We checked 31 political science journals on Friday, December 26, 2025 using the Crossref API. For the period December 19 to December 25, we retrieved 35 new paper(s) in 15 journal(s).

American Political Science Review

State-Building and Rebellion in the Run-Up to the French Revolution
MICHAEL ALBERTUS, VICTOR GAY
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Early modern European powers were beset by episodic unrest as they sought to consolidate their authority and build empires. We examine how growing state communication networks and the penetration of society impacted unrest by combining original and detailed parish-level data from pre-Revolutionary France on the expansion of the horse-post relay network with rebellion in this period. Using a staggered difference-in-differences framework, we find that new horse-post relays are associated with more local rebellion. We argue that the main mechanisms are the material consequences of state centralization. New horse-post relays are linked with more rebellion against state agents and associates—the military, police, tax collectors, and the judiciary—that conscripted civilians, enforced taxes and laws, and increasingly monopolized roads. Pre-existing state and administrative fragmentation also mediated this relationship. Our findings have implications for the scholarly understanding of the co-evolution of states and order.

British Journal of Political Science

Elections Without Constraints? The Appeal of Electoral Autocracy Across the World
Anja Neundorf, Sirianne Dahlum, Kristian Vrede Skaaning Frederiksen, Aykut ÖztĂŒrk
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What democratic institutions and practices do citizens prioritize, and how responsive are their preferences to competing concerns such as economic and physical security? We explore this through a conjoint experiment with over 35,000 respondents across thirty-two countries – spanning democracies and autocracies – who evaluate hypothetical countries varying in democratic features, cultural characteristics, economic prosperity, and physical security. Our findings reveal that citizens consistently prioritize free and fair elections, highlighting their salience as a core democratic value. However, executive constraints appear less central to citizens’ preferences, especially when set against the promise of economic prosperity. These patterns hold across a wide range of national and individual contexts. The results suggest that while elections remain symbolically and substantively important, many citizens are responsive to appeals that frame strong, unconstrained leadership as a pathway to economic prosperity – an emphasis often seen in electoral authoritarian regimes.
A Two-Path Theory of Context Effects: Pseudoenvironments and Social Cohesion
Cara Wong, Jake Bowers, Daniel Rubenson, Mark Fredrickson, Ashlea Rundlett
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Social cohesion suffers when people perceive that they live among others who differ from them, even if such people live in homogeneous neighborhoods. This article shows that (1) two individuals who live in equally diverse local contexts may not perceive the same amount of diversity in that context, nor think of the boundaries of their local community in the same way; and (2) when comparing two individuals who live in equally diverse local contexts, the one who thinks they live with more minorities tends, on average, to see lower social cohesion and less collective efficacy among their neighbors. These descriptive results align with a causal framework that distinguishes the objective environment from that of the subjective context. Revealing that perceptions of social reality matter above and beyond the experience of objective context adds evidence to a theory of context effects that involves perceptions as well as experience.
Like ’Em Rich? Public Perceptions and Opinions of Politicians’ Wealth
Marko KlaĆĄnja, Lucia Motolinia
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Voters regularly face financially diverse candidate pools, yet electoral winners tend to be much wealthier than the challengers. What role do public preferences play in this over-representation of wealth? We posit three channels: direct preference for wealthy candidates, indirect preference due to in-group biases, or inadvertent preference due to ignorance about candidate wealth. Drawing on original surveys in the United States, Brazil, Chile, and India, and leveraging conjoint and information experiments, we find that when given information about wealth, the public exhibits a strong preference against wealthier candidates. While the public grossly underestimates the true wealth of politicians, correcting such misperceptions does not significantly change the preferences over candidate wealth. On the margin, the public uses wealth as a proxy for other desirable qualities like skill, but such an inferential shortcut does not boost public sentiments. Partisan bias, however, may produce some indirect support for the wealthy.

Comparative Politics

Violence and Bias: The Political Legacy of Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia
Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell, Yujeong Yang
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Studies have discussed long-term effects of state-led violence on victims’ political attitudes and behaviors, but less is known about its impacts on those who sided with the perpetrators. We develop a theory of authoritarian indoctrination and cognitive dissonance that explains variation in outgroup intolerance among the majority group, focusing on the ethnic violence against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority. Drawing upon unique survey data, we find that proximity to anti-Chinese violence in 1996–1999 correlates with elevated outgroup animosity today, particularly among individuals who grew up during the autocratic era. We further demonstrate that such bias extends to political behavior, leading to support for right-wing politicians instigating outgroup prejudice. Findings highlight historical legacies of authoritarian-led ethnic violence as a source of political intolerance.

Electoral Studies

Who punishes the government? Income-based disparities in economic voting
Chloé De Grauwe, Silke Goubin
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An attentive audience? If and how voters evaluate coalition formation
Ida B. Hjermitslev, Svenja Krauss
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How do underrepresented voters view electoral system trade-offs?
Don S. Lee, Charles T. McClean
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Issues of high potential: A novel methodology to uncover unactivated public policy demands
James Breckwoldt
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Did Trump do better where inflation was worse? Evidence from county-level data
Patrick Flavin
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Journal of Conflict Resolution

The Impact of Terrorism on Democratic Support in Africa
Souleymane Yameogo, Anja Neundorf
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How does chronic terrorism affect support for democracy in fragile states? While most research examines isolated attacks in stable democracies, little is known about persistent violence in insecure, weakly institutionalised contexts. This paper addresses that gap by analysing Africa, where terrorism is widespread and democratic transitions remain incomplete. Using Afrobarometer survey data matched with terrorism events, we employ an entropy balancing strategy within an unexpected-event-during-survey (UESD) design to estimate causal effects. We find that terrorism consistently undermines democratic support – especially in countries with stronger liberal institutions and lower development. Younger and older citizens are particularly susceptible to attitudinal shifts. These findings highlight how terrorism’s political impact hinges not just on exposure, but also on broader structural vulnerabilities shaped by institutions, development, and demography. The study advances theories of authoritarian reflex and threat perception, offering new insights into sustaining democracy amid chronic insecurity.

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Explanatory pluralism in political science
Keith Dowding, Charles Miller
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Most writers on political science methods seem to suggest that explanation means causal explanation. Certainly, many explanations in the political sciences are causal. However, natural science often provides non-causal explanations, while non-causal explanations are recognized by philosophers of science. Causal inference, in itself, is not a causal explanation; it explains alongside theory. In this paper, we defend explanatory pluralism, arguing that many important explanations in political science are not causal in nature. We identify two important types of non-causal explanation – constitutive explanation (CE) and explanation by constraint (EC) – providing examples from the political sciences literature. We conclude by outlining what we believe non-causal explanation can contribute to political science.

Party Politics

Are socialists and populists better connected to the working class? Comparing politicians’ intimate social ties in 13 countries
Nino Junius, Stefaan Walgrave
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Populist and social democrat parties often claim to better represent lower socio-economic status (SES) citizens, yet existing research shows their elected politicians are mostly socio-economically privileged. This study asks whether these politicians nonetheless maintain closer personal ties to lower SES individuals, focusing on politicians’ intimate relationships such as parents, partners, and close friends. Using original survey data from 1185 politicians across 13 countries, we find limited evidence that populists and socialists are better in touch, through their ties, with lower SES individuals. Populists and socialists are more likely than other politicians to come from lower-class families, and social democrats more often have lower-educated parents. However, both groups are just as likely as other politicians to have highly educated and higher-class friends and partners. A notable exception is that populists are somewhat more likely to have a lower-educated partner. Overall, despite their rhetoric, intimate ties to lower SES groups remain limited among populists and socialists.
Field of greens: Issue competition between niche parties and mainstream parties in the news
Rachid Azrout, Joost van Spanje, Aurelia Ananda
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Niche parties have emerged in many democracies worldwide. Various aspects of these parties have been studied, including the role of mainstream parties in their electoral success. Key to that success, arguably, is news media attention. Is the media attention that niche parties receive affected by mainstream parties as well? In this paper, we combine news value theory with party competition theory to argue that other parties influence niche party visibility. Focusing on green parties in 11 countries between 1992 and 2021, we find evidence that the salience of green policies in mainstream parties’ manifestoes enhance green party visibility in newspapers if these parties take an adversarial position. This positive effect turns negative as the mainstream party becomes greener, which suggests that it steals a niche party’s thunder. The insight that mainstream parties can influence media attention to niche parties opens up new lines of research on the emergence of niche parties.
How issue ownership impacts responsibility attribution in countries with minority governments
Emil W Hildebrand, Ida B Hjermitslev
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In this study, we explore under what conditions the various actors in minority coalition governments are perceived as more or less responsible for policy outcomes. Using the 2022 budget negotiations between Norway’s two-party minority government and its informal support party as a case, we test whether voters attribute more responsibility to parties who “own” the issues that are particularly salient during the negotiations. We test our hypotheses with a 3 × 2 × 2 factorial vignette experiment. The results reveal that junior members and support parties are perceived as more responsible for policy outcomes when their issue ownership is emphasized in budget negotiations. This effect is amplified when voters are primed to consider policy influence. This has important strategic implications especially for smaller parties involved in coalition governing.

Perspectives on Politics

Brand Transformation in European Politics: The Rise and Limits of Nonclassical Names
Endre BorbĂĄth, Swen Hutter
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Political parties in Europe are undergoing profound transformations, with many abandoning traditional brands. This study analyzes party names as indicators of ideological and organizational change, combining an original content analysis across 28 European countries (1945–2023) with two conjoint survey experiments. We find that “nonparty” names have become the majority, reflecting a shift away from ideology toward alternative forms of identification. While movement names appear in wavelike patterns linked to protest cycles, such as after the 2008 Great Recession, nonclassical names are especially prevalent among new, opposition, and right-wing parties. However, a paradox emerges: despite their growing adoption, nonclassical names do not easily yield the anticipated electoral benefits, as new parties seem to gain little from abandoning classical naming conventions. By tracing long-term naming trends and integrating survey-based experimental evidence, we advance debates on party transformation, political branding, and the evolving interplay between electoral and movement politics in contemporary democracies.
Benefit Seekers or Principle Holders? Experimental Evidence on Americans’ Democratic Trade-Offs
Chloe Rose Mortenson, Erik C. Nisbet
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This study examines how Americans conceptualize democracy and whether their support for democratic principles remains consistent across different trade-offs. Using a conjoint experiment, we test whether citizens act as principle holders—maintaining support for democratic norms regardless of circumstances—or benefit seekers who prioritize material outcomes over liberal democratic norms. Our findings reveal that while respondents generally prefer democratic principles including rule of law, political equality, and freedom of expression, these preferences are moderated by economic well-being. When presented with scenarios featuring economic disadvantage, support for traditional democratic principles declines markedly. This context dependency challenges conventional survey measures of democratic attitudes, as we observe substantial divergence between participants’ self-reported understandings of democracy and their revealed preferences when forced to navigate trade-offs. These results help to explain why campaign appeals framing democracy as “on the ballot” proved ineffective in the 2024 US presidential election, as voters facing economic hardship privileged material concerns over abstract democratic principles. Our findings contribute to debates about democratic backsliding by demonstrating that economic conditions play a crucial role in shaping citizens’ commitment to democratic governance, with implications for understanding populist mobilization and the resilience of democratic norms during periods of economic uncertainty.
The Relational Method: How Community Organizing Can Reshape University Research
Amanda Tattersall, Marc Stears
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Crises of confidence in the relationship between academic research and broader society has led to an explosion in interest in community-led research methods, such as codesign, community-engaged research, and participatory action research. These methods are intended as a way of reconnecting scholarship and society during a period of intense polarization, but they remain far from mainstream. This reflection considers whether community organizing, and in particular the kind of approach initiated by Saul Alinsky that borrowed from a scholarly method at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and is now practiced in more than 99 cities around the world, can offer a practical guide for scholars keen to resolve this challenge. It outlines three elements of what is labeled the “relational method” that build on the philosophical and practical tools of community organizing: relationality, power, and uncertainty. It suggests that the principles and practices of the relational method can not only strengthen community-led research practice, but, if we take a lead from community organizing and recognize the importance of the relationship between the practice of social change and the institutions that seek to produce it, it can also help us to more clearly see how the diffusion of community-led research can align with the broader goal of creating more community-engaged universities.
Unspoken Hierarchies: The Enduring Effects of Caste Discrimination in Africa
Leonardo Arriola, Dominika Koter, Martha Anne Wilfahrt
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How do social hierarchies affect patterns of discrimination in democratic contexts? While studies of identity politics in diverse societies often focus on relations between groups formed around parallel identities like ethnicity, these same societies often feature hierarchical identities that rank individuals into stratified groups. This paper examines how culturally embedded caste identities, inherited at birth, continue to shape everyday life. Drawing on an original survey of 2,160 Senegalese citizens, we show that caste remains a salient axis of perceived discrimination despite its formal abolition over a century ago. Individuals from occupational caste and slave-descended backgrounds are significantly more likely to report experiences of exclusion such as the denial of basic services. Most respondents attribute caste-based discrimination to cultural norms rather than economic competition, religious instruction, or biological differences. Moreover, we find that high-status individuals systematically overreport tolerant attitudes in face-to-face interviews with lower-status enumerators, suggesting that social desirability can obscure the extent of status-based attitudes. These findings shed light on the persistence of caste hierarchies and their impact on citizenship in societies otherwise considered tolerant and democratic. These findings contribute to research on identity politics by highlighting the need to distinguish between ranked and unranked forms of social difference.

Political Analysis

Bayesian Sensitivity Analysis for Unmeasured Confounding in Causal Panel Data Models
Licheng Liu, Teppei Yamamoto
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Despite the recent methodological advancements in causal panel data analysis, concerns remain about unobserved unit-specific time-varying confounders that cannot be addressed by unit or time fixed effects or their interactions. We develop a Bayesian sensitivity analysis (BSA) method to address the concern. Our proposed method is built upon a general framework combining Rubin’s Bayesian framework for model-based causal inference (Rubin [1978], The Annals of Statistics 6(1), 34–58) with parametric BSA (McCandless, Gustafson, and Levy [2007], Statistics in Medicine 26(11), 2331–2347). We assess the sensitivity of the causal effect estimate from a linear factor model to the possible existence of unobserved unit-specific time-varying confounding, using the coefficients of the treatment variable and observed confounders in the model for the unobserved confounding as sensitivity parameters. We utilize priors on these coefficients to constrain the hypothetical severity of unobserved confounding. Our proposed approach allows researchers to benchmark the assumed strength of confounding on observed confounders more systematically than conventional frequentist sensitivity analysis techniques. Moreover, to cope with convergence issues typically encountered in nonidentified Bayesian models, we develop an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm exploiting transparent parameterization (Gustafson [2005], Statistical Science 20(2), 111–140). We illustrate our proposed method in a Monte Carlo simulation study as well as an empirical example on the effect of war on inheritance tax rates.

Political Behavior

Political Bias in College Student Access To Campus Resources
Jessica Khan
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Political Geography

Technopolitics of water appropriation: How Mumbai claims hydrological dominance in its metropolitan region
Sachin Tiwale
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State making at the infrastructural frontier: bureaucratic practices and the techno-politics of hydraulic infrastructure in post-revolutionary Mexico City
Alejandro De Coss-Corzo
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Political Psychology

From cognitive coherence to political polarization: A data‐driven agent‐based model of belief change
Marlene C. L. Batzke, Peter Steiglechner, Jan Lorenz, Bruce Edmonds, FrantiĆĄek Kalvas
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Political polarization represents a rising issue in many countries, making it more and more important to understand its relation to cognitive‐motivational and social influence mechanisms. Yet, the link between micro‐level mechanisms and macro‐level phenomena remains unclear. We investigated the consequences of individuals striving for cognitive coherence in their belief systems on political polarization in society in an agent‐based model. In this, we formalized how cognitive coherence affects how individuals update their beliefs following social influence and self‐reflection processes. We derive agents' political beliefs as well as their subjective belief systems, defining what determines coherence for different individuals, from European Social Survey data via correlational class analysis. The simulation shows that agents polarize in their beliefs when they have a strong strive for cognitive coherence, and especially when they have structurally different belief systems. In a mathematical analysis, we not only explain the main findings but also underscore the necessity of simulations for understanding the complex dynamics of socially embedded phenomena such as political polarization.
Emotional representation: Identifying the characteristics and consequences of elected officials mirroring the emotions of their constituents
Christopher Stout, Davin Phoenix, Gregory Leslie, Elizabeth Schroeder
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This study examines which elected officials are most likely to mirror their constituents' emotions in public outreach—a concept we term emotional representation. We also analyze the significance of emotional representation for the targeted group. To accomplish these goals, we examine the degree to which members of Congress mirrored Black people's documented increase in expressions of anger following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Using a regression discontinuity design and the sentiment analysis of 305,358 tweets, 190,192 Facebook Posts, and 35,409 press releases, we show that descriptive representatives provide the highest levels of emotional representation. To examine the impact of emotional representation, we deployed a two‐stage experiment to 390 Black respondents. We find that Black people who increased in anger after being primed with images of police violence view elected officials who engage in emotional representation as more favorable, empathetic, and trustworthy.

Political Science Research and Methods

Promoting democracy in the context of terrorism: experimental evidence from Burkina Faso
Souleymane Yameogo, Anja Neundorf, Aykut ÖztĂŒrk
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Democracy faces growing threats from authoritarian ideologies, especially in terrorism-affected regions. We test whether citizen-targeted democracy-promotion intervention can bolster democratic support and resist authoritarian appeals. A randomized online experiment in Burkina Faso exposed participants to educational videos focusing on: (1) introduction of civic rights democracies offer, (2) general discussion of democracy’s advantages in combating terrorism, (3) Burkina Faso–specific discussion of democracy’s advantages in combating terrorism, (4) space exploration (placebo). Democracy-promotion videos increased democratic support. The general terrorism-advantage message produced the largest gains, whereas the country-specific message had little effect. Effects are not contingent on respondents’ proximity to attacks or direct experience. These findings highlight how democratic resilience can be strengthened in conflict-affected societies and inform future efforts to promote democracy. .
The distribution of hate speech and its implications for content moderation
Gloria Gennaro, Laura Bronner, Laurenz Derksen, Maël Kubli, Ana Kotarcic, Selina Kurer, Philip Grech, Karsten Donnay, Fabrizio Gilardi, Dominik Hangartner
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Hate speech is widely seen as a significant obstacle to constructive online discourse, but the most effective strategies to mitigate its effects remain unclear. We claim that understanding its distribution across users is key to developing and evaluating effective content moderation strategies. We address this missing link by first examining the distribution of hate speech in five original datasets that collect user-generated posts across multiple platforms (social media and online newspapers) and countries (Switzerland and the United States). Across these diverse samples, the vast majority of hate speech is produced by a small fraction of users. Second, results from a pre-registered field experiment on Twitter indicate that counterspeech strategies obtain only small reductions of future hate speech, mainly because this approach proves ineffective against the most prolific contributors of hate. These findings suggest that complementary content moderation strategies may be necessary to effectively address the problem.
Preemptive multipartism and democratic transitions
Natån Skigin, Aníbal Pérez-Liñån
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Scholars debate whether the presence of multiple parties in the legislature stabilizes dictatorships or promotes their demise. We show that authoritarian regimes face a dilemma: allowing for multipartism reduces the risk of bottom-up revolt, but facilitates protracted top-down democratization. Concessions to the opposition diminish the long-term benefits of authoritarian rule and empower regime soft-liners. We test our theory in Latin America—a region with a broad range of autocracies —using survival models, instrumental variables, random forests, and two case studies. Our theory explains why rational autocrats accept multipartism, even though this concession may ultimately undermine the regime. It also accounts for democratic transitions that occur when the opposition is fragmented and without a stunning authoritarian defeat.
Opportunities to govern: how to increase the supply of moderate and qualified candidates
Andrew Eggers, Anthony Fowler, William Howell, Molly Offer-Westort
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The state of American politics would be improved, many argue, if more moderate and qualified people served in government. We investigate what draws such individuals to run, focusing on a dimension of politics that has received scant attention within the candidate-entry literature—the ability of candidates, once elected, to exercise meaningful influence over policy. In a conjoint experiment, we find that the opportunity to wield greater authority differentially increases moderates’ interest in seeking office, and that more qualified people express more interest in running for offices with greater authority, lower thresholds for passing legislation, and higher staff support. These findings have implications for political representation, government effectiveness, and the relationship between institutional reform and mass politics.
Selectively (il)liberal: theory and evidence on nativist disidentification
Alberto LĂłpez Ortega, Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte
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Does group-based tribal thinking against ethnic out-groups condition support for both liberal and illiberal policies? Our thesis is that, irrespective of the direction of the policy (progressive or conservative), nativists express selective support for policies based on different signals of group-identity: descriptive markers, group-based substantive representation, in- and out-group norms, and group-based reasoning. We test this theoretical expectation using a novel AI-powered visual conjoint experiment in the Netherlands and Germany that asked individuals to select between hypothetical educational reform proposals presented by civic actors during a public consultation. Empirically, our results demonstrate that citizens, on average, are indeed selectively (il)liberal and that this instrumental policy support is greater among those with higher levels of underlying nativism. Specifically, we show that—among our multidimensional markers of group-based identities, norms, and reasoning—group-based substantive representation and in-group norms are the strongest determinants of support for diverse reform proposals. These findings have key implications on the malleable nature of citizens’ support for the backsliding of the liberal tenets of democracy as well as the persuasive power of out-group disidentification .

Research & Politics

Gauging preference stability under authoritarianism
Jennifer Pan, Yiqing Xu
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Do people living under authoritarianism exhibit stable, constrained preferences? Autocrats have incentives to suppress the formation of stable preferences structured by underlying constraints as such preferences can empower challengers and limit policy choices. However, research in political psychology suggests that such preferences may emerge through internal cognitive processes regardless of external conditions. We address this question using three surveys, two of which are longitudinal, in China, a theoretically important case. We find that preferences related to political institutions, economic policies, nationalistic policies, traditional social values, and ethnic policies exhibit relatively high levels of intertemporal stability over month-long and year-long periods, comparable to patterns observed in competitive electoral democracies. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of political knowledge and education exhibit more stable preferences. These findings suggest that, despite autocratic efforts to suppress stable and constrained preferences, such preferences can still take shape. We also offer practical recommendations for measuring preference configuration in authoritarian contexts.
Government performance and support for democracy in Spain
Darren Hawkins, Joshua R. Gubler, Celeste Beesley, Tayla Ingles, Julia Chatterley
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Do problems with government performance impact public support for democracy? Observational studies offer mixed answers. Given the limits of observational data, we present results from a 2022 survey experiment of nearly 2000 residents in Spain. Respondents were prompted to write about one of two common types of poor government performance—corruption or unemployment. In addition, we asked respondents to write about corruption as generated either by elites or by the system of government generally. Our outcome, support for democracy, is measured using questions about commonly eroded democratic practices and about democracy generally (labeled “conceptual democracy”). We find that the writing primes reduce support for conceptual democracy but did not reduce support for specific democratic practices like civil liberties or institutional checks on executives. These findings show that in addition to factors like partisanship and elite rhetoric, government performance plays an important role in shaping public support for democracy in nuanced ways.
Stereotypes and scandals: Politician gender and public judgments about scandal in Mexico
Fernanda Quintanilla DomĂ­nguez, Rebecca Bell-Martin, Brett Ryan Bessen
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This article examines how politician gender shapes voter judgments about political scandal in Mexico. We test the hypothesis that individuals discount or disbelieve scandals when their content contradicts gender stereotypes. In a survey experiment, we varied the type of scandal and the gender of politician facing misconduct allegations. Respondents were more favorable toward female politicians accused of stereotype-incongruent behaviors. Further, benevolent sexists—those who idealize women as uniquely pure—were especially likely to discount stereotype-incongruent scandals. These findings elucidate the role of gender stereotypes in shaping judgments about politicians’ fitness for office.

West European Politics

Vote choices in the Council of the European Union 2010 to 2021
Arash Pourebrahimi, Madeleine O. Hosli
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Blame games, problem denial, and relational distance
Thomas Elston, Christopher A. Cooper, Anna Bilous
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