Riccardo Di Leo

Riccardo Di Leo is a Post-doctoral Fellow in Political Sciences in the Social Sciences Department at the Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. He is also a member of the Carlos III - Juan March Institute. His research focuses on the study of public opinion, with applications to the civil-military gap, terrorism in Western countries, and historical legacies. Two of his current projects investigate the increased "tribalization" of Western politics, and some among its several determinants. His work titled "Terrorism, perpetrators and polarization: Evidence from natural experiments" studies the impact of Islamic and far-right terrorism on affective polarization in the United Kingdom. While exposure to the latter appears to decrease affective polarization, the opposite holds true for the latter, which activates a public debate over contentious, divisive issues. A second, ongoing project addresses the question of whether schooling can help citizens holding accurate beliefs about politically-relevant facts, namely, immigration and unemployment. Figuring out interventions that mitigate political misperceptions is in fact fundamental to preserve democratic representation, accountability and legislation. Boosting educational attainment, in itself, is unlikely to produce any result, in the absence of a serious intervention on the socioeconomic determinants of early school dropouts, and on the stratification that education produces later in life.

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