Political Studies

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Abstract Regime legitimacy and survival rely on citizens’ consent to election results, even when these results are unfavorable. Theories posit that individuals with pro-democratic attitudes are more accepting of electoral losses. We test this assumption by analyzing the empirical relationship between support for democratic principles, such as universal suffrage, and electoral consent to randomly generated, hypothetical but plausible electoral outcomes. Using data from a representative sample of Germans, we find a negative correlation between the two variables. Furthermore, those with the strongest democratic convictions are those most influenced in their consent by partisan preferences. Part of the explanation stems from reactions to the far-right, anti-democratic party Alternative for Germany, as many respondents strongly dislike this party and are unwilling to consent to outcomes in which it performs well. However, even among other respondents, democratic support does not correlate positively with losers’ consent.
Abstract As Western democracies become increasingly diverse, political influence often depends on effective alliances and solidarity that cut across group boundaries. While the intergroup solidarity literature points to shared grievances as a central driver, it remains unclear exactly what kind of grievance information promotes political solidarity between which groups. To test this, we conducted a survey experiment in the United Kingdom among respondents from three distinct groups: migrants from Eastern Europe, migrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and natives. The treatments vary based on which immigrant group is described as experiencing discrimination, making potentially shared group grievances salient. We find that discrimination information increases support for prospective MENA immigrants among migrants from Eastern Europe, but not vice versa, and we find no effects among UK natives. Moreover, discrimination information is more effective among migrants without British citizenship. Importantly, discrimination information may not uniformly foster political solidarity or interest alignment across all population groups.
Abstract As democracies grow more diverse through immigration, a key question arises: when should immigrants participate in political decision-making? We examine citizens’ beliefs about when immigrants should vote in national elections (before citizenship, with citizenship, or never) and whether these views depend on immigrants’ integration markers. We assess how exclusionary worldviews and psychological predispositions—authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (SDO), and ethnocentrism—shape views of democratic membership and how malleable those views are. Using 2021 survey data from Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that integration criteria matter most to those who view citizenship as the primary gateway to political inclusion. High levels of SDO and ethnocentrism are associated with exclusionary preferences, though integration efforts reduce resistance among individuals high in SDO. Authoritarian-leaning individuals are simultaneously more willing to include immigrants pre-naturalization and more likely to support permanent exclusion. These findings highlight the conditional nature of political inclusion in diverse democracies.
Abstract Political stereotypes—beliefs about the attributes of politically defined groups—can deepen polarization by obscuring commonalities among citizens. Yet little is known about their nature outside the United States. Using open-ended survey responses from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland (N = 5381), we analyze how citizens describe political adversaries in their own words—focusing on issues, social groups, and traits. Combining deductive and inductive coding, we uncover both cross-national patterns and context-specific dynamics. Our content analysis shows that issue- and trait-based stereotypes dominate, but boundaries between categories are blurred. Respondents often conflate politicians and voters, use group labels to suggest traits or views (and vice versa), and deploy trait language to express moral condemnation. These tendencies vary by country, reflecting salient debates and historical cleavages. Our findings suggest treating political stereotypes as webs of associations that go beyond discrete categories, with implications for the comparative study of stereotypes and polarization.
Abstract Trust in civil servants is essential for effective governance, enabling policy implementation, public service delivery, and compliance. However, the lack of comparable cross-national data on trust in bureaucracy has limited our ability to systematically examine these relationships. To address this gap, we develop the Trust in Civil Servants (TCS) dataset with an advanced latent-variable modeling technique, using 123 national and cross-national surveys from 98 countries (1986–2022). Our measures reveal variations in trust both within and between countries. We find that economic performance and public security enhance trust in the short term, whereas government quality and effectiveness have more enduring, long-term impacts on trust in civil service. The TCS dataset opens new avenues for examining connections between trust, governance quality, and complex policy challenges across different contexts.
Abstract In many parliamentary democracies, incumbents can call early elections. This is thought to provide incumbent governments with an advantage due to the ability to time elections to favorable economic conditions. This article explores an additional incumbency advantage of early elections. Due to information asymmetry about election timing, government parties can better plan fundraising and campaign spending in early elections years compared to nongovernment parties giving government parties a relative financial advantage. This argument is tested on campaign-spending data from British parliamentary candidates 1950–2019. The results supports the argument. Government party candidates gain a relative financial advantage in early elections years compared to scheduled election years. The effect is found only for non-incumbent candidates and may have been eliminated by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, which removed government election-calling power. The results suggest that government election-calling power provides incumbent parties with a relative financial advantage.
Abstract The ‘directional’ definition of negative campaigning (i.e. when candidates leverage critiques against their political opponents) has been criticized for lacking reliability and validity. Does this critical assessment resist scrutiny? We propose, via nine different original studies, a full-scale reassessment of this critical assessment. Building on novel evidence from sources as disparate as expert ratings of elections across the world, automated and manual coding of social media posts, candidate self-ratings, cross-sectional surveys, experimental evidence, and more, we provide a much less pessimistic outlook. The evidence discussed in the nine studies showcases high levels of (self-)observer agreement (i.e. different people evaluate the same phenomenon similarly), situational consistency (evaluations are stable across time and space), convergent validity (different independent measures of the same phenomenon are strongly correlated), construct validity (measures can be used to provide empirical support for theoretically cogent hypotheses), and discriminant validity (proximate phenomena are perceived differently). The directional measure of campaign negativity is not perfect, but it is very much alive and kicking. The data and materials for all nine studies are open for replication and re-analysis.
"Abstract Across diverse policy domains, there is broad concern about whether trust in science and expertise has eroded during the past decade. Using quota-based surveys with over 7,500 respondents across five countries and preregistered vignette experiments, we investigate what persuades populists and non-populists to accept expert advice. We find first that populism is associated with less willingness to accept expert advice, yet with variation between countries and topics. Second, we find both populists and non-populists are similarly impacted by stronger arguments. Finally, we show that populists are more likely to judge advice as poorly reasoned and perceive it as politically biased. A mediation analysis showed that the relationship between populism and advice acceptance was nearly completely mediated by these judgments. Our study indicates that populists not only listen to expertise but also respond to the same qualities of expert advice as others, even if their skepticism is higher."
"Abstract Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Answering these questions requires valid conceptualization and reliable measures of democratic resilience. This study presents a novel conceptualization and measurements of democratic resilience. It differentiates between democratic resilience as regime performance and regime capacity and introduces the Democratic Resilience Capacity Index. The index is the first and only measure available to empirically compare the ability of democracies to become or to remain resilient. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach for empirical research through an exploratory study of 103 democracies since 2000. We find that resilience capacity strengthens the ability of a democracy to prevent a substantial loss of its democratic qualities and regime breakdown, but not its ability to recover from autocratization. This suggests that different forms of democratic resilience, though temporally connected, depend on different forms or combinations of resilience capacities."
"Abstract Populism and affective polarization speak of a bisected society, and scholars have linked them at the party level. While the relationship between populism and affective polarization can be reciprocal, this article leverages panel data to delve into the causal relationship between populism and affective polarization. First, I posit individuals who become identified with populist parties will hold higher levels of affective polarization. Second, I expect increases in levels of populist attitudes to heighten affective polarization, and this is explained by both the increase of affect towards the ingroup and the decrease of affect towards the outgroup. Using nine waves of a panel survey, results show the importance of differentiating between measures of populism at the individual level, as the increase in populist attitudes appears to fuel affective polarization, symmetrically increasing affect towards the ingroup and decreasing affect towards the outgroup, while the effect of becoming a populist party supporter is more nuanced, as it is different for populist left and right parties."
"Abstract Previous studies have extensively demonstrated that young people vote less than older ones. However, the magnitude of this age-related gap varies across different contexts: While in some countries, the gap is remarkable and increasing over time, in others, it is quite modest, and it has remained constant. This article investigates some of the factors that might explain this variability. In particular, it examines the impact of different types of representation (descriptive and substantive) on the age-related gap in turnout. It does so by relying on a dataset that combines individual-level data with information concerning the age composition of national parliaments and party system emphasis on specific issues. Overall, the dataset covers 57 elections and 19 West European countries. Results show that when young people are descriptively represented, the age-related gap in turnout is significantly reduced. The same effect occurs when party systems place relatively more emphasis on postmaterialist issues."
"Abstract Since 2001, studies of (counter)terrorism and (counter)radicalisation have burgeoned. However, at times, these literatures have reduced the agency of ordinary citizens, imagining them as ‘actors of the state’ and ‘petty sovereigns’. By integrating vernacular security approaches with allied research in Education, we develop a novel ontological conceptualisation of ordinary citizens as ‘enactors of the state’, engaged in the everyday coproduction of security. The article presents the findings of a survey, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, conducted in Manchester’s Further Education sector, following the 2017 Arena attack. We capture the security enactments of 95 elites, professionals, teachers, and students. Our data reveal the complex interactions, ensembles, and assemblages at the heart of security’s everyday coproduction. In contrast to existing approaches, we show how this creative dynamic operates through citizens’ variegated imbrications with state policy, complex relationalities, and subtle nuances in everyday enactment."
"Abstract The months around the US 2020 presidential election were characterized by polarization, populism, conspiracy theories, and violent acts, far exceeding usual out-party animosity in western democracies. Using an original two-wave panel survey fielded before the election in November 2020 (n = 3111) and after the inauguration in January 2021 (n = 3384), supported with data from the American National Election Study (ANES, n = 3080), we investigate the dynamics of political violence justification and its connection with populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs. While we find that conspiracy beliefs are associated with higher justification of violence, the relationship with populist attitudes is mixed, and mostly depends on whether people believe in conspiracy theories or not—with populist attitudes being associated with greater political violence justification among those who believe conspiracy theories, while having no or even a negative correlation among those who do not. Finally, results from fixed-effects models provide some evidence for a temporal interpretation of the relationships, indicating that an increase in conspiracy beliefs is strongly and consistently associated with an increased willingness to justify violence."
Abstract We explore the characteristics of politicians that make them trusted by citizens, fielding conjoint survey experiments in seven democracies. Studies regularly indicate that competence and integrity are key attributes in the perceived trustworthiness of politicians, but we show that displaying authenticity is also important. Authenticity is about being true to oneself, and in the political context this requires politicians to appear unlike typical politicians and more like ordinary people. We find that some attributes associated with authenticity are as important as competence and integrity, and they appear to be especially important to citizens with lower levels of generalized political trust. These findings suggest that considerations of politicians being ‘in touch with ordinary people’ can matter just as much as more traditional judgements of their honesty and ability to produce outcomes. This has implications for our understanding of political leadership as well as for trust-building strategies.
Abstract Research on far-right parties has mostly focused on Western Europe, where anti-immigration agendas and related nativist ideas have played a major role in right-wing radicalization. In this article, we analyze the rise of the far right in Latin America, a region where immigration has been much less prominent in public debates. Drawing on the 2020 Chapell Hill Expert Survey, we propose to assess the extent to which Latin American far-right parties fit existing conceptualizations that identify nativism and authoritarianism as the core characteristics of this party family. Given the relative unimportance of nativism as a distinguishing feature of cases of right-wing extremism/radicalism in the region, we propose a more parsimonious conceptualization of the far right. We also develop a typological classification and find that authoritarian-fundamentalist parties that embrace an extreme form of religious conservatism are the most common subtype of far-right party in Latin America.
Abstract Previous research has found that attending university results in an individual being more socially liberal and less racially prejudiced, accounting for a variety of alternative explanations. Yet what is it about university that induces this change in political values? This is the question this article addresses, by investigating three variations in university experience – degree subject, geographic mobility and change in social context – through analysis of a British cohort study linked to Census data. Using panel estimation methods, it finds that graduates of arts, humanities and social science subjects become more socially liberal than those studying other subjects, even when accounting for institutional variation, mobility, contextual effects and time-invariant confounding. It therefore makes the case that the effect of university on political values should be considered in part a learning effect: whereby disciplines affect individuals’ worldviews during the ‘impressionable years’.
Abstract Why did Australia border earlier than most other states in response to the outbreak of COVID-19? Between mid-January and March 2020, the Australian government adopted increasingly restrictive travel bans that led to the country closing its borders to all non-residents, adopting mandatory hotel quarantines for 14 days and a travel ban on Australians travelling overseas. These actions were in contravention of the World Health Organization advice to states on travel restrictions. Australia’s border closure was one of the strictest and, ultimately, longest in the world. In this article, we complement existing explanations on bordering that include critical border studies, securitization and bio/necropolitics with theoretical approaches from public policy literature to examine the domestic conditions that inform border closure policies and practices. We demonstrate that the decision to border, in this case, was not a rejection of World Health Organization advice but a turn towards the domestic pull factors – including domestic expert advice – to border.
Abstract Does variation in local economic environments help explain why some areas exhibit systematically higher support for radical-right parties? To address this question, I focus on two drivers related to the type of industry where individuals work and socially interact. First, in contrast to knowledge-based industries, labour-intensive industries are characterised by a clustering of individuals with high job vulnerability and low education. Second, when they coincide spatially, these two socioeconomic characteristics give rise to nativist preferences and exclusionary attitudes, which drive support for radical-right parties. I test these claims with two empirical strategies. In geographical municipal-level data from Spain, I confirm that support for radical-right parties is determined by exposure to labour-intensive activities such as certain sectors of agriculture and tourism. In addition, survey data from 17 European democracies confirm that working in labour-intensive industries boosts the roles of job vulnerability and education in developing and expressing exclusionary political behaviours.
Abstract Authoritarian legislatures are often portrayed as “rubber stamps” that merely formalize predetermined decisions. Yet growing evidence suggests that they can influence policy through deliberation and bill modification. This study investigates legislative modification in China’s National People’s Congress. Drawing on an original dataset of 133 bill–law pairs enacted between 2008 and 2023, we employ an improved minimum edit-distance algorithm to quantify textual change and identify conditions that generate more extensive modification. Results reveal that Congress has become proactive in shaping legislative outcomes. Party attention and public concern significantly amplify modification, whereas bureaucratic fragmentation constrains it. A qualitative case study of the Food Safety Law illustrates how bureaucratic competition creates drafting ambiguity, while public concern weakens departmental interests and facilitates consensus. These findings demonstrate that bill modification functions as a mechanism of controlled coordination that reconciles party priorities, societal pressures, and bureaucratic fragmentation within a centralized authoritarian policymaking system.
Abstract How do collective memories of war shape inter-group social attitudes in post-conflict societies? Can the legacy of wartime violence hinder reconciliation for years or even decades after the conflict ends? While prior research shows that war memories influence a range of political processes and outcomes, their effects on how members of formerly opposing groups perceive one another remain underexplored. To address this gap, I conducted a survey experiment in post-war Bosnia, investigating whether the activation of these memories affects hostility toward out-groups. The results show that making war memories salient intensifies hostility, especially among individuals who personally experienced violence during the war. These findings suggest that deeply ingrained war memories pose a significant barrier to reconciliation, but their impact may gradually diminish through the generational replacement of the wartime population.
Abstract Despite strong support for democratic ideals, citizens are often not democratically active, a situation Dahl described as the ‘Democratic Paradox’. This paradox remains relevant, as many express a desire for more citizen involvement in decision-making processes, yet actual participation falls short of ideals. Understanding the gap between citizens’ democratic ideals and their actual participation is essential to addressing declining civic engagement. This paper examines the discrepancy between citizens’ decision-making preferences and their actual and intended participation in democratic innovations by analysing survey data from over 27,000 European respondents. The findings reveal that, while citizens generally support the notion of greater civic influence, those who favour direct democracy are not the most participatory. Instead, clusters with technocratic or politician-averse views demonstrate higher engagement levels. These findings highlight a paradox where people who normatively endorse greater influence by ordinary citizens simultaneously show limited willingness to exercise such influence, posing significant democratic challenges.
Abstract Prefigurative organisations that practice democratic, community-oriented and environmentally sustainable ways of organising are a crucial component of any political strategy that aims to transcend capitalism. However, since capitalism is the dominant economic system, prefigurative initiatives often remain limited to marginal spaces of the economy and society and are vulnerable to the encroachment of capitalist values, practices and logics. Therefore, prefigurative practices face a central problem: how to move beyond capitalism from within capitalism? This article presents one potential answer: prefigurative initiatives should strategically use the capitalist state to advance their aims and resist capitalist encroachment, thereby building futures beyond capitalism from inside of capitalism. The argument draws on a case study of the Scottish social enterprise to demonstrate how this can be done in practice. The article theorises three interrelated yet distinct strategies of resistance: a strategy of co-production, a strategy of institutionalisation and a strategy of withdrawal, on which prefigurative initiatives can draw when strategically interacting with the capitalist state. This article goes beyond anarchist and autonomist understandings of prefiguration and contributes to an emerging body of scholarship that highlights the potential of mobilising the resources of the capitalist state for emancipatory ends.
Abstract Understanding when and why social cleavages shape electoral behaviour is a central concern in the study of democratic politics. While many accounts emphasise the long-term social changes, others point to the role of party strategy. We contribute to this debate by analysing the political evolution of one of the central cleavages of the twentieth century—class—in one of the world’s longest-standing democracies—Britain. Analysing a unique new dataset combining constituency-level results across 37 general elections from 1885 to 2024 with data from eight censuses, applying geospatial redistricting methods, we describe the rise, stability and eventual decline of class-based voting, showing that a strong class cleavage emerged in the early twentieth century, remained stable for decades, but then unravelled rapidly after the 1990s. These patterns are difficult to reconcile with theories that emphasise gradual social change and are more consistent with accounts that stress political agency and representation.
Abstract What structures voting behaviour under conditions of electoral and political constraints? The impact of authoritarian legacies from dictatorship on voting behaviour is well documented, but we know comparatively less about voting in constrained democracies. This study focuses on the 1963 and 1964 Greek legislative elections, analysing a novel archive of opinion polls. It contributes to the understanding of voting decisions and preference formation under democratic constraints, highlighting the role of the centrist vote in bringing about political and economic change in Greece. We show that political concerns linked to authoritarian practices and political repression were not the most prominent at these elections, but concerns over economic conditions, social welfare and education were. We demonstrate the role of age group, socio-economic stratification, newspaper readership and economic concerns for voting for the centre and left-wing parties. This indicates an emerging political realignment which can produce meaningful political change even in cases of constrained democracy.
Abstract Language is central to political representation, yet the role of dialects remains understudied. This study examines how dialects are associated with citizens’ feelings of and preferences for political representation. We argue that dialect use can be a part of social identity: politicians who share their constituents’ dialect may signal local attachment and social proximity. However, dialects also carry social stigma, potentially leading to underrepresentation in a political sphere dominated by standard language. Using original survey data from Germany, we test whether dialect-speaking citizens (1) feel less represented and (2) prefer politicians who speak a dialect. We find support for both: dialect speakers feel less represented and have stronger preferences for dialect-speaking representatives. These results suggest that dialects can serve as a subtle but meaningful form of descriptive representation. Our findings underscore the role of linguistic identity in political inclusion and call for greater attention to language in research on political behaviour.
Abstract Science and expertise are frequently invoked to legitimize policy decisions. However, while prior research suggests broad support for expert-led governance, it often overlooks how citizens differentiate between types of experts and how political beliefs shape these perceptions. This study examines how institutional affiliations of experts—universities, government, and think tanks—influence citizens’ perceptions of legitimacy in political decision-making. Drawing on two pre-registered factorial survey experiments embedded in a survey from Finland (N = 2546), we investigate (1) differences in how actors affect decision-making legitimacy, and (2) how these effects differ depending on the type of issue, outcome favourability and issue salience. Our results show that proposals involving university researchers frequently gain legitimacy, but the exact effects hinge on the type of issue, outcome favourability, and salience. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how citizens perceive the role of expertise in democratic governance.
Abstract Political parties expect youth wings to recruit and socialize young people into the norms and values of the party, nurturing aligned future grassroots members, officials, and candidates. However, embeddedness in youth wings – understood in terms of membership length and activity levels – may not necessarily deliver this. In our study, we examine whether youth wings nurture the members parties want using YOUMEM survey data from over 5000 members of 12 youth wings in six countries. Specifically, we assess whether embeddedness is associated with greater ideological alignment and desire for long-term party engagement. We find that active members are more ideologically aligned and inclined to remain in the party, while passive members display the opposite trend. However, length of membership is associated with reduced aspirations among all for intra-party and public office. Our findings suggest that the added value of youth wings as future-oriented socialization vehicles for parties is less than generally assumed.
Abstract Authoritarianism, populism, and radicalism are considered important risks to citizens’ support for democratic institutions. Most studies have so far analyzed varying combinations of these, making it difficult to understand the potentially damaging effects of either of these separately. Analyzing a survey of 14,000 British, French, German, and Italian citizens, I show that studying authoritarianism, populism, and radicalism together reveals important differences in citizens’ support for and understandings of democracy. Authoritarians do not support democracy. Populists support democracy as much as non-populists, while they are highly critical of its real-world implementation. Their open-ended responses refer less often to liberal democracy than those of other respondents. Radicalism in itself correlates little with citizens’ democratic attitudes. Importantly, findings differ for left- and right-wing radicals. These findings urge us not to overlook the harmful effects of authoritarianism. We should not underestimate the extent to which some citizens, in particular authoritarians, consciously reject liberal democracy.
Abstract How is internal migration related to political efficacy and participation in autocracies? Existing research emphasizes migration’s socioeconomic impact, given the staggering internal migration volume in developing countries, but pays inadequate attention to its relationship with politics. We argue that migrants are more likely to interact with the government and possess greater political efficacy than non-migrants. When migrants return home, they are motivated by higher political efficacy to participate more in politics than non-migrants. We test the theory using four nationally representative surveys in China from 2006 to 2014 and find that returning migrants are more confident in understanding and influencing politics. However, they vote less in elections and avoid challenging the government collectively. Exploratory analysis shows that the counterintuitive results arise because returning migrants shift from traditional political participation, like voting, to new means, like lodging complaints online. The relationship between migration and politics is contingent on the authoritarian context.
Abstract Political violence is on the rise in Western democracies. The increase in violence against political actors is alarming because it clashes with fundamental democratic values. Political violence is also concerning because it does not affect all politicians equally. Existing research has primarily focused on the demographic characteristics of targeted politicians, while largely overlooking ideological factors. Using candidate survey data from the 2021 German federal election, we show that the polarization of electoral districts, as well as party and candidate extremeness increase the likelihood that politicians report being victimized. This is the case both for physical attacks and property damage.
Abstract We argue political parties should select their parliamentary candidates by way of a lottery among their members. Alternatives such as party primaries, caucus votes, and elite selection create entry points for elite manipulation of the electoral process. While sortition for selecting parliaments directly has been said to control for elite capture, it is also likely to dissolve political parties and established voting blocs within parliament. This would undermine the democratic ideal of political parties, including their role in producing and implementing comprehensible legislative agendas. Sortition within parties, however, will not have that effect. Rather it promotes the democratic ideal by guarding against elite capture and stimulating internal deliberation in a feasible way. Voting will still weed out poor candidates in the general election. Party members should also be able to vote to retain successful lottery winners for subsequent elections to incentivize good performance and party discipline in parliament. We discuss the limited use of insaculación by the Mexican political party Morena as provisional evidence for the feasibility of our proposal.
Abstract This paper is concerned with a conundrum: the contention that the dead are dehumanized both through body counts and their absence. To understand this paradox we need to excavate who normatively speaking has a life that counts. I advance the idea of countability as a novel explanatory concept to name the general conditions of possibility, including the ordering of grievability, that underpins acts of counting. Among other things, orders of grievability regulate who enjoys ontological status as fully human. To be eligible for counting an embodied being must first be countable. Furthermore, body counts are performative. They have onto-political effects, organizing and facilitating, reflecting and reiterating, the differential valuation of human lives as well as the distribution of ontological possibilities. The failure or refusal to count has parallel onto-political effects. (De)humanization, however, is not just an issue of whether deaths are counted but, as shown here, how they are counted.
Abstract It is well established in political science that those who favour an election outcome tend to say it has a higher chance of success than those who oppose it. This tendency towards so-called ‘wishful thinking’ is often treated as a problem for democracy because it shows that voters are, as the term suggests, irrational. In this article, I make the case that partisan electoral expectations are significant not because they demonstrate widespread irrationality, but because they show how voters make sense of their role in democracies. I provide an alternative account of partisan electoral expectations as following a principle of electoral hope. On this account, partisan electoral expectations are rational in a practical, if not necessarily theoretical, sense.
Abstract How do people in authoritarian regimes adapt to external economic pressure? We examine how economic sanctions affect informal economic activity in North Korea. Using county-level data from 167 regions for the years 2016, 2018, and 2022, we find that informal economic activity significantly expanded in areas most affected by sanctions, particularly those reliant on heavy industry such as primary metals, machinery, and transportation. These bottom-up adaptations illustrate how citizens, rather than the state, absorb the shocks of international pressure. By tracing micro-level adjustments over time, our study sheds light on the uneven and indirect effects of sanctions in targeted countries. The findings highlight the need for more strategic, sector-sensitive sanction design and contribute to broader debates on the effectiveness of economic sanctions, authoritarian resilience, and economic coping mechanisms under constraint.
Abstract Violent extremist attacks pose a serious threat to democracy, undermining its institutions, norms and practices. This article examines the disruptive impact of violent extremism on the public sphere and considers the role of political leaders in responding to these challenges. Leaders are widely recognised as the key actors shaping the public discourse after extremist attacks, by either reinforcing or resisting the division intended by these attacks. Yet, their role in building democratic resilience – that is, fostering the public sphere’s ability to respond to extremist attacks without compromising its democratic commitments – remains underexplored. Drawing on a range of case studies, the article examines the spectrum of leaders’ responses to violent extremist attacks and their effects on democratic resilience. It identifes two distinct approaches to democratic resilience: ‘bouncing back’ by maintaining the status quo, or ‘bouncing forward’ by deepening democratic commitments. The article considers the implications of each approach and underscores the necessity of the latter in strengthening the public sphere and its deliberative capacity in the aftermath of extremist attacks.
Abstract This article examines how media framing of election results affects voter perceptions of election winners and losers. We conceive of media framing as equivalency framing because the very same election result can be framed positively or negatively. We expect direct effects on voter perceptions and additionally argue that ambivalent voters should be most affected by such framing in their evaluation of election results. We test these arguments with two pre-registered studies, namely, a survey experiment that employs fictional stimulus material and a two-wave panel survey linked to a news content analysis against the backdrop of the 2021 German Federal Election. The findings reveal framing effects on voter perceptions in fictional settings and conditional effects driven by partisan reasoning in real-world contexts. These findings provide an important mechanism for future research interested in the consequences of election outcomes for government legitimacy or political system support.
Abstract The contemporary surge in public demand and use of deliberative democracy coincides with an increasing number of parties using deliberation. Despite this growing appetite, we still do not know why political parties support deliberative democracy. This research note addresses this gap in the literature and aims to explain what drives parties’ support for deliberation. We analyze the manifestos belonging to 225 European parties that gained at least 1% of the votes in the national elections between 2019 and 2024. The results confirm the importance of left-wing ideology but bring novel insights according to which the presence in government, party newness and manifesto length increase support for deliberative democracy. Surprisingly, electoral support and populism have no effects.
Abstract In this article, we investigate what factors contribute to the divergence of people’s ideological inclinations in a post-socialist society. To this end, we analyze large-scale survey data from China to examine the relationship between the socialist past and individual ideological inclinations. The findings reveal a strong and direct association between people’s current political orientation and their formative-age lifeworld. Specifically, individuals who grew up in families within the Socialist Establishment exhibit significantly greater equality-oriented inclinations than their peers from families outside the Socialist Establishment, even long after the centrally planned economy was replaced by a market economy. In addition, we identify a gender-specific pattern that highlights the potential role of family socialization in transmitting the socialist legacy. We also find that individuals with families tied to the Socialist Establishment during their youth are more actively involved and supportive of the current Party-state. Overall, our findings suggest that centrally planned socialism may leave a lasting imprint on people’s ideological preferences in the post-socialist era.
Abstract The study identifies the typical political socialization trajectories leading to political parties in Hungary through an analysis of life history interviews with 40 young party members. These trajectories develop within a context where the decline and aging of party membership are not accompanied by a resurgence of civil society but rather by its exclusion from political decision-making processes and ongoing democratic backsliding. The findings underscore the significant influence of historical, social, and political contexts on the socialization routes leading to party-political participation, resulting in a more varied, fragmented, complex, and conflictual process compared to Western Europe. Distinct socialization pathways entail specific conflicts, with the persuasive power of party communities playing a crucial role in overcoming these challenges. This persuasive influence functions as an essential compensatory mechanism, particularly in Hungary and, arguably, in other contexts where the broader socialization environment does not actively promote political participation.
Abstract The mainstreaming of the far right is a defining feature of European politics, raising concerns that incorporating far right parties into democratic politics could lead to the normalisation of undemocratic ideas. This paper explores this contention in the case of Brothers of Italy, a radical right party with extreme right roots. Conceptualising mainstreaming as the result of moderation or normalisation, it assesses whether Brothers of Italy can facilitate the normalisation of undemocratic ideas. The analysis evaluates ideological, organisational and symbolic continuity and change between Brothers of Italy and its predecessors: the extreme right Italian Social Movement and the conservative National Alliance. Drawing on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of party programmes, the study finds limited ideological continuity, suggesting restricted potential for normalising extremism. However, continuity in party personnel and narratives highlights ongoing organisational and symbolic links, indicating that Brothers of Italy may still indirectly contribute to the normalisation of extremism.
Abstract Why are some democracies more resilient than others? How can their resilience be improved? Answering these questions requires valid conceptualization and reliable measures of democratic resilience. This study presents a novel conceptualization and measurements of democratic resilience. It differentiates between democratic resilience as regime performance and regime capacity and introduces the Democratic Resilience Capacity Index. The index is the first and only measure available to empirically compare the ability of democracies to become or to remain resilient. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach for empirical research through an exploratory study of 103 democracies since 2000. We find that resilience capacity strengthens the ability of a democracy to prevent a substantial loss of its democratic qualities and regime breakdown, but not its ability to recover from autocratization. This suggests that different forms of democratic resilience, though temporally connected, depend on different forms or combinations of resilience capacities.
Abstract Apocalyptic consciousness, which is now common in campaigns on climate change as well as in theological political movements, is often understood as incompatible with a commitment to democracy. However, in this article, I contest the straightforward opposition between the apocalypse and democracy. It is first argued that democratic anti-apocalypticism, whereby democratic processes are protected by encouraging people to abandon their apocalypticism, is not viable. Instead, what is required is a form of apocalyptic democracy, in which the two terms come together to the mutual benefit of both. To develop this claim, I focus on three political thinkers: Percy Bysshe Shelley, W. E. B. Du Bois and Roger Hallam. These theorists use the apocalypse to, on the one hand, identify the irredeemable corruptions of current political institutions and, on the other, posit new forms of democracy established through the struggles of people in the face of apocalyptic threats.
Abstract Scientists gained relevance and visibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, but how trust in scientists affected compliance with COVID-19 policy measures is understudied. This article asks to what extent trust in scientists influences (intended) compliance with COVID-19 vaccination policy and whether and how it acts as a mediator of the effects of cultural worldviews, partisanship, and ideology. Using data from the latest round of the European Social Survey, it applies multigroup path analysis to outline the mediating influence of trust in scientists in two countries differently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic: Italy and Switzerland. The results indicate that trust in scientists is related to (intended) compliance, but that there are cross-country differences in the explanatory models: While ideological and party-related influences on COVID-19 vaccine uptake become visible in Switzerland, cultural worldviews better explain the intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine in Italy.
Abstract How do citizens in autocracies respond to government-provided information? While scholars have explored various forms of information manipulation used by autocrats, we still know little about how the dissemination of government statistics affects public perceptions and behavior in everyday life. In a survey experiment conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kazakhstan, we investigate whether government-provided data and message influence citizens’ risk perceptions and behavioral intentions. After asking respondents to estimate the number of infections and deaths during the pandemic, we corrected their estimates using official statistics or exposed them to a message that optimistically interprets the statistics, with the information source randomly attributed either to the Kazakh government or the World Health Organization. Our findings suggest that government-provided information did not significantly alter respondents’ perceptions of the virus. These results indicate that citizens in autocracies may not always be decisively influenced by government information manipulation.
Abstract Analyses of the politics of defense spending have often assumed a guns–butter tradeoff that maps onto the standard left–right political spectrum, with dovish leftists favoring less military spending and hawkish rightists supporting more. But in Europe, plotting parties’ positions on military spending against their left–right position reveals almost nothing. To address this puzzle, I advance three arguments—first, that nationalism should be understood as a separate axis influencing defense spending preferences; second, that party positioning is conditioned by GDP; and third, that the USSR’s role as an external ideological pole played a key role in structuring left party positions on military spending. I use Manifesto Project data to test these hypotheses and find support for the third. In doing so, I shed light on the sources of party positioning in an under-analyzed issue space, and I offer evidence for the international order’s role in constituting the domestic one.
Abstract This article examines the relationship between crisis concerns and conspiracy-related and populist attitudes, viewed as facets of anti-establishment sentiment. Research shows that crises can trigger fear, uncertainty, and loss of control, making individuals more receptive to conspiracism and populism, as both provide simple explanations for complex problems. Yet most studies have treated ‘crisis’ as a uniform concept, whether linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the economy, or migration, overlooking how different crises may resonate differently with citizens. We refine this understanding by analysing concerns across five domains: Covid-19, the climate crisis, the immigration emergency, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the energy crisis, assessing their distinctive effects on three facets of anti-establishment attitudes. Drawing on survey data from seven European countries, our findings reveal variation in perceptions of different crises and their associations with conspiracism and populism. Since not all crises are equally associated with the spread of anti-establishment attitudes, this nuanced analysis highlights the need for more tailored approaches to understanding crises and their political consequences.
Abstract In recent decades, numerous welfare states have implemented in-work benefits to ‘make work pay’ and tackle in-work poverty. To explain the adoption and institutionalisation of this instrument, studies tend to emphasise either socio-political demand or ideational influences as motivators of policy decisions. However, the relative importance of these causal logics, and the relationship between them, remains ambiguous. To advance this debate, this article examines in-work benefit reforms in two welfare states: France and the United Kingdom. Examining reforms from the late 1990s to the 2010s, findings suggest that policy change and convergence were driven by an ideational rather than a demand-based logic. Reforms were more strongly motivated by the shared interpretive frameworks of policymakers and their instrumental use of ideas (ideational power) rather than the demands of voters and organised interests. This finding on the specific drivers of in-work benefits contributes wider insights into the roles of ideas in public policy.
Abstract We know surprisingly little about when and how governments respond with policy change to the public’s opinions expressed on social media. Even studies of autocracies like China – the focus of much social media research – have concentrated on single cases or events. This article, based on a mixed method analysis of Chinese social media and policy datasets for the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic, is the first to explore in depth when and how the public’s attention to an issue on social media can influence policy. We show that the government did sometimes respond with a change in policy to an issue of high relative salience on social media. Through qualitative comparative analysis of policy change cases, we find that change was more likely when it aligned with existing policies or priorities, was narrowly targeted, low cost and required little bureaucratic coordination. Government policy responsiveness exists in authoritarian contexts but is strategic.
Abstract State policies are state efforts to shape its relationship with society and maintain the political order. In this process, the interpretive effect of information is an important mechanism. However, the key question remains: what information is the state communicating through its policies? Previous studies on policy contents and policy discourses have offered valuable insights for this question, but have not fully explored the state’s symbolic logic. Discursive practice theory suggests that policies are state self-presentation actions, through which the state builds its identity and its relationship with society. A critical discourse analysis of China’s anti-corruption policies indicates that the state systematically employs problem-definition, solution-selection, implementation-decision, and outcome-evaluation discourses, to present itself as (1) a tenacious defender of public interests, (2) a rational responder to tough problems, (3) a powerful warrior against stubborn enemies, and (4) a progressive achiever in changing circumstances. Understanding the nature of public policies as state self-presentation action can enhance understanding of the policy-making process and the political effects of public policies. It can also facilitate the practice of policy analysts.
Abstract Which dimensions of state capacity are most effective in safeguarding democracies from distinct modes of breakdown? This article theorizes and examines how two fundamental dimensions of state capacity—coercive and administrative—affect democratic stability differently depending on whether threats arise from incumbents or nonincumbents. Based on a global analysis covering democratic breakdowns from 1789 to 2020, we find that administrative capacity, characterized by meritocratic recruitment, impartial administration, and predictable enforcement, significantly reduces the risk of incumbent-led democratic breakdowns. In contrast, coercive capacity indicators, such as territorial control and military resources, do not robustly relate to either incumbent-led or nonincumbent-led breakdowns. Our study highlights the critical role of high-quality administrative institutions for democratic stability.
Abstract Think tanks have emerged as significant political groups in corporatist political economies in Europe. However, little is known about how think tanks situate themselves among existing actors in the political system and how existing actors react to them. We explore possible coordination between think tanks and interest groups by drawing on rational choice institutionalism to argue that organizations might either engage in allied advocacy to increase political influence, or that interest groups might seek to preserve autonomy and privileged positions by declining to engage in coordinated messaging with think tanks. Across a quantitative text analytical study, a case study, and elite interviews, we find that systematic patterns of allied advocacy across organizational type are relatively absent, although the interviews suggest the theoretical relevance of the hypothesis. Our results imply that think tanks are not mere extensions of existing structures and that they may struggle to find lasting alliances.
Abstract Political parties are increasingly caught in the fast-paced rhythm of modern politics, where short-term messaging and rapid response dominate long-term thinking. This article examines whether and how Political Party Think Tanks help parties transcend these pressures by supporting long-term, policy-focused work. Drawing on case knowledge of 22 Political Party Think Tanks in the Netherlands and Flanders, it uses qualitative comparative analysis to explain why some Political Party Think Tanks focus more on policy development while others prioritise short-term political goals. The analysis shows that Political Party Think Tanks with direct public funding and greater autonomy from the party are better positioned to support long-term thinking. In highlighting how public funding, organisational autonomy, party type and leadership shape these roles, this article contributes to broader debates about public funding for political organisations and how political parties and their auxiliary organisations can be better equipped to strengthen democratic governance.
Abstract People-centrism is a key defining characteristic of the dominant ideational approach to populism. Yet, who do populist actors consider their ingroup? Research on the empirical characteristics of who is deemed “the people” is scarce. Bringing together previous work on populism, group references, and social identity theory, this article develops a typology of populist in- and outgroup references. Applying word embeddings, a novel text-as-data approach, the empirical characteristics of these groups are identified and contextualized in election manifestos from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland between 1983 and 2021. In line with the theoretical expectations, the results show that the ingroups’ identity remains imprecise and is primarily constructed indirectly, namely through opposition to and in distinction from the outgroup. Right-wing populist parties can be distinguished from other parties through their negative references to outgroups such as foreigners or Muslims. These references indirectly create the ingroup ex negativo. These findings have implications for the representation of minority groups and political polarization in liberal democracies.
Abstract While some argue that diminishing welfare policies erode political trust, others contend they do not significantly influence support for political institutions. Despite pressures on social spending, a comprehensive examination of the relationship between welfare policies and political trust is lacking. This research analyzes trends in political trust across Europe using Bayesian dynamic latent variable modeling and investigates the impact of within-country changes and enduring between-country differences in social policies on national-level trust. It focuses on cash benefit transfer policies, particularly those addressing for life-course risks and labor market insurance. Results show that structurally generous social policies correlate with higher political trust, but short-term changes in policy generosity do not. Furthermore, the generosity of specific policies does not exhibit a clear direct relationship with national-level trust. Overall, these findings support the skeptical view that more generous welfare policies do not easily foster increased political trust in the short term.
Abstract Over the last few years, short-term lets or home sharing have radically changed the dynamics of mass tourism and triggered disruptive consequences for civic, social and economic life. While lucrative for some, it has also impacted the character of different urban areas, creating significant changes to the local economy and often triggering citizens’ discontent. While previous works have focused on the economic and urban effects of short-term letting, much less is known about the electoral impact of the ‘Airbnb phenomenon’. Does it lead to a higher propensity to vote for certain parties? Using detailed geographic data on Airbnb locations in Barcelona and geo-located individual-level surveys, this article examines the effect of short-term letting on electoral behaviour. We contend that short-term letting can become a mobilising issue for political entrepreneurs. Our analysis shows that areas with a higher concentration of Airbnbs were more likely to vote for the party that campaigned in favour of restrictive home-sharing regulations. This study has important implications for our understanding of the interplay between urban management, housing, protest and vote choice.
Abstract Affective polarization is widely considered detrimental to democratic processes, yet recent research suggests it may play an important role in political participation. This systematic review investigates the impact of affective polarization on political participation, synthesizing findings from 18 empirical studies. Through a comprehensive search across multiple databases, we address the fragmented understanding of the link between affective polarization and institutional (e.g. voter turnout) and non-institutional (e.g. protest) forms of participation. Our findings indicate that most studies show a positive association between affective polarization and political participation, with stronger evidence for its impact on institutional than on non-institutional participation. This pattern also holds for habitual versus non-habitual participation, albeit with variations across different cultural and political contexts. Finally, we highlight the need for further research, particularly through longitudinal and experimental designs and by examining the mechanisms through which affective polarization is linked to political participation.
Abstract This article considers the moral limits on uncivil climate protest. It does so by examining Andreas Malm’s influential claim that the climate movement should engage in the targeted sabotage of property associated with high emissions. Although Malm’s criticisms of civilly disobedient climate protest are forceful, I show that there are problems with his positive arguments. First, we need not view sabotage as necessarily violent, and more clarity is needed on the relationship between the violence/nonviolence distinction and property damage. Second, the norms of defensive harm are too permissive: they seem inconsistent with the principle of nonviolence to persons Malm and other climate activists want to endorse. Finally, an ethic of resistibility to the climate movement is underspecified in both its content and grounds. The conclusion of the article is that Malm’s important challenge is incomplete, and that more work is required to understand the norms of uncivil climate protest.
Abstract This article examines the concept of transition as it is employed in climate-change discourse, drawing lessons from earlier usage in the context of post-communist change. Approaching the green transition as both an analytical and a political concept, the article explores the intentions to which it responds, the assumptions that come with it and the extent to which these are well founded. As the article argues, the concept of transition carries an alluring promise of peaceful change that can be guided to completion by elites. Underpinning this, however, is a misleading image of linear movement towards a new state of equilibrium, the political effect of which may be to weaken the cause of climate-change mitigation and the democratic institutions on which it depends.