I checked 18 political science journals on Wednesday, September 23, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period September 16 to September 22, I found 19 new paper(s) in 12 journal(s).

American Journal of Political Science

Breadwinner backlash: The gendered effects of industrial decline
Richard Clark, Roza Khoban, Noah Zucker
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Low‐skilled men have long been vulnerable to globalization, decarbonization, and other forms of economic disruption. When shocks are realized, women often increase their paid labor to compensate for men's loss of income. We study how layoffs of low‐skilled men and concurrent shifts in workforce composition toward women affect voting. We theorize that this labor market rebalancing produces “nostalgic” coalitions of men and women that seek a return to male‐breadwinner family models. Such attitudes fuel right‐wing movements that pledge to protect conservative gender roles. Evidence from local labor markets and voting in the United States over the last two decades, as well as a longitudinal study tracking individual Americans over several decades, support this theory. These findings contribute a new gender‐based account of the globalization backlash.

American Political Science Review

Imperial Aid and Tax Mobilization in Late Colonial Africa
DIDAC QUERALT
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In 1929, the British Empire launched a four-decade development initiative to modernize colonial economies without self-government. Known as the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the program required colonial administrations to raise local taxes to cofinance development projects. This article shows that imperial aid expanded colonial taxation only after organizational reforms in the Colonial Service screened in officials who shared the metropole’s developmental agenda and made tax mobilization incentive-compatible with career advancement. Drawing on original data from 12 African colonies and extensive archival evidence, I show that aid increased tax revenues when patronage-based governors were replaced by career officers and promotion within the Colonial Service became conditional on fiscal performance. These findings highlight how bureaucratic incentives shaped the effectiveness of imperial aid and offer a new explanation for the expansion of fiscal capacity in late colonial Africa.

British Journal of Political Science

Selection, Stability, and Shock: Political Attitudes of Chinese Students at Home and Abroad
Yingjie Fan, Jennifer Pan, Yiqing Xu
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Theories of democratic diffusion predict that exposure to liberal democracies fosters support for political liberalism, while recent studies on Chinese overseas students suggest studying abroad generates backlash against liberal values. Using a unique four-year longitudinal dataset of nearly 1,000 Chinese college students in China and the United States, we examine how studying abroad shapes students’ ideology, attitudes, and identity. Our findings challenge both perspectives. Students who study in the United States are already more politically liberal, market-oriented, and cosmopolitan, and less nationalistic than their peers upon departure, underscoring the importance of selection. Ideological preferences remain remarkably stable throughout college, regardless of location. However, support for China’s political system and affective identification with Chinese national identity declines among students in both countries from 2022 to 2023, with a greater decline among students in the United States. These results show that selection, home-country shocks, and host-country context jointly shape overseas students’ political attitudes.

Electoral Studies

Candidate deviation and partisan loyalty: Policy divergence, moral failures, and American voter behavior
David J. Andersen, Tessa Ditonto, David A.M. Peterson
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Term limits and corruption: Evidence from a reelection reform in Mexico
Gustavo Guajardo, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
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European Journal of Political Research

Conditional gender gaps in welfare state support: The role of labor market and household inequality
Kaitlin Alper, David Attewell, Andreas Jozwiak
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Why are women more supportive of the welfare state than men? Existing literature on this attitudinal gender gap focuses mainly on how men and women, on average, experience varied risks in the labor market. Feminist scholarship argues that the welfare state has the potential to equalize within-household bargaining power between men and women, but has not fully explored the political implications of contemporary inequality dynamics within low- vs. high-income households. We theorize that the gender gap in welfare state support is shaped by the interplay between households’ position on the income distribution and women’s relative incomes within households. Using Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data from 1963 to 2024, we first find that, within households, women’s income relative to male partners falls systematically moving up the income distribution. Next, our analyses of 2016 International Social Survey Programme data show that gender gaps in welfare state support are narrow and statistically uncertain among lower-income households, where need is high. However, in higher-income households, gender gaps emerge and grow moving up the household income distribution. Furthermore, attitudinal gaps in higher-income households are sensitive to inequalities in relative income – large where male incomes predominate and narrow or nonexistent in households where women contribute half or more of income. Gender inequality and its political consequences are thus intertwined with broader structures of income inequality.

Party Politics

Varieties of left-wing authoritarianism? The local foundations and intra-party heterogeneity of the German challenger party BSW
Eric Linhart, Jan Philipp Thomeczek, ManÚs Weisskircher, Benjamin Höhne
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Research has emphasized both the existence of left-wing authoritarian attitudes among the European electorate and a lack of political supply. In Germany, this dynamic changed with the rise of the BSW. Advancing research on left-wing authoritarianism in general and the BSW specifically, we rely on original Voting Advice Application (VAA) data from six city elections in 2024, allowing us to study the supply- and demand-side at the local level. We highlight three findings: First, BSW’s local-level positions vary widely across policies, including left-wing, moderate, and (moderately) right-wing stances. Second, BSW’s intra-party heterogeneity is higher on socio-cultural than on socio-economic issues. Third, BSW voters’ answers to VAA questions are more right-leaning than their self-placement. Our findings on the BSW offer key insights into an empirically observable case of left-wing authoritarianism, highlighting nuanced perspectives on the ideology of an emerging political phenomenon.
How members and elites make sense of ideological change: Natural evolution, pragmatic adaptation, or betrayal in the (Northern) League
Mattia Zulianello
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How do party members and representatives make sense of ideological change? This article tackles this question by studying one of the most important party transformations in contemporary European politics: the shift of the (Northern) League from populist regionalism to populist radical right politics under Matteo Salvini. Drawing on 60 semi-structured in-depth interviews with members and representatives, the analysis identifies three recurrent narratives: natural evolution (the national turn as the completion of the federalist project), pragmatic adaptation (change as electorally and strategically necessary), and betrayal (a rupture with the founding identity). The survival of the residual Padanian identity is no longer sustained by ideology, but loosely surfaces in rituals such as the annual gathering at Pontida, where it is blended with the state-wide symbolism. The findings suggest that the mass party model has facilitated the transformation while preventing overt infighting. This invites further research into the interpretive work during party change.

Political Behavior

Credible Prejudice? When and Why Mainstream Party Adoption of Far-Right Rhetoric Weakens Anti-Prejudice Norms
Ali Karčić
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This article examines whether mainstream political parties adopt prejudiced rhetoric from the far right and how such shifts shape anti-prejudice norms. Building on existing work, I argue that mainstream parties are particularly influential in weakening anti-prejudice norms because they possess greater normative credibility and legitimacy than far-right parties. Empirically, the article combines cross-national observational evidence with two preregistered survey experiments in Germany and Denmark. Using parliamentary speeches from six European countries between 1994 and 2022, I document rising mainstream party anti-Muslim rhetoric and its association with weaker norms against holding far-right views. The experiments provide causal evidence for the argument. In Germany, exposure to prejudiced rhetoric weakens anti-prejudice norms, but only when voiced by mainstream parties, rather than far right parties, likely due to their normative credibility and legitimacy. In Denmark, comparable effects are absent, consistent with decades of mainstream accommodation having already normalized such rhetoric. The experimental results also show that rhetoric targeting Muslims weakens anti-prejudice norms toward out-groups more broadly, suggesting spillover effects. These findings have important implications for future scholarship: when mainstream parties adopt prejudiced rhetoric from the far right, they affect not only electoral politics, but also the broader social norm environment.
Do Political Discussion Partners Share Policy Priorities and Policy Frames?
Matthew T. Pietryka, Amber E. Boydstun, Taylor N. Carlson
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To understand politics, people often rely on political discussion. Among the many ways that discussion may shape political perceptions, one possible mechanism is by promoting a shared sense of priorities— which issues are important. A second mechanism is by framing how people think about important issues. We examine these potential mechanisms by answering the descriptive question: Do policy priorities and policy frames tend to co-occur within political discussion networks? We answer this question by reanalyzing the 1996 Indianapolis-St. Louis Study in which participants—and their discussion partners—described the most important problem facing the United States in their own words. We show that the modal outcome is for people to hold both different priorities and different frames than their discussion partners. This finding stands in contrast to network scholarship suggesting that homophily is so often the norm. Yet we also show that people disproportionately share the same policy priorities as their discussion partners, and adopt the same frames in thinking about policy topics, especially when their policy priorities match. This finding suggests that some policy priorities are so embedded in certain frames of thinking that the topic and frame stay linked even as the topic may diffuse through a social network.

Political Geography

Generic title: Not a research article
Corrigendum to: “Indigenous struggle, oil extraction and the rights of nature: The case of the Marañón River, Peru” [Political Geography, 130, (2026), 103610]
Mirella Pretell, Tom Perreault
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Neoliberal restructuring, climate de-adaptation, and urban infrastructure failure in Porto Alegre, Brazil
Tamara Zambiasi
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Political theology reloaded: Postliberalism and the spectre of Carl Schmitt's eschatology
Benedikt Korf
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Territorial justice after “green colonialism” in the Quilombo do Cumbe, Brazil
Idil Mohamud
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Political Psychology

From referendum to reconciliation: How shared values and identities align with a commitment to long‐term collective action
Emily A. Haines, Emma F. Thomas, Susilo Wibisono, Winnifred R. Louis, Janquel D. Acevedo, Michael Wenzel
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One formal mechanism for effecting change to progress the rights of structurally disadvantaged groups is via citizen referenda. However, referenda are often characterized by divisive public debate. We suggest that sustaining action for long‐term change (beyond a referendum itself) may be associated with identifying with an opinion‐based group and perceiving shared values between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Among a nationally representative sample of Australians ( N = 2467), we examined collective action intentions for the Reconciliation Movement 1 month before, 1 week before, and 1 week after the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. Study 1 used a random intercept cross‐lagged panel model to show that value consensus, opinion‐based identification as a supporter of Reconciliation, and reconciliation action were positively associated at a temporally stable level, but within‐person effects did not vary much from these levels. Study 2 used growth mixture models and revealed five diverging trajectories of reconciliation action, which were explained by differences in value consensus, opinion‐based identification, and support/opposition to the Voice referendum. Our findings offer some of the first evidence showing that value consensus and opinion‐based identification are associated with sustaining action for social change, especially during times of polarization and division.

PS: Political Science & Politics

Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States
Andrew Kerner, Jane L. Sumner
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A recently popular line in American trade politics is that free trade threatens male blue-collar manufacturing employment, thereby undermining “traditional” family gender roles in which men work outside of the home and women work as caregivers within it. This study asks whether American mass politics mirrors these ideas. Does a preference for “traditional” gender roles lead Americans to protectionism? Our analysis of American National Election Studies data suggests that it does. We find a significant and highly robust empirical relationship between gender conservatism and protectionism. That relationship has been evident since 2008 and it decidedly is not a product of Trump-era politics. That relationship holds among men and women and among Republicans and Democrats, and it is robust to the inclusion of controls meant to isolate gender conservatism from other expressions of conservatism. The recent rise of gender-conservative trade skepticism should be understood as elite politics catching up with the public rather than leading it.
Survival Before Diplomacy: How Electoral Competition Constrains Leader Diplomacy in Turkey
Ali Balcı
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Do election campaigns reduce leaders’ engagement in foreign diplomacy? Whereas existing research argues that elections divert leaders’ time and attention away from international affairs, most evidence comes from the United States and relies on yearly data. This article examines the relationship between electoral cycles and diplomatic travel using the case of Turkey. Drawing on a monthly dataset of official foreign visits by Turkish prime ministers, presidents, and foreign ministers between 1990 and 2025, the analysis reveals that foreign travel declines significantly during election months and the immediately preceding period. The effect is strongest for top leaders, although foreign ministers also reduce travel. By using high-frequency data from a non-US case, the article provides new evidence on how domestic electoral pressures shape foreign-policy activity.

Public Choice

A model of criminal justice discretion
Tom S. Clark
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Cross-tier incumbency spillovers: evidence from India
Ajay Saharan, Shraddha Yadav
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Quarterly Journal of Political Science

The primary premium: Why legislators are incentivized to side with primary voters over general election voters
Sarah E. Anderson, Daniel M. Butler, Laurel Harbridge-Yong
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How are legislators incentivized to behave when their primary and general electorates disagree about an issue? We argue that primary electorates are generally more unified in their issue preferences and more sensitive to roll-call positions than general electorates, incentivizing legislators to prioritize primary voters when facing conflicting demands from the two groups. Using the 2016 Cooperative Election Study and an original survey experiment with over 13,000 respondents, we show that primary voters are both more unified and more likely to adjust their vote choice based on policy alignment. When we combine electorate unity and voter sensitivity, we find that US senators had more to gain by siding with their primary electorate in 84% of the votes where they were cross-pressured. This helps explain why politicians are incentivized to cater to their primary electorate − shaping patterns of representation and policy outcomes in American politics.