Gaetano Inglese, PhD Candidate

Journal articles

article Green, J., Grant, Z., Evans, G., & Inglese, G. (2025). Linking artificial intelligence job exposure to expectations: Understanding AI losers, winners, and their political preferences. Research & Politics, 12(2).

Policy reports

report Green, J., Evans, G., Grant, Z., Inglese, G., & Seibert, L. (2025). Mid-life economic crisis: The electoral and policy importance of economic insecurity among middle-aged adults. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

report Bressanelli, E., Di Palma, A., Inglese, G., Marini, S., & Repetto, E. (2020). Institutions and Foreign Interferences. European Parliament Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs, 2020/6.

Book chapters

Vesan, P., & Inglese, G. (2023). Gli intellettuali e il policy advising: Un rapporto complesso. In R. Calvo (Ed.), Sapere e Pensiero Critico. Giappichelli Editore.

Inglese, G. (2018). Populismo in democrazia. In Sini, L. & Andretta, M. (Eds.), Populismi, Nuove Destre e Nuovi Partiti. Pisa University Press, pp. 19–34.

Book reviews

Inglese, G. (2020). Review of Giugni, M. & Grasso, M. T. (2019) Street Citizens. Cambridge University Press. PArtecipazione e COnflitto, 13(1), 954–969.

PhD Dissertation

Disappointed Winners. The Political Consequences of AI-driven Employment Threats Among University Graduates
Best Paper Prize, CIVICA EU Conference on Political Behaviour, CEU 2025
IBEI AI & Politics Workshop 2025 slides

Abstract

What are the political effects of generative artificial intelligence among highly educated workers? Graduates have largely remained on the winning side of technological change, but generative AI now exposes them to vulnerability. Exploiting the release of ChatGPT in the United Kingdom as a quasi-exogenous shock for graduate labour market entrants and drawing on UK panel data and two original surveys, this study shows that generative AI disrupts the meritocratic link between fields of study and expected career returns. Unlike earlier automation waves that created material losers, exposed graduates become disappointed winners: they perceive the market as unfair and withdraw support from the mainstream left without supporting more redistribution. When skills-specific fields constrain adaptability to a changed labour market, support for redistribution intensifies, and voting intentions shift toward the challenger left. These findings show how generative AI fractures the graduate bloc, recasting how technological change generates political backlash in advanced democracies.

Local House Price Increase and Renters' Political Preferences in the United Kingdom
APSA 2025 slides

Abstract

How do house prices shape private renters' political behaviour? Housing unaffordability increasingly deepens political divides across advanced democracies. While benefiting homeowners through asset appreciation, it closes off the path to homeownership for many private renters. Yet the latter's political response remains poorly understood. This paper argues that when price growth closes off future homeownership, it triggers economic insecurity, heightening demand for redistribution and state intervention, but also hardened hostility toward migrants seen as competitors for welfare resources. Focusing on the United Kingdom, the paper builds a Bartik-style shift-share instrument that combines local housing-stock composition with regional price changes by property type, and identifies the causal effect of local housing appreciation using 25 waves of BES panel data. The findings show that appreciation boosts both redistributive demand and hostility toward immigration, pushing renters away from the Conservative Party and toward both Labour and the radical right. Private renters therefore appear as a cross-pressured political group that plays a crucial role in party competition in rich democracies.

Unmet Expectations and Attitudes toward the Role of Government. The Long-term Effects of Early Labour Market Experiences
EPSA 2024 slides

Abstract

Labour market entrants in advanced democracies increasingly face a mismatch between their expected income and what they actually earn, given diminishing returns to education. What are the political consequences of this gap? The paper argues that income expectations formed in early adulthood create a benchmark against which individuals judge realised earnings, and that falling short shapes attitudes toward the state's economic role over the life course. Focusing on the United Kingdom and using 30 waves of panel data, the paper shows that the gap between expectations and realised earnings during formative years strongly and durably predicts support for economic interventionism. This effect is primarily associated with perceptions of market unfairness rather than material self-interest, and is concentrated among the highly educated and those from privileged class backgrounds. The findings suggest that early economic disappointment fuels demand for a pre-distributive, rather than redistributive, role of the state in the economy.

Other Projects

Remote Work, Housing Constraints, and the Politics of Local Backlash
with Christos Makridis

Summary

The project examines the political consequences of the rise of remote and hybrid work arrangements in advanced economies. In recent years — and especially following the COVID-19 pandemic — remote work has become an increasingly important feature of labour markets, particularly among highly educated white-collar workers. By weakening the traditional link between the workplace and residence, remote work reshapes mobility patterns, housing demand, and local consumption. The project argues that these transformations generate new forms of local political conflict. In some areas, remote work increases demand for housing and local amenities, contributing to rising rents, gentrification pressures, and perceptions of displacement among long-term residents. In others, remote-capable residents can relocate while retaining access to high-income labour markets, creating new inequalities between geographically mobile and place-bound populations.

Masculinity, Economic Insecurity, and Support for the Far-Right
with Philipp Heyna and Djordje Milosav

Summary

Recent evidence suggests that support for far-right parties is growing among young men across Western democracies. While existing research addresses far-right support among middle-aged and older men, explanations for its growing appeal among younger men remain limited. Economic accounts stress gendered insecurity and status decline, while cultural approaches highlight backlash against changing gender norms. However, we know little about whether and how these processes interact. This paper proposes and tests a new theoretical framework that integrates economic insecurity, masculinity, and support for the far-right. We argue that conservative young men hold expectations of upward mobility in line with traditional gender norms. When economic insecurity undermines these expectations, it threatens masculine identity by generating a mismatch between the idealised provider role and their perceived ability to fulfil it. In response, young men adopt both externalized, aggressive strategies, such as hostile sexism and far-right support and internalized, defensive strategies, such as rejecting their own provider role. We test this argument using observational causal evidence and a survey experiment. Our findings advance understanding of the drivers of youth support for the far right and inform strategies to safeguard democratic stability.

Merit in the Age of AI: Does AI Change What We Think Workers Deserve?
with Cesar Fuster Llamazares

Public Attitudes Towards University Education
with Luis Cornago-Bonal

Graduate Teaching Assistant, LSE Government

GV264 Politics and Institutions in Europe
AY 2024–25, full unit; AY 2025–26, full unit; AY 2026-27, full unit. Best evaluation: 4.7/5. Evaluations
GV251 Government, Politics and Public Policy of the European Union
AY 2024–25, full unit; AY 2026-27, full unit. Best evaluation: 4.5/5 Evaluations

I am interested in understanding the political consequences of economic disappointment in advanced knowledge economies, and why this matters for the future of our democracies. I explore three key areas: falling income returns to education, the rise of artificial intelligence, and housing. In my work, I use individual-level panel surveys, administrative data, and survey experiments in causal inference designs to analyse how shocks to economic expectations foster perceptions of unfairness and political dealignment. My research shows that younger cohorts are particularly sensitive to disruptions in future prospects, with important long-term implications for the stability of European democracies.

I am an affiliate of Nuffield College (University of Oxford) and a Research Assistant at the Nuffield Politics Research Centre. I am also affiliated with the LSE Data Science Institute and serve as LSE representative to the European Graduate Network. Currently, I am visiting the University of Zurich, hosted by Thomas Kurer.

I hold a BSc in Political Science from the University of Pisa and an MA from the University of Florence, where I was an honours student at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the Scuola Normale Superiore. I also hold an MSc in Comparative Politics from the LSE, funded by the Ermenegildo Zegna Founder’s Scholarship.
Previously, I was a Blue Book Trainee at the European Commission’s DG CNECT.
More details in my CV.

Gaetano Inglese

Publications ›

Journal articles

Policy reports

Book chapters

Book reviews

Work in Progress ›

PhD Dissertation

Other Projects

Teaching ›

Graduate Teaching Assistant, LSE Government

More About Me ›