I checked 18 political science journals on Tuesday, May 26, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period May 19 to May 25, I found 30 new paper(s) in 11 journal(s).

American Journal of Political Science

Breaking barriers: How an international treaty for women reduces the size of the informal economy
Chris Gahagan
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Prior research on the role the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has improving women's outcomes has shown ratification results in increased political and social rights, yet no improvements in economic rights. I challenge prior findings by providing evidence that CEDAW improves women's economic rights by reducing gendered legal barriers to employment. I also demonstrate CEDAW has unexpected but desirable downstream consequences that further improve women's economic outcomes by facilitating movement from the informal to the formal economy. Through matching within a difference‐in‐differences design, I show ratifying countries experience a significant increase in women's equality of economic opportunity and a significant decrease in the size of the informal economy. These results hold under multiple robustness checks and placebo tests. By examining specific outcomes that are relevant to CEDAW, I offer greater insight into CEDAW's impact on women's economic outcomes than previous research has afforded.
Post‐instrument bias
Julian Schuessler, Adam N. Glynn, Miguel R. Rueda
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When using instrumental variables, researchers often assume that causal effects are only identified conditional on covariates. We show that the role of these covariates is often unclear and that there exists confusion regarding their ability to mitigate violations of the exclusion restriction. We explain when and how existing adjustment strategies may lead to “post‐instrument” bias. We then discuss assumptions that are sufficient to identify various treatment effects when adjustment for post‐instrument variables is required. In general, these assumptions are highly restrictive, albeit they sometimes are testable. We also show that other existing tests are possibly misleading. Then, we introduce a sensitivity analysis that uses information on variables influenced by the instrument to gauge the effect of potential violations of the exclusion restriction. We illustrate it using a published study and summarize our results in easy‐to‐understand guidelines.

Electoral Studies

Who does disproportionality favour? A measure for cross-domain comparison of disproportionalities
Chris Hanretty, Iain McMenamin
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Sibling-sex effects on voter turnout
Sven Oskarsson, Rafael Ahlskog, Christopher Dawes, Karl-Oskar Lindgren, Aaron Weinschenk
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European Journal of Political Research

The (alleged) consequences of affective polarization: A survey experiment in nine democracies
Eelco Harteveld, Lars Erik Berntzen, Andrej Kokkonen, Haylee Kelsall, Jonas Linde, Stefan Dahlberg
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Affective polarization (or antipathy between supporters of opposing political camps) is considered a threat to societal cohesion and democratic stability worldwide. However, causal evidence of its impact remains scarce, especially outside the United States. Our study examines the individual-level consequences of affective polarization by manipulating it in a survey experiment in nine countries (Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States; N ≈ 18,000) and subsequently assessing the downstream consequences for social avoidance and discrimination of opponents, support for aggression, aversion to political compromise, democratic norms, democratic dissatisfaction, and political engagement. Our intervention successfully reduced participants’ affective polarization in six out of nine countries. In turn, this was associated with significant improvement in interpersonal relations and (in contrast to recent US studies) support for democratic norms. Importantly, the impact varied between societies, suggesting that the consequences of affective polarization may be more context-dependent than previously understood.
Strategies of agenda denial: Anti-gender opposition to LGBTQ+ policies in Italy
Anna Lavizzari, Andrea Terlizzi
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While the agenda setting literature largely focuses on how issues gain the attention of policy-makers, the strategies used to keep certain issues off the governmental agenda remain underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by examining agenda denial in the context of LGBTQ+ equality policies. It analyzes how opponents of such policies employ both strategies of avoidance and non-confrontation, as well as strategies of attack and issue redefinition, in order to prevent LGBTQ+ equality from advancing on the policy agenda. The opponents examined in this study are anti-gender actors, who have increasingly positioned themselves at the forefront of the backlash against gender equality, forming alliances across political and civil society sectors to push back or halt progress on LGBTQ+ policies. By dissecting their opposition arguments, this study examines how they strategically mobilize reason (evoking empirical proofs and factual evidence) and emotion (evoking sensibilities and feelings) to sustain their denial strategies. Focusing on Italy, where parties of the right-wing bloc and anti-gender organizations are increasingly intertwined and have gained significant influence, this study utilizes qualitative, interpretive content analysis of parliamentary debates on laws against homotransphobia, as well as organizational documents from anti-gender actors. The paper contributes to the literature by linking gender studies with agenda denial theory, offering fresh insights into gender backlash dynamics from a public policy perspective.

Journal of Experimental Political Science

The Policy Feedback Effects of State Assistance: Did Small Business Bailouts Increase Support for Public Aid Programs?
Neil Malhotra, Saikun Shi
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We examine whether exposure to government assistance can generate positive policy feedback effects among constituencies not traditionally supportive of the welfare state. Focusing on the U.S. Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a small business bailout enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we study how making government assistance salient affects attitudes toward social assistance programs among a typically Republican-leaning and relatively affluent group. Leveraging a bespoke survey of verified program recipients and an embedded experimental manipulation, we find that reminding PPP recipients of program participation increases support for government spending on healthcare, nutritional assistance, and unemployment benefits by an average of 6.9 percentage points—equivalent to roughly 16 percent of the partisan divide on these issues. The findings provide novel causal evidence that making the receipt of government assistance salient increases support for anti-poverty programs among well-off people, even when those programs do not directly benefit them.

Party Politics

Have populist right supporters’ views on refugee policy radicalized under the Ukrainian crisis? Evidence from a three-wave survey experiment
Natalia Letki, Peter Thisted Dinesen, Dawid Walentek, Ulf Liebe
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This paper examines the refugee policy preferences of supporters of anti-Russia and pro-Russia populist right parties (PRPs) and mainstream parties (MPs) in Germany, Poland, and Hungary during the Ukrainian refugee crisis. We use cross-sectional quota representative and panel (re-contact) samples from a unique three-wave survey experiment covering both EU-level (allocation of refugees, EU border protection) and national-level dimensions (access to the labour market, freedom of movement, and policy cost for an average household) of asylum policy. We compare these preferences before, immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and 2 years later. We demonstrate that the Ukrainian refugee crisis did not cause a polarisation of anti-Russia and pro-Russia PRP supporters, and MP supporters either short or long term. Instead, the electorates converged on restrictions to admission of refugees and their freedom of movement, accompanied by liberalization of their access to the labour market. These results highlight the need for multidimensional measures of policy preferences, and longitudinal designs, to provide a nuanced and context-specific understanding of the dynamic of public opinion on policy.
Youth representation in Latin American legislatures: Cross-national party-level evidence from the PELA project
Vicente FaĂșndez-Caicedo, Sergio Huertas-HernĂĄndez
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Despite relatively low legal age thresholds for legislative office in Latin America, young people remain markedly underrepresented in national parliaments. Drawing on more than 9,000 individual interviews from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America (PELA-USAL) project covering 18 countries between 1994 and 2024, this research note provides a cross-national descriptive overview of the age profile of legislators. The analysis examines age distributions across countries, political parties, gender, and ideological positioning. The findings show that only 12.2% of deputies are under 35, with substantial cross-national variation: while only 3.4% of legislators in Argentina fall into this category, the share reaches 14.8% in Mexico. Using individual-level survey data, the study documents persistent youth underrepresentation and highlights important variation across party systems and ideological orientations in Latin American legislatures.
Political parties and democratic innovations: From challenges to consequences
Sergiu Gherghina, Bettina Mitru, Petar Bankov, David M Farrell
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Despite the popular appeal of democratic innovations and of political parties’ need to reconnect with citizens, many parties are reluctant to embrace innovations - especially in the form of direct and deliberative democracy - either internally or in the wider political system. This is counter-intuitive behaviour on which the literature rarely reflects. This special issue addresses this gap and makes two main contributions to the existing research. Theoretically, it formulates broad questions to be picked up by further research and develops more focused analytical frameworks on how political parties use reforms. Empirically, it enriches the literature about the importance of ideology, explains why party elites and members engage with, avoid or are undecided about democratic innovations, and investigates the consequences of the relationship between parties and new democratic approaches for the political system, society, and decision-making.
Intra-government democracy and policy responsiveness to public opinion
Tobias Böhmelt, Lawrence Ezrow
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Does the internal organization of governmental parties influence their ability to respond to shifts in public opinion? We argue that intra-government democracy , defined as the average internal democracy of governmental parties, explains variation in responsiveness. Intra-government democracy has positive features such as promoting internal deliberation and it encourages attention to core supporters’ preferences. However, deliberation limits policy changes, and responding to supporters may distract governing parties from the median voter. Thus, we expect that internally democratic governments will be less responsive to changes in the median voter position. We test this expectation using three different estimation strategies for time-series cross-national data on public opinion and governmental policies since the 1970s, and these analyses support our argument. This finding has important implications for our understanding of how intra-party institutions influence substantive responsiveness to public opinion.
Populist electoral success and party system concentration: A cross-national analysis
Vlad Surdea-Hernea, Grigorii V. Golosov
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Why does the electoral success of anti-establishment populist movements lead to fewer, rather than more, effective political parties? Using panel data from electoral democracies worldwide (1970–2020), we document a robust negative relationship between populist electoral success and subsequent party system fragmentation. We theorize that the electoral validation of populism triggers three mechanisms that concentrate party systems: delegitimation of moderate positions, polarization that eliminates centrist parties, and the establishment of barriers preventing new challengers from entering. Employing entropy-balanced two-way fixed effects, we find that a one unit increase in our Vote-Weighted Populism Index reduces the effective number of parties by 0.388 units. This effect persists across diverse institutional contexts, though regional analysis reveals important variation: the concentration effect is strongest in Europe and Asia-Pacific, and null in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of moderation, we demonstrate that economic recessions amplify the effect, nearly doubling its magnitude, while other institutional factors seem to play no significant role.
Party systems at the European union’s doorstep: Party system structuration and dimensionality in the Western Balkans
Adea Gafuri, Jacob R. Gunderson, Jesper Lindqvist
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Although consisting of EU (potential) candidate countries, the Western Balkan Six (WB6: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) remain largely absent from the study of party politics. Mapping the dominant lines of party contestation in the region and comparing them cross-nationally is vital to understanding what types of ideological conflicts divide the parties of this region, how programmatic the party systems are, and whether they resemble other party systems. We are the first to use and validate the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey to investigate which issues structure Western Balkan party systems and to quantitatively map these systems. Generally, these party systems are weakly programmatic, unidimensional, and structured along cultural issues with a background consensus on the EU. This article contributes to the scholarly understanding of party competition in a geopolitically important region and facilitates future research on party systems in young democracies.
Issue ownership in times of crisis: Dynamics of party issue ownership during the COVID-19 pandemic
Christopher Klamm, Marc Debus, Simone Paolo Ponzetto, Ines Rehbein, Sarah Wagner
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The COVID-19 pandemic became one of the most salient issues for the public in the past few years, so that political parties had to address this issue if they wanted to maximize their vote share and thus the support of the citizens in upcoming elections. Due to the pandemic’s all-encompassing nature, many parties were forced to adjust their policy stances to the multitude of issues facing the public, the economy, and the health care sector. In this contribution, we analyse to what extent parties associated the COVID-19 pandemic with their issue ownership drawing upon German parliamentary parties’ press releases. Using a novel multi-step text analysis approach, we estimate which additional topics parties address in their press releases when publishing their position on the COVID-19 pandemic. We find mixed evidence for our expectation: only in a limited number of prominent issue areas, including domestic affairs, labour policy, macroeconomic issues and civil rights, do the parties we identify as more likely to associate these issues with the pandemic actually make such associations.

Political Analysis

Estimating Treatment Effects on Proportions with Synthetic Controls
Konstantin Bogatyrev, Lukas F. Stoetzer
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Synthetic control methods are widely used for causal inference in case studies and panel data settings, often applied to model counterfactuals for proportional outcomes. However, conventional synthetic control methods are designed for univariate outcomes, leading researchers to model counterfactuals for each proportion separately. We make the case for jointly estimating synthetic controls across multiple compositional outcomes. Using the same weights for each proportion establishes a constant control comparison, improving comparability while adhering to compositional constraints on treatment effects. We illustrate the benefits of the method through a simulation and two applications to recent empirical studies. This implementation integrates naturally with a wide range of synthetic control approaches, providing interpretable estimates for compositional panel data common in political science.

Political Behavior

The Dynamics of Anti-Establishment Politics
Adam Enders, Casey Klofstad, Justin Stoler, Joseph Uscinski
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Recent work theorizes that the American mass opinion space is organized along two broad, uncorrelated dimensions––a left–right one and an “anti-establishment” one––that jointly explain recent events in American politics, such as the election of Donald Trump and belief in conspiracy theories. In this paper, we test several previously untested predictions of this theory, including those involving temporal dynamics. Utilizing a time series of cross-sectional surveys spanning 2019–2024 and a 2024 three-wave panel survey, we offer five findings: (i) the two dimensions remain empirically distinct; (ii) the initially orthogonal left–right and anti-establishment dimensions become moderately correlated by 2024; (iii) by 2024, this change is driven primarily by movement of the left–right dimension towards the anti-establishment one; (iv) anti-establishment sentiments are associated with two-party vote choice and presidential primary candidate preferences; and (v) anti-establishment orientations are associated with preferences for reducing government spending on science, public health, and foreign aid.
Perceptions of Discrimination Against White People in Post-Floyd America: Media Coverage and Public Opinion, 2020–2024
Matthew Levendusky, Shawn Patterson, James N. Druckman, Michele Margolis, Josh Pasek
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The aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests illustrates a fundamental truism of race relations in America: racial progress is difficult to sustain. While the protests initially seemed to usher in a progressive era of racial politics, a counter-narrative quickly emerged arguing that efforts to remedy past injustices against people of color discriminated against white people. We show that this framing soon dominated media coverage of, and elite messages about, racial issues. Moreover, using data tracking public opinion between 2020 and 2024, we show that Americans came to believe that white (Black) people experienced more (less) discrimination. In fact, by 2021, Republicans, on average, perceived white people as facing more discrimination than Black people.
Flattering Social Groups: Do Warmth and Competence Descriptions Impact the Effectiveness of Group Appeals?
Camilla BjarnĂže, Kristina Jessen Hansen, Dominik Schraff, Mads Thau
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Political parties and candidates appeal to social groups to gain their support. Yet, we lack knowledge about what makes such group appeals effective. This article tests novel explanations for the success of in-group appeals. Specifically, we investigate (1) how voters respond to social group appeals that flatter them by describing their group’s positive qualities (warmth and competence), and (2) whether voters identifying with high or low status groups differ in how they are effectively flattered. Focusing on social class, we conducted survey experiments in Denmark and the United States, in which respondents received in-group appeals corresponding to their self-identified class and were randomly assigned to receive different types of flattery. The results show that, as expected, the impact of group appeals on candidate support increases as individuals express stronger class identities. However, they also suggest that adding flattery to these appeals can boost effectiveness among high-identifiers. Further, high- and low-status groups are relatively similar in their responses to flattery. These findings underline the potential of flattery-based group mobilization, even for high-status groups like the upper-middle class.
Constituents’ Responses to LGB Representatives in Congress
Philip Edward Jones
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How have voters responded to the increasing “rainbow wave” of LGBTQ representatives in Congress? To date, political science has not tackled this question directly. Research on other marginalized groups, however, finds that being represented by a minority legislator affects constituents’ approval, evaluations of government, knowledge about the incumbent, and perceptions of their policy positions, among other variables. In this paper, I extend these findings to LGB Members of Congress (MCs) using pooled CES data from 2016 to 2023. The results show that constituents respond differently to LGB and straight MCs, in three ways. First, descriptive representation boosts approval ratings—LGBT constituents approve of LGB legislators at higher rates. On average, straight cisgender constituents do not rate LGB MCs differently from straight MCs, although this masks countervailing partisan reactions that cancel out in the aggregate. Second, LGB MCs have a higher profile among all voters. Regardless of their own sexuality, constituents are more likely to have information on, and be able to answer questions about, LGB MCs. Third, stereotypes of LGBTQ politicians as ideologically liberal are widespread. Even after controlling for their actual party and roll call record, LGB MCs are perceived to be significantly more liberal than straight MCs. Overall, these results show that LGB representatives are evaluated differently from their straight peers, with potential implications for their political careers.
Do Losing Candidates Harbor Illiberal Attitudes?
Michael Barber, Hans J. G. Hassell, Michael G. Miller
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Tesla Takedown: Brand Politicization and Partisan Consumerism in the Trump Era
Kyle Endres, Donald P. Green, Costas Panagopoulos
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During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Tesla CEO Elon Musk endorsed the Republican nominee Donald Trump, contributed nearly $250 million to PACs supporting his candidacy, and grew close to Trump as a prominent figure in his second administration through his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency, prior to his withdrawal from the Trump inner circle in May 2025. We contend his alliance with Trump politicized his electric vehicle company Tesla, polarized the carmaker’s brand image and reputation, and likely resulted in partisan consumerism. Using daily brand tracking data, we find support for these contentions across a variety of brand perception metrics including quality, value, employment reputation, and purchase considerations. Specifically, we show that, on average, Democrats grew to view Tesla more negatively while Republicans warmed to the brand in the aftermath of Musk’s endorsement of Trump and in the early months of his second administration. Consumers are responsive to partisan activity by corporate leaders and appear willing to adapt their views of corporate brands and purchasing behaviors to align with and express their partisan allegiances. Corporate leaders engage in partisan politics at the peril of their brand images and, ultimately, even the bottom line.

Political Geography

A place for extremism: Nativist grievance, frustrated expectations, and the spatial dynamics of the global city
Tahir Abbas
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Will ‘America first’ leave America behind? Exploring discourses of a fossil-fueled heartland
Ida Marie StĂžp Meland, Guri Bang
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Dispossessed geographies: Statelessness and eco-resistance in Rojhelat
Ahmad Mohammadpour
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Theorisation of environmental justice in Chinese political philosophy
Shizhi Zhang, Linda Westman, Vanesa CastĂĄn Broto
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Political Psychology

Ideological differences in moral concern reflect circle expansion, not inversion
Kyle Fiore Law, Seoyeon Bae, Liane Young, Stylianos Syropoulos
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Do liberals prioritize distant others over close relationships, inverting the moral hierarchy? Across three studies, we test this claim directly. Study 1a analyzes a nationally representative U.S. sample ( N = 1000). Study 1b reanalyzes four Prolific samples ( N = 3201). Study 2 preregisters a new sample ( N = 899) using both unconstrained Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES) ratings and a fixed‐resource allocation task. Across all studies and ideological groups, ingroups consistently receive the highest moral concern. In unconstrained settings, greater concern for distant entities does not predict reduced concern for close others; ideological differences reflect how far moral concern extends outward, not compromised ingroup prioritization. When concern is treated as a fixed resource, tradeoffs emerge as expected: allocating more to distant targets means allocating less elsewhere. However, even under constraint, ingroups remain the top priority across the political spectrum; liberals simply reallocate more toward distant categories than conservatives do. These findings challenge claims of moral inversion and clarify that liberal moral universalism reflects circle expansion, not reversal in the ordering of concern.
The irredeemability of the past: Psychological determinants of reconciliation and revenge in post‐conflict settings
Kristen Kao, Kristin Fabbe, Michael Bang Petersen
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Peace after violent conflict often hinges on reconciliation with persons suspected of having collaborated with an enemy. Receiving communities must refrain from vengeance, lest the cycle of violence renew. Can accused collaborators mitigate past wrongs through attempts at redemption? We present results of an experiment embedded in a face‐to‐face survey ( n = 4592) of communities confronting the return or resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accused of collaboration with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Despite both reconciliation and revenge being keys to unlocking durable peace, they are rarely investigated within a single study. We find that perceived culpability for past wrongs strongly predicts reconciliation and revenge propensities towards stigmatized IDPs. Redemptive signals have little to no impact, though IDPs who assist in security efforts to combat the enemy elicit more reconciliatory responses. Cognitive and emotional decomposition analyses indicate that past behavior shapes latent reconciliation and revenge propensities because it simultaneously activates a past‐oriented moral condemnation and a future‐oriented heuristic assessment of the value and risks of associating with the IDP. These results suggest that durable peace requires careful programming attentive to the culpability of individual crimes, and that prevailing redemptory strategies for accused collaborators may be ineffective.

Political Science Research and Methods

Political lotteries and roll-call voting in the Belgian parliament during democratization
Brenda Van Coppenolle, Jessica De Rongé, Sofija Riegger
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How do political lotteries affect choices and outcomes? We study the monthly lotteries used to assign all legislators to deliberation committees in 19th century Belgium. We focus on the period of democratization around the entry of a new, third, and Socialist party. We ask whether random, more extensive exposure to certain MP types affected voting over all roll-call votes between 1892 and 1902, i.e. debating more Socialists, more incumbents, or more of those from majority Flemish-speaking districts. We find small but significant exposure effects on rebelling against the party majority, against the deliberative ideal but along government-opposition logic. Legislatures may similarly limit lottery’s potential today.
Electoral opportunism and economic policy: disentangling myopia and moderation
Axel Cronert, PĂ€r Nyman
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This study jointly considers two opportunistic behaviors among political incumbents that may be triggered by electoral uncertainty—policy myopia and policy moderation—which hitherto have been the focus of separate research traditions. We evaluate their prevalence in economic policy-making among Swedish local governments, using a new measure of electoral competitiveness, capturing the incumbent government’s re-election probability, for which plausibly exogenous variation is generated by exploiting national-level polls. We find a substantial moderating effect of competitiveness on incumbents’ tax rate decisions—shifting policy towards the political center—but little evidence of policy myopia, whether in taxation, budget balance, or public investment. Corroborated by evidence from a politician survey, these findings caution against the popular understanding of democratic policy-making as inherently short-sighted.

Research & Politics

Immigration attitudes and the emerging education divide in left-right identification
Ruth Dassonneville, Ian McAllister
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Across the advanced democracies, educational attainment has become increasingly linked to citizens’ political orientations. Education, it seems, polarizes citizens – with the higher educated turning to the left and the lower educated to the right. Here, we contend that this ideological divide between the highly and less educated does not stem from changing political opinions, but rather from a change in the issues that are associated with left and right . Drawing on over two decades of data from the European Social Survey, we demonstrate that Europeans have progressively come to associate left-right positions more with views on immigration. As a result, long-standing educational divides in immigration attitudes have become more strongly reflective of left-right self-identifications. Our findings suggest that the growing education-based cleavage is driven not by opinion change, but by the rising salience of immigration in structuring ideological labels.