Citizens rely on information to evaluate the government, but their sources are limited in authoritarian regimes. This study shows that citizens can learn from extraordinary events, such as public safety incidents, which are socially salient, highly visible, and clearly attributable. When the state bears causal responsibility for a safety failure, political trust declines under both a controversial and an uncontroversial response. Using survey data that cover three national crises in contemporary China, the analysis compares respondents in the weeks immediately before and after the incidents. Trust in government declined following the 2011 bullet train crash and the 2018 vaccine scandal, but not following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Further analysis finds no increase in perceived corruption, while perceptions of free expression declined after the train crash but not after the earthquake, consistent with dissatisfaction over information control. The findings have implications for authoritarian accountability and regime stability.

Black women have long anchored Black political cohesion, yet little explains why a gender gap persists within a group marked by strong Democratic loyalty. Drawing on historical and sociological work, we argue that Black women’s collective-first orientation—shaped by gendered social roles across enslavement, Jim Crow, and modern civic life—heightens the political significance of the antecedents of Black Democratic partisanship: racial identity salience, perceived discrimination, and racially homogenous social networks. Using an original national survey of 4,200 Black Americans, we find that the partisan gender gap widens because the composition of their social networks more strongly shapes Black women’s political preferences. Accounting for racial identity salience and perceived discrimination substantially reduces the gender gap. These findings illuminate how racialized gender roles structure the pathways through which group-based norms translate into partisan behavior, providing a mechanism for intragroup variation and guiding more nuanced strategies for political engagement and mobilization.

Building on the concept of reciprocity in directed weighted networks, we propose a framework to study legislative vote trading. We first discuss the theoretical conditions to quantify vote trading empirically. We then illustrate how our empirical framework—complementary to existing approaches—can facilitate the discovery and measurement of vote trading in roll-call data. Validation is provided via an agent-based model where the ground truth is controllable. Applications to two major studies in the field provide richer, yet consistent evidence on vote trading in U.S. politics.

Survey research examining social influence in political behavior has often relied on name generators to measure individuals’ social networks. As the term implies, name generators ask respondents for a list of their network ties—these batteries often focus on core networks, or the handful of intimate contacts with whom the individual discusses important matters. Recent work has broadened its focus from these small, dense, core networks to larger, but less intimate acquaintance networks; this is the broader set of people an individual knows on a first-name basis, and these contacts have been measured with aggregated relational data (ARD) batteries. In this paper we use data from the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50) and a series of Cooperative Election Study (CES) modules fielded in 2018 and 2024 to examine the reliability and validity of acquaintance network data. Our analysis pays particular attention to points of similarity and distinction between ARD measures and standard name generators, and we close by offering some suggestions to researchers studying patterns of interpersonal interaction in mass publics.

Amid growing public discourse about a “masculinity crisis,” political scientists have sought to measure masculinity as an identity distinct from binary sex. This paper advances a continuous framework for assessing self-perceived masculinity rather than fixed categories. We review measures of masculinity used across the social sciences, zeroing in on self-perceived measures and what they have contributed to the political science literature. Drawing on original survey data, we show that continuous masculinity (and femininity) predict political participation, attitudes on force issues, and broader ideological orientations. We conclude by calling for renewed attention to masculinity as a political identity—one that can be measured continuously and helps explain patterns of backlash, hierarchy maintenance, and participation in contemporary politics. Integrating expectancy–discrepancy models of masculine identity, we propose new directions for understanding how feelings of masculine threat and loss shape political behavior in an era of shifting gender norms.

This article presents a DuBosian approach to civic education: one that advocates for content that is racially inclusive and addresses political activism; centers conversations about politics; and ensures that K-12 educators reflect the diversity of their students. I argue that this approach provides a useful framework for classroom practices that can equip young people with the capacity needed to navigate and transform a democratic system defined by persistent racial inequality. I also assess whether there is public support for such an approach using a national sample of Americans. I find that a majority of respondents across racial, ethnic, and partisan lines, including many parents, support central tenets of a DuBoisian approach to civic education. By emphasizing the tangible pedagogical techniques associated with a DuBosian approach to civic education, it may be possible to sidestep the ambiguity and polarization of curriculum debates and reengage in the nuances of civic education policymaking.

Scholarly interest in the evaluation of atheist candidates for office has been growing. In the aggregate, atheists are a political pariah. However, aggregate effects conceal a wide partisan gulf, with Democrats more open and Republicans more averse to atheist candidates for office. Less is known about biases that nonreligious candidates with less stridently secular views might encounter in political evaluation. Focusing on broadly conceptualized nonreligion, I make several contributions to the literature: 1) I partially replicate the findings on the links between nonreligion and political appraisal using a conjoint experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey; 2) I assess the relative importance of nonreligion and other factors that influence candidate appraisal; 3) I investigate how partisanship and religiosity interact to affect receptivity to candidate nonreligion; and 4) I examine how age and religiosity interact to influence Democrats’ and Republicans’ openness to candidate nonreligion.

We possess a limited understanding of Indigenous electoral behavior, partisanship, and political attitudes. Previous research has mainly focused on explaining Indigenous electoral abstention and has faced constraints, mainly because of small sample sizes. Drawing on data from both the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Studies, which encompass an unprecedented number of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis respondents, we explore Indigenous electoral behavior, partisanship, and attitudes toward public spending at the federal level in Canada. We show that while Indigenous respondents remain more likely to consider abstention, they can also be more supportive of third parties than their non-Indigenous counterparts and adopt views spanning the traditional left–right ideological spectrum. These findings encourage a redefinition of the expectations regarding the political behaviors and attitudes of Indigenous Peoples in order to fully engage with diverse political cultures.

American politics scholars have long argued for the centrality of Black group consciousness in political decision-making for African Americans, regardless of class. However, what has not been completely explored is whether there are specific circumstances in which class-based concerns are prioritized for middle-class African Americans over racial group considerations. This paper explores whether the specific circumstance of direct economic threat heightens the relevance of class considerations over racial group considerations for local redistributive policy preferences among Black homeowners. Utilizing a novel survey experiment, I directly pit economic self-interest against racial group solidarity to analyze the prioritized political consideration for affluent Black political decision-making. I argue that the strength of racial group solidarity will extend to African American homeowners foregoing their own economic self-interest, defined as their property value, for the benefit of the overall racial group. Findings support my hypotheses and demonstrate that Black homeowners higher in linked fate are most likely to show the highest levels of support for the redistributive policy when low-income tenants are explicitly described as Black, as compared to the White condition or the control. These findings point to the effects and non-effects of economic self-interest in Black political decision-making depending on the racialized context. Lastly, this inquiry points to the resilience of Black group racial solidarity and its role in the formation of Black policy preferences irrespective of class-based intra- group differences.

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.

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.

Text analysis typically focuses on content—such as sentiment or topic—but expression is also a form of effortful action. Building on this insight, I propose using simple features of open-ended tasks to study text as behavior. This approach treats expression, such as writing, as cognitively, emotionally and temporally “costly” for subjects but inexpensive for researchers. I show basic statistics like the number of characters can approximate effort and significantly improve estimation of quantities of interest, including candidate choice, the probability of turning out to vote and psychological states about which a subject may not be fully aware. Further, these methods can convert nonresponse into informative data; validate survey instruments; serve as mechanism checks; be hard for a subject to “game”; work across different languages and analogize well to real-world situations. In sum, text as behavior can help address a range of issues related to quantifying attitudes and actions.

The symbiotic relationships between Black politics and religious institutions have often been understood through the lens of the Civil Rights Era and the political significance of the Black Church. Today, religious organizations remain an important pillar of Black political organizing, with particular focus on Black Protestant Churches. Given the increasing Black Muslim population, we examine the relationship between Black religious socialization and political attitudes. We view these identities intersectionally and investigate how religion may produce within-group differences with respect to both religious and racial identity development, which in turn produces some variation in political attitudes. Using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS) and the 2020 PEW Survey of Black Faith, we demonstrate that perceptions of Black collective identity and religious identity differ for Black Christians and Black Muslims. Importantly, linked fate and identity importance differently predict political attitudes even if the political attitudes fundamentally remain similar.

Progressive parties often advocate pro-immigration policies but do not attract equal support from all immigrant groups. Why is this the case? This study examines immigrants’ support for green parties, a key progressive party family in Western Europe. Our findings reveal that immigrants from established democracies are more likely to support green parties compared to those from (post-)authoritarian regimes. We attribute this disparity to socialization: Individuals from established democracies, where post-materialist values and environmental politics are more prominent, are more attuned to green issues. This heightened salience influences their political preferences after migration. Using entropy balancing on cross-national European surveys, we document this green support gap and provide evidence for our proposed mechanism. These results inform debates on how political preferences travel across contexts and the socialization effects of political institutions.