I checked 18 political science journals on Wednesday, August 05, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period July 29 to August 04, I found 78 new paper(s) in 14 journal(s).

American Political Science Review

Contested Governance and Civilian Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from Lab-in-the-Field Experiments in India
BRANDON BOLTE, VINEETA YADAV, BUMBA MUKHERJEE
Full text
How does contested governance by states and competing armed actors affect the behavior of the governed? During civil conflicts, rebel organizations frequently provide public goods, judicial arbitration, and security, but these forms of governance often operate alongside local state institutions. Beyond avoiding violence, therefore, noncombatants must navigate the daily uncertainty of local governance by states and armed groups vying for territorial control. This, we argue, shapes their quotidian interactions with one another. Using a series of lab-in-the-field experiments and surveys from Naxal-affected Bihar, India, we find that individuals living under such contested governance exhibit greater interpersonal trust and trustworthiness and less opportunistic behavior. We propose two mechanisms to explain these patterns—fearing intra-community retaliation or substituting for the state with interpersonal reliance. Most evidence is only consistent with the latter. By connecting governance, rebellion, and social capital, this work makes important contributions toward understanding the micro-politics of local order during longstanding armed conflicts.
A Democratic Theory of Labor Unions
STEVEN KLEIN
Full text
Recently, political theorists have been increasingly concerned with the implications of democratic values for work. This article contributes to these debates by examining the main vehicle through which workers, historically, have sought democracy at work: the labor union. The article defends a vision of economic democracy that arises from the practice of labor unions. It then emphasizes the distinctive features of labor unions that make them potential vehicles for democracy in other domains. Labor unions are particularly important means of advancing democratic values for three reasons: (1) their ability to appeal to the short- and mid-term self-interest of their members; (2) their anchor in the material reproduction of society; and (3) that they rely on attitudes of cooperation and solidarity among their members. Yet these three features also point to potential limitations of labor unions as laboratories of democracy.
Redistricting Reforms Reduce Gerrymandering by Constraining Partisan Actors
CORY McCARTAN, CHRISTOPHER T. KENNY, TYLER SIMKO, EMMA EBOWE, MICHAEL Y. ZHAO, KOSUKE IMAI
Full text
Political actors often manipulate redistricting plans to gain electoral advantages, a process known as gerrymandering. Several states have implemented institutional reforms to address this problem, such as establishing map-drawing commissions. Estimating the impact of these reforms is challenging because each state structures its processes and rules differently. We model redistricting as a sequential game whose equilibrium solution summarizes multistep institutional interactions as a univariate score. We argue that this score measures the leeway political actors have over the partisan lean of the final plan. Our differences-in-differences analysis demonstrates that reforms reduce partisan bias and increase competitiveness by constraining partisan actors. We perform a counterfactual policy analysis to estimate the effects of enacting recent reforms nationwide. Though commissions are likely to reduce bias, reforms that restrict partisan actors in multiple ways, such as removing veto points (Michigan), are more effective than commissions where parties retain some control (Ohio).
Is Blood Thicker Than Water(-and-Earth)? Partisanship Geography in Imperial China and the Limits of Quantitative History
YAO LIN
Full text
Using Wang Anshi’s Reform as a case study, Yuhua Wang’s “Blood is Thicker Than Water” ( American Political Science Review , 2022) argues that geographically dispersed kinship networks incentivize political elites to support the building of a strong state, whereas geographically concentrated kinship networks undermine state building. In this article, I improve the sample with the help of additional historical records and show that the reported correlation fails to replicate when either the control issue or the outlier issue is considered. I then propose two alternative hypotheses on the role of kinship network dispersal in Wang Anshi’s Reform, based on two common explanations of its partisanship geography in Chinese historical scholarship, that is, status competition and policy adaptiveness. After examining those hypotheses respectively, I reflect on the limits of quantitative history that this case illustrates.

British Journal of Political Science

Democratic Satisfaction and the Public Sphere
AgustĂ­n Goenaga
Full text
Public debate is central to most theories of democracy, yet few cross-national studies have examined its association with democratic satisfaction. This article identifies three features of national public spheres – pluralism, information, and respect – and presents annual measures of these features for 175 countries from 2000 to 2020. Among electoral democracies, pluralism remained stable, but the quality of information and the respectfulness of debate tended to decline during that period. Using data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find that higher levels of pluralism, information, and respect correlate with greater democratic satisfaction, even after controlling for other democratic institutions, various socio-economic factors, and past levels of satisfaction with democracy. Notably, respect remains associated with higher democratic satisfaction when controlling for the other features of the public sphere. These findings call for further research into the relationship between non-electoral components of democracy and political attitudes.
The Equality Positions and Policies of Governments, 1970–2020: How Egalitarian Parties Evoke Equality While Evading Real Redistribution
Alexander Horn, Leo Ahrens
Full text
Despite egalitarian rhetoric, governments often fail to implement redistributive policies. We argue that selective egalitarianism helps to understand this puzzle. Analysing a new dataset of 850,000 manifesto statements and equality policies in 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (1970–2020), we show that even parties committed to equality avoid taxing the rich. Instead of engaging in complex top-end taxation, which is perceived as electorally risky, they pursue pre-distribution and welfare policies with less concentrated costs and complexity. Even these policies are primarily adopted if the party’s constituency is not too educated or rich to benefit from them. Our findings suggest that equality-oriented governments adopt an approach that insures the middle, buffers the poor, but spares the rich. The result is a rhetorical commitment to equality that eschews its most redistributive instrument(s). The patterns we reveal help to explain the consequential disconnect between redistributive demand and actual policy, even under ostensibly economically egalitarian governments.
Education for Mobilization: The Effects of Knowledge about Labor History on Union Support
Roxanne Rahnama, Jonne Kamphorst
Full text
The US working class is less organized along class lines than in other advanced democracies. We propose a new explanation: the absence of education on historical class struggle and labor organizing weakens support for the contemporary labor movement. To test this, we conduct two survey experiments exposing respondents to educational videos about the history of an American union and present-day union drives. Our surveys focus on non-college-educated whites in the US South, where union membership is low and racial conflict has historically constrained class-based solidarity. We find that exposure to labor history increases enthusiasm for unions and cross-racial class coalitions. These effects appear to be driven by greater political efficacy, better understanding of unions’ material benefits, linked fate with the working class, and increased allyship with marginalized groups. Our findings suggest that labor history education can shift political attitudes and foster greater class-based mobilization, even in contexts historically resistant to such organizing.
Disproportionality in Geographic Representation
Orit Kedar, Yair Amitai, Gilad Hurvitz
Full text
We theoretically develop and empirically study the concept of geographic representation. We identify an overlooked aspect of (mis)representation in electoral systems: the degree to which within parties, voters residing in some districts are overrepresented at the expense of their co-partisans residing elsewhere. Drawing on district-level data of 113 parties from twelve districted democracies, we find a substantial degree of geographic representational discrepancies within parties. Importantly, we show that the discrepancy is often accompanied by a difference in policy positions between under and overrepresented districts, making it particularly significant politically. We derive a general measure for the discrepancy between the votes a party gains and the seats it holds in different districts, namely, geographic disproportionality (GeoDisp). Unlike malapportionment, GeoDisp is party specific and draws on actual votes. Utilizing geocoded data, we find a substantial degree of geographic disproportionality, which, per our expectations, varies systematically by party.
Can Authoritarian Electoral Propaganda Compete with the Opposition? Experimental Evidence from Russia
Michael Rochlitz, Koen Schoors, Nikita Zakharov
Full text
We examine the effectiveness of electoral propaganda in an autocracy, using Russia as a unique setting. Exploiting the unexpected release of a pro-regime propaganda video about Vladimir Putin shortly before the presidential election, we conducted a field experiment by randomly promoting the video to voters via a telephone survey and measuring self-reported voting behaviour after the election. Our results show that the pro-regime treatment successfully mobilized offline media consumers to vote for Putin, but failed to persuade online media users, and even backfired among respondents dissatisfied with the regime. Using electoral statistics for all major Russian cities and instrumenting public interest in the propaganda video with rainfall, we find a positive, albeit moderate, causal effect of the video on Putin’s vote share. As an alternative treatment, we used a viral anti-corruption video by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which consistently undermined regime support among both offline and online media consumers.

Electoral Studies

Exodus and vote: Mass emigration and voter turnout in Honduras
Jesse Acevedo
Full text
Theories and measurement of political values and under-represented groups: the case of women in the UK
Ceri Fowler, Maria Sobolewska
Full text
Does the measure of party system size matter with incomplete election returns? The case of Ireland
Heather Stoll, Vincent Munley, Paul Redmond
Full text
The impact of youth pro-climate policy preferences on political support: evidence from salience shifts in Germany
Lovisa Mundschenk
Full text
Protest and opposition parties’ election strategies
Tobias Böhmelt, Lawrence Ezrow
Full text
District protectionism: Public opinion on race, partisanship, and redistricting change
Ursula Hackett
Full text
The psychological basis of the urban–rural divide: Evidence from Germany
Antonia Lang, Kai Arzheimer
Full text
The dynamics of tactical voting: What explains repeated tactical voting behavior?
Lucas NĂșñez
Full text
How swing model assumptions shape vote-to-seat predictions
Cornelius Erfort, Thomas Gschwend, Lukas F. Stoetzer, Simon Munzert
Full text
Conditional loyalty: Partisanship and voter responses to corruption
Laura Chelidonopoulos
Full text
From instability to hostility: Coalition collapse and affective polarization
Felix Hormig, Cyrill Otteni
Full text
Election salience revisited: How elections (do not) boost affective polarization
Bjarn Eck, Elie Michel
Full text
Sibling-sex effects on voter turnout
Sven Oskarsson, Rafael Ahlskog, Christopher Dawes, Karl-Oskar Lindgren, Aaron Weinschenk
Full text
Surviving political disruption: Renomination patterns of former Party of Regions deputies in post-Euromaidan Ukraine
Masatomo Torikai
Full text
Policy or polity? Experimental evidence on voters’ information priorities in European parliament elections
Mathias Wessel Tromborg, Roman Senninger, Andreas VidebĂŠk Jensen
Full text
Womens causal impact through the policy process: Different preferences – same outcomes
Karl-Emil Bendtsen, Lene Holm Pedersen, Frederik Klaaborg KjĂžller
Full text
Socialising effects of recession and issue salience on environmental attitudes
Hironao Yoda
Full text
Hidden or declared? Evidence from a list experiment on homophobic motives in electoral behavior
Jaakko Hillo, Isak Vento, Åsa von Schoultz
Full text
Who won the feed? TikTok campaigning of the alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left in Germany’s 2025 federal election
Victoria Palchikova, Julia Schulte-Cloos
Full text
Education and the gender voting gap in U.S. presidential elections
Cameron J. Arnzen, Sarah R. Cohodes
Full text
What do voters want out of elections?
Semra Sevi, André Blais, Can Mekik
Full text

European Journal of Political Research

Threat perception and partisan animosity: Evidence from Argentina and Brazil
Raul Gomez, Jose Javier Olivas Osuna, Luis Ramiro
Full text
This study examines antagonism between opposing political camps in Argentina and Brazil, two Latin American countries that have experienced heightened polarization and growing support for contentious right-wing populist leaders. Using original survey data, we analyze how specific perceived threats relate to social distance toward supporters of rival presidential candidates, which we use as a proxy for outgroup animosity. We examine multiple threat domains, including perceived threats from rival political camps, other social groups (racists and immigrants) and threats to symbolic values (equality and the nation). Our findings show that threat perception is a significant correlate of outgroup distance in both countries, but the forms of perceived threat linked to outgroup distancing differ across political camps. We also find partial support for the hypothesis that threat perception is more strongly associated with outgroup distance among supporters of the populist right, particularly once potential confounders are taken into account. While this pattern is evident in Brazil, in Argentina, the left and right camps do not differ significantly in how strongly threat perception predicts outgroup distance.
Constructing representation: Political actors’ representative style on Facebook during European and national election campaigns
MĂĄrton Bene, GĂĄbor IllĂ©s, Uta Russmann, PaweƂ Baranowski, Jörg Haßler, Simon Kruschinski, Linda Bos, Jakob Linaa Jensen, Anders Olof Larsson, Alena MackovĂĄ, Anamaria Dutceac Segesten
Full text
This study investigates contemporary forms of political representation by analyzing the Facebook communication of 110 political leaders from eight European countries during both national and 2024 European Parliament (EP) election campaigns. Based on constructivist theories of representation, we introduce the concept of ‘representational style’, defined as the specific combination of six communicative elements: policy focus, personalized communication, direct voter connection, appeals to social groups, references to a homogeneous people, and antagonism toward opponents. Using manual content analysis of 7,854 posts, the study identifies three distinct representational styles through inductive cluster analysis: People’s Policy Warriors, Technocratic-Pluralist Heroes, and (Wo)man of the People. The findings reveal substantial variation across political and national contexts. A clear East–West divide emerges with Western European leaders tending to adopt a Technocratic-Pluralist approach, while Central and Eastern European politicians more often represent themselves as responsive figures closely connected to the people.

Journal of Experimental Political Science

Beyond Single-Shot Designs: Repeated Treatments, Affective Polarization, and Democratic Norms
Libby Jenke
Full text
Although theory and observational work suggest that affective polarization should shape citizens’ support for democratic norms, experimental tests of this causal claim largely find null effects. Most studies assume any impact would be immediate and rely on one-shot manipulations. Yet democratic norms are sticky; brief shifts in partisan feelings may be too weak or fleeting to move them. I therefore test whether repeated treatments over several waves of a survey shift affective polarization and, in turn, support for democratic norms. I find no significant first-stage effects: the treatments do not change respondents’ affective polarization, so repeated exposures do not cumulatively move it and downstream effects on norms cannot be identified. I conclude by considering why my findings differ from studies that report significant effects for similar treatments. Many experiments measure affective polarization as hostility toward the outparty, whereas this study and observational work conceptualize it as the gap between inparty and outparty evaluations.

Party Politics

When the party is over: How parties respond to electoral decline
Felix Lehmann
Full text
Over the past decades, we have witnessed the severe electoral decline of formerly successful parties. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how these parties have responded to their losses. I examine the consequences of severe and persistent electoral losses through the lens of intra-party dynamics. I argue that parties react to severe decline by shifting attention to core issues and adopting more extreme positions. I theorize that this is because office-seekers are the first to abandon the sinking ship, tilting the internal power balance towards policy-motivated actors. Testing the theory with manifesto data from 18 Western European countries between 1970 and 2025, I find evidence that parties devote more attention to their core issues following their electoral decline. Parties do not, however, adopt more extreme positions on these issues. I find limited evidence that shifts in the intra-party balance are behind these changes.
A dynamic seat product model
Abelardo GĂłmez DĂ­az
Full text
The Seat Product Model uses just two institutional parameters (average district magnitude and assembly size) to predict legislative fragmentation with remarkable accuracy. However, it is best suited for simple, single-tier systems. Subsequent extensions to complex, two-tier systems rely on an upper-tier (multiplier-style) correction that accounts for cross-tier inflationary effects but estimate it as a single constant from pooled cross-national data. Applied to Mexico’s mixed-member lower house elections (1997–2021), both specifications systematically mispredict legislative fragmentation. This is because cross-tier inflationary effects are not a fixed system property but an evolving one, shaped by institutional features interacting with a changing party system. This study proposes a Dynamic Seat Product Model that retains the original institutional baseline while allowing the correction to update automatically via exponential smoothing. The DSPM tracks Mexico’s long-run rise in legislative fragmentation more closely than fixed alternatives, clarifies the mechanism behind it, and offers a principled path toward making the SPM applicable to virtually any single election.
Party responsiveness to party supporters, the electorate, and interest groups in a multidimensional policy space
Vibeke WĂžien Hansen, Mads Thau
Full text
This article sheds new light on party responsiveness by considering the role of interest group pressure in parties’ responsiveness to their supporters and the electorate on multiple policy dimensions in 12 countries. Following recent work, we expect that parties are as responsive to shifts in their supporters’ preferences as to the wider electorate. Yet, parties also attend to interest group pressure. We argue that parties’ responsiveness to voters is enhanced by leadership ties with interest groups but that ties with only sectional groups are associated with more stable party positions. Combining data on voters, interest groups, and parties, our analysis shows that parties are responsive to preference change among their supporters and, further, that their policy positions are more stable when they only have ties with sectional groups. However, parties’ responsiveness on specific dimensions is not necessarily enhanced by leadership ties with the interest groups particularly active on those dimensions.
Book review: The republican civil war: What Liz Cheney’s Wyoming tells us about a divided American right MuravcikStephanieShieldsJohn A., The Republican Civil War: What Liz Cheney’s Wyoming Tells Us About a Divided American Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2026. $29.99 (pbk), xi + 180 pp. ISBN: 9780197832233.
Nicol C Rae
Full text
Party membership motivations and political activism in a polarized new democracy: Evidence from South Korea
Gi-Woo Roh, Jungsub Shin
Full text
This study investigates party membership motivations in South Korea, a highly polarized new democracy, and how they distinctively shape intra-party and campaign participation. Using survey data from 1,410 Democratic and People Power Party members, we evaluate the General Incentives Model alongside negative partisan motivation. Results show that while altruism is the primary reason for joining, higher affective polarization significantly intensifies negative partisan motivation, making it a key membership driver, particularly among conservatives. Crucially, engagement mechanisms are not monolithic: selective benefits predict both forms of participation, whereas collective policy motives specifically foster campaigning. Conversely, social norms motivation deters visible campaigning due to polarization-induced cross-pressures. Furthermore, negative partisan motivation reduces routine intra-party engagement without increasing campaign involvement. Ultimately, membership surges driven by out-group hostility produce “detached members,” indicating that expanding party rolls in polarized contexts does not automatically deepen democratic participation or organizational capacity.

Political Analysis

The Power of Prognosis: Improving Covariate Balance Tests with Outcome Information
Clara Bicalho, Adam Bouyamourn, Thad Dunning
Full text
Scholars frequently use covariate balance tests to test the validity of natural experiments and related designs. Unfortunately, when measured covariates are unrelated to potential outcomes, balance is uninformative about key identification conditions. We show that balance tests can then lead to erroneous conclusions. To build stronger tests, researchers should identify covariates that are jointly predictive of potential outcomes; formally measure and report covariate prognosis; and prioritize the most individually informative variables in tests. Building on prior research on “prognostic scores,” we develop bootstrap balance tests that upweight covariates associated with the outcome. We adapt this approach for regression-discontinuity designs and use simulations to compare weighting methods based on linear regression and more flexible methods, including machine learning. The results show how prognosis weighting can avoid both false negatives and false positives. To illustrate key points, we study empirical examples from a sample of published studies, including an important debate over close elections.

Political Geography

Abolition and the everyday life of Sacramento's carceral housing crisis
Mia Karisa Dawson
Full text
Enjoying contradictions: The spectacular fantasy of tourism authenticity in southern Africa
Elke B. Zweers, Stasja Koot
Full text
The green territorialization of high Asia: national security, transboundary power, and the politics of climate legitimacy
Qidong Huang, Mark Wang
Full text
What is the frontier to the migrating bird? Ladakh, education-driven migration, and the frontier as home
Sara Smith, Mabel Denzin Gergan
Full text
Reppin’ your constituency? Urban-rural differences in geographical representation in Swedish parliamentary debates
Albert Wendsjö
Full text
“We'll never go”: Inuit youth refusals as climate politics
Jen Bagelman, Carmen (Qagun) Kuptana, Darryl Tedjuk, Eriel Lugt, Maéva Gauthier, MichÚle Tomasino, Ingrid Medby, Rachel Pain
Full text
In the gap between my thoughts and yours: A response to commentaries on the 2025 political geography plenary
Anna J. Secor
Full text
European strategic antinomy
Benjamin Herborth
Full text
The military green transition: Decarbonisation as warfighting opportunity
Nico Edwards
Full text
A land between solid and fluid: Situating permafrost within more-than-human geopolitics
Vincent Roderic Hansmann, Jason Dittmer
Full text
Embodied statecraft: The endurance of zhǐ jiÚ (pointing at the boundary) in Taiwan's land digitalisation
Wen-I Lin, Ayona Datta
Full text
Standing in the spaces
Rachael Squire
Full text
Will ‘America first’ leave America behind? Exploring discourses of a fossil-fueled heartland
Ida Marie StĂžp Meland, Guri Bang
Full text
Theorisation of environmental justice in Chinese political philosophy
Shizhi Zhang, Linda Westman, Vanesa CastĂĄn Broto
Full text
Geographies of migrant mobile containment along the Balkan Route
Lucija Klun Turk, Claudio Minca
Full text
On becoming political: between controversies and deliberation. The making of the rubbish issue in Buenos Aires
Lucila Newell
Full text
Dissociation or disavowal? or, Where's the fetish?
Ilan Kapoor
Full text
Tubular governance: Surveillance, control, and migrant lives in China
Qinyu Feng
Full text
Reckoning with liberalism
Alan Ingram
Full text
Disciplining desires: Understanding how bird hunters' desires shape prospects for sustainable hunting
Stella Portelli
Full text
Mapping ocean worlds through the data revolution
Emily C. Melvin, Ana Zurita Posas, Gabrielle Carmine, Elizabeth Havice, Lisa M. Campbell
Full text
Patchwork diplomacy: rethinking state-city relations in a multipolar world
Julian Clark, Alun Jones
Full text
2025 Political Geography Plenary: On the bad timeline: Dissociative geo-politics in the time of Trump
Anna J. Secor
Full text

Political Psychology

How moral values underpin and affect attitudes on ethnic discrimination
Ida Bruun NĂžrregaard
Full text
When political elites and activists promote anti‐discrimination policies, they often frame discrimination as violating liberal moral values such as fairness, care for vulnerable groups, and equality. However, this approach may fail to resonate with conservative voters and could even alienate them. Through two separate studies, this article uses a multi‐method approach to examine the moral values held by supporters and opponents of discrimination and test how conservative and liberal value appeals influence acceptance. The findings reveal that values like loyalty, care for the in‐group, authority, and sanctity appear in acceptors' justifications and that framing discrimination as a violation of these values, associated with conservatism, reduces acceptance across the political spectrum. Contrastingly, appealing to values associated with liberalism backfires and increases Republicans' acceptance. While liberal values were central in shifting social norms towards anti‐discrimination, appealing to conservative values may be more effective in reducing contemporary acceptance of discrimination.
When propaganda resonates
Xiaoxiao Shen
Full text
Existing scholarship on propaganda in authoritarian regimes centers on whether it persuades or coerces. Within the persuasion camp, researchers have examined how factors such as message source, content, credibility, and audience demographics shape propaganda effectiveness. This study shifts attention to psychological needs. Drawing on evidence from China, it integrates multi‐round survey experiments, a virtual lab‐in‐the‐field experiment using a mobile news app developed by the author, text analysis of state media, and field interviews. The results show that propaganda appealing to the need to belong, the need to maintain self‐esteem, or the need to express core values is most effective among individuals for whom the corresponding need is particularly strong—but generalized propaganda, even when psychologically engaging, is not. The findings suggest that propaganda is most persuasive when targeted to stable psychological orientations rather than designed for broad consumption. These findings have implications for understanding how authoritarian regimes sustain public support: propaganda effectiveness depends not only on content or reach, but also on how closely its psychological appeals correspond to the stable motivational orientations of its audience. The shift in authoritarian communication strategies toward psychologically targeted appeals makes the mechanisms identified here increasingly relevant to understanding contemporary propaganda.
Affective regimes and ontological security: When empathy threatens the state
Naomi Head
Full text
The ontological security of states may be threatened by the politics of empathy. Empathy—as a contested affective‐political field—has a capacity to both consolidate and unravel dominant understandings of identity, security, political subjectivity, and self‐other relations. This article connects a politics of empathy to patterns of state violence and resistance in situations of conflict and authoritarian politics, arguing that the distribution of feeling that underpins a politics of empathy is structured by positionality, power, and social context. The article argues that states construct “affective regimes” through which they seek to manage the legitimate subjects of empathy in order to maintain their ontological security, and focuses on empirical testimony from the Syrian uprising in 2011 and the Assad regime's strategies of violence to explore these affective dynamics. It reveals ways in which the state's efforts are always resisted and transgressed by citizens, generating counter‐narratives of security‐identity and affective relations. A politics of empathy offers analytical tools for understanding the construction and effectiveness of states' affective regimes to maintain ontological security as well as being normatively essential to the task of challenging forms of state power, political violence, and generating alternative imaginings of ontological security and subjectivity.

Political Science Research and Methods

Policymaking activities of caretaker governments in Western Europe
Mingyi Zhang
Full text
In parliamentary democracies, coalition government formation often takes a certain amount of time, during which the outgoing incumbent government remains in office as the “caretaker” until the new government can be formed. While the literature has reached a consensus that caretaker governments retain the policy status quo, empirical evidence remains limited. This article uses original data on government bills from 238 cabinets in 11 Western European countries as descriptive evidence to challenge this long-standing assumption. I propose a timeframe-based, political definition of the caretaking period within the coalition lifecycle and discuss the normative issues with its presence. The over-generalization of the prevalent policy status quo assumption raises critical issues concerning practical caretaking rules, as well as coalition governance and bargaining.
Racialization of the democratic peace in foundational embedding models
Juho Kim
Full text
One of the most prominent theories in modern international relations is the democratic peace theory, which posits that democracies tend not to engage in armed conflicts with fellow democracies. Recently, Rathbun, Parker, and Pomeroy examined this effect at a microstructural level, performing surveys, computational studies, and meta-analysis. Of particular originality in their work was embedding analysis, which I review and offer a systematic critique of. Then, I propose a new and improved methodology that addresses its issues while leveraging foundational embedding models. My replication results agree with their findings that the democratic peace effect is racialized, that is, it is associated with racial and ethnocentric motivations. The findings offer a timely guide in conducting embedding analysis in political science research.

PS: Political Science & Politics

How to Upend America in 100 Days: Unilateral Power at the Outset of Trump’s Second Term
Aaron Childree
Full text
President Trump used the unilateral power of the presidency in extraordinary ways during the first 100 days of his second term. This article examines his use of executive action using a dataset of every action issued in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, along with a similar dataset for his first term and other recent administrations. At the outset of his second term, Trump issued substantially more executive actions than his own first administration and his recent predecessors; however, this also came with historically low legislative productivity. His unilateral policy making is notable for the many revocations of previous executive actions and startling uses of the pardon power. The areas that Trump acted within most were government operations, tariff policies, and policies related to law and crime. These findings reveal important details of Trump’s unilateral presidency and demonstrate that his executive actions are likely to erode the traditional boundaries of presidency power if not held in check by other institutional actors.
Predatory Journals: Do They Publish Undergraduate and AI-Generated Papers?
Daniel Stockemer, Farah Fakri
Full text
Predatory journals are criticized widely for weak peer-review and profit-driven editorial practices, but little empirical evidence assesses their capacity to publish low-quality or AI-generated research. This study examines the level to which these journals publish undergraduate essays and AI-generated manuscripts. We submitted papers to 144 predatory journals identified through spam solicitations, Beall’s list ( https://beallslist.net ), and the Predatory Journals database ( www.predatoryjournals.org/news/predatory-journals-list-2025 ). This included 19 undergraduate political science and human rights essays and 10 AI-generated engineering case reports to test the degree to which these essays are published. We find that most undergraduate essays and AI-generated manuscripts are accepted, which confirms the low quality of these outlets and the risk emanating from them.
Beyond the Greenback: Currency Power in a Greener, More Fragmented World
Ryan Weldzius, Joshua Buckson
Full text
Structural shifts in the global economy are reshaping the foundations of international currency power. This article explores how the green transition, geopolitical realignment, and sustained US protectionism could interact to transform the global currency hierarchy, with a particular focus on the US dollar and the Chinese renminbi (RMB). We highlight two key drivers of currency usage: (1) the liquidity and availability of a currency for cross-border transactions; and (2) the strategic economic and political alignment between currency issuers and their partners. Considering developments in green value chains, evolving alliances, and trade policies, the article outlines how China’s growing role in critical minerals, infrastructure finance, and alternative financial systems can enhance the internationalization of the RMB. Concurrently, US protectionism and withdrawal from multilateralism may open up space for regional currency diversification. These trends point to an increasingly fragmented and multipolar international monetary system, in which currency power will have a central role in shaping the future global order.

Public Choice

A characterization of Black’s voting rule
Salvador BarberĂ , Walter Bossert
Full text
Sociological rational choice theory: retrospect and prospect
Edgar Kiser, Steven Pfaff, Blaine Robbins
Full text
Office-seeking under demographic change: immigration, coalition government, and municipal budget reallocation in Sweden
Dennis Kolcava
Full text
This paper examines how local governments adjust public budgets following immigration-induced demographic change. It argues that office-seeking incumbents reallocate fiscal resources towards newcomers if these are expected to become voters within a short time horizon. Such adjustments are constrained by uncertainty within governing coalitions over who will capture any resulting electoral gains. The argument is evaluated using data from 290 Swedish municipalities between 2014 and 2023. Empirically, the analysis relates annual changes in budget shares across 11 expenditure categories to annual changes in the local non-EU foreign-born population share. The findings show that larger increases in the non-EU population share are associated with budgetary reallocation towards spending areas that are particularly relevant to these groups. Ideological differences between left- and right-leaning governing coalitions do little to condition these reallocations, whereas broader coalitions exhibit weaker fiscal adjustment. The paper contributes to public choice and political economy research by showing that fiscal responses to demographic change take the form less of uniform expansion than of strategic budget recomposition, and that such adjustment is weaker where coalition partners are uncertain about the distribution of electoral gains.
Social identification and equilibrium law enforcement
Claude Fluet, Tim Friehe
Full text
This paper studies how social identification reshapes the political economy of law enforcement. In a two-class economy with property crime, individuals choose whether to offend, vote over the detection probability under majority rule, and choose whether to identify with their class or with the encompassing nation. In the absence of identity concerns, class-specific material preferences over enforcement depend on victimization exposure, tax incidence, and the option value of offending. With class identification, voters place greater weight on the relative payoff of their own group, so social identity amplifies the underlying distributive conflict. With national identification, voters place greater weight on aggregate payoffs, compressing preferred enforcement levels across groups. Endogenous identity choice produces distinct political regimes and can generate multiple equilibria: societies in which class differences are more salient in identity space are more likely to sustain class identification and more extreme enforcement outcomes, whereas higher national prestige favors national identification and policies closer to the aggregate benchmark. An extension in which offending carries an action-based social deviance cost preserves the main mechanism and shows how compliance norms can reinforce class-based identity.
Fairness trade-offs in expert evaluation: information, judgment, and procedural design
Karol J. Borowiecki, Marc T. Law
Full text
Evaluation systems often seek to reduce bias, prevent manipulation, preserve relevant information, maintain comparability, and treat candidates equally, but these fairness goals can conflict. This paper develops a framework for understanding such trade-offs in expert evaluation—including peer review, grant panels, academic hiring, and artistic competitions—where quality is multidimensional and legitimate disagreement among evaluators is possible. We treat the choice among evaluation procedures as a problem of constitutional design: rules must be selected before the specific candidates, evaluators, and circumstances that will test them are known. Classical music competitions are our primary analytical setting because their rules, scores, and controversies make these trade-offs unusually visible, but the framework applies to other settings in which expert judgments are aggregated under incomplete information. The framework highlights two core tensions: information control and outlier rules. First, when information is both quality-relevant and identity-revealing, procedures that suppress bias-relevant cues may also remove information with genuine evaluative content. Second, because sincere minority judgment and strategic manipulation can generate similar observed score patterns, score-based exclusion rules may reduce manipulation while limiting legitimate dissent. Two further trade-offs concerning transparency and standardization are developed as illustrations. The analysis shows that no procedure can eliminate all vulnerabilities at once. Beyond this design implication, the framework also helps explain why evaluation rules differ across stages and settings, and why well-intentioned reforms may create new vulnerabilities.
Proportional representation primer
Marek M. Kaminski
Full text
This primer provides a systematic introduction to proportional representation (PR) electoral systems for scholars and students unfamiliar with their mechanics and political consequences. PR is now used for legislative elections in approximately 118 countries, making it the world’s most common family of electoral systems. However, its formal structure and political effects are often poorly understood outside specialist communities. The primer covers the main families of apportionment algorithms (quota, divisor, and ranked-choice methods), the principal types of PR electoral systems (list PR, STV, mixed, and semi-proportional), and their key structural components, including district magnitude, thresholds, measures of disproportionality, volatility, and the effective number of parties. It surveys major empirical regularities, including Duverger’s Law, the impact of district magnitude on party fragmentation, women’s and minority representation, voter turnout, and coalition formation, before turning to paradoxes and problems, including apportionment paradoxes and the Balinski–Young impossibility theorem, STV Non-Monotonicity and the No-Show paradox, spoilers and ballot-position primacy effects in list PR, and overhang seats and decoy parties in mixed compensatory systems. The primer concludes that every apportionment method is formally flawed, that institutional parameters interact with strategic behavior in ways that frequently produce unexpected outcomes, and that the empirical regularities anchoring the field rest on identification strategies that are vulnerable to the endogeneity of electoral institutions. A Glossary of key concepts is included as an Appendix.

Research & Politics

From the courtroom to the public: Judicial influence on People’s attitudes toward same-sex marriage in Japan
Robert Nordström, Sou Shinomoto, Antonio Benasaglio Berlucchi
Full text
Can judicial action change public attitudes? While most empirical studies on the societal impact of court rulings have focused on the United States, particularly its Supreme Court, the influence of courts in other contexts remains largely unexplored. This study examines Japan—the only G7 country that does not legally recognize same-sex marriage—and explores how judicial rulings on same-sex marriage influence public attitudes. Using data from an original survey incorporating natural and experimental treatments, the analysis finds that while a court decision has no significant effect in a natural environment, experimental exposure to a reminder of the ruling can shift respondents’ views. The findings suggest that judicial action on same-sex marriage may have limited but measurable impacts on public attitudes, even in unconventional settings, and therefore contribute to discussions of external validity regarding the societal influence of courts.

The Journal of Politics

Attacking Women or their Policies? Understanding Violence against Women in Politics
Gianmarco Daniele, Gemma Dipoppa, Massimo Pulejo
Full text