Successful coordination around a Duvergerian equilibrium requires accurate and consistent information about parties’ expected electoral support. In practice, such information is often unreliable and rarely available at the local level, thus hindering voters’ coordination. In this paper, we leverage Argentina’s Open, Mandatory, and Simultaneous Primary Elections as a large-scale survey of voter preferences. Using data from 135 municipalities in the province of Buenos Aires (2011–23), we show that a narrower margin between the top-two placed parties in the primary increases both turnout and the proportion of positive votes in the general election, while decreasing electoral fragmentation. We further show that the second-placed party in the primary is substantially more likely to win the election than the third-placed one. Also consistent with theory, these effects are more pronounced (a) in concurrent elections; (b) in smaller municipalities; and (c) when the second-placed party is closer to the first-placed one.

Legislative oversight is an important element of the relationship between parliament and government. However, little research explores how the characteristics of ministers incentivize MPs to oversee some more thoroughly than others. This article studies whether and why the oversight activities of parliamentarians are shaped by ministers’ gender. We argue that legislators control women ministers more tightly than men due to stereotypical competence ascriptions and perceptions of lower trustworthiness of women. Studying original data for five European democracies since 1990, we show that legislators ask more written and oral questions to women compared to men ministers. Moreover, we underpin the causal mechanisms behind this pattern using semi-structured interviews with thirty-two parliamentarians inquiring about a specific replacement in that country. Revealing gender bias in legislative oversight has broader implications for women in government and parliamentary democracies.

Political representation is challenged by social acceleration, the rise of populism, and electoral volatility. Politicians’ need for prioritizing time and energy is acute and consequential for democracy. Voters’ preferences constitute one democratically relevant standard for guiding such priorities. However, current research mainly focuses on voters’ preferences for representatives’ personality traits or policy outcomes, which are hard for an individual politician to control. This study provides a conceptual framework for analyzing politicians’ task priority by separating functional legislative tasks from relational representative tasks, and employs this framework in surveys among Danish, German, UK, and US voters. Analyses of open-ended answers, time allocations, and conjoint experiments show that voters assign higher importance to functional tasks compared to relational tasks. The framework offers a new approach to studying political representation in practice, and the results provide guidance for how politicians should prioritize scarce resources for political representation in a high-speed, volatile political context.

Why do women and men vote differently in presidential elections? Much research on gender and vote choice has focused on the United States and Western Europe, with less attention to the Global South. We develop a theory of sex gaps in presidential voting, which shows how ideology, feminism, and gendered personalities may help explain them. To test this, we designed and fielded surveys for presidential elections in Chile in 2021, Brazil in 2022, and Argentina in 2023. Results show that ideology and feminism largely explain men’s and women’s divergent votes for presidential candidates. Leftists, self-identified feminists, and respondents with more feminist attitudes were more likely to vote for Gabriel Boric instead of José Antonio Kast, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over Jair Bolsonaro, and Sergio Massa rather than Javier Milei. Unlike in the United States, Latin Americans’ gendered personalities do not seem to influence their vote choice.

In many countries, women participate in politics at lower rates than men. This gap is often most pronounced among young adults. Civic education programs that provide non-partisan political information are commonly used to try to close this gender gap. However, information alone rarely reduces the gap and sometimes exacerbates it. We extend the literature emphasizing the psychological resources women need to participate by evaluating whether embedding efficacy-promoting messages within civic education reduces gender disparities in participation. In collaboration with Zambian civic organizations, we implemented a field experiment before national elections that randomly assigned urban young adults to an information-only course or the same course with efficacy-promoting messages. We find that the efficacy-promoting course substantially increased young women’s political interest and participation, narrowing gender gaps across a wide range of behavioral and attitudinal outcomes. We discuss the study’s implications for theories of political participation and the design of civic education.

How do political parties balance policy adaptation with ideological continuity? While spatial models emphasise external factors driving party behaviour, less attention has been given to internal party choices. This article innovates by proposing that parties differentiate between and make distinct strategical decisions regarding their ideological core and peripheral policy areas. We argue that parties maintain continuity in their ideological core while exhibiting greater flexibility in modifying their periphery. Using the Manifesto Project Corpus and an XLM-RoBERTa-based language model, we analyse manifesto sections to distinguish core from peripheral segments. Our findings show that parties take clearer stances in their ideological core while adapting their periphery more flexibly, with niche parties displaying this pattern more strongly than mainstream parties. Electoral setbacks lead parties to adopt more extreme peripheries, while cores remain stable. These results highlight the strategic importance of the core–periphery distinction in party communication and suggest that studies of party competition should consider where policy shifts occur within parties’ electoral programmes.

Many localities in the United States are, or have been at some point in their past, economically dependent on a single industry. This leaves local governments vulnerable to capture by dominant firms. In such places, business interests may shape not only policy outcomes, but the size, structure, and capacity of government itself. Focusing on the case of eastern coal country in the twentieth century United States, this paper presents evidence that the coal industry hindered the growth of local government capacity where it was dominant. A difference-in-differences design and instrumental variables analysis show that coal-dependent counties employed fewer public workers, collected less tax revenue, and spent less on government services than comparable areas, with the latter two effects persisting long after the industry’s decline. These findings illustrate that local political economy in the early phases of institutional development can shape the trajectories of governance in lasting ways.

In a political wave that has been emulated across many African states, state-sponsored homophobia is being entrenched via draconian laws. Social movements grapple with countering these state-driven initiatives and altering ingrained anti-LGBTQ societal attitudes. Drawing on a survey experiment developed with guidance from Zimbabwean activists, this study tests the effectiveness of locally rooted messages that affirm queer indigeneity and contest claims that homosexuality is ‘un-African’. We find that ‘rooted’ messages incite no backlash, while an indigenous message reduces prejudice towards LGBTQ neighbors and a liberation message may increase support for LGBTQ-equal rights. These findings are important as they provide empirical support for effective strategies to combat anti-LGBTQ sentiments in challenging contexts. They also speak to broader political science debates on norm contestation and the limits of universal human-rights framing in nationalist and post-colonial contexts, demonstrating that activist-informed rooted messages offer a powerful alternative in shaping opinion on contested rights.

Since the 2010s, social scientists have increasingly conducted survey-experimental studies that explore what factors drive public attitudes towards migrants in host countries. We conducted a systematic meta-analysis of 118 such studies, comprising 428,881 respondents from fifty-three countries. We find that sociotropic economic concerns play a key role, with individuals being more welcoming towards migrants who contribute to the economy through their professional occupation, education, or language skills. In contrast, there is limited evidence that hosts evaluate migrants based on egocentric economic concerns. Cultural concerns are also important; notably, we uncover a persistent anti-Muslim bias. Humanitarian concerns shape attitudes as well – especially towards forcibly displaced migrants, who are generally viewed more favorably than economic migrants. Climate migrants place between conflict migrants and economic migrants in terms of public perception. Our meta-analysis raises several questions that remain unanswered in the literature, suggesting important directions for future research.

Why do politicians sometimes deliver passionate speeches and sometimes tedious monologues? Even though the delivery is key to understanding political speech, we know little about when and why political actors choose particular delivery styles. Focusing on legislative speech, we expect legislators to deliver more emphatic speeches when their vote is aligned with the preferences of their constituents. To test this proposition, we develop and apply an automated video analysis model to speech recordings from the US House of Representatives. We match the speech emphasis with district preferences on key bills using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that House members who rise in opposition to a bill give more passionate speeches when public preferences are aligned with their vote. The results suggest that political actors are not only mindful of public opinion in what they say but also in how they say it.

This article examines the firm-level roots of anti-system political attitudes, focusing on Jair Bolsonaro’s rise in Brazil. Using Brazil’s RAIS dataset, a comprehensive matched employer–employee longitudinal database, and exclusive data on Aliados apoios, a unique dataset of over 69,000 Bolsonaro supporters, this study provides new insights into the employment trajectories of his base. Paired with an original representative online survey of full-time workers featuring observational and experimental components, the findings show that Bolsonaro supporters faced significant declines in wages and occupational premia relative to similar workers. Experimental evidence reveals that poor job quality, workplace unfairness, and wage inequality information might fuel anti-democratic attitudes. By leveraging distinctive data and methods, this article uncovers how firm-level inequalities shape populist and anti-system sentiments, offering a novel perspective on the political consequences of economic disparity and bringing nuance to economic theories of populism.

As private actors turn to international courts (ICs), we argue that judges can adopt pro-individual rights agendas to promote their own legitimacy. By leveling the odds for disempowered individuals and spotlighting their rights claims, ICs rebut charges that they are playthings of the powerful and cultivate support networks in civil society. We assess our theory by scrutinizing the first IC with private access: the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Established as an economic court and alleged to conceal a pro-business bias, we leverage original data demonstrating that the ECJ publicizes itself as protector of individuals and matches words with deeds. The ECJ ‘levels’, favoring individuals’ rights claims over claims raised by businesses boasting better legal teams. The ECJ then ‘spotlights’ pro-individual rights rulings via press releases that lawyers amplify in law journals. These findings challenge claims that ICs build legitimacy by stealth and the ‘haves’ come out ahead in litigation.

Can a scandal in one political sphere tarnish – or unexpectedly polish – the reputation of leaders in another? This study investigates the impact of political scandals in multilevel political systems and explores three possibilities: contagion, where trust erodes across all political levels; containment, where evaluations are limited to the specific institutions involved; and contrast, where actors at other levels appear more trustworthy in comparison. We present the first experimental test of vertical contagion, containment, and contrast effects following real-world scandals in UK and Scottish politics: Partygate and Campervangate. We find weak evidence of contagion in the Scottish-level ‘Campervangate’ scandal, although trust reductions were small and often not significant. However, the ‘Partygate’ scandal reveals a distinct contrast effect: trust decreased in UK political actors but increased at the Scottish level. These results suggest that scandals in multilevel polities can influence evaluations of ‘innocent’ political actors, with troubling consequences for democratic accountability mechanisms.

How do women’s pre-election experiences influence their behavior in government? We examine women’s participation in rebel groups as a form of masculine socialization and theorize that former rebel women elected in the national legislature will continue to defy gender norms by being more active than their other women colleagues and more frequently discussing topics that are male-dominated and relate to their wartime experience. Using novel datasets of parliamentary speeches and rebel ties of elected MPs in Uganda and Zimbabwe, we find that women ex-rebels make more legislative speeches, including speeches on topics related to wartime experience. We find mixed evidence for speeches on ‘hard’ topics. These findings contribute to theoretical debates on women’s political representation, gender and conflict, and legislative politics.

Do employment opportunities for women reduce intimate partner violence (IPV)? We address this question using harmonized field experiments in Egypt and Tunisia. In Egypt, we evaluate a public works program that disproportionately benefited women; in Tunisia, the program we evaluate benefited men and women equally. Consistent with a household bargaining model in which men perpetrate IPV to maintain dominance over their spouses, we find that the Egyptian program exacerbated IPV and heightened psychological distress, even among eligible women who were not randomly selected to participate, while the Tunisian program did not. Also consistent with this model, the Egyptian program increased women’s control over spending – a measure of bargaining power – while the Tunisian program did not. We rule out several alternative explanations for these results. Finally, we show that the Egyptian program’s adverse effects on IPV persisted over time, but did not spill over onto women in the community writ large.

How do citizens evaluate lesbian and gay (LG) party leaders? While recent scholarship has provided a window into how individuals evaluate openly gay legislative candidates, few studies have examined voter evaluations of LG individuals in executive positions, where voters may have different expectations of political leaders. This study assesses public perceptions of LG party leaders, with a focus on leader deservingness, competency, and electoral viability. Results from a conjoint experiment in the United Kingdom indicate that LG leaders receive lower leadership evaluations than straight leaders on all dimensions. Additionally, we find that gay women and men face similar penalties. This finding holds regardless of the leader’s level of legislative experience. Thus, LG party leaders face a significant disadvantage compared to their straight counterparts when seeking the top position within their party.

‘Democratic innovations’, which enhance citizen participation in decision-making processes, have been proposed to address challenges faced by many democracies. Only recently has research studied these innovations’ legitimacy among the public, which is of importance if innovations are to be viable remedies for democracy’s problems. This paper advances this literature with survey experiments conducted in Ghana. Ghanaians ascribe higher legitimacy to citizen deliberative bodies (mini-publics), open participatory processes, and citizen-elite deliberation processes relative to the status quo. These processes generate more legitimacy among those who do not favor the process outcome. Ghanaians were most favorable towards citizen-elite deliberation, viewing it as more fair, democratic, and likely to ameliorate partisan tensions. I suggest that this is because citizen-elite deliberation is most consistent with Ghanaian understandings of democratic accountability. This highlights the importance of context in shaping democratic reforms’ legitimacy, with implications for theory and reform design.

Drone strikes are a fixture of US counter-terrorism policy, often advertised as ‘surgical’ alternatives to ground operations. Drone strikes’ effects, however, are less precise than proponents suggest. Using data from over 12 billion call detail records from Yemen between 2010 and 2012, we show that the US drone campaign significantly disrupted civilian lives in previously-unmeasured ways. Strikes cause large increases in civilian mobility away from affected areas and create immediate, durable displacement: mobility among nearby individuals increases 24 percent on strike days, and average distance from the strike region increases steadily for over a month afterward, signifying prolonged displacement for thousands of individuals. Strikes are disruptive regardless of whether they kill civilians, though effects are larger after civilian casualties. Our findings suggest that even carefully targeted drone campaigns generate collateral disruption that has not been weighed in public debate or policy decisions about the costs and benefits of drone warfare.

Globalization’s emphasis on the knowledge economy gradually shifted universities’ objectives away from fostering social cohesion towards developing market skills. What kind of citizenship has emerged from this process? Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, I study the political economy legacy of the largest ever market-oriented transformation in higher education – the Bologna Process – for European millennials. I find evidence for a ‘neoliberal hypothesis’: the reform substantially increased the perceived importance of achieving status and wealth. By contrast, I find no evidence for a ‘humanist hypothesis’: The reform did not change the perceived importance of global equality and environmental issues. Ironically, the Bologna Process heightened the perceived importance of status and wealth without delivering long-run gains in income and employment. My findings dispute that universities indoctrinate students into left-wing politics, and suggest that market-friendly institutional change constructs the ‘student customer’.

Can political activism foster electoral participation? We investigate this question by examining the role of the British suffragists in fostering women’s electoral participation. While scholars have shown that women politicians increase women’s participation in politics, less attention has been paid to the role of activists. We fill this gap by studying the 1913 Pilgrimage, a large-scale nationwide march in support of women’s parliamentary suffrage. Using a novel database of geocoded electoral registers, we employ a differences-in-differences strategy to show that proximity to the Pilgrimage increased women’s registration in local elections. To explain this effect, we show that exposure to women activists spurred other women’s political mobilization, and that our results are not driven by an endogenous selection of the march path and cannot be attributed to mobilization by other movements or politicians. Our findings highlight that women’s activism can drive political participation even in the virtual absence of women politicians.