I checked 18 political science journals on Thursday, April 02, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period March 26 to April 01, I found 104 new paper(s) in 12 journal(s).

American Journal of Political Science

What is (de)politicization and what is wrong with it?
Dimitrios Halikias
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This article attempts to clarify the meaning of (de)politicization. Politicization sometimes refers to the inappropriate intrusion of partisan loyalties in nonpolitical social domains ( affective politicization ). Politicization can also constitute an ideal of civic agency and energy ( contestatory politicization ). In other contexts, politicization is meant as a kind of institutional corruption, in which government decisions are made for the sake of sectional advantage ( patrimonial politicization ). It can also refer to the imposition of controversial values judgments by ostensibly neutral institutions like the courts and bureaucracy ( values politicization ). These concepts raise divergent normative considerations of varying weightiness. This article motivates the potency of a fifth concept of politicization, which centers on the category of authoritative rule ( archic politicization ). It offers an ideal–typical contrast between political rule and depoliticized power, and it treats the distinct justifications for and objections to the substitution of depoliticized, impersonal reason for authoritative, political will.
Mutual restraint in nondemocratic legislatures
Sarah Hummel
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Nondemocratic regimes sometimes benefit from tolerating the expression of critical opinions and visions for policy in their legislatures. Doing so enables them to gather important information about societal preferences, to co‐opt potential challengers, and to address other threats to their control. In these cases, regimes and deputies exhibit mutual restraint: deputies respect regime‐set limits on their freedom to express critical opinions, while regimes refrain from punishing deputies for expressing negative views when the stakes are acceptably low. By examining both the responsiveness of individual deputies and how regimes police the limits of acceptable behavior, we are better able to identify both the functions and strengths of nondemocratic legislatures. I illustrate these dynamics using data about deputy voting behavior and legislative success in the Kyrgyz Jogorku Kenesh (2016–2020).
What exploitation is
Benjamin Ferguson, Peter Hans Matthews, David Ronayne, Roberto Veneziani
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We experimentally elicit views of what exploitation is from over 2,000 subjects. Our experimental design does not test existing theories of exploitation. Rather, it focuses on more fundamental properties that are the building blocks for these theories. We find, first, that exploitation is not a vacuous concept: Not all economic interactions are deemed exploitative. Second, contrary to several of the major approaches in the literature, both inequalities in the distribution of economic gains and asymmetric power relations contribute to exploitative relations. What matters most is the interaction of power and inequality: The effect of both elements together is significantly greater than the sum of each on their own. Finally, and perhaps remarkably, we found no major differences in exploitation ascriptions between experts and lay subjects. These findings have implications for the ethics of employment contracts, particularly in the context of sweatshop labor.

British Journal of Political Science

Strategic Interdependence: Using Internet Outage Data to Study How Combatants Manage Collective Institutions During War
Nadiya Kostyuk, Jon Lindsay, Eunji Emily Kim, Aniket Anand, Zachary Bischof, Amanda Meng, Alberto Dainotti
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This article challenges the view that war and interdependence are inherently incompatible by examining how combatants manage collective institutions during conflict. Using the internet as a case of such an institution, we show that belligerents selectively preserve or disrupt mutual access based on battlefield conditions. Disruption is more likely during mobile offensives, which offer greater operational freedom, while static or constrained operations incentivize maintaining interdependence for co-ordination, intelligence, or deception. Drawing on geolocated data from internet outages in the Russia–Ukraine war (2022–3) and qualitative evidence from this conflict and the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflicts (2020, 2023), we find that the disruption likelihood declines as battlefield constraints increase. These findings reveal how interdependence can serve as a tactical asset rather than merely a casualty of war. This has important implications for understanding the relationship between institutions and conflict, as wartime strategies shape not only battlefield outcomes but also prospects for post-war peace building.
Fighting the Future: Short-Term Investors and Business Opposition to Climate Policy
Jared J. Finnegan, Jonas Meckling
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Business interests have often stymied progress on climate policy, raising the question of the source of business opposition to decarbonization policy. We bring intertemporal trade-offs into the study of business and climate change to build new theory on the relationship between firm ownership and policy opposition. Climate policy confronts companies with an intertemporal trade-off: incur costs today for gains in the future. Firms with short-term owners face pressure to maximize short-term profits, making them unable to undertake this trade-off. They therefore oppose climate policy. We test our argument using a dataset of US firms and an original firm-level measure of climate policy opposition. Firms most exposed to short-term capital oppose policy more than observably similar firms with long-term ownership. Our theory develops the microfoundations of long-term policy making. The greater an economy’s exposure to impatient capital, the more business opposition policy makers are likely to face in adopting long-term policies.
Muting the Liars: A Democratic Response to Disinformation
Yi-Hsuan Huang
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Disinformation poses a serious threat to democracy, yet regulating it risks infringing on freedom of speech. This article defends the democratic legitimacy of regulating disinformation by distinguishing it from two similar forms of speech: ‘false opinion’ and ‘toxic persuasion’. I argue that disinformation, as deliberate falsehoods intended to manipulate citizens’ political judgment, does not merit protection. Regulation, on this account, is normatively legitimate and desirable when it safeguards citizens’ ability to function as meaningful decision makers in the democratic common world. I then propose a dual-track model to identify removable content. Paired with regular review, transparency obligations, and an appeal process, this framework offers principles that help democracies to balance between protecting expressive freedom and resisting disinformation.
The British Academy Brian Barry Prize Essay: Civil Disobedience and State Anxiety
Chong-Ming Lim
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Political philosophers writing about civil disobedience have tended to neglect the anxiety of the state about such disobedience. I identify three components of state anxiety – Contagion , Fragility , Value – concerning the contagiousness of disobedience, and the fragility and value of public institutions. I argue that state anxiety can be substantiated or specious, depending on the plausibility of Contagion and Fragility . It can also be significant or trivial, depending on the plausibility of Value . Finally, and focusing on John Rawls’ influential discussions of civil disobedience, I show how political philosophizing can mirror state anxiety about disobedience and, in doing so, bolster it.

Electoral Studies

Do strategic voters have a strategic personality? Examining the role of machiavellianism in strategic voting
Scott Pruysers, Julie Blais, Luke R. Mungall
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A populist incitement? Populism, attack rhetoric, and support for political violence
Alessandro Nai, Elizabeth L. Young, Vlastimil HavlĂ­k, Alena KluknavskĂĄ
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Wishful thinking in mass–elite electoral expectations
Philippe Mongrain, Anam Kuraishi, Karolin Soontjens, Stefaan Walgrave
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The myth of compensatory effects: How party organisation shapes women's representation in dual-candidacy mixed electoral systems
Heinz Brandenburg, Maarja LĂŒhiste
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Do open lists increase turnout? Probably not, but they increase rates of voter error: New evidence from Spain
Leonardo Carella
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Just like me? Testing descriptive attributes as voting heuristics
Leonie Rettig, Lukas Isermann
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Do voters hold the president’s party accountable for local economic conditions?
B.K. Song
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District expectations and strategic defection in two-tiered proportional systems: The case of the 2021 Norwegian election
Alexander Verdoes
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European Journal of Political Research

The effects of government propaganda in electoral authoritarian regimes: Evidence from Turkey
Philipp M. Lutscher, Jonas Bergan Draege, Carl Henrik Knutsen
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Previous research conducted in closed autocracies indicates that government propaganda can deter opposition, shift political attitudes, and influence emotions. Yet the specific mechanisms and contextual factors influencing how and when propaganda works remain unclear. We theorize how power-projecting government propaganda works differently for government supporters and opponents in polarized electoral authoritarian regimes, focusing on emotional reactions, sense of societal belonging, and downstream effects on contentious political behavior. Through two preregistered surveys in Turkey ( N = 6,286), we find that supporters exposed to propaganda videos feel a greater sense of belonging and are more susceptible to engage in pro-government activities. Opponents report heightened anger and anxiety and seem deterred from protesting. However, the latter effect weakened during the highly contested 2023 electoral campaign. These results indicate that propaganda can help electoral authoritarian regimes deter anti-government action and encourage pro-government action, but that its deterrent effects may weaken during periods of high mobilization and contention.
Chains in episodes of democratization
Kelly Morrison, Martin Lundstedt, Yuko Sato, Klas Markström, Staffan I. Lindberg
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How do democratic institutions develop during episodes of liberalization in autocracies? Existing research has theorized about the long process of institutional change that makes up regime transitions, but existing quantitative methods are not equipped to analyze these multi-stage patterns of development across many variables. In this research note, we introduce a new methodology, Analysis of Chains (AOC), that allows for such analysis. Unlike previous methodologies, AOC identifies long patterns of simultaneous changes across numerous dichotomous, ordinal, and/or continuous variables. To demonstrate the utility of this method, we use AOC to catalog chains of institutional development across 47 indicators of democracy in 377 episodes of liberalization from 1900 to 2021. In addition to generating a descriptive account of the multi-step processes of regime change in each of these episodes, this innovative approach yields two general findings for transitology research. First, the results show that institutions related to elections and freedom of association are the most common elements of democracy to develop earlier during democratization episodes. Second, there is limited correlation between the order of institutional development and successful transition to democracy. Overall, the research note makes critical methodological and empirical contributions to research on democratic transitions.
The impact of unelected representatives on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy: A cross-national survey experiment
Pieter de Wilde, Andrea Vik, Lene AarĂže, Oliver Treib
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When activists act as unelected representatives by voicing political demands on behalf of various constituencies, does this affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy? We theorize that this may be the case if and when such individuals constitute an effective channel of representation, meaning that (1) activists substantively represent individuals and (2) they are included in politics. Furthermore, we theorize that marginalized individuals become more satisfied with the way democracy works when they witness activists with whom they agree. We test this through a preregistered vignette experiment in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Romania ( N = 8196). Our findings are mixed. Unelected representatives can sway citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in some instances. Specifically, the electoral winner–loser gap can be narrowed through substantive representation from unelected representatives. This presents an invitation for further research on the role activists play in shaping the legitimacy of liberal representative democracies.
Electoral vulnerability and women MPs’ estimation of voters’ preferences on women’s issues
Daniel Höhmann, Stefanie Bailer, Christian Breunig
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Given that parliamentary democracies channel the preferences of their citizens through elected representatives, parliamentarians need to estimate the policy preferences of their electorate. We investigate how the gender of representatives influences this assessment for policies characterized as women’s issues. Building on theories of shared group experiences, gendered role expectations, and strategic behavior, we expect that, in comparison to their men colleagues, women representatives are better at estimating their party voters’ policy position when they are electorally vulnerable. Combining original survey data from political elites and voters in Germany and Switzerland, our estimation indicates that women representatives’ estimation of public opinion on women’s issues is not more accurate than that of their men colleagues. Yet, the perceptual accuracy of women representatives increases markedly if they are electorally vulnerable. Corroborating our theoretical expectations, a placebo test implies that our findings are specific to women’s issues.
Conflicting perceptions: Misalignment between citizens’ and politicians’ evaluations of political conflict
Emma Sarah van der Goot, Laura Jacobs, Pirmin Bundi, Frederic Varone, Toni (G.L.A.) van der Meer, Rens Vliegenthart, Lior Sheffer, Jorge Miguel Fernandes
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This study examines how citizens and politicians evaluate different types of political conflict. Conflicts can be substantive in nature, involving disagreements over policy measures or clashes over core ideological values, or less substantive, concerning strategic relationships between parties. While conflict is inherent to politics, we know little about how different types of conflict are perceived by the public and how this differs from the perceptions of political elites. Whether citizens and their elected representatives share a common understanding of the role of conflict in politics is crucial, as misalignment may hamper political representation and effective governance. Empirically, our study relies on a survey experiment conducted among citizens ( N = 8264) and politicians ( N = 331) in four countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland) to investigate whether different types of conflict lead to different evaluations. Our results show that politicians are more likely to endorse ideological conflicts (over goals or core values) and substantive conflicts (over policy measures), yet citizens are more likely to approve of personal conflicts than politicians. Furthermore, politicians judge citizens’ perceptions of substantive and ideological conflicts more positively than citizens themselves and overestimate the concern citizens have with personal conflicts. These results may have important implications. If politicians fail to recognize that citizens are less accepting of political conflicts, this might be detrimental for trust in political parties and democracy at large – thus undermining the legitimacy of the political system.
Financing the state: Government tax revenue from 1800 to 2012
Per F. Andersson
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The 19th and 20th centuries are key periods in the development of the modern fiscal state, but a lack of reliable historical revenue data remains an obstacle for students of the period. In this research note, we introduce the Government Revenue Dataset (Govrev), which provides information on central government revenues in 31 countries in Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan from 1800 to 2012. Compared to previous efforts, our dataset is an improvement both in coverage and in validity. We use the new dataset to reanalyze the relationship between elite competition and taxation, showing that, contrary to previous findings, direct taxation is not driven by elite competition. In fact, thanks to the fine-grained detail of our data, we find that elite competition is associated with a heavier reliance on indirect taxation.
Globalisation, government partisanship, and labour strike intensity
Melle Scholten
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How does government partisanship affect strike intensity? While there is a strong emergent literature examining the consequences of labour strikes on political attitudes, how politics affects strikes is less well understood. This is despite the fact that strikes historically have been politically salient and have had political goals. In line with previous contributions, this research note shows that labour strikes in the OECD are generally less intense with higher representation of left-wing parties in government. However, this effect is conditional on levels of economic globalisation: as trade penetration increases, left-wing parties in government become less able to address the concerns of organised labour, and the effect of government partisanship on strike intensity attenuates. These findings matter for understanding the traditional alliance between labour movements and left-wing parties in advanced democracies with open economies.
One-dimensional, multidimensional, or non-dimensional? Ideological structure in mass and elite opinion
Philippe Mongrain, Stefaan Walgrave
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There is an enduring debate about whether, to what extent, and along which fault lines citizens’ policy preferences are ideologically structured. Some scholars maintain that public opinion is largely unstructured, with individuals adopting inconsistent and idiosyncratic positions – for instance, holding a ‘left’ stance on issue A does not necessarily imply a ‘left’ stance on issue B. Others argue that citizens’ views are shaped by coherent ideological constraints, such that a ‘left’ position on one issue is systematically accompanied by ‘left’ positions on others. This paper contributes new evidence to this debate by leveraging unprecedented big data. We draw on original data from Belgium’s widely used Voting Advice Application (VAA), known as the Vote Test , which was completed more than six million times in the run-up to the June 2024 elections. Our analysis is based on the actual log files of the application, encompassing millions of observations. The Vote Test consisted of twelve distinct VAAs designed for the seven concurrent elections held in Belgium in 2024 – including simultaneous federal, regional, and European contests across the country’s three regions – yielding millions of responses to hundreds of policy statements. Using these exceptional data, we examine the correlations among citizens’ answers and assess the dimensionality of the opinion landscape. We further compare the structure of mass opinion with that of political elites, who responded to the identical set of policy statements. Our findings reveal minimal, if any, ideological structuring among voters, especially when contrasted with the more consistent patterns observed among elites.
A track too far? The effect of general versus vocational upper secondary education on voter turnout
Marcus Österman, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh
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Despite the wealth of research on how education affects political participation, there are few studies that successfully identify the effects of different types of education or different educational tracks. In this article, using a regression discontinuity (RD) design, we present evidence on how electoral participation is affected by pursuing a general (academic) versus a vocational programme in upper secondary education. These two pathways represent a fundamental educational differentiation in most European countries. By exploiting Swedish register data and the admission process for upper secondary education, we provide robust support for causal inference. In contrast to previous research, we do not find positive effects from attending a general programme on voter turnout. In fact, in our RD analysis, our estimates suggest negative effects. This analysis focuses on students who apply for general and vocational programmes – a group with average academic skills. The negative effects appear related to that these students perform poorly in general programmes and risk dropping out. Furthermore, in a population-level analysis relying on within-family comparisons, we predominantly find null effects on turnout of attending a general programme, compared to a vocational one. We conclude that there are no universal positive effects of starting a general rather than a vocational secondary education – and that effects can turn negative for students who start an education that is too demanding. This finding implies that it is important to design secondary education such that it matches the abilities of different students, not only for labour market prospects, but also for their political inclusion.
Crisis management and territorial preferences: Experimental evidence during the pandemic
Sandra LeĂłn, Amuitz Garmendia Madariaga
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Centralization represents the historical response of political elites to overcome the difficulties of coordination when faced with an external threat. Yet, we know little about the demand side of authority distribution in the context of a crisis. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of the effect of crises and coordination inefficiencies on the territorial preferences of individuals. We predict that crisis-time uncoordinated responses will prompt a centralizing shift in preferences. We tested this argument using online survey experiments in a comparative sample of 13 countries in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The results show that exposure to unsuccessful intergovernmental coordination shifted individual preferences toward a more centralized power allocation in a majority of countries. This effect is moderated by contextual conditions, such as actual multilevel policy efforts and changes in the intensity of the pandemic. Individual-level territorial identity or partisan identification also intervenes as a significant moderator of our treatment.
Group identities and party competition
Christina Isabel Zuber, Philip J. Howe, Edina Szöcsik
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The rise of nationalist and populist candidates worldwide provides compelling evidence that parties win elections, not by appealing to voters’ policy preferences alone, but rather by connecting those preferences to group identities. This state-of-the-field article argues that party scholars need to integrate constructivist insights from neighboring fields to better understand the role of group identities in party competition. We review recent demand- and supply-side studies on the role of group identities in elections and bring them into conversation with the literature on ethnic politics and nationalism and political economic models of identity politics. On this basis, we suggest a research agenda that models voters as having both policy preferences and desires for self-esteem and self-consistency, which are mediated by their identification with social groups. Voters want to benefit others they see as being similar to themselves, to raise the status of the groups they identify with, and to maintain self-consistency by narrowing the gap between themselves and members of groups with which they identify. Political parties strategically combine policy offers with group appeals to address – and shape – all these motivations. Shifting from a ‘policy-only’ towards a ‘policy-cum-identity’ paradigm will enable the field of party politics to better understand the dynamics of real-world electoral competition and to reconcile its models with the latest developments in the political theory of representation.
Institutionalizing mutual toleration? Opposition power and the decline of democracy
Simone Wegmann
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Around the globe, democracies have come under pressure. At the same time, one of the most prominent research areas in political science is the question of which democratic designs generate the most stability. However, so far, one inherent part of democracies has not received much attention in this literature: the opposition. Although research has shown that there is a wide range of power granted to oppositions, little research exists investigating the consequences of these institutional differences. In this research note, I focus on the importance of mutual toleration for democratic stability and argue that this might manifest in institutionalized legislative opposition power, which, in turn, might affect democratic stability. Preliminary results indicate that instances of democratic decline are more likely to occur in countries with weak institutionalization of opposition power. These results have important implications and open up avenues for future research on questions relating to determinants of democratic stability.
More social, less material, more influenced by family ties: Why young women join political parties
Sofia Ammassari, Duncan McDonnell, Annika Werner, Reinhard Heinisch, Marco Valbruzzi, Carsten Wegscheider
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Do young women and men join political parties for different reasons? To investigate, we theorize the following: first, women will be more attracted by social incentives and men by material ones, while purposive incentives will be equally appealing to both; second, before signing up, women will have more party-affiliated family ties than men; and third, these ties will moderate the gender gap in incentives. Drawing on YOUMEM survey data from over 3500 youth wing members of the main center-left and center-right parties in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain, we find strong support for our argument. Our results show that, already in this early – but crucial – part of the pipeline to power, the incentives for joining parties are gendered: young women are more mobilized by social benefits, and less so by material ones. In addition, they are more likely than men to have party-affiliated family ties, indicating that these resources are particularly valuable to them in overcoming the disadvantages they face when entering politics. Notably, family ties boost women’s purposive motivations more than men’s, but they also reduce women’s material motivations to a greater extent. Our findings indicate that if parties are interested in recruiting more young women, they should emphasize the social rewards of membership in their recruitment campaigns.
The role of procedural fairness in EU legitimacy: Lessons from the Spitzenkandidaten process
Paul Meiners, Andreas C. Goldberg, Pieter De Wilde
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The European Union (EU) is facing an ongoing challenge to its institutional and political legitimacy. The 2014 European Parliament elections marked a decisive step towards bringing the EU closer to its citizens by increasing the personalization of EU politics. Under the slogan ‘this time it’s different’, the idea was that the ‘winning’ lead candidate (Spitzenkandidat) of the EP elections would become the new President of the European Commission (EC). However, the selection of von der Leyen as EC President after the 2019 EP elections neglected this process. Inspired by procedural fairness theory, we investigate the impact of the Spitzenkandidaten process on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy in the EU. In a first study, we use observational survey data to examine whether Europeans reacted negatively when the Spitzenkandidaten process was ignored in 2019. In a second study, we investigate how the Spitzenkandidaten process could be salvaged to increase citizens’ satisfaction with EU democracy. We focus on the involvement of citizens through a primary system to select potential Spitzenkandidaten and the binding nature of the results of the EP elections to determine the EC President. Our two studies show the low impact of the Spitzenkandidaten process: Member state governments are able to override the results of the Spitzenkandidaten process without having to fear a (large) public backlash. Increasing citizen participation through a European primary does not affect this conclusion. In summary, we find very little evidence for the relevance of procedural fairness for citizens’ evaluation of the EU and the Spitzenkandidaten process.

Political Analysis

Correcting Nonignorable Nonresponse Bias in Turnout Estimation Using Callback Data
Xinyu Li, Naiwen Ying, Kendrick Qijun Li, Xu Shi, Wang Miao
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Overestimation of turnout has long been an issue in election surveys, with nonresponse bias or voter overrepresentation identified as major sources of bias. However, adjusting for nonignorable nonresponse bias is substantially challenging. Based on the ANES Non-Response Follow-Up study concerning the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we investigate the role of callback data, that is, records of contact attempts in the survey course, in adjusting for nonresponse bias in the estimation of turnout. We propose a stableness of resistance assumption to account for nonignorable missingness in the outcome, which states that the impact of the missing outcome on the response propensity is stable in the first two call attempts. Under this assumption and by integrating with covariate information from the census data, we establish identifiability and develop estimation methods for turnout. Our methods produce estimates very close to the official turnout and successfully capture the trend of declining willingness to vote as response reluctance increases. This work highlights the importance of adjusting for nonignorable nonresponse bias and demonstrates the potential of widely available callback data for political surveys.
From Faces to Politics: Vision-Language Models (Sometimes) Link Visual Demographic Characteristics to Ideological Labels
Soyeon Jeon, Messi H. J. Lee, Jacob M. Montgomery, Calvin K. Lai
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When foundation models analyze political content, do they use demographic characteristics as shortcuts for ideological attribution? We conducted detailed experiments with GPT-4o-mini and validated key findings across GPT-4o and LLaVA , using identical, ideologically neutral campaign advertisements with systematically varied candidate demographics. All models consistently attributed more liberal ideologies to women than men. These effects exceeded real-world gender differences from a nationally representative survey. However, racial associations differed by model: strong in GPT-4o-mini (where Black candidates received substantially more liberal attributions), attenuated in GPT-4o , and insignificant in LLaVA . These demographic effects persisted across temperature settings, prompt variations, and even explicit debiasing instructions in GPT-4o-mini . Our findings reveal that visual demographic features can shape AI outputs in ways that vary across models, with implications for applications such as content classification.

Political Geography

The price of climate finance: Agency, knowledge and refusal in Mexico
Miriam Gay-Antaki
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Good bridges make good neighbors: The convergence of political support astride the Connecticut river
Quinn M. Bornstein, James G. Gimpel
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The spatial politics of green hydrogen: Speculative enactments, contested dynamics and alternative pathways in southern Chile
CristiĂĄn Flores FernĂĄndez
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Rethinking environmental governance for development: the blue Ɠconomy dispositif
Alex Midlen
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Imposing connectivity: Privileging an elephant corridor over ecotourism in the Sigur Plateau, South India
Ananda Siddhartha
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From home to summit: Sovereign bodies and the everyday geopolitics of mountain tourism in Iraqi Kurdistan
Marie Poulain, Jean Miczka
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There is nothing here! Unequal access to services and rural resentment in Spain
Rubén García del Horno
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Geonarratives of outer space: How astronaut memoirs narrate conquest
Darshan Vigneswaran, Enrike van Wingerden
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Civilian militia formation and protection against rebel violence: Evidence from Nigeria
Imrana Buba, Jana Krause
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Technopolitics of water appropriation: How Mumbai claims hydrological dominance in its metropolitan region
Sachin Tiwale
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Maritime security technologies and coastal neo-fortification
Alexandra E.J. Hall
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How local candidates mobilize voters: Evidence from India
Dishil Shrimankar, Oliver Heath
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State making at the infrastructural frontier: bureaucratic practices and the techno-politics of hydraulic infrastructure in post-revolutionary Mexico City
Alejandro De Coss-Corzo
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Enduring crises, dynamic border work: Migration governance in Ventimiglia since COVID-19
Silvia Aru
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Climate Justice or Climate Apartheid? The justice trade-offs of private solar investments for South Africa's just transition
Charlotte Lemanski, Christina Culwick Fatti, Fiona Anciano
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Testing the liberal borders of the EU: (De)Constructing the right of asylum through informality
Francesca Fortarezza
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Political Psychology

Conspiracy thinking and belief in partisan conspiracy theories: A moderating effect of partisan congruence?
Omer Yair, Shira Hebel‐Sela, Amnon Cavari, Asif Efrat
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Various studies have shown that people's predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories, commonly referred to as “conspiracy thinking,” strongly predicts belief in a myriad of conspiracy theories. Research also shows that partisan affiliations shape conspiracy theory beliefs: people tend to embrace theories that portray their political opponents as conspirators, while rejecting those that implicate their side. In this paper, we theorize that one's conspiracy thinking and partisan affiliations interact in predicting belief in partisan conspiracy theories. Specifically, we argue that the effect of conspiracy thinking is moderated by one's partisan affiliation, such that this effect is stronger when the conspiracy theories are congruent with one's partisan affiliations than when they are incongruent. Drawing on six studies from the US and Israel (total N = 10,765; 61 conspiracy theories in total), we find strong and consistent support for our argument. In addition, we find no interactive effect when predicting belief in non‐partisan conspiracy theories. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of conspiracy theory endorsement.
Susceptibility to misinformation and propaganda during wartime: Evidence from the Israel‐Gaza war
Nur Givon‐Benjio, Yaniv Reingewertz, Michael L. Gross
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Advances in digital technologies have facilitated the creation and dissemination of misinformation, creating a complex information ecosystem where distinguishing between real and fake content has become increasingly challenging. Wars, in particular, present a unique case in which misinformation is often weaponized to shape public perception, both domestically and internationally. While individual differences in susceptibility to misinformation are well documented, research in this context remains sparse. Our study addressed this gap by examining individual differences in susceptibility to misinformation and propaganda during the Israel‐Gaza war. Using a sample of 792 Israeli participants, we assessed participants' ability to distinguish between real and fake news headlines, covering both war‐specific and war‐neutral content. We tested a range of predictors, including cognitive, moral, socio‐political, and conflict‐specific variables. The results showed that enemy dehumanization, conspiracy mentality, willingness to act violently for political ideology, social media activity, and skepticism are associated with lower discrimination ability. In addition, discrimination ability was lower for war‐specific news and among participants with right‐wing political ideology. Taken together, the study offered insights into the mechanisms underlying susceptibility to misinformation during wars.
Intergroup contact with people experiencing poverty reduces hostile but not benevolent classism
Mario Sainz, Gloria JimĂ©nez‐Moya, Roberto M. Lobato, Andreas Laffert, Alexandra VĂĄzquez, Roberto GonzĂĄlez
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Intergroup contact can reduce bias against disadvantaged groups, yet it may differentially shape ambivalent attitudes. This project examines how contact with people experiencing poverty relates to ambivalent classism and its policy consequences. We hypothesized that positive and frequent contact would have mixed effects, reducing the hostile dimension of classism while reinforcing benevolent forms (protective paternalism and complementary class differentiation). We conducted a multi‐country correlational study ( N = 4209) examining associations between intergroup contact and hostile and benevolent dimensions of ambivalent classism, incorporating support for social policies in separate models for women and men experiencing poverty. We then carried out two experimental studies. In Study 2 ( N = 784), we used a recall paradigm to manipulate contact quality. In Study 3 ( N = 931), a conceptual replication, we employed a fictitious society paradigm to manipulate both contact quality and quantity with women and men experiencing poverty. Across studies, positive contact consistently reduced hostile classism but increased complementary class differentiation. Effects on protective paternalism and support for dependency‐oriented policies were less consistent. Overall, the findings suggest that while contact may attenuate overt hostility, it can simultaneously reinforce benevolent representations of poverty, with implications for support of restrictive policy measures.

Political Science Research and Methods

Is winning the first primaries of primary importance? A regression-discontinuity approach
Jonne Kamphorst, Alexander Davenport, Marcus Hagley, Elias Dinas, Arnout van de Rijt
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The literature on American politics widely agrees that early victories in U.S. presidential primaries are pivotal for securing the nomination, a belief that underpins the front-loading behavior of states. However, demonstrating this success-breeds-success effect is challenging because unobserved candidate qualities could independently link early victories to later success. To address this, we used a regression-discontinuity design, focusing on variations near the victory threshold. Our analysis shows that conclusions about early states rely heavily on limited observations around the cutoff. If any inference is to be drawn, it is that winning in Iowa or New Hampshire has no lasting impact on subsequent contests, nor does winning on any election day affect outcomes on the next. These findings question the presence of momentum effects for winners in the primaries.
Measuring interethnic marriage in Africa
Daniel N. Posner
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Interethnic marriage is commonly employed as an indicator of social cohesion. However, intermarriages are a reflection of both preferences and opportunities. If we are to interpret intermarriage rates as indicators of people’s willingness to cross group boundaries, we must find a way of controlling for exposure to out-group members in local marriage markets. In this Note, I exploit census data from Zambia to demonstrate how this can be done. The findings, which reveal significant differences across estimates that do and do not control for local exposure to out-group members, underscore a significant weakness in common approaches. The findings also point to important substantive implications for understanding changes in social cohesion in Zambia—and likely other African societies—over time.

PS: Political Science & Politics

Does “Precocious Research Creativity” Account for Notable Late-Career Research Achievements by Political Scientists?
Kim Quaile Hill, Soren Jordan
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This article offers the first test with valid measures and rigorous multivariate methods of the hypothesis that significant early-career research achievements of academics predict late-career achievements of the same type. Considerable research investigated the correlates of late-career research success; however, this promising hypothesis that originated in psychological and educational research on adolescents has not been tested systematically for academic careers. In a sample of three annual temporal cohorts of political science faculty members, our study finds notable evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our findings also provide a foundation for future research on how innate abilities, the character of doctoral programs, and the advantages of different types of academic positions shape long-term career productivity.
Female Authors in Top-Cited Political Science Articles: Underrepresented but Not Marginalized
Audrey Gagnon, Daniel Stockemer, Chloé Dubuc
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What is the gender distribution among authors in top-cited articles? To answer this question, we examined the 20 most-cited articles for each of the 201 most frequently used concepts in political science during the past 10 years. Using a sample of 4,020 articles comprising approximately 8,500 authors, we confirmed the underrepresentation of female authors among top-cited articles. Women account for approximately 38% of authors within this canon of articles. On the one hand, this finding is encouraging considering that women’s proportion of authorship did not decline relative to their overall representation among published authors. On the other hand, it is discouraging considering that most recent influential research continues to be written primarily by men. To explain variation in the proportion of female authors per article, we find that women are more likely to engage in single-authored publications and to use qualitative methods. In contrast, we find no significant difference between male and female scholars in the rankings of the journals in which they publish.
Using AI to Assess Demographic Balance of Syllabi and Bibliographies
Sarah Musgrave, Jane L. Sumner
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The Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT) was introduced in 2016 as a shortcut for researchers and instructors who wanted to quickly determine the gender balance of the authors in their bibliographies and syllabi. In the years since then, some journals and departments have encouraged its use. However, technology also has changed significantly during this period, and the emergence of generative AI models have introduced systems with enormous potential to evaluate the demographic balance of syllabi and bibliographies. By leveraging information on the Internet other than names, and by being less constrained in terms of formatting and name recognition, this article shows that generative AI systems are superior to the GBAT, in terms of both their accuracy and their ability to evaluate general demographic balance rather than only gender balance.

Public Choice

Do US presidents leave fiscal fingerprints? the power of the executive branch through a century of tax data
Brandon Parsons, Mike Kimel
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Electoral autocracy with powerful local elites: theory and evidence from Brazil
ArnĂłbio Chagas, M. Christian Lehmann
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Is invalid voting more common in complex electoral systems than in simpler ones? An examination of mixed systems and first-past-the-post systems
John Högström
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This study examines the level of invalid voting in mixed electoral systems in comparison with the level of such voting in First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) systems. High levels of invalid votes can indicate problems with the electoral system used and can weaken the legitimacy of elections. Theoretically, a higher level of invalid votes can be linked to elections in which a complex electoral system, such as a mixed system, is used. Conversely, lower levels of invalid voting can be linked to elections in which a simple electoral system, such as a FPTP system, is used. We carry out a large, global, cross-national empirical comparison of invalid voting for national parliaments worldwide that covers more than six decades. First, we examine whether the level of invalid voting is higher in mixed systems than in FPTP systems. Second, we examine whether the level is higher in countries that currently use mixed systems but previously used FPTP systems or were formerly non-independent states. The results show that invalid voting is more prevalent in mixed systems than in FPTP systems. They also illustrate that invalid voting is more prevalent when countries transition from a FPTP system to a mixed electoral system, or when they adopt a mixed system following full independence or the restoration of sovereignty. In the persistent debate about which electoral system is preferable, invalid voting rates represent one of several indicators of system quality, and according to this measure, FPTP systems outperform mixed systems.
Covert regime change and ideology
Joshua Ammons, Shishir Shakya, Konstantin Zhukov
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Research & Politics

Introducing the trust in government (TrustGov) dataset: A new resource for cross-national time-series trust research
Yuehong Cassandra Tai
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Although political trust is a long-standing interdisciplinary topic, the lack of com parable cross-national time-series data has limited scholars’ ability to analyze its determinants and consequences and to generalize findings across countries and over time. To address this gap, this paper introduces the Trust in National Government (TrustGov) Dataset—a cross-national time-series resource covering 115 countries and territories from 1973 to 2020, harmonizing 1,545 country-year observations from 189 national and cross-national surveys using a Bayesian latent variable model. The dataset is validated through a series of convergent and construct validity tests. TrustGov supports qualitative and mixed-method research by guiding case selection and helping scholars probe mechanisms behind shifts in trust. It also enables quantitative analyses of trust’s dynamic relationships with determinants such as inequality, election integrity, and institutional performance, as well as outcomes such as policy preferences and crisis resilience. The project will be updated regularly through periodic releases as new data become publicly available, supporting ongoing research on political trust.
Private members’ bills & parliamentary motions: Who bothers?
Eunseong Oh, Indridi H. Indridason
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While the role of legislators in parliamentary systems may sometimes seem to involve little more than to support the government of the day, legislators in many parliaments regularly take advantage of their, often limited, opportunities to introduce members’ bills and parliamentary motions. The success of these efforts is typically limited, which raises the question of why legislators bother. We argue that the legislators’ behavior is in part driven by the incentives their parties present them with. Government and opposition MPs behave in a different manner because government and opposition parties value legislative activity and types of legislative activity differently. Government MPs are expected to stay out of the way of the government’s agenda or focus their attention on less salient issues. In contrast, opposition MPs are expected to do the opposite and to present their parties as viable government alternatives. Examining members’ bills and parliamentary motions in Iceland over a thirty-year period, we observe patterns consistent with the importance of parties in shaping legislative behavior, while also finding some evidence of MPs’ career concerns affecting their behavior.

The Journal of Politics

Does Youth Representation Matter for Social Spending?
Charles T. McClean
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Elite Rhetoric and the Running Tally of Party-Group Linkages
Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard, Frederik Hjorth
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Against the Wind: The Radical Right, Renewable Energy, and the Politics of the Green Transition
Pauliina Patana, Held Alexander
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Varieties of Participation and Investment in Local Public Goods: Evidence from an RCT in Kenya
Tara Grillos, Michael Touchton
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Effects of Popular Legitimacy on International Organizations: An Elite Survey Experiment
Thomas Sommerer, Jonas Tallberg
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The Politicization of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Brazil
Anderson Frey, Rogerio Santarrosa
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Do Politicians Listen to Youth Wings? Evidence from an Elite Experiment
Henrik Bech Seeberg
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“It’s a Gender Thing”: The Wrongdoing of Stereotype Articulation
Lasse Nielsen, Mathilde Cecchini
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Do External Threats Reduce Affective Polarization? An Experiment on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Jonas Pilgaard Kaiser, Markus Seier
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Unorthodox Lawmaking and the Value of Committee Assignments
James M. Curry, Leah Rosenstiel
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The Gender Gap in Political Careers Under Proportional Representation
Tobias Nowacki
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Between Withdrawal and Engagement: Disentangling the Effects of COVID-19 on Turnout
Kevin T. Morris
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Keep Winning with WinRed? Online Fundraising Platform as the Party’s Public Good
Seo-young Silvia Kim, Zhao Li
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The Answer Was There All Along: Worry About the Dynamics!
Ali Kagalwala, Guy D. Whitten
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Executive–Legislative Policymaking Under Crisis
Nathaniel A. Birkhead, Jeffrey J. Harden, Jason H. Windett
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The Politics of Disaster Prevention
Martin Gilens, Tali Mendelberg, Nicholas Short
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Occupation-Specific Skills, Labor Market Context, and Preferences for Redistribution
Josep Serrano-Serrat
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Loss Framing in Territorial Disputes
Andi Zhou, Hein Goemans, Michael Weintraub
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Observable Bounds of Rationality and Credibility in International Relations
Andrew Kenealy, Trent Ollerenshaw, So Jin Lee
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Social Density, Clientelism, and Community Benefits
Jeremy Spater, Erik Wibbels
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Intraparty Competition, Geographic Responsiveness, and Incumbent Deselection in Closed-List Proportional Representation
Jochen Rehmert
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Who’s Persuasive? Understanding Citizen-to-Citizen Efforts to Change Minds
Martin Naunov, Carlos Rueda-Cañón, Timothy J. Ryan
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Defending Elections Against the Oligarchic Charge
Palle Bech-Pedersen
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Universal Mail Ballot Delivery Boosts Turnout: The Causal Effects of Sending Mail Ballots to All Registered Voters
R. Michael Alvarez, Yimeng Li
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Cycles of Silence: Police–Citizen Cooperation in Communities with Criminal Groups
Andrew Cesare Miller
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Bureaucrats in Congress: The Politics of Interbranch Information Sharing
Pamela Ban, Ju Yeon Park, Hye Young You
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Incivility Does Not Exist: An Experimental Assessment on the Drivers of Incivility Perceptions and Their Effects on Candidate Evaluations
Chiara Vargiu, Alessandro Nai, Diego Garzia
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Differently Divisive: Sexism, Racial Resentment, and Support for Candidates with Incongruent Views
Ryan Bell, Gabriel Borelli, Rafaela Dancygier, Daniel J. Hopkins, Jeremy Roth
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How Exiles Mobilize Domestic Dissent
Elizabeth R. Nugent, Alexandra A. Siegel
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Arms and Elections: Arms Deals with Autocracies, Defense Contracting, and US Presidential Elections
Joshua Alley
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Understanding Resourcing Trade-Offs in International Organizations: Evidence from an Elite Survey Experiment
Mirko Heinzel, Bernhard Reinsberg, Christian Siauwijaya
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Candidate Positions, Responsiveness, and Returns to Extremism
Mellissa Meisels
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The Supply of Conspiracism in State-Controlled Media
Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, Richard A. Nielsen, David Romney
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When Conservatives See Red but Liberals Feel Blue: Labeler Characteristics and Variation in Content Annotation
Nora Webb Williams, Andreu Casas, Kevin Aslett, John Wilkerson
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Commodity Booms, Conflict, and Organized Crime: Logics of Violence in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Plantation Economy
Paul D. Kenny, Rashesh Shrestha, Edward Aspinall
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An Agency Perspective on Immigration Federalism
Asya Magazinnik
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The Institutional Sources of Economic Transformation: Explaining Variation in Energy Transitions
Jared J. Finnegan, Phillip Y. Lipscy, Jonas Meckling, Florence Metz
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When Do Legislators Represent Their Constituents? Evidence from Roll-Call and Referendum Votes
John G. Matsusaka
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Preposterous Fake News, the Breach of Democratic Trust, and Intellectual Humility
Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Federica Liveriero
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Who Should Be the Master of My Words? On Political Authority and Linguistic Justice
Sergi Morales-GĂĄlvez
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Military Power and Ideological Appeals of Religious Extremists
Luwei Ying
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The Minimal Effects of Making Local News Free: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Andrew Trexler
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The Role of Issue Salience and Competitive Advantages in Spatial Models of Political Competition
Anna-Sophie Kurella, Milena Rapp
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