Despite a persistent gender gap in political donations-where men donate more than women-recent Canadian research suggests this gap can reverse when financial resources are equalized and donors consider provincial parties. Building on this insight, we investigate the mechanisms driving gendered donation behavior using a pre-registered survey experiment. By manipulating financial resources and issue salience in a federal system, we assess donations to Canadian federal and provincial parties. Our findings show that, with equalized resources, women are more likely to donate to provincial parties when issues and jurisdictions are not primed. However, when issue salience is highlighted beforehand, women's donation behavior aligns more closely with men's. These results suggest that the gender gap in political donations may be shaped not only by material constraints but also by institutional context and access to political information at the time of decision-making.
The relationship between party preference and epistemic trust is a seldom studied subject, especially regarding climate change issues. Previous studies have focused mainly on left-right and liberal-conservative divides and the role of partisan media. Here, we deployed a design that allowed an examination of how party preferences shape epistemic trust in experts and science as well as in different information sources of climate change-related knowledge in the multi-party environment of Finland, a country known for its high societal trust in science and institutions. Based on survey data, we found that party color affects epistemic trust in multifaceted ways. The supporters of the New Left and Green parties were consistent and unified in showing epistemic trust, the voters of the Social Democratic Party trusted agencies of urgent climate action and agencies of industry, and the voters of the populist far-right showed low epistemic trust in general.
This study is a critical discourse analysis of how Iranian state-aligned media - Tehran Times and Mehr News Agency - discursively construct social legitimacy for the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 2025 Iran-Israel war. Drawing upon the theoretical foundations of legitimacy and legitimisation and utilising the framework of legitimisation strategies and proximisation theory, this research analyses 200 headlines and lead paragraphs from The Tehran Times and Mehr News Agency. Data collection was carried selectively: We solely opted for the headlines and lead paragraphs that portrayed Iran-Israel's war from a variety of aspects. Through systematic coding and thematisation, the study identifies four major conceptualisations of WE as the focal point is soliciting legitimisation: WE as a united nation, WE as a rightful nation, WE as a wounded nation and WE as a powerful nation. These conceptualisations fall under three representational themes - the representation of the US camp, the representation of the Iran-Israel conflict and the representation of Iran's retaliation - framing the IRI's state of national-ideological stance, its affectedness and its preventive-retaliatory posture in the context of an existential threat and national resistance. The study reveals how regimes under duress repurpose conflict as a discursive opportunity to restore fractured trust, reforge ideological cohesion and reassert political credibility for the political system.
Using Afrobarometer survey data covering 36 countries (N approximate to 94,000), this study examines the relationship between experiences of ethnic discrimination and patterns of identification among Africans. The regression analysis indicates that as the frequency of ethnic discrimination increases, so does the likelihood that individuals will prioritize their ethnic identity over their national identity. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the negative association between ethnic discrimination and exclusive national identification is substantially stronger than the positive association between ethnic discrimination and exclusive ethnic identification. These regression results are robust to the use of a binary measure of ethnic discrimination and to the employment of a different estimation method. One possible explanation for these findings is that experiences of ethnic discrimination foster feelings of exclusion from the broader national community, prompting individuals to reaffirm their attachment to their ethnic group as a source of belonging, support, and identity.
