Cross-border exchange programs have become an increasingly important instrument of external political influence, yet their effects on regime attitudes remain poorly understood. This study examines whether exchange programs to Mainland China affect Taiwanese students’ acceptance of the Communist Party of China regime. Using an integrated four-pathway framework encompassing affective, cognitive, instrumental, and ideological dimensions, this study analyzed a 10-year panel dataset of 600 Taiwanese students. Analysis revealed a modest but statistically significant short-term increase in regime acceptance at the end of the exchange programs, associated with improved affective evaluations, reduced cognitive threat perceptions, heightened instrumental interest in development opportunities, and a strengthened authoritarian order orientation. By situating these mechanisms within broader debates on authoritarian influence and democratic resilience, this study demonstrates how structured exchanges operate as agents of political socialization. This study offers an analytically transferable framework for examining non-coercive influence and political socialization in contested geopolitical contexts.
This article examines how citizens’ understandings of democracy change during autocratization. It argues that democratic learning shifts through two linked pathways: lived experience of democratic institutions; and exposure to elite discourse. Turkey under the Justice and Development Party offers a most-likely case, combining prolonged autocratization, intensive democratic reframing and repeated survey data. The study first traces changes in learning conditions through narrowing opposition space, civil society erosion, media capture and shifts in regime discourse. It then analyses World Values Survey data from 2007, 2011 and 2018 using an age−period−cohort-informed design. Liberal−procedural understandings decline across waves, with a sharper early drop in the liberal dimension and a steeper late decline among government supporters. Social understandings follow a nonlinear pattern, rising first and then falling, especially on equality. The findings suggest that autocratization may coincide with shifts in citizens’ democratic benchmarks.
This study explores the political cultural foundations of assertive foreign policy roles. By utilizing cultural dimensions widely used in comparative behavioral research, it shows how leaders’ emphasis on different cultural frames influences their choice of assertive foreign policy roles differently. For this purpose, the study uses a novel, longitudinal dataset comprising 2000 speech texts delivered between 2000 and 2024 by leaders in Germany, Russia, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. The findings provide evidence of a positive and significant influence of survival values, and a negative and significant influence of self-expressive values and rational-secular values on the use of assertive roles. The present study bridges comparative behavioral research and foreign policy analysis within a single analytical framework, and, by doing so, it contributes to the systematic, comparative study of culture in foreign policy analysis.
This article analyzes how presidential communication on Twitter shapes public attention and information-seeking behavior and interacts with online media agendas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on leaders’ use of social media in different political regimes, we assess the impact of presidential tweets on citizens’ information demand through Google Trends and their amplification in online press coverage. Using quantitative content analysis and time-series modeling, the study identifies patterns of agenda-setting that vary across democratic and hybrid contexts. Findings show that presidential use of Twitter can mobilize public attention and influence media agendas, although effects depend on regime type and media dynamics. The results contribute to understanding how digital platforms mediate political communication in times of crisis and highlight the role of social media in reinforcing or challenging democratic processes. We argue that Twitter functions both as a strategic tool for leaders and as a channel reshaping traditional media dynamics.
Despite billions in annual foreign aid to Africa, evidence that aid “buys” political support remains inconclusive. Using panel data for 49 sub-Saharan African countries (2000–2021) and case studies of Ethiopia and Djibouti, we distinguish between two influence logics: transactional flows (annual aid disbursements) and structural stocks (cumulative infrastructure financing and trade integration shaping long-term economic ties). We found that annual aid flows from both China and the United States showed no significant relationship with United Nations General Assembly voting alignment. By contrast, cumulative Chinese infrastructure finance stocks and bilateral trade dependence significantly predicted alignment even controlling for annual flows, while donor competition further eroded transactional leverage. These findings challenge principal-agent models of aid diplomacy and suggest that, amid U.S.–China rivalry, influence increasingly derives from embedded economic relationships rather than annual aid disbursements.
Political settlement analysis, as a framework to understand power configurations, has been mainly concerned with domestic dynamics, as well as with the implications of settlements for development. While some scholars have acknowledged the role of international capital in shaping political settlements, international actors are often overlooked in this literature, with settlements primarily understood as domestic elite coalitions. By conceptualizing three mechanisms—material resources, ideational influence, and regime recognition—the paper examines how international actors impact settlement dynamics. We illustrate the empirical plausibility of these mechanisms by examining four cases of political settlement change across different African countries: Ghana (1982), Kenya (2008), Côte d’Ivoire (2011), and Tanzania (2016). These cases reveal that international actors might play a pivotal role in defining and stabilizing political settlements, providing critical resources and legitimacy to ruling coalitions.
Amid growing dissatisfaction with political systems, deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) have been systematically proposed. Understanding how the broader public evaluates these processes is therefore critical. This study examines public attitudes toward multilingual DMPs in Luxembourg, using original panel survey data linked to the 2022 Climate Citizens’ Assembly. Adopting a relational lens, we show that attitudes are shaped not only by individual traits or procedural features but by individuals’ – perceived – position within broader societal and political structures. Results indicate that personal multilingual ability has little impact, whereas non-nationals and non-native speakers consistently evaluate DMPs more positively than nationals and native speakers. Reactions to linguistic accommodations vary with baseline attitudes, highlighting the conditional nature of public responsiveness. Overall, the findings demonstrate the embeddedness of public evaluations of DMPs, just as DMPs themselves are situated within wider structures, emphasizing the importance of context-sensitive, relationally informed design to foster inclusive and legitimate deliberative processes.
This article introduces the IRSR Special Issue on Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom by further exploring how the two concepts are interrelated and contingent on one another. We do so by (1) providing some empirical background on the decline of academic freedom in countries around the world; by (2) introducing what we understand as the autocratic playbook toward academic freedom; and by (3) situating all the contributions to this special issue within this framework.
This article provides the first systematic, large-scale review of how “liberal democracy” has been used in political science over the past three decades. Drawing on 2401 English-language journal articles indexed in Web of Science (1957–2025), it focuses on a political science subset of 737 items classified by subfield and regional focus. The analysis combines computational and qualitative approaches: a Wordfish text-scaling model maps semantic divisions across abstracts, while close coding of the 30 most cited articles adds interpretive depth. Three findings emerge. First, references to “liberal democracy” surge after the mid-2010s, even after normalization, reflecting heightened concern with democratic crisis. Second, conceptual openness declines: earlier debates over definition and measurement give way to a predominantly normative use of the term as a contrast to populism or authoritarianism. Third, democracy research becomes increasingly standardized. Overall, “liberal democracy” has shifted from a contested analytical concept to a largely defensive normative category.
An implicit assumption in the literature is that donors recently transitioning from recipients emphasize distinct foreign aid priorities. To what extent does this assumption reflect public preferences? This paper examines public aid priorities through a single-country study of South Korea. I show that although individuals may feel a moral obligation to repay past assistance, perceptions that their country is not sufficiently affluent may also lead them to favor aid that promises significant donor benefits at a low cost. Using a conjoint experiment, I find that support increases when packages signal higher national-interest gains, involve lower amounts, and target countries that assisted South Korea during the Korean War. Further analyses show that self-interest and reciprocity operate as substitutes and that cost-sensitivity is moderated by strategic, but not by reciprocal, considerations. The findings highlight the role of a donor’s developmental trajectory, providing implications for framing aid narratives to build domestic support.
This study examined how Facebook users have expressed sentiments and political bias on the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war. The VADER model and LDA-based topic modeling were employed to analyze 130,133 Facebook posts related to the war over a two-year period. Furthermore, the XGBoost classifier model was used to annotate data on political bias toward Russia or Ukraine. The study found strong polarization, indicating posts were 65.4% negative, 12.4% positive, and 22.3% neutral. While significant proportions of positive and negative discussions (74% and 62%, respectively) showed a pro-Ukraine bias, most neutral discussions (approximately 71%) were leaning toward Russia. The prevalence of negative sentiment suggested that a significant proportion of the data expressed criticism or disappointment, whereas a relatively minor proportion of positive and neutral sentiments were either supportive or did not take either side. The political bias category within 10 countries showed significant differences in sentiments analyzed across different regions.
This article connects the literatures of psychological effects of protest (for participants and non-participants) and vote choice, identifying five voter pathways: staying, conversion, protest voting, vote spoiling, and alienation. On a general level, the study examines whether there is evidence of a longer-term impact of protest on elections, that is, a durable afterlife. The analysis employs a difference-in-differences approach using municipal council election results from Bosnia- Herzegovina (BiH) 2008-2020 to see whether protests and the short-lived citizen assemblies ('plenums') in 2014 triggered changes in subsequent electoral results, and if so, whether these changes persisted. Specifically, the study investgates whether citizen-led direct-democratic mobilisation affected electoral results for the predominant Bosniak Party, Party for Democratic Action. More broadly, the article explores whether bottom-up mobilisation can initiate political change long after protest activities have ended, even in places that are controlled by ethno-nationalist elites such as in BiH.
Recent literature on democratic backsliding shows how authoritarian populist leaders reshape policymaking by weakening institutions and dismantling policies. In Brazil, Bolsonaro's presidency (2019-2022) was marked by systematic attacks on science, targeting higher education and the scientific community. This article investigates the strategies Bolsonaro used to weaken science, adopting a descriptive and mixed-methods approach: analysis of budgetary data from the Integrated Planning and Budget System, documentary evidence from the National Union of Faculty of Higher Education Institutions, and content analysis of all presidential speeches. Findings reveal a dual strategy: (a) weakening the public science infrastructure and an attack on university autonomy; and (b) discursive attacks that framed universities as sites of denied scientific consensus and subordinated science to political projects. The Brazilian case shows that policy dismantling under authoritarian populism combines material retrenchment and discursive delegitimization, using attacks on science to weaken institutions and reshape policymaking during democratic backsliding.
Is originalism a constraining judicial philosophy, or a strategic rhetorical tool used by Supreme Court justices to justify ideologically motivated decisions? Building on Erwin Chemerinsky’s “hypocrisy problem,” this study tests the claim that self-proclaimed originalist justices on the U.S. Supreme Court invoke originalism inconsistently and behave ideologically when the ideological preferences are clear. Theoretically, we argue that originalism’s internal epistemological weaknesses make genuine constraint unlikely. Empirically, we analyze 52 Supreme Court opinions authored or joined by five self-described originalists on the Roberts Court (2005–2022) using a mixed content-analytic design. Our results offer strong empirical support for Chemerinsky’s thesis. The findings suggest that originalism, rather than constraining judicial discretion, functions as a legitimizing rhetoric that masks ideological decision-making. This phenomenon might contribute to the emergence of a “gouvernement des juges”—a judiciary whose interpretive authority rivals that of the elected branches, blurring the boundary between constitutional interpretation and political governance.
Recent global events have prompted a flurry of boycott and divestment campaigns targeting foreign governments, expressed through social media. These surrogate boycotts - targeting corporate proxies of state actors - are often dismissed as merely expressive, though this assessment is based primarily on the outcomes of the campaign rather than the motivations of participants. This article investigates the motivations conveyed by individuals posting calls for a boycott of Russia on Twitter following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Bridging literatures on political participation, political consumerism, and digital activism, we develop and implement a novel two-stage method for inferring expressive and instrumental motivations from digital trace data. Through computational analysis and applying a new typology, we show that inferred motivations for boycott calls on social media can be positioned along a spectrum - from expressive to instrumental - based on: (i) identification of a target; (ii) attempts to enable others; and (iii) expectation of an outcome.
Can money buy support in established democracies? Existing research on the political effects of cash transfers yields mixed findings, in part because most district-level analyses of ‘conditional’ cash transfer fail to distinguish between recipients and nonrecipients. This article advances a polarization hypothesis based on rational choice and motivated reasoning theories: unconditional cash transfers increase political support for incumbents only among the co-partisan recipients while leaving opposition supporters unmoved. We test this hypothesis by examining a unique ‘unconditional’ COVID-19 relief voucher lottery in Taiwan in 2021, in which vouchers were randomly assigned based on the last two digits of citizens’ national identification numbers. Combining lottery outcomes with an original individual-level survey ( n = 776), we show that voucher receipts increased presidential approval only among respondents aligned with the ruling party. These findings suggest that even under conditions most favourable to programmatic redistribution, the political effects of cash transfers remain polarized.
In analysing elite accommodation, political science has often focused on ascriptive attributes such as region or ethnicity. The social foundations of elite networks, however, are more complex. Using original data from Gabon, Benin, Cameroon, Uganda and Botswana, this paper shows that the majority of Members of Parliament have known at least one of their fellow Members of Parliament prior to being elected. Many of these prior contacts stem from joint membership in political and civic associations, sports clubs or churches, while a substantial share originates in educational institutions. A further category relates to home communities, kinship ties and matrilineal or patrilineal systems of descent. The findings demonstrate that these relational foundations contribute more to the formation of political networks than social selection based on ascriptive identities. To better understand elite alignment, research must therefore pay closer attention to the processes of elite formation and reproduction.
By leveraging over 150 years of electoral and biographical data in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, we argue that voluntary exit is best understood as a cost-benefit calculation shaped by positional and institutional incentives in the legislative arena. We show that institutional changes that make seeking re-election costlier are associated with an increased likelihood of a legislator voluntarily exiting the legislative arena. We also find that the determinants of exit vary across age cohorts: younger legislators are more sensitive to institutional and positional cost-benefit incentives, reflecting greater professional mobility and outside career opportunities. Overall, our results indicate that positional and institutional in part explain a legislator’s decision to not seek re-election, but that their impact of these incentives is mediated by life-cycle and retirement-horizon considerations.
This article examines the determinants of satisfaction with democracy in South Korea, focusing on the role of affective polarization within a broader structural and attitudinal framework. Using nationally representative data from the 2022 Korean Presidential Election Voter Attitudes Survey, the study employs hierarchical regression models across four domains: demographics, system and performance evaluations, political participation and efficacy, and ideological and affective orientations. The findings show that institutional trust and perceptions of electoral fairness are the strongest predictors of democratic satisfaction, while household-level economic evaluations also play an important role. Even after accounting for these factors, affective polarization remains negatively associated with democratic satisfaction, indicating that emotional hostility toward political opponents conditions how citizens interpret institutional performance. Robustness checks using ordinal logistic regression confirm the stability of these findings. Situating South Korea within the comparative literature, the study highlights the conditional yet consequential role of emotional polarization in consolidated democracies.
Identity politics suggests that voters favor co-ethnic candidates, but little is known about how ethnic voting operates when democratic institutions collapse. Using a survey vignette experiment in post-coup Myanmar, this study examines how candidate ethnicity and agenda framing (local vs. national) jointly shape voter evaluations under authoritarian reversal. The findings show that local agenda appeals do not increase support for co-ethnic candidates, yet the same appeals are heavily penalized when advanced by non-co-ethnic candidates. The results suggest that under authoritarian disruption, identity cues function less as sources of in-group reward, but more as credibility filters that screen out out-group candidates. Correlational analyses further show that ethnic voting is associated with perceived ethnic identity, experiences of discrimination, and interethnic distrust, rather than categorical group membership alone. These findings demonstrate that ethnic voting is attitudinally mediated and that political uncertainty reshapes identity-based heuristics while limiting the persuasive power of policy appeals.
