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Gaetano Inglese

PhD Candidate
Department of Government

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About

About

My research interests lie at the intersection between political behaviour and political economy. I use causal inference methods to study the impact of declining income returns to education, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and housing unaffordability on people’s support for the market system and government intervention in the economy. I show that these processes erode trust in meritocracy and foster political disaffection. I have taught course on Comparative European Politics and the Politics of the European Union. I also work as research assistant the Nuffield Politics Research Centre at the University of Oxford. I aim to expand this research agenda studying how economic insecurity shifts young people’s support for liberal democracy.

Essays on the Politics of Unmet Expectations

My thesis examines how deteriorating economic expectations shape political behaviour, with particular attention to young and highly educated citizens in advanced capitalist democracies. Moving beyond classical models of material self-interest, my work highlights the relevance of future expectations, and it explores what happens when expectations fail to materialize. My thesis zooms into three structural transformations: (1) declining income returns to education, (2) the labour-market impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and (3) the growing unaffordability of housing. It argues that the growing gap between expectations and reality generates perceptions of insecurity and systemic unfairness, eroding belief in meritocratic principles and fostering resentment against mainstream politics.

From Aspiration to Disillusion? The Political Consequences of AI-driven Employment Threats

The expansion of higher education in knowledge economies has fostered the belief that investment in education brings economic rewards and enhances security. However, the fast-growing advancements in Artificial Intelligence are transforming highly skilled sectors, fuelling perceptions of risk and uncertainty among highly educated workers. What are the political implications of this new trend? This paper examines whether AI-driven threats to graduates' employability erode their faith in the meritocratic system, leading to shifts in economic preferences and voting intentions. The paper builds on a dataset linking individual-level surveys and administrative data on online job vacancies in the United Kingdom with novel indices of occupational exposure to AI. Leveraging the introduction of ChatGPT in December 2022, the paper demonstrates how AI causally affects the employability of graduates across different fields of higher education. Negative shifts alter individuals' fairness beliefs, shift ideological self-placement to the left and drive anti-incumbent voting intentions. The study importantly underscores how AI is likely to influence the political views and behaviours of the young and highly educated, suggesting important and long-lasting political repercussions for the politics of knowledge economies.