This study leverages the adoption and subsequent abandonment of proportional representation in interwar France to examine how electoral systems shape politicians’ incentives to engage in programmatic redistribution. Using novel data on the legislative initiatives and manifesto commitments of members of France’s Chamber of Deputies, we compare politicians against themselves under different electoral rules. We find that politicians devote more effort to programmatic redistribution under France’s single-member majoritarian system than under the open-list proportional rule, both in parliament and while campaigning. Our results contradict canonical work by economists on the distributive effects of electoral rules, but are consistent with work by political scientists that emphasizes the tendency of electoral competition under open-list PR to devolve into personalism at the expense of programmatic policy. Our findings point to the distributive significance of institutional variation among PR countries and highlight the shortcomings of stylized contrasts between PR and single-member systems.

How do refugee experiences in receiving countries shape their political behavior after return? This article argues that inclusive reception policies that grant refugees political and economic rights can foster civic engagement after return. Leveraging the exogenous assignment of Mayan indigenous Guatemalans to refugee settlements in 1980s Mexico, I find that inclusive hosting increased post-return participation in nonviolent protest by 25 percentage points. The analysis draws on archival sources, an original household survey of 379 returnees, and 48 semi-structured interviews conducted during ethnographic fieldwork in three Guatemalan return communities. It probes four mechanisms plausibly driving this relationship: expectations of institutional responsiveness, increased political efficacy, strengthened organizational capacity, and peer learning. While most existing research focuses on the effects of refugees on host communities and determinants of return, this study examines how host reception policies influence refugee behavior after going home, with implications for post-conflict democratization and refugee policy worldwide.

Can public health shocks boost right-wing populism? We investigate how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted support for populists in Western Europe, an unresolved debate on which surprisingly little systematic evidence exists. Building on theories of populist mobilization in societal crises, we hypothesize a positive aggregate effect driven by declining confidence in public institutions, intensifying hostility toward outgroups, and opposition to government restrictions. Exploiting variation in local COVID-19 incidence stemming from the idiosyncratic timing of early superspreader events, we find a rise in online engagement with populists in regions with higher infection rates. We document a similar increase in populist support in the 2020 French municipal elections and in representative British and Dutch survey data. These varied sources corroborate our three posited mechanisms while casting doubt on possible alternative economic, social, and psychological channels. The findings broaden our understanding of the types of societal shocks that foster extreme politics.

Are there long-term benefits to military service under authoritarian rule? This paper examines whether wartime service or demonstrated loyalty during a civil war protects veterans from repression when a new regime takes power. Using geo-referenced data on World War I veterans, personnel records from the White and Red Armies, and Stalin-era secret police archives, I examine whether veterans of the Russian Empire and Civil War were treated differently during Stalin’s purges. Veterans were systematically targeted regardless of which side they fought on, and formal recognition for battlefield valor increased vulnerability to repression. Three mechanisms account for this pattern: revolutionary regimes perceive veterans as organizational threats; they view loyalty as contingent and untrustworthy; and they rely on bureaucratic records, making veterans legible as targets. For revolutionary autocracies capable of retrospective surveillance, these findings reveal that the very qualities making soldiers indispensable in wartime marked them as liabilities once power was consolidated.

Subnational administrative units are fundamental to territorial states and their political topography, but we know little about how their borders are designed. I argue that indirect rulers engage in preservation by ethnically aligning administrative borders, which empowers peripheral actors. In contrast, centralizing governments disrupt ethnic groups and their ability for collective action by splitting groups (dismemberment) and/or creating diverse units (suffocation). I test this argument by studying colonial administrative unit designs in Sub-Saharan Africa. I contrast indirect British with more direct French colonial rule and use new historical data on administrative borders and ethnic geography. Modeling subnational borders with a probabilistic spatial partition model, I find strong positive associations with ethnic boundaries under British compared to French rule, which realized more extensive ethnic dismemberment but not suffocation. The results shed light on colonial administrative unit designs, thus highlighting the importance of unit endogeneity more broadly.

Around the world, the growing power of giant technology firms has outpaced regulatory oversight, raising urgent questions about how public opinion can be mobilized in support of meaningful reform. When do broad coalitions emerge in support of stronger regulation? This study investigates corporate scandals as windows of opportunity—focusing events—that can galvanize public support for new regulations and amplify issue salience. To assess this possibility, we conducted a two-wave survey experiment that we fielded simultaneously in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. After collecting pre-treatment data in a separate, dedicated survey wave, our subjects were later assigned to read media coverage describing the 2018 Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal. The results confirm our preregistered hypothesis: in all four countries, exposure to scandal coverage significantly increases support for technology regulation and elevates the issue’s salience. Anger mediates this shift, and increased issue salience correlates with a greater willingness to engage in political action around technology policy. At a moment of heightened concern about the concentration of economic and political power in a handful of mammoth technology firms, these findings illuminate the microfoundations of how focusing events can break political inertia and catalyze regulatory reform.

Does democratic public diplomacy work in authoritarian societies and, if so, when? I investigate the impact of the US Embassy in China’s online advocacy of American democracy through two survey experiments conducted during the first Trump administration. The results show that American public diplomacy can improve Chinese audiences’ attitudes toward the United States, not in relatively normal times but when the US international image is under threat. This novel finding suggests that public diplomacy may function more as a “shield” to maintain residual credibility than as a “sword” for proactive influence, expanding our understanding of how public diplomacy works. At the same time, the embassy’s messaging had little effect on Chinese audiences’ attitudes toward democracy, views on China, or behavioral intentions such as protest, regardless of the US image. This general silence greeting the democratic sound underscores the challenges of democracy promotion in a rising authoritarian power, at least in the short term, while also undermining authoritarian governments’ frequent attempts to blame domestic grievances on “foreign forces.” The findings illuminate both the potential and limits of democratic public diplomacy.

Affective polarization (or antipathy between supporters of opposing political camps) is considered a threat to societal cohesion and democratic stability worldwide. However, causal evidence of its impact remains scarce, especially outside the United States. Our study examines the individual-level consequences of affective polarization by manipulating it in a survey experiment in nine countries (Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States; N ≈ 18,000) and subsequently assessing the downstream consequences for social avoidance and discrimination of opponents, support for aggression, aversion to political compromise, democratic norms, democratic dissatisfaction, and political engagement. Our intervention successfully reduced participants’ affective polarization in six out of nine countries. In turn, this was associated with significant improvement in interpersonal relations and (in contrast to recent US studies) support for democratic norms. Importantly, the impact varied between societies, suggesting that the consequences of affective polarization may be more context-dependent than previously understood.

In established democracies, governing parties are expected to govern effectively. Government terminations that result from breaking the rule of law, policy blunders, or disastrous policy performances have the potential to damage voters’ perceptions of how well democracy functions in their countries. Yet, current research on coalition politics has not examined the specific consequences of scandal-based government terminations on voters’ attitudes toward politics and the quality of democracy. We analyze the attitudinal impacts of scandal-based government terminations and argue that this type of termination reduces citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy functions in their countries and their propensity to vote for the party responsible for the scandal. We also examine whether scandal-based coalition terminations negatively impact voter perceptions of the government’s performance. We test our arguments by relying on a recent scandal that took place in Austria: the so-called Ibiza scandal, which caused the early termination of the coalition between the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). At the time the scandal broke, the Austrian National Election Study was in the field. We utilize an Unexpected Event during Survey Design to test if the scandal had consequences for voters’ perceptions of the parties and their collaboration. The supporting evidence for our argument calls for the need to revive research on government termination and to initiate a new line of research on how government breakdowns affect citizens’ democratic attitudes.

Improvements in the availability, accuracy, and processing of individual-level data have allowed political science literature to address the ‘ecological fallacy’, whereby inferences are made about individuals based on units of analyses operating at a higher level. Yet there has been limited attention to the risk that individual-level analyses may suffer from the reverse ‘atomistic’ – or ‘individualistic’ – fallacy: the erroneous practice of drawing inferences about national-level outcomes based on individual-level analyses. In this research note, we present a mathematical statement and simulations to diagnose and evaluate the extent of this fallacy in the case of voting behaviour. We also illustrate the problem using European Social Survey data on far-right voting. We conclude by identifying three ‘perils’ of the atomistic fallacy, related to extrapolating conclusions about a party’s overall performance from information about an individual’s voting propensity. These perils can significantly affect how researchers interpret election results and, in turn, the policy implications of political science research.

Recent work theorizes that the American mass opinion space is organized along two broad, uncorrelated dimensions––a left–right one and an “anti-establishment” one––that jointly explain recent events in American politics, such as the election of Donald Trump and belief in conspiracy theories. In this paper, we test several previously untested predictions of this theory, including those involving temporal dynamics. Utilizing a time series of cross-sectional surveys spanning 2019–2024 and a 2024 three-wave panel survey, we offer five findings: (i) the two dimensions remain empirically distinct; (ii) the initially orthogonal left–right and anti-establishment dimensions become moderately correlated by 2024; (iii) by 2024, this change is driven primarily by movement of the left–right dimension towards the anti-establishment one; (iv) anti-establishment sentiments are associated with two-party vote choice and presidential primary candidate preferences; and (v) anti-establishment orientations are associated with preferences for reducing government spending on science, public health, and foreign aid.

Political parties and candidates appeal to social groups to gain their support. Yet, we lack knowledge about what makes such group appeals effective. This article tests novel explanations for the success of in-group appeals. Specifically, we investigate (1) how voters respond to social group appeals that flatter them by describing their group’s positive qualities (warmth and competence), and (2) whether voters identifying with high or low status groups differ in how they are effectively flattered. Focusing on social class, we conducted survey experiments in Denmark and the United States, in which respondents received in-group appeals corresponding to their self-identified class and were randomly assigned to receive different types of flattery. The results show that, as expected, the impact of group appeals on candidate support increases as individuals express stronger class identities. However, they also suggest that adding flattery to these appeals can boost effectiveness among high-identifiers. Further, high- and low-status groups are relatively similar in their responses to flattery. These findings underline the potential of flattery-based group mobilization, even for high-status groups like the upper-middle class.

How have voters responded to the increasing “rainbow wave” of LGBTQ representatives in Congress? To date, political science has not tackled this question directly. Research on other marginalized groups, however, finds that being represented by a minority legislator affects constituents’ approval, evaluations of government, knowledge about the incumbent, and perceptions of their policy positions, among other variables. In this paper, I extend these findings to LGB Members of Congress (MCs) using pooled CES data from 2016 to 2023. The results show that constituents respond differently to LGB and straight MCs, in three ways. First, descriptive representation boosts approval ratings—LGBT constituents approve of LGB legislators at higher rates. On average, straight cisgender constituents do not rate LGB MCs differently from straight MCs, although this masks countervailing partisan reactions that cancel out in the aggregate. Second, LGB MCs have a higher profile among all voters. Regardless of their own sexuality, constituents are more likely to have information on, and be able to answer questions about, LGB MCs. Third, stereotypes of LGBTQ politicians as ideologically liberal are widespread. Even after controlling for their actual party and roll call record, LGB MCs are perceived to be significantly more liberal than straight MCs. Overall, these results show that LGB representatives are evaluated differently from their straight peers, with potential implications for their political careers.

Do liberals prioritize distant others over close relationships, inverting the moral hierarchy? Across three studies, we test this claim directly. Study 1a analyzes a nationally representative U.S. sample ( N = 1000). Study 1b reanalyzes four Prolific samples ( N = 3201). Study 2 preregisters a new sample ( N = 899) using both unconstrained Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES) ratings and a fixed‐resource allocation task. Across all studies and ideological groups, ingroups consistently receive the highest moral concern. In unconstrained settings, greater concern for distant entities does not predict reduced concern for close others; ideological differences reflect how far moral concern extends outward, not compromised ingroup prioritization. When concern is treated as a fixed resource, tradeoffs emerge as expected: allocating more to distant targets means allocating less elsewhere. However, even under constraint, ingroups remain the top priority across the political spectrum; liberals simply reallocate more toward distant categories than conservatives do. These findings challenge claims of moral inversion and clarify that liberal moral universalism reflects circle expansion, not reversal in the ordering of concern.

When are identity‐based groups harmful to democracy? We argue that identity‐based groups become harmful to democracy when they engage in and promote victimized majority narratives—portraying the majority as being removed from power and sidelined by minority groups. We support this argument through a mixed‐method approach and by analyzing Muslim groups in Indonesia. Through interviews with leaders of moderate and hardliner Muslim groups, we show that the narratives are more prevalent in the latter than the former type of groups, even though the groups may hold similar views on other issues such as the question of heterodoxy and blasphemy. We then test this argument at the individual level using original panel data of identifiers of Muslim groups, showing that identifying with hardliner groups—but not the moderate groups—correlates with higher support for political Islam, higher religious intolerance, and higher support for religious violence.

Peace after violent conflict often hinges on reconciliation with persons suspected of having collaborated with an enemy. Receiving communities must refrain from vengeance, lest the cycle of violence renew. Can accused collaborators mitigate past wrongs through attempts at redemption? We present results of an experiment embedded in a face‐to‐face survey ( n = 4592) of communities confronting the return or resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accused of collaboration with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Despite both reconciliation and revenge being keys to unlocking durable peace, they are rarely investigated within a single study. We find that perceived culpability for past wrongs strongly predicts reconciliation and revenge propensities towards stigmatized IDPs. Redemptive signals have little to no impact, though IDPs who assist in security efforts to combat the enemy elicit more reconciliatory responses. Cognitive and emotional decomposition analyses indicate that past behavior shapes latent reconciliation and revenge propensities because it simultaneously activates a past‐oriented moral condemnation and a future‐oriented heuristic assessment of the value and risks of associating with the IDP. These results suggest that durable peace requires careful programming attentive to the culpability of individual crimes, and that prevailing redemptory strategies for accused collaborators may be ineffective.

In recent years, depression has entered the research agenda of political psychology, emerging as a meaningful psychological correlate of diverse political attitudes and behaviors. Surprisingly, however, its link to populism—the political phenomenon that has probably attracted most public and scholarly attention over the past several years—has not yet been studied. We address this notable blind spot and provide a first exploratory evaluation of the relationship between depressive symptoms and the inclination to populism. To do so, we make use of two European datasets (CRONOS‐2 and ESS 11) that include a validated, epidemiological short scale to measure depressive symptoms (CES‐D8) and allow us to consider both populist attitudes and populist voting as key individual‐level manifestations of populism. Our analyses show that individuals experiencing depressive symptoms tend to exhibit a stronger affinity for populist ideas and are more likely to support populist parties. Our study thus underlines the importance of prevention, early detection, and treatment measures targeting the widespread “black dog” of depression—also in the interest of preserving and promoting democratic health.

This paper explores the view that, beyond particular wrongs committed by Zionism, the Zionist project was itself inherently wrong. I argue that the most plausible basis for this claim is the contention that Zionism disrespected the territorial rights of the local Arab population. By examining leading contemporary theories of territorial rights – specifically those of Miller Moore and Stilz – I demonstrate that none provide a strong foundation for this view. At the onset of Zionist immigration, the Arabs of Palestine did not meet the criteria required to possess territorial rights under these theoretical frameworks.

Kate Phelan's defense of feminism as a movement exclusively concerned with sex‐based oppression rests on two interlocking moves: a sharp division between women as women and women as members of other oppressed groups, and a “sex‐right” framework that is supposed to entail an abolitionist conclusion about prostitution. This reply argues that both moves fail, and that they fail together. The attempt to isolate sex‐based oppression as a separable object of feminist concern proves unstable once the intersectional constitution of women's oppression is acknowledged: the characteristics that make sex‐based oppression recognizable as such cannot be cleanly separated from class, race, and other axes of domination. The same instability undermines Phelan's sex‐right argument: the inference from the existence of prostitution to the persistence of unconditional male entitlement does not hold once rape has been criminalized and sexual access has been made legally conditional on consent. The line‐drawing to which Phelan attributes such importance is, in the end, both theoretically imprecise and politically unnecessary for the ends she wishes feminism to pursue.

Giovanni Sartori suggested that in order to understand party systems, we need to focus on interactions between parties. These interactions have been conceptualised by Sartorian scholars as the structure of competition for control of the executive, and operationalised as patterns of government formation. This ‘government formation’ approach to party systems has limitations, chief among which is that it focuses on relations between government parties, but ignores other interparty relations. To mitigate these shortcomings while retaining a focus on interactions associated with competition for control of the executive, this study makes a case for describing party systems using data on parties’ coalition preferences. I demonstrate this ‘coalition preference’ approach by applying it to the Irish party system, a case characterised by significant party system change. The case study shows that this new approach provides a lens through which we can systematically describe party systems, which can complement existing approaches.

The Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established during the first administration of Barack Obama to coordinate gender equality policy and programs across USAID bureaus and missions. Susan Markham (SM) was appointed Senior Coordinator during the second Obama administration, 2014–2017, while Jamille Bigio (JB) served in this role during the administration of President Joe Biden, 2021–2025. This is a slightly edited version of an interview that took place with Mona Lena Krook (MLK) via Zoom on March 23, 2026.

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) at the United States Department of State focuses on the interlocking issues of democracy, human rights, and workers’ rights. It is also responsible for producing annual reports on the state of human rights in countries around the world. During the administration of Joe Biden, Tambria Schroeder (TS) was the Gender Equality Policy Advisor, and Andrea Gillespie (AG) served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons and in the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs. This is an edited and compiled version of interviews that took place with Mona Lena Krook (MLK) via Zoom on January 8, 2026, and January 27, 2026.

This paper examines the refugee policy preferences of supporters of anti-Russia and pro-Russia populist right parties (PRPs) and mainstream parties (MPs) in Germany, Poland, and Hungary during the Ukrainian refugee crisis. We use cross-sectional quota representative and panel (re-contact) samples from a unique three-wave survey experiment covering both EU-level (allocation of refugees, EU border protection) and national-level dimensions (access to the labour market, freedom of movement, and policy cost for an average household) of asylum policy. We compare these preferences before, immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and 2 years later. We demonstrate that the Ukrainian refugee crisis did not cause a polarisation of anti-Russia and pro-Russia PRP supporters, and MP supporters either short or long term. Instead, the electorates converged on restrictions to admission of refugees and their freedom of movement, accompanied by liberalization of their access to the labour market. These results highlight the need for multidimensional measures of policy preferences, and longitudinal designs, to provide a nuanced and context-specific understanding of the dynamic of public opinion on policy.

Why does the electoral success of anti-establishment populist movements lead to fewer, rather than more, effective political parties? Using panel data from electoral democracies worldwide (1970–2020), we document a robust negative relationship between populist electoral success and subsequent party system fragmentation. We theorize that the electoral validation of populism triggers three mechanisms that concentrate party systems: delegitimation of moderate positions, polarization that eliminates centrist parties, and the establishment of barriers preventing new challengers from entering. Employing entropy-balanced two-way fixed effects, we find that a one unit increase in our Vote-Weighted Populism Index reduces the effective number of parties by 0.388 units. This effect persists across diverse institutional contexts, though regional analysis reveals important variation: the concentration effect is strongest in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and null in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of moderation, we demonstrate that economic recessions amplify the effect, nearly doubling its magnitude, while other institutional factors seem to play no significant role.

Who do Americans think runs their elections? This paper examines the racial typification of election officials, that is, how Americans perceive the racial composition of the people who administer elections and what drives those perceptions. Using survey data from a module in the 2024 Cooperative Election Study paired with county-level demographic data, we model perceptions of election official racial composition as a compositional dependent variable using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) models. We find that partisanship is the driving predictor of racialized perceptions. Republicans perceive a substantially greater share of election officials as non-white, even after controlling for the actual racial demographics of respondents’ counties. We then show that these perceptions carry downstream consequences for election trust. Among white respondents, perceiving a greater share of election officials as Black is associated with significantly lower trust in local election officials and lower confidence that the 2024 election would be run fairly. These findings suggest that as America diversifies, public trust in elections may be undermined not by actual failures of administration, but by racialized perceptions of who holds administrative power.

Do reactions from international organizations or foreign authorities persuade domestic public opinion? While many studies argue that individuals’ ideological orientations condition their responses to international organizations, two competing mechanisms explain this effect. The cooperative internationalism perspective suggests that left-leaning individuals, who value multilateralism, are more receptive to international reactions. In contrast, the motivated reasoning perspective posits that individuals accept international reactions consistent with their ideological predispositions and reject those that are not. Distinguishing between these mechanisms is empirically difficult because international reactions often align with left-leaning positions. We address this challenge by examining Japan’s decision to discharge treated cooling water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. Although left-leaning Japanese citizens were skeptical of the discharge, several international organizations and foreign governments expressed support for it. Using data from an original 2024 online survey of over 1,100 Japanese respondents, we find that endorsements from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United States increased support for the discharge among left-leaning individuals. These results support the cooperative internationalism perspective over motivated reasoning, suggesting that the internationalism posture of the ideological left can shape responses to international society.

Existing scholarship has increasingly recognized that strong partisanship does not inevitably produce out-party hostility—yet the scope and consistency of this decoupling across multiple measures of affective polarization remains underexamined. In this study, we revisit the relationship between partisan strength and affective polarization using original national survey data across three established measures: feeling thermometers, trait attributions, and social distance. We provide systematic, multi-measure evidence that the empirical linkage between partisan strength and out-party hostility is weaker and more heterogeneous than much of the literature implies. Substantial variation in out-party hostility exists at every level of partisan strength—even among the strongest partisans. We further show that ideological and issue-attitude strength meaningfully predict which strong partisans become most hostile toward the out-party. These results extend prior work by demonstrating that the decoupling of partisanship and hostility is robust across measurement approaches, and they highlight the importance of distinguishing partisanship’s constructive democratic functions from its corrosive forms.

Hundreds of US cities have switched from single choice to ranked choice voting (RCV) systems. In allowing voters to rank multiple candidates and eliminating fears of wasting votes on less viable candidates, RCV purports to improve both political expression and representation. Realizing this potential, however, depends on voters’ willingness and ability to use their rankings. We assess these outcomes by conducting a survey with an embedded experiment during real-world elections for multiple municipal offices using RCV. We examine whether citizens’ propensity to rank multiple candidates and choose like-minded candidates (spatial voting) vary with the prestige of local offices and in response to endorsements. Political expression and spatial voting are substantially lower in elections for comptroller and city council relative to mayor. Endorsements from unions and issue advocacy groups improve both outcomes for these lower-level offices. Our results highlight differences in the efficacy of RCV across local elections and illustrate how endorsements can help citizens navigate these challenging settings.

Jury instructions—the rules for jury deliberation approved by the judge and read to the jury during trial—are an important communication between judges, parties, and jurors. Parties and judges draft these instructions with trials in mind and judges possess substantial discretion over this critical process, deciding the law in a case. Given prosecutor power, strategic disadvantages of defense counsel and powerful role of federal magistrate judges, the courtroom provides a unique venue to how judges wield this powerful policy process. Despite substantial research on judicial decision-making, we know little about how a judge’s prior professional experience, like work as a prosecutor, public defender, or federal magistrate judge affects when a judge drafts their own version of jury instructions. To test this, I constructed an original dataset of 1,389 federal criminal trial cases from 23 districts for 2015–2018. Logistic regression analysis suggests experience as a public defender and federal magistrate judge matters in whether a judge files their own draft of the instructions. This finding presents evidence that a judge’s professional background affects their decision-making in this critical stage of a case. This research has broad implications for judicial appointments, judicial decision-making theory, legal policy, and future trial courts research.

Can contemporary Confucian political theory contribute to both a culturally relevant and politically practicable public philosophy for East Asian societies, while simultaneously providing a model of comparative political theory that aspires to deprovincialize the West? This state-of-the-field essay examines how contemporary Confucian political theory has evolved in the past two decades in Anglophone academia, what challenges are posed to its further development, and how they could be addressed to anticipate a new epoch of modern political Confucianism in which Confucian political theory becomes more engaged and grounded as a public philosophy that can also inspire Western political theory for mutual learning and growth. After critically examining various contemporary Confucian political theories—Confucian communitarianism, Confucian democracy, Confucian meritocracy, Confucian perfectionism, progressive Confucianism, and public-reason Confucianism—and their liberal challenges, this essay diagnoses the current crisis of Confucian political theory and shows a way to overcome it.

This study examines legislative gatekeeping in the South Korean National Assembly by analyzing bill review subcommittee meeting frequency from 2004–2024. Unlike the U.S. Congress, where majority parties monopolize committee chairs, Korea's proportional chair allocation system creates a unique institutional setting for testing party cartel theory. Using negative binomial regression on 3314 committee‐months, we find that partisan coordination between committee and subcommittee chairs significantly increases meeting frequency, whereas ideological extremism reduces legislative activity. Meeting patterns follow an inverted U‐shaped electoral cycle, peaking during midterm periods. These effects vary systematically across committee types, with mixed committees showing different dynamics than particularistic or universal goods committees. The findings extend party cartel theory beyond majoritarian systems, demonstrating how “negotiated procedural control” operates when institutional power is distributed rather than monopolized.

How legislators divide their efforts between constituency service and parliamentary work has long attracted scholarly attention, yet we know far less about how voters evaluate this trade‐off. This paper addresses this gap by examining how voters evaluate legislators' effort allocation between constituency service and parliamentary work in Taiwan, a context where legislators traditionally devote substantial energy to constituency service, and how pre‐existing representational priorities condition these evaluations. We employ an original conjoint experiment and show that Taiwanese voters generally prefer legislators who balance constituency service and parliamentary work, while penalizing those who focus too heavily on one dimension. Furthermore, we demonstrate that citizens' stated representational priorities shape these evaluations: respondents who prioritize parliamentary work favor legislators who allocate more effort to national policymaking, whereas those who prioritize constituency service reward greater local engagement. Taken together, these findings suggest that a preference for balanced representation may be widespread and that incorporating voters' expectations is essential for understanding the dynamics of political representation.

Populist and Eurosceptic parties’ growing popular support has created a new transnational sociopolitical cleavage that challenges European integration. We hypothesize that disagreements over European integration drive cross-national conflict between party elites, and that party populism—which we show is less strongly related to Euroscepticism than is commonly believed—is an especially important contributor to cross-national elite conflict, independently of Euroscepticism or of the cultural issues debates that animate radical right parties’ domestic agendas. We substantiate our arguments by analyzing machine codings of tens of thousands of news reports of cross-national, elite-level, inter-party cooperation, and conflict between parties in 13 European Union member states between 2001 and 2019.

Does the return of major warfare override identity-based constraints on European Union (EU) support? While post-functionalist theory suggests exclusive national identities act as a brake on integration, bellicist and social identity accounts argue that external threats generate functional demands, strengthening affective European orientations. Analyzing survey data from 16 countries collected 5 weeks after Russia’s 2022 invasion using a causal forest algorithm, we uncover a heterogeneous “rally” effect. Exclusive nationalists, typically EU skeptics, show the strongest positive association between threat perceptions and European pride, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe—a pattern mirrored in heightened levels of support for a common European army. We conclude that functional security demands can transform the EU from a perceived cultural threat into a necessary geopolitical shelter, even for traditional skeptics.