Professor Sergei Guriev, Dean of London Business School, discusses his research, Political Information and Network Effects, which explores why political campaigns can sometimes produce outcomes contrary to their original intentions.

Professor Sergei Guriev, Dean of London Business School, presents groundbreaking research on how political information campaigns can unexpectedly backfire through social network effects. Drawing on a randomized controlled trial during Argentina’s 2023 presidential election, his work shows that a leaflet campaign criticizing Javier Milei’s education voucher proposal successfully reduced his support among directly treated voters, yet simultaneously increased support among untreated voters in the same precinct, leading to a net boost for Milei overall, exactly the opposite of what campaigners intended. Dr. Guriev and his co-authors explain this using the idea of a “vocal minority effect”, where a smaller group of outraged, unconvinced individuals becomes highly motivated to spread their views, overshadowing the quieter convinced majority through asymmetric communication in their social networks. The research highlights that campaigns only shift opinions when they provide genuinely new information, and that failing to account for heterogeneous reactions and spillover effects can turn apparently successful interventions into large-scale failures.

Beyond elections, Prof. Guriev emphasizes that the same dynamics apply to corporate communication, organizational change, and policy rollouts, where ignoring vocal skeptics and informal networks can trigger backlash against otherwise well-designed proposals.

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