I checked 18 political science journals on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period June 17 to June 23, I found 36 new paper(s) in 12 journal(s).

American Political Science Review

Portraits of Power: Facial Appearance and the Tacit Domain of Political Selection in China
JUNYAN JIANG, SONGPO YANG
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As the epitome of modern, rational organizations, bureaucracies are often believed to select candidates based on rules and reason. We argue that intuitive—and even instinctive—assessments of candidates’ external appearances sometimes underpin seemingly rational and calculated decisions. Using a novel, AI-based algorithm that learns and reproduces human assessments of facial appearances at scale, we examine how perceived facial traits influence the careers of over four thousand mid- and senior-level Chinese officials. We find that officials who look more competent, trustworthy, and less aggressive enjoy significantly better promotion prospects and lower purge risk than their peers. Warmth-related traits (e.g., trustworthiness and non-aggressiveness) are especially valued at higher-level promotions and for male candidates. Additional analyses, including conjoint experiments with real officials, demonstrate that appearances’ influence over selection preferences is comparable to performance or political connections. These findings challenge the prevailing meritocratic and relation-based theories of bureaucratic selection and highlight the role of impressions in the workings of government institutions.
Correction to Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1998)
SAMI PETERSEN
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The proof of Proposition 2 in Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1998, American Political Science Review 92(1): 23–35) is flawed. This note presents an elementary direct proof of the result.
Beyond Belief Change: The Persuasive Returns of Targeting Attitude–Relevant Beliefs
YAMIL RICARDO VELEZ, PATRICK LIU, SCOTT CLIFFORD
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A persistent puzzle in the study of public opinion is why political information often produces minimal attitude change despite reliably influencing beliefs. We argue that this duality reflects belief relevance—the extent to which specific beliefs bear on attitudes. Using conversations with large language models (LLMs), we elicit deeply held issue attitudes and the “focal beliefs” people use to justify those attitudes. We then randomly assign participants to receive an LLM-generated counterargument targeting either their focal belief, an issue-relevant but unmentioned belief (“distal belief”), or a placebo. In experiments with two large online convenience samples, counterarguments targeting the aforementioned beliefs successfully decrease belief strength, with effects persisting after 10 days. More importantly, focal belief counterarguments produce larger and more durable attitude change than distal counterarguments. These findings suggest that political information can successfully shift political attitudes and provide new evidence for the role of belief relevance in persuasion.
Efficient Production without Domination: The Case of Labor-Managed Firms
IÑIGO GONZÁLEZ-RICOY
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Labor-managed firms, whether in the form of worker cooperatives, codetermination, or broad-based employee ownership, have recently prompted substantial public debate, to which political theorists have contributed with normative analyses that are seriously deficient insofar as they have neglected considerations of productive efficiency. I offer a normative view of labor-managed firms that leans squarely on efficiency considerations. I first argue that the value of productive efficiency is grounded not only on the interests of capital suppliers and society at large, but also on workers’ interest in avoiding domination by their bosses, and examine how efficiency may serve and set back this interest. I next argue that some variants of labor-managed firms can secure efficient production while protecting workers’ interest in nondomination more robustly than capital-controlled firms. Finally, I compare labor-managed firms to alternatives to achieve these aims, including self-employment, workplace regulation, unionization, and labor market policies to enhance workers’ exit options.
Vernacular Architecture and Grassroots Urban Politics: How Politics Is Embedded in Residential Design
PAIGE BOLLEN, NOAH L. NATHAN
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The physical structures in which urban life occurs are an underappreciated determinant of how grassroots urban politics unfolds. In many rapidly growing cities, housing scarcity forces residents into multifamily buildings that create daily exposure to neighbors. We argue that these exposures affect political behavior by shaping residents’ access to political information and capacity for collective action. We focus on the informal, vernacular architecture of West Africa’s dominant urban housing form—the compound house. Compound house residents in urban Ghana participate more in politics than similar residents of other housing types. Leveraging an original survey, including novel measures of tenants’ spatial network centrality within their residential buildings, we suggest that key mechanisms for this relationship emerge from the effects of architectural design on visibility and social ties among co-tenants. Ultimately, built environments must be studied alongside demographic environments to best understand contextual effects on political behavior.

Electoral Studies

Theories and measurement of political values and under-represented groups: the case of women in the UK
Ceri Fowler, Maria Sobolewska
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European Journal of Political Research

Social projection and political behaviour in low-information environments
Alex Yeandle, Johan AhlbÀck
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Research on social projection shows that people overestimate the prevalence of their own views among others, significantly shaping their political behaviour. But existing studies focus on wealthy, information-rich democracies, rather than lower-income, uncertain settings where evaluating others is a high-stakes part of political life. Misperceiving others can constrain voters’ ability to coordinate, undermining access to public goods or efforts to overthrow dominant parties. Misestimating support for one’s party may also undermine acceptance of electoral loss. Using original survey data from Malawi, in a pre-registered fixed-effects design, we show that respondents perceive greater levels of local support for their own party and a higher prevalence of their own ethnic group. Politically engaged individuals also report higher levels of participation by those around them. These findings provide microfoundational insights into the study of political behaviour in low-income states and highlight several avenues for future work.
Party systems and executive accountability: The politics of investigative committees in Central and Eastern Europe
Marko Kukec
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Parliaments are equipped with accountability mechanisms to uncover and sanction executive misconduct, yet the variation in their use across countries and over time remains poorly understood. This article links the frequency with which various constellations of MPs initiate ad hoc parliamentary investigative committees (ICs) to the institutionalization of party systems. It argues that the closure of the party system in the governmental arena, and particularly the degree of alternation in government, fosters the use of ICs due to the enhanced clarity of responsibility and competitive pressures. This argument is tested using a novel dataset of IC proposals in 97 cabinets across 10 countries of Central and Eastern Europe from the early 2000s to 2024. The findings indicate that under closed party systems, these accountability mechanisms are initiated more frequently both by opposition parties and a portion of coalition parties without the support of the remaining coalition partners. The article adds to the comparative understanding of parliamentary accountability as exercised by both opposition and government parties.
‘Left behind’ and an undemocratic mind? The link between perceived marginalization and democratic orientations
Vanessa Schwaiger
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The ‘left behind’, commonly defined by socio-economic factors such as rural residence, working-class status, and subjective perceptions of marginalization, have been repeatedly linked to support for populism and authoritarianism. However, it remains unclear whether the left behind are truly turning away from democracy and whether and how perceived marginalization (understood as a lack of recognition in different areas) is linked to fundamental democratic orientations (democratic attitudes, understandings, and governance preferences) that go beyond support for populist parties or specific policies. Using data from about 2,500 respondents in both the United States and Germany, I investigate how perceived societal marginalization is related to democratic orientations while accounting for traditional socio-economic factors. The results show that a lack of cultural recognition (feeling that one’s values are becoming less important or that one’s group cannot freely express its opinion in public) is associated with lower democratic support, an authoritarian and majoritarian understanding of politics, and higher support for authoritarian governance. Conversely, feeling unseen and unheard by politicians is associated with dissatisfaction with democracy and lower support for representative governance but also with high democratic support, a liberal understanding of politics, and support for citizen-centered decision-making in the form of referendums. These findings challenge simplistic portrayals of the left behind as inherently undemocratic. They also highlight the need for nuanced approaches to engage the left behind based on the dimensions in which they experience a lack of recognition to ensure democratic stability.
Understanding (gendered) public tolerance of violent threats against politicians
Reed Wood, Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Rob Johns, Graeme Davies
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Women receive a disproportionate share of the online abuse and violent threats made against politicians. Yet, mounting cross-national evidence also suggests that the long-observed gender disparity in citizens’ voting preferences has rapidly diminished – and arguably reversed – in recent decades. Emerging experimental research likewise suggests the broader public in many democratic countries is particularly sensitive to online abuse and threats against women politicians. Herein, we highlight the sexist beliefs of audiences as an important explanation for this apparent inconsistency. Analyzing data from a vignette experiment embedded within a wider survey administered to a demographically representative sample of the British electorate, we demonstrate that the sex of the candidate has only limited influence on observers’ tolerance for threats against politicians. However, respondents that held more sexist attitudes were both more tolerant of violent threats against politicians and particularly tolerant of abuse directed against female candidates. More concerningly, we find that priming sexist respondents to think about female candidates increased support for abusive behaviors against politicians more generally, irrespective of their sex. Our results add to the growing evidence that tolerance for political violence is driven not so much by partisan hostility and ideological polarization as by specific personality traits.
Following voters in the chain of representation: The important role of pre-election pledge awareness
Mathias Bukh Vestergaard, Carsten Jensen, Troels BĂžggild
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Election pledges are fundamental for representative democracy, linking parties’ campaigns before elections with their behavior afterwards. Yet little is known about voters’ awareness of these pledges before elections and how this affects post-election awareness of pledge fulfillment. Triangulating between a rich set of panel and pooled cross-sectional survey data surrounding the 2019 Danish national election ( N = 10,322), we show that voters who were able to recognize and recall pledges before elections were more likely to be aware of their fulfillment status after the election. Furthermore, pre-election awareness mostly benefited people with less political interest, enabling these relatively disinterested voters to nevertheless hold parties accountable. These findings have important implications for our understanding of voters’ ability to make informed choices when they delegate power to parties at elections and hold them accountable afterwards.
Growing together or apart? Regional inequality and preferences for inter-territorial redistribution
Dominik Schraff
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Even though political conflict on inter-territorial inequality appears to play a crucial role in understanding salient political developments in Western democracies, we still have a limited understanding of how individuals form inter-territorial redistributive preferences. We argue that relative regional income – meaning the degree of equally shared economic growth across places – serves as a cue for voters to evaluate their individual future benefits from inter-territorial redistribution. We propose that absolute regional income, defined as a region being richer or poorer today, polarizes preferences over inter-territorial redistribution under contexts of rising inequality in relative income gains. We test this argument with a factorial survey experiment in France and Germany, where respondents are randomly exposed to different information about relative and absolute regional income. We find that absolute regional income is an important determinant of preferences for inter-territorial redistribution as relative income gains are skewed to the richest areas. The difference in absolute income, however, loses explanatory power for redistributive preferences as relative income gains are distributed more equally, demonstrating that equality in economic gains can unite poor and rich areas in their redistributive preferences. This interactive relationship between relative and absolute regional income is also found in an observational study of inter-territorial redistributive preferences across 146 regions from nine European countries, underlining the external validity of our findings.
Neutral arbiter, partisan speaker, or asset of the coalition? Patterns of Oral Question Selection by the Speaker of the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament
Wouter Nelen, Simon Otjes
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The Speaker of Parliament is potentially a highly influential actor in parliamentary politics. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how they make decisions. In many parliaments, they, for instance, choose who gets to speak in question time. By examining a unique data set from the Netherlands, which lists all proposed oral questions and which ones were selected to be asked in parliament, this paper examines the considerations of the Speaker when selecting questions. This gives a unique insight into their considerations in general. Our central question is as follows: under what conditions are Speakers more likely to select an oral question? We look at the following three options: the neutral arbiter that seeks to treat all parties fairly; the partisan Speaker who defends the interests of their own party; and the asset of the coalition that protects the unity of the governing coalition. Our analyses indicate that Speakers are more likely to block questions that would drive a wedge in the coalition and are more likely to accept questions that meet established norms of urgency and importance.
Dog-whistle politics in far-right discourse: Analyzing ethnonationalism in Martin Sellner’s book ‘remigration’
Armin Langer, Florian Hartleb, Christoph Schiebel
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This article explores the phenomenon of dog-whistle politics within the context of Austrian far-right activist Martin Sellner’s rhetoric, focusing on how coded language is employed to promote ethnonationalist and far-right ideologies in contemporary European political discourse. By conducting a detailed qualitative content analysis of Sellner’s 2024 book Remigration: Ein Vorschlag (Remigration: A Proposal), the study investigates the extent to which ostensibly neutral terms can function as linguistic vehicles for exclusionary, racist, and antisemitic messages to a specific, ideologically aligned audience. While Sellner’s primary influence remains German/Austrian, his tactics reflect global far-right strategies. We thus contextualize his rhetoric through selective comparison with other far-right figures to illuminate shared communication logics. The findings reveal how coded language may shape public discourse while navigating social and legal constraints, with significant implications for political communication, media practices, and policymaking.

Party Politics

Representational gaps and movement institutionalization: Contrasting experiences of German Greens and PEGIDA
Firat Kimya
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This study investigates why social movements either form political parties or remain extra-parliamentary. I hypothesize that the availability of suitable political representation critically shapes these trajectories. Through a comparative analysis of the German Greens and the far-right PEGIDA movement and process tracing approach, I examine the organizational evolution of the German Greens and PEGIDA. Findings reveal the Greens formed a new party to address an unrepresented ecological agenda. In contrast, PEGIDA, facing a similar anti-immigrant gap, fused with the transforming Alternative fĂŒr Deutschland, obviating its own party formation. Cross national evidence from Manifesto Project Data complements these findings, illustrating that representation gaps are closed following the entry of Green and far-right parties. This work contributes by demonstrating that representational gaps are not only filled by new party emergence but also by symbiotic absorption into existing parties, offering a more nuanced understanding of institutionalization and party system adaptation.

Political Analysis

Generic title: Not a research article
Selecting More Informative Training Sets with Fewer Observations – CORRIGENDUM
Aaron Kaufman
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Political Behavior

How Partisan Policy Threat Mobilizes Gun Owners: Evidence from Firearms Background Checks
Chris Cassella, Michael E. Shepherd
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How does the threat of adverse policy change influence affected individuals? To answer this question, we explore the responses of gun owners following salient mass shootings and after the election of Democratic presidents. We gather and merge data on the timing and location of mass shootings (2006–2020) and data on the timing of gun purchase background checks from (2006–2020). We exploit the exogenous timing of elections and the resulting determination of future partisan control of the White House over three closely contested presidential elections as well as the timing of mass shootings under a Democratic versus Republican administration. Using regression discontinuity designs, we find that the election and re-election of Barack Obama led to increases in gun sales of 70–210 per 100,000, while the election of Trump was not related to similar increases. Further, we find that salient mass shootings led to substantially higher gun sales during times with Democratic presidents.
The Causes of Opposition to Teaching About Racism
Adam Thal
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Perspective-Taking and Partisan Depolarization in the U.S. and Turkey
Cansu Paksoy, Leonie Huddy
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There is keen research interest in the reduction of affective polarization, which can worsen interpersonal interactions and challenge democratic norms. Past research has generated inconsistent findings on efforts to reduce affective polarization, however, including their ability to backfire. Additionally, studies have primarily focused on the two-party U.S. political system, resulting in less information about the success of interventions in a multiparty system. In this study, we test the ability of perspective-taking (PT) to reduce affective polarization in two highly polarized contexts: Turkey, a typical multi-party context, and the U.S. two-party system. We use a specific form of PT, perspective-getting (PG), which is less likely to backfire and has proven to be more successful than other forms of PT in mitigating polarization. Data is drawn from a Facebook sample in Turkey (N = 605), and an MTurk sample in the U.S. (N = 386; 186 Republicans, 200 Democrats). The PG intervention improved attitudes towards an out-partisan target person in both national contexts and boosted feelings of warmth towards outpartisans more generally in both countries when compared to a control condition. The PG intervention was less successful in reducing negative cognitions about out-partisans. This study documents the success of a PG exercise and lends insight into the reduction of affective polarization in two national contexts.
Who Trusts? The Relevance of Race for Political Trust
Jennifer Chudy, Andrew M. Engelhardt
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Racial Identity and Evaluations of Civilian-Perpetrated Violence in the United States
Kiela Crabtree
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The Effects of SMS Mobilization, Message, and Timing on Voter Turnout
Katherine Haenschen, Christopher B. Mann, Stephanie L. DeMora
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Political Geography

Review forum
Kai Bosworth, Cynthia Morinville, Penelope Anthias, Bruce Braun, David Kneas, María Alejandra Pérez, Desirée Valadares, Andrea Marston
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Uneven territorial sponsorship: NGOs and ancestral recognition in inter-indigenous territorial disputes in Amazonia
Angus Lyall, Tod Swanson
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Investor legibility, territorial silence: ESG knowledge and the coloniality of green-transition governance
Chun Kai Leung
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Against ‘green jobs’: Transition discourse as climate coloniality
William Monteith
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Political Psychology

Generalized loss of trust following political betrayal: Cross‐country evidence in the context of elections
Jakob Schuck, Rainer Greifeneder, Fanny Lalot
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This research investigates how perceptions of political betrayal —that is, the perceived violation of mutually known pivotal expectations by a political entity—shape political trust. We test a generalization hypothesis that the loss of trust might extend beyond the specific political entity (i.e., the one who betrayed) and generalize to others. Across three preregistered studies (one cross‐sectional and two longitudinal) in Germany, the UK, and the US ( N = 2136), we observe that perceptions of betrayal by one political entity is consistently associated with lower trust in that same entity, both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. Additionally, we find evidence for two types of generalizations: assimilative and contrastive. Perceived betrayal by one figure often decreases trust in other political entities (presumably categorized within a similar category; i.e., assimilation ). Conversely, perceived betrayal sometimes increases trust in other political entities (most often political rivals, thus presumably categorized in different categories; i.e., contrast ). Lastly, we observe reverse effects from trust toward betrayal, indicating that trust can function as a buffer in the political context. Additional analyses could not identify any distinct or stable partisan effects in these dynamics. We discuss implications for future research and policymaking.
Does digital surveillance boost citizen compliance? Evidence from China
Dakeng Chen, Jing Vivian Zhan
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Authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy digital surveillance to monitor citizens, but how this affects citizen compliance remains understudied. We argue that, beyond repressing or deterring regime opponents, digital surveillance serves as an instrument of everyday governance that operates through psychological mechanisms rather than direct coercion. Specifically, pervasive monitoring fosters routine compliance with the regime through self‐regulation and mutual observation. However, these effects attenuate over time as citizens habituate to surveillance and update risk assessments about noncompliance. We test this argument against empirical evidence from China. Drawing on in‐depth fieldwork and employing a quasi‐natural experiment enabled by two pilot surveillance projects that coincided with two national social surveys, we reveal digital surveillance's paradoxical short‐ and long‐term effects: Newly introduced surveillance significantly boosts citizen compliance. Over time, however, this effect diminishes, and even reinforced surveillance cannot sustain the initial surge in compliance. The findings highlight both the potency and the limits of digital surveillance as a tool of authoritarian governance.

PS: Political Science & Politics

Fieldwork in Middle East Political Science: Misalignments in Training and Practice
Christiana Parreira, Michelle D. Weitzel
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The discipline of political science lacks a systematic understanding of how scholars studying Middle East politics prepare for and navigate in-country research, even as fieldwork plays a vital role in contemporary scholarship about the region. Drawing on evidence from an original survey of scholars studying the Middle East and North Africa, we identify a training–practice misalignment wherein 38% of respondents reported having received no formal training before entering the field despite almost all respondents claiming to have conducted fieldwork. Qualitative evidence from open-ended responses reveals the frustration that many scholars experience due to their lack of formal training and subsequent dependence on informal networks and knowledge. Conflict, authoritarianism, state surveillance, and repression in public space—characteristics that increasingly are prevalent in many parts of the world—have long shaped the practice of fieldwork in the Middle East, rendering our findings significant beyond this region alone. The article discusses implications of this misalignment for this subfield and the discipline more broadly, as well as potential pathways forward.
American Muslim Support for Black Social Movements: The Case of Support for the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement
Nura A. Sediqe
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This article investigates the extent to which American Muslims express solidarity with Black-led social movements, focusing on the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. American Muslims occupy a unique position in the US social landscape as a faith-based group that is racialized and frequently experiences surveillance and subjugation when encountering US law enforcement. Using data from two nationally representative online panel surveys of American Muslims conducted in 2020—the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding survey and the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey—this study finds that Muslims report relatively higher levels of support for BLM compared to other religious groups (e.g., Christian and Jewish) and other ethnoracial groups (e.g., Latinos and Asian Americans). These findings provide further insight into American Muslims and their linkage to Black social movements, given the role of Black communities—particularly Black Muslims—in shaping the social foundations and political mobilization of American Islam. This research contributes to ongoing conversations about interminority group relations amid a shifting democracy in the United States.

Public Choice

Organized thuggery
Henry A. Thompson
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Few mafia traditions have endured as long or been shared as widely as the pizzo . The pizzo was and is a customary payment collected from clients by Italian mafias in exchange for private protection. The value of the pizzo was vulnerable to two sources of dissipation. First, excess competition for clients from other mafiosi . Second, evasive behavior from clients themselves. I argue that Italian mafias created de facto property rights to limit those losses. To limit competition, mafias in Italy defined client ownership via territorial delineation. To limit opportunism by clients, mafias tailored pizzo terms in proportion to clients’ latitude for opportunism. Historical evidence from New York mafias and Italy’s retailing and construction industries supports my thesis.
New brooms sweep cleaner? political term and air pollution governance
Lafang Wang, Lunbo Zhang, Wenjing Kuai, Dan Qu
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The rise of Christianity, the demise of Greco-Roman religion, and economics
Mario Ferrero
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How voters choose under the Borda rule: evidence from a post-election survey experiment in Germany 2025
Anna-Sophie Kurella
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The Borda count offers a promising alternative to counteract the growing polarization of party systems by incentivizing moderate party strategies. However, empirical evidence on the Borda count is still lacking. This paper presents results from an online survey conducted in the aftermath of the 2025 German federal election, in which respondents were asked for their vote choice under a Borda count system. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: in the first, they could rank up to three out of seven parties; in the second, they could rank all seven parties. The findings show that more ranks considered, the more fragmented the election result. It also shows that the Borda count has mixed effects on policy congruence between voters and parliament. Respondents’ overall acceptance of the Borda rule was moderate to negative, with many of the objections cited were based on misconceptions about the system’s consequences.
From pilots to law: policy uncertainty in rural land reform and land prices in China
Guangyu Cheng, Ziqing Yuan
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Quarterly Journal of Political Science

Overcoming digital barriers: evidence from Venezuelan migrants in Colombia
Nejla Asimovic, Kevin Munger, Mateo Våsquez-Cortés
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Unprecedented migration flows demand effective strategies for integrating migrants into the public systems of their host countries. The rapid digitalization of services creates new opportunities for inclusion, but limited internet access, digital literacy challenges, and weak social networks remain significant barriers. In collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action and using administrative data from Colombia’s National Planning Department, this study designs and implements a randomized controlled trial to reduce these barriers among Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. This study tests whether providing unlimited mobile data for a month and information about public benefits, delivered individually or within moderated WhatsApp groups, improves access to social services and other integration outcomes. This study finds that information provision, particularly via WhatsApp groups, significantly increased verified enrollment in Portal Ciudadano, the country’s social services platform. Networked participants also demonstrated greater interest in government services and a stronger ability to complete digitally demanding tasks, which are increasingly important in today’s digital environment. By contrast, this study finds no effects on outcomes such as employment, and even observes some negative effects on well-being. This study advances our understanding of migrant integration, highlighting WhatsApp’s potential to activate networks and assist migrants in navigating host societies, while also revealing the ongoing challenges in achieving broader integration outcomes.

The Journal of Politics

Scarcity, Strategy, and the Racialized Politics of Refugee Admission in the Global North
Andrew S. Rosenberg
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