I have also launched and now convene the London Experimental Seminar Series, a workshop hosted at the LSE to promote methodological exchanges, foster a scholarly community, and strengthen research in this field.
Research interests:
- Public attitudes on fairness, inequality and redistribution
- Housing
- Experimental designs
- The politics of memory
- Narratives and their effects on political behaviour
Contact: a.clemente@lse.ac.uk
Papers:
Mind the Bricks: Fairness Beliefs and Local Housing Inequality in the UK
With Giuliano Formisano
Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5351109
Raising mortgage costs and rents across Western countries have increased the salience of housing among the public. While housing matters for the politics of redistribution as a form of wealth, its role in informing perceptions of the fairness of the economic system is understudied. As unaffordability increases, people may perceive that even playing by the rules of the economic system is not enough. A local context of wealth inequality, exposing the disparity of rewards, may make salient the sharp differences between winners and losers. This is compounded by the uneven housing supply, which is mainly targeted to the winners of globalisation, changing the character of areas. We focus on inequality linked to housing prices as an example of wealth acquired through mechanisms of accumulation based on booming property prices, disconnected from individual effort. We study whether individuals in places where inequality has increased the most see inequality as unfair and demand more redistribution. We find this is the case in the British context, using survey data and supervised machine learning methods on Twitter data. Where the Gini of housing prices has increased the most, individuals are more likely to advocate for fairness when discussing economic issues. This shows housing matters not only on a material level, but also for structuring beliefs in the fairness of the economic system.
Caring about inequality: Income shocks and changes in meritocratic beliefs
After economic shocks, we expect increases in demand for redistribution. Prominent explanations include desire for insurance and compensation or a revaluation of the fairness of the economy (Margalit, 2019). Inequity aversion (the dislike for unequal outcomes) has not been properly addressed as a potential mechanism. I propose that during adverse economic circumstances individuals become more sensitive to overall levels of inequality, independently of how inequality was achieved. Simply put, merit matters less in justifying unequal outcomes after an economic shock. I test this through a survey experiment conducted in the UK and in the US. The study disentangles change driven by learning from inequity aversion. Among British participants, the shock increases redistribution by acting on inequity aversion rather than updated priors. A randomised prime, connecting the experimental loss to the real world, activates the effect of the shock. Results indicate support for meritocracy may not be as stable as assumed.
The scale of fairness: examining preferences for competing egalitarian and meritocratic narratives
Lack of redistribution in the American context is often attributed to Americans’ propensity to think of individual mobility out of poverty as determined by the presence of opportunity rather than welfare assistance (McCall, 2013). This belief, however, is at least partly informed by how parties talk about these issues. Despite deep divisions between parties, the discourse on meritocracy and equality of opportunity is consensual, so that voters are not presented with competing interpretations of equality. Does the success of meritocratic narratives depend on the absence of competitive alternatives or rather on them being read as more convincing and closer to one’s own experience? This study tests the persuasiveness of competing narratives related to equality of opportunity and sufficiency of outcomes. Results reveal that the description of meritocracy as the prevailing American ethos is unjustified, and that a small majority prefers egalitarian narratives.
Victims of Amnesia? World War II Memories and Authoritarian Attitudes in Germany
with Ludwig Schulze (EUI) and Joe Kendall (ETH)
How do narratives of guilt and victimhood affect how groups interpret the past, and engage with the present? Whilst guilt can lead to efforts to atone for past wrongs, it can also backlash against framings of the ingroup as perpetrators. By contrast, victimhood narratives can engender compassion, but can also provoke competitive victimhood, reducing moral responsibility and opening the path to revisionist political actors. To disentangle these dynamics, we ran a survey experiment with 3,296 German respondents, who are randomly assigned to recall family memories of World War II through a perpetrator frame, a victim frame, or a neutral placebo. We examine effects on remembrance norms, democratic attitudes, and partisan affect. Contrary to expectations of guilt fatigue, perpetrator primes do not trigger backlash. Instead, they reinforce support for inclusive commemoration and reduce preference for strongman leadership. In East Germany, they also shift respondents away from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). On the other hand, in West Germany victim primes increase support for the party. Our findings suggest that in contexts where historical responsibility has been institutionalized, confronting perpetration strengthens democratic commitments. Yet, even well-established memory regimes remain vulnerable to victimhood narratives that can be mobilized by far-right actors.
Work in Progress:
- From Concern to Action? How Collective Efficacy Shapes Attitudes Toward Inequality, funded by the IPZ Inequality Research Fund (€6500), invited at EPSA 2026, APSA 2026
- How Social Norms Shape Attitudes Toward Foreign Conflict: Evidence from Germany, with Ludwig Schulze and Joe Kendall, invited at EPSA 2026
- Was it the American Dream all along? Understanding 100 years of meritocratic rhetoric, with Simone Abbiati, invited at APSA 2024
- Stigmatization Fatigue: Evidence from the F-word, with Riccardo Di Leo, Elias Dinas, and Biljana Meiske, invited at EPSA 2026
