We examine whether different information frames affect how people perceive the domestic costs of sanctions and support sanctions. Using data from an information provision experiment in Germany and Poland, we demonstrate that people overestimate the costs of sanctions (Gross Domestic Product loss due to an energy embargo) in sending countries. Yet, this perception can be corrected through the provision of actual information, which in turn enhances the support for the sanction. Contrasting sanctions’ costs with other costs – Covid-19 costs and costs imposed on target countries – has no additional effect.

Minority governments are common across parliamentary systems, and a large body of literature has examined their stability and performance. Meanwhile, we know very little about how voters perceive this government type and whether they understand its political implications. We survey voters in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, three European countries with varying degrees of exposure to minority governments, about their knowledge and perceptions of minority governments. We find that voters have knowledge levels comparable to those about the role of political parties, and that this is independent of the respective prevalence of minority governments in each country. Informed voters express stronger preferences for majority governments. However, minority governments are associated with specific positive representational traits, specifically with the impression that such governments listen more to the demands of all voters, and general perceptions are stronger for knowledgeable voters. The findings have implications for how elites can formulate arguments in favour or against minority governments that may resonate with voters.

What determines the outcomes of negotiations is a central question in political science, and such negotiations are crucial in coalition systems where political parties distribute policy payoffs during coalition negotiations. In this paper, we argue that due to the combination of the non-separability of most public policies and the shared responsibility for policy outcomes under coalition governments, which policies a party manages to get included in a coalition agreement will reflect these policies’ popularity among the other governing coalition parties, rather than policy payoffs being driven by proportionality or relative salience. Using a unique dataset containing novel data on the budgetary impact of every measure proposed in election manifestos and coalition agreements over five government formations, we can directly observe the policy payoffs extracted by each party for participating in government, using a measure that is directly comparable across parties, policy areas, and time. The results have substantial implications for our understanding of the formation process and functioning of coalition governments.

For many years, political scientists have debated over voter competence in direct democracy. At the core of the discussion is whether this central institution enlightens citizens about political facts. However, scholars have primarily examined if direct democracy fosters general political knowledge even though referendums and ballot initiatives are policy-specific in nature, as citizens vote on particular political proposals. By utilising a range of unique panel survey data collected around four Danish European Union referendums, I show that voters’ knowledge of policy-specific information markedly increased during the campaigns. I also combine the survey data with an original media content analysis and find that the learning of issue-specific facts is more related to the opportunities provided by the media information environment than to individual ability or motivation. These results suggest that a broad group of voters acquire policy-specific facts that help them make informed choices when they are granted full control of political decision-making.

Studying lobbying influence in politics has been confronted with the challenge of gaining insights into processes that usually take place behind closed doors and about which honest answers from participants are difficult to obtain. Therefore, innovative methods of indirect measurement of lobby success – via text analysis or interviews – have been used to get at the hidden politics of lobbying. In this research note, we propose an additional technique to study lobby influence much more directly, the randomized response technique (RRT). This method has been successfully used to study doping in elite sports, for instance, but has been almost absent from political research in the past. The note presents the method and illustrates its applicability with a study of lobby influence in German Parliaments. The study reached out to 2386 present and to 850 former MPs (Members of Parliaments). The response dataset added up to 273 present and 160 former MPs, equaling response rates of 11.4% and 18.8% respectively. Despite these low response rates, it was nevertheless possible to estimate rates of lobby-friendly behavior among German MPs at comparably low rates of instruction noncompliance. Although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to the low response rate, the study demonstrates the viability of RRT surveys as a means to study sensitive issues in politics.

Two interrelated trends have narrowed the class backgrounds of policymakers over the past decades: a decreasing share of working-class MPs and a parallel rise of highly educated ‘career politicians’ with little occupational experience outside politics. Although these trends risk aggravating representational inequality, we know little about their causes. Focusing on parties as the main gatekeepers to parliament, we analyse how the class background of political candidates influences the chances of being nominated in electorally safer positions. Based on original data on MPs’ backgrounds and the German GLES Candidate Study, we show that candidates with a working-class background have lower chances to be placed in safe positions, especially in center-right parties. Careerists, in contrast, enjoy systematic advantages in the nomination process, at least in left-wing parties. Lacking individual resources is thus not the only obstacle to working-class representation, but political parties are important actors in shaping the class composition of parliaments.

Peaceful transfers of power are a fundamental principle of democracy. Yet, in times of heightened affective polarisation, election losses may trigger strong negative emotional reactions in partisans, which in turn undermine support for fundamental democratic principles among partisans. We test this idea through two pre-registered survey experiments conducted after the 2022 and 2024 elections in the United States. We randomly assign partisans to receive either a placebo or an emotive reminder about the election that their party lost, containing others’ angry or worried reactions at the election outcome. Contrary to our pre-registered expectations, we do not find evidence that priming negative feelings about electoral loss affects support for political violence or democratic norms. Emotive reminders about salient political events can momentarily turn up the heat on politics, but are not enough to propel partisans to adopt extreme anti-democratic attitudes. By linking the study of emotions to democratic norms, this article contributes to our understanding of when negative emotions (fail to) radicalise partisans.

Subjective group relative deprivation (SGRD) is a powerful driver of political protest and support for radical parties. Yet, we lack insights into whether such subjective perceptions of disadvantage attack the very core of democratic legitimacy, that is, citizens’ support for democracy. Against this backdrop, we investigate how SGRD relates to diffuse democratic support. We argue that perceptions of being systematically disadvantaged fuel disaffection with and resentment against the prevailing democratic system, whereas authoritarian systems with their strongmen leadership appear appealing as they promise a stronger in-group protection and pursue more confrontational in-group-out-group relations, which both can be understood as coping strategies to overcome an unfair disadvantage. Employing original – cross-sectional and panel – survey data, we show that SGRD has the potential to undermine citizens’ support for democracy across six European countries in 2020–2022. Our study highlights the negative impact of subjective disadvantage on support for democracy by combining literature from political psychology and political economy.

When democracy is eroded by democratically elected incumbents, it is up to others to defend democracy and sustain the democratic institutions. An emerging body of research looks at the roles, challenges, and tactics of these democratic defenders, yet there is no research that explores under what circumstances civil servants move from bystanders to democratic defenders. I argue that civil servants are prime candidates to defend democracy against incumbent-led autocratisation, which I conceptualise as ‘administrative democratic defence’. Based on in-depth, semi-structured elite interviews in the Netherlands, I argue that administrative democratic defence only occurs when three dilemmas are successfully navigated: civil servants need to perceive they have the capability to recognise autocratisation, they need to perceive they have access to legitimate instruments to halt it, and they need to be willing to use those instruments. In addition, I show how a resilient democracy requires continued awareness and action on its part – even in a highly democratic and liberal context.

Are citizens in western democracies developing affective attachments to the Left and Right as social-political groups? If so, one can hardly imagine a more consequential development for understanding the electoral behavior of Western publics. However, previous evidence suggesting such attachments are important (and growing) comes from a small number of single-case studies. In this paper, we expand the evidentiary basis for this idea by implementing a method that leverages existing survey data to test whether citizens in western democracies, over a long time period, have developed such group-based attachments. Specifically, we use surveys in which respondents place parties on the left-right scale to test for the existence of an out-group homogeneity effect between potential Left and Right identifiers. We argue that this pattern provides compelling indirect evidence of such group attachments and shows that the effect is both widespread across western democracies and increasing over time. As a proof of concept, we fielded original surveys in Denmark, Italy, and Sweden and found that our direct Left/Right attachment measures are strongly associated with the indirect evidence documented in our cross-national analyses. Thus, this paper provides an empirically justified call for scholars to invest in the development of appropriate survey batteries that directly measure affective attachments to the Left and Right in a large set of countries.

The scholarship on satisfaction with democracy has increased significantly in recent decades, with scholars investigating how democratic satisfaction influences political attitudes and behaviors as well as the individual and contextual determinants of citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. To our knowledge, however, scholars omitted to examine the democratic satisfaction of politicians. Making use of survey data from the Comparative Candidates Survey, this research note addresses this gap in the literature. As a first step in this endeavor, we pose two objectives. First, we want to compare levels of democratic satisfaction across citizens and politicians in different countries to evaluate whether mass-elite gaps are apparent. Second, we want to replicate core findings from the research on citizens but with politicians. As such, we examine two hallmark findings in the literature on democratic satisfaction with respect to the role of ideological extremism/nicheness and the winner-loser gap at elections. Our study contributes to the growing literature on elites’ attitudes and behaviors and identifies some of the conditions that favor and undermine politicians’ satisfaction with democracy. This is a crucial research endeavor given elites’ influence on public opinion and democratic stability.

Affective polarization among citizens is often attributed to the harsh rhetoric and personal attacks that politicians direct at one another. However, the influence of elite rhetoric on affective polarization may work in both directions. We theorize that politicians can reduce affective polarization by making positive or respectful statements about their political opponents. A preregistered survey experiment with 2,000 citizens provides strong support for this expectation. Politicians’ congenial messages about their opponents significantly reduce affective polarization on two distinct measures. Specifically, the experimental treatments reduce citizens’ negative emotions toward outpartisans, as well as their desire to socially distance themselves from such outpartisans. The depolarizing effect of such messages does not depend on the political alignment of either the politician or the citizen, nor does it necessarily require high levels of political trust.

Previous research suggests the effects of negative campaigning are highly conditional on country context and the specific messages that are used. In this paper, we present an experiment on negative campaigning in an unexamined context in which existing studies could point to differing outcomes. We examine the effect of attacks placed in campaign leaflets on a candidate’s personal traits and policy positions in Great Britain. Unlike prior studies, our treatments are contrast ads and not purely negative ads. While the inclusion of positive messaging from the sponsor could increase voters’ parasocial relationship with the candidate, shielding them from backlash, the results from our experiment suggest that British voters view attacks on personal traits as too negative and lower their evaluation of the sponsor as a result.

The declining voter turnout across democracies has raised concerns regarding its implications for democratic representation. Yet, the extent to which low turnout may undermine representation in Europe remains unclear. Do the policy preferences of voters and non-voters differ? This research addresses that question by providing the first large-scale, cross-national examination of policy preference differences between voters and non-voters in European democracies. Using data from the 2014 and 2019 waves of the European Election Study, covering 29 European democracies, I analyse differences across the left-right spectrum, economic attitudes (ie redistribution, regulation, spending), social attitudes (ie immigration, same-sex marriage, environment, and civil liberties), and views on European integration. The results reveal some disparities between voters and non-voters, but these are generally sporadic, even within individual countries, suggesting that such disparities are not the norm. Still, when differences do arise, they are not trivial. The analysis of how the electorate’s preferences would change under a hypothetical full turnout scenario suggests that these disparities can introduce meaningful biases. Using data from the British Election Study Internet Panel, I further distinguish between regular voters, peripheral voters, and perpetual non-voters and find notable heterogeneity in their policy preferences. These findings show that when turnout is low, the electorate’s overall stance reflects that of regular voters, but higher turnout mitigates this bias. Overall, the results suggest that while voters and non-voters in Europe typically hold similar policy views, occasional disparities can introduce representation bias in policy preferences, with implications for democratic representation and party strategies.

Research indicates a lack of presence of lower socioeconomic status (SES) individuals in parliament, hindering their representation due to a lack of shared experiences between low SES citizens and representatives. Theorists argue that understanding low SES experiences depends not only on representatives’ own SES but also on those closest to them. However, little is known about whether elected representatives count lower SES citizens in their intimate network. Surveying 1,185 representatives across 13 Western countries, we examine the educational attainment and social class of their parents, partner, and two closest friends. In none of these countries do representatives’ ties mirror the share of lower SES citizens in the population. The results are only slightly better when we examine how many representatives have at least a single lower SES tie. We also find evidence for homophily. High SES representatives tend to associate with high SES individuals, and they tend to do that much more than high SES citizens associate with other high SES citizens. This shows that representatives who could benefit most from lower SES perspectives in their personal networks often lack them.

How do far-right actors influence mainstream parties over time? Previous research shows that mainstream parties contribute to the electoral success of far-right parties through coalitions or policy alliances. However, a long-term perspective on the influence of far-right actors, including parties, civil society organisations, and social movements, on mainstream parties’ communication is lacking. This article investigates how far-right actors and issues have influenced mainstream parties’ communication in Germany since the 1990s. Using automated text analysis, we analyse 520,408 articles from six newspapers. First, we semi-automatically collect far-right actors and mainstream parties and implement a structural topic model to analyse their issue agendas. Second, we use time-series analysis to examine agenda-setting effects and their drivers. The results show that far-right influence on mainstream parties’ communication has increased, particularly among opposition parties and around issues of Islam and migration. Notably, the agenda-setting effect cuts across party ideologies, indicating mainstream parties’ impact on the rise of the far right in democracies.

Judicial transformation may result either from shifts in institutional context (prompting behavioral adjustment among incumbent judges) or changes in the composition of the bench (particularly through court-packing strategies that introduce new appointees). This article examines the case of the Polish Constitutional Court to evaluate which of these mechanisms better accounts for the controversial transformation of the court since late 2015. Drawing on data from constitutional abstract review decisions spanning 2003 to 2023, we analyze the behavior of distinct cohorts of judges. Our findings reveal a marked alignment with government positions following the October 2015 parliamentary elections, especially among judges appointed by the newly elected ruling party. The evidence suggests that the transformation is driven primarily by changes in judicial composition rather than by behavioral adaptation among pre-existing judges.

Politics is increasingly negative, especially surrounding elections, raising concerns about mass disengagement and democratic backsliding. Despite these worries, the literature on how negativity in voting affects democratic attitudes and voting intentions is riddled with ambiguous and contradictory results. We argue that this may partly be due to the failure to distinguish between two types of negativity in voting: (a) understanding voting as a way to act against a specific party, politician, or policy (negative meanings of voting), and (b) opposition to voting itself (an anti-voting orientation). Contrasting these to the classical conception of voting to support a party, politician, or policy (positive meanings of voting), we conceptualize these constructs and validate their measurement in twelve countries, differing in geography, political systems, and levels of democracy (N = 23,828). We arrive at two main conclusions. First, positive and negative meanings of voting are complementary and compatible attitudes. Modeling positive and negative voting separately rather than relative to each other shows a more nuanced picture of negative voting than previous work. Second, negative voting and anti-voting orientation are distinct types of negativity that relate differently to classical conceptions of voting and democratic attitudes. The first signals political dissatisfaction but belief in the electoral process. The second corresponds to such a disillusionment about voting that it inhibits dissatisfaction with democracy. As such, this distinction highlights the multifaceted nature of political negativity from a citizen perspective and helps clarify the relationship between negativity and democracy.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a deep economic crisis that prompted governments and central banks to implement extraordinary fiscal, monetary, and financial interventions. We examine public support for these interventions using a conjoint survey experiment conducted in Australia and the United Kingdom in early 2021. Our experiment innovates by investigating public preferences across two main categories of intervention: (1) wage subsidies designed to address employment and income risks and (2) financial stabilization measures aimed at supporting the balance sheets of households, businesses, and financial institutions. Results show that wagesubsidies received robust public support across diverse social, economic, and experiential cleavages. By contrast, financial and credit market interventions elicited mixed reactions, with strongest opposition toward those benefiting large firms and banks. We argue that the variation in support is primarily driven by an alignment of fairness considerations and policy design. In both countries, wage subsidies had key design features that made them more likely to be perceived as distributionally neutral, consistent with important fairness norms, and limiting the potential for free riding. They were available to all citizens experiencing verifiable employment disruption, delivered through employers, and appealed to welfare-chauvinistic views by excluding many recent immigrants and temporary residents. Moreover, the viral origin of the economic shock was widely perceived as exogenous and quasi-random, and the associated losses – particularly those related to employment and income more readily elicited greater empathy when borne by individuals than by firms. In contrast, financial-sector interventions, especially those aiding large corporations and banks, were less easily viewed as consistent with these fairness norms. These interventions were more prone to being perceived as favoring opportunistic or politically connected firms, echoing earlier public resentment of global financial crisis bailouts. Even some household-targeted financial interventions, such as debt relief and rent holidays, likely raised concerns among respondents about undeserved gains. Unlike some existing studies, our subgroup analysis finds little evidence that personal or local pandemic experiences significantly influenced attitudes toward economic interventions. Individuals who suffered direct health or economic impacts, or who lived in areas with high infection rates or strict lockdowns, were no more or less supportive of interventions. Instead, partisan orientation and perceptions of inequality were more predictive. Left-wing partisans and those who perceived rising or high inequality were especially supportive of wage subsidies and household-focused assistance. Traditional material cleavages – such as income, education, wealth, or asset ownership – had limited explanatory power. The underbanked population was an exception, showing more muted support for all interventions, likely due to perceived exclusion or limited personal benefit. We conclude that public evaluations of economic interventions during the pandemic were shaped less by self-interest or crisis exposure than by judgments about deservingness, fairness, and partisan attachments. Our findings emphasize the importance of policy design and political framing in sustaining public support for large-scale interventions during crises, and they have broader implications for the politics of economic policy in future global shocks.

Rising inequalities have been described as fertile ground for populist parties across the world. In this article, we investigate the role that inequality perception plays in strengthening populist attitudes and increasing support for populist parties. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, we find that those who perceive greater inequality in society are more likely to support populist parties. To explore the causal relationship, we also conduct a survey experiment in Denmark, Germany, and Italy, randomly exposing participants to factual information about the wealth distribution. The results show that the perception of inequality can increase populist attitudes, but does not immediately affect the likelihood of voting for populist parties in this context. The findings speak to current debates on how inequalities and their perception became a pre-condition for the rise of populist parties all over Europe.