Abstract Our study explores the nature of political trust ratings in surveys. We provide novel empirical evidence that, in addition to informed and rational reasoning, emotional states play a role in trust evaluations. Leveraging a U.S. sample, we employ a novel smartphone survey methodology that captures real-time voice responses during the trust evaluation process. We then classify these responses using sentiment analysis and speech emotion recognition techniques. Our findings demonstrate a substantial presence of negative sentiment when respondents evaluate political trust. Moreover, the sentiment conveyed in these responses significantly impacts trust scores, with positive sentiment bolstering trust and negative sentiment leading to its decline. A more granular examination of emotions reveals limited variation with only one notable effect where respondents employing ‘happy’ language and paralinguistics exhibited higher trust scores.
Abstract Many Western democracies have experienced an increase in the prevalence of parties that have never been in government. Since these so-called challenger parties are not held accountable to the same extent as established parties, there is a concern that they will simply churn out promises and fuel a process of rising political distrust. This paper explores the extent to which this image of overpromising populists is accurate. Instead of expecting more promises from challenger parties, the paper argues that we should find the opposite. Using a novel dataset of over one million content-coded quasi-sentences from election manifestos, the paper empirically demonstrates that challenger parties make substantially fewer election promises than established parties and that this is likely due to their lack of governmental experience. These results have important implications for research on the growing phenomenon of challenger parties and their distinct communication in electoral campaigns.
Abstract Claims that citizen deliberation can strengthen public confidence in democracy rest on the assumption that it enhances the perceived procedural legitimacy of democratic governance. We test this assumption by examining whether integrating deliberative constituent forums into electoral-representative institutions increases perceived legitimacy among non-participating publics and which specific features of such forums drive these diffuse effects. We extend existing experimental research on democratic innovations by theorising that the deliberative norms of consequentiality and listening shape legitimacy judgements. Drawing on a nationally representative survey vignette experiment in Australia, we show that even minimal, realistic exposure to information about a deliberative citizens’ panel informing a parliamentary committee produces a modest but statistically significant increase in perceived procedural legitimacy. These gains depend on signals that citizens’ input is taken seriously and that participants are sincerely listened to. While legitimacy declines when deliberative input is ignored, the strongest positive effects arise when processes visibly communicate high-quality listening by political representatives. Moreover, legitimacy gains are strongest among respondents with low institutional trust. The findings demonstrate that the legitimacy-enhancing potential of deliberative innovations hinges not only on institutional design but also on the perceived relational quality of engagement between constituents and decision-makers. This contributes to ongoing debates in democratic theory and political behaviour about when and why deliberative innovations can rejuvenate representative democracy.
Abstract Online platforms have become indispensable tools for political candidates to gain visibility, particularly for female candidates in electoral autocracies who often lack access to traditional networks, party hierarchies, and media platforms. We argue that online visibility, while a resource for female candidates, disproportionately exposes them to online violence that functions as a mechanism of political control, reinforcing patriarchal exclusion from the political sphere. Our analysis draws on more than three million tweets directed at 1,834 candidates across the 2023 parliamentary and 2024 local election campaigns in Türkiye, providing a rare opportunity to observe how these dynamics unfold at both the national and subnational levels. We find that while online visibility increases abuse for all candidates, the effect is markedly stronger for female candidates, who are disproportionately targeted across diverse forms of violence, including profanity, demeaning and ridiculing language, physical threats, and ethnic and religious hate speech. Moreover, our results suggest that in local elections, where candidates rely more heavily on personalized campaigns, increases in visibility are more strongly associated with female candidates’ exposure to online violence.
This paper investigates the conditions under which women are more likely to represent interest groups in parliamentary hearings, shifting attention from the content of advocacy to the identity of advocates. While existing research has focused on how interest groups gain access to legislative venues, it has largely overlooked who delivers these messages and how messenger characteristics shape political representation. Drawing on theories of gender representation, interest group advocacy, and source effects, we develop a framework that distinguishes between structural and strategic representation and examine whether gender is deployed as a symbolic and relational resource in legislative settings. Using an original dataset covering all interest group appearances in the Spanish Parliament from 1996 to 2023, and hierarchical logistic regression models with Bayesian inference, we analyze how organizational, institutional, and contextual factors shape gendered representation. The findings show that citizen groups are significantly more likely than economic organizations to be represented by women, and that female representation increases with the proportion of women MPs on parliamentary committees. Gendered patterns also vary across policy domains and hearing characteristics. Importantly, the results provide evidence consistent with strategic adaptation: interest groups appear more likely to select female representatives in gender-diverse institutional environments, suggesting that gender functions as a form of strategic signaling rather than solely reflecting internal organizational structures. These findings contribute to research on interest groups and political representation by highlighting how identity operates as a political resource, with implications that extend beyond parliamentary lobbying to broader debates on descriptive and substantive representation.
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.
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.
Several groups in democratic polities are legally excluded from voting. Are they thus also excluded from democratic representation? In this article, we focus on the political inclusion of underage youth and migrants. We theorize that proxy representation of their interests might occur through two mechanisms: mechanical or solidarity representation. Drawing on parallel citizen and politician surveys in 14 countries (N citizens = 27,465; N national politicians = 1,185), we find that both groups have some preferences that are not automatically matched by either the general electorate or politicians. While underage youth's preferences are at least matched by young voters (aged 18 to 25 years), this is not the case for migrant non-voters. Second, we show that citizens and politicians largely consider youth, children, and future generations - but not migrants - to deserve political representation equal to that of adult citizens. In sum, our evidence suggests proxy representation is a weak alternative to enfranchisement, especially for the migrant population.
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.
Abstract How should asylum seekers be distributed across EU member states? And can EU citizens agree on the principles underlying such distribution? While scholars have proposed various fairness principles – such as allocation based on population size, wealth, or past intake – we know little about which principles citizens support. Using an original population survey in six EU member states, this study examines public preferences for distributive fairness in asylum governance. We find widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo of large asymmetries in refugee numbers and broad support for European responsibility sharing based on fair distribution. However, there are significant differences between member states in the principles that citizens support, and these preferences are also affected by the principles that would keep the number of refugees in their own country at a minimum. These findings suggest that while there is a transnational consensus on the need to move to a fairer distribution of refugees in the EU, its practical operationalisation reveals the deeper political divides on the matter.
Considerable attention has been devoted to understanding individual-level factors shaping immigration attitudes. However, we know far less about the top-down influence of political elites on such attitudes. In this review, we synthesise scholarly evidence to examine how elite discourse affects public opinion about immigration. We propose that immigration preferences are best understood through three dimensions of public opinion: attitude extremity (the degree to which individuals support or oppose immigration), attitude importance (the extent to which they consider immigration to be an important issue), and attitude expression (the behavioural manifestation of immigration attitudes). Our review suggests that elite rhetoric has a limited effect on the extremity of immigration attitudes, as these preferences are typically rooted in long-standing belief systems and shaped early in life. Isolating the influence of elites on the importance of immigration as an issue is more complex, as shifts in public concern often coincide with changes in elite discourse and media coverage, all of which are shaped by external events. However, our review indicates that political elites can play a significant role in shaping the expression of immigration attitudes - both at the ballot box and in everyday social interactions. These insights have important implications for identifying pressing research gaps and for understanding the politicisation of immigration in contemporary politics.
This article considers the interaction of the expansion of international law and the rising politicization of domestic institutions. As international legal processes frequently incorporate domestic institutions, how citizens react to the development of international law may become influenced by their perceptions of those institutions. We argue that involving politicized domestic institutions in the international legal decision-making process affects support for rulings through individuals' perceptions of the domestic judiciary vis-a-vis an international court. Contra our preregistered expectations, a survey experiment fielded in Hungary shows that opposition partisans withdraw support for a European Union law decision when it is issued by a Hungarian court rather than directly by the European Court of Justice, while the involvement of a national court does not increase support for European Union law among government supporters. Further exploratory analyses of government supporters suggest that court decisions are broadly unlikely to move these individuals' attitudes toward international law.
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.
Electoral participation among immigrants is frequently examined through the lens of residence country integration policies and institutional access. However, immigrants arrive with embedded values and political attitudes developed through early political socialisation in their country of origin, which may influence their engagement with democratic institutions long after migration. Grounded in theories of political (re)socialisation - exposure, resilience, and transferability - and drawing on the 'impressionable years' argument in resilience theory, we hypothesise that pre-migration political culture influences electoral participation, but its influence varies across generations. Specifically, we examine how pre-migration exposure to different political regimes affects electoral behaviour and how the timing of arrival (before or after age 13) and the length of residence moderate these effects. To test the hypotheses, the analysis draws on European Social Survey (ESS) data (Rounds 5-11), covering 23 EU member states. We focus on citizens of foreign origin, including 14,216 first-generation, 3,620 1.5-generation (arriving before age 13), and 5,359 second-generation immigrants. Using additional measures from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), we employ logistic regression models that integrate individual-level predictors with origin-country political culture, derived from migrants' or their parents' countries of birth. Our findings speak to all three strands of the political resocialisation framework. Early arrival and longer residence are associated with higher electoral participation, while pre-migration political socialisation continues to shape political behaviour after migration. Most notably, we find that first-generation immigrants socialised under authoritarian regimes exhibit higher electoral participation than their peers from democratic origins, suggesting the presence of a reactive mobilisation mechanism.
What are the determinants of individual uptake of vaccination? Using original data from a survey fielded in September 2021 in Germany and the United Kingdom, this study looks at the impact of three factors on individual vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a first study using observational data, we look at individual trust in institutions and political ideology. In a second study, based on experimental data, we assess the impact restrictions for unvaccinated individuals in the form of 'green pass' policies have on the propensity to get vaccinated.Results from the first study show that trust in institutions and ideology are associated with vaccination uptake. Results from the survey experiment indicate that the 'green pass' policy scenario significantly increased willingness to get a booster shot for Germans, but not for UK respondents, due to a ceiling effect in the United Kingdom.We further ask whether the effects of trust and policy coercion 'amplify' or 'compensate' each other. We find that trust has a 'compensation' effect, whereby individuals not yet vaccinated are considerably more likely to do so if they trust political institutions. Trust also compensates for other policy measures, as trusting individuals are highly likely to get vaccinated with or without the 'green pass' policy incentive, whereas low-trust individuals are more likely under the 'green pass' scenario.
Do immigration policies impact long-term political integration? I argue that the interplay between admission requirements and post-admission rights of migrants is highly consequential in shaping key democratic attitudes of increasingly diverse societies. Migrant selectivity boosts democratic satisfaction and political trust only when combined with inclusive internal regulations, such as high security of status, easier pathways to settlement, and social rights. Analyzing Commonwealth migrants in the UK after WWII through difference-in-differences and interrupted time series models, I find that 'watermelon regimes' (strict entry with inclusive post-entry rights) show lasting positive effects. Cross-national analyses with European data support the findings that watermelon regimes outperform free movement and stricter policies. Selection and context mechanisms explain why watermelon regimes enhance migrants' economic integration, leading to political support. The benefits and costs of adopting watermelon regimes are discussed.
This paper studies variation in mass attitudes towards the Russo-Ukrainian War. Although most Europeans express dismay at Russia's aggression against Ukraine, more ambivalent or even pro-Kremlin positions are not rare. Drawing on the literature on foreign policy and war, we hypothesise that support for the aggressor may stem from a quartet of factors: economic interests, ideological preferences, partisan alignment, and disinformation. We examine the role of these factors using two types of survey data. The first is an original survey conducted in five countries (Czechia, France, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) and spanning over 12,000 respondents. The second is the Solidarity in Europe survey, with more than 24,000 respondents from seventeen countries. The results of three types of analyses reveal that neutral and pro-Kremlin attitudes, held by sizeable segments of European society, are most strongly linked to the positions of respondents' preferred political parties, followed by disinformation and ideology. Overall, top-down models of public opinion seem to better explain within-country variations in attitudes towards the conflict than bottom-up models. These findings, which should be interpreted with caution, carry important implications for containing Russia's influence on European public opinion and contribute to the literature on public preference formation in the field of foreign policy.
Parties in all European countries at least partially rely on private donations to finance their activities, but gender gaps in donations remain underexplored. Investigating gaps in donation frequencies and amounts, as well as which parties are likely to receive donations from women, is crucial, as parties represent the interests of donors more than the interests of non-donors, opening an avenue of potential underrepresentation of women's interests. This study addresses this gap, leveraging data from party finance reports from Italy, the UK, and Finland over time to investigate gender gaps in donation amounts, frequencies, and recipient parties. The results highlight that while gender gaps in donation frequency exist, these differences in how often women and men donate to parties do not directly translate into how much money they donate. Rather, there is large variation in donation amounts over time and across countries. Particularly in Finland, a highly gender-equal country, differences in donation amounts are marginal. Finally, the expectation that green and left parties are most likely to receive donations from women does not hold across all cases - while in all three countries green parties are most likely to receive donations from women, right-wing parties are not the least likely to receive donations from women in Finland and Italy.
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.
Improvements in the availability, accuracy, and processing of individual-level data have allowed political science literature to address the 'ecological fallacy', whereby inferences are made about individuals based on units of analyses operating at a higher level. Yet there has been limited attention to the risk that individual-level analyses may suffer from the reverse 'atomistic' - or 'individualistic' - fallacy: the erroneous practice of drawing inferences about national-level outcomes based on individual-level analyses. In this research note, we present a mathematical statement and simulations to diagnose and evaluate the extent of this fallacy in the case of voting behaviour. We also illustrate the problem using European Social Survey data on far-right voting. We conclude by identifying three 'perils' of the atomistic fallacy, related to extrapolating conclusions about a party's overall performance from information about an individual's voting propensity. These perils can significantly affect how researchers interpret election results and, in turn, the policy implications of political science research.
