This article is a review of the recent literature on generational differences in electoral behaviour. We first discuss several conceptual issues, after which we provide a description of the main findings in three fields: the role of generations in (1) turnout, (2) party choice and (3) the determinants of party choice. In the concluding section we discuss a number of overall patterns that emerge from this very rich literature. We also sketch some pitfalls and avenues for further research.

Research on unequal representation argues that party representatives’ preferences align more closely with wealthier citizens than with the public. Comparative research on the role of economic elites in political representation, however, remains largely unexplored, as most studies rely on income to distinguish segments of the population. To address this gap, we employ an innovative measure – the Earth Mover’s Distance – to examine elite bias through a longitudinal, comparative analysis of mass–elite congruence across 16 European countries in 2007, 2016, and 2017. Our findings confirm a systematic bias toward the preferences of economic elites, particularly among party representatives from mainstream, right-leaning, and governing parties. Yet, this tendency is not uniform. Elite bias is most evident on cultural values and European integration, whereas voter bias emerges on other issues. Our results also show that politicians moved further away from the positions of economic elites in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis.

Despite its place at the core of EU integration, support for the EU’s single market is under-investigated by European public opinion scholars. This paper uses novel survey data from eight EU member states to compare how utilitarian concerns, postmaterialist values and national identities shape popular views of the EU’s single market. Focusing on the freedom of movement for goods, workers, and services, we find that postmaterialist attitudes more consistently predict attitudes towards the single market than economic positioning. We thus contribute to the literature on attitudes towards European integration by showing that postmaterialist values and national identities matter not only for views of highly politicized issues like migration, but also for “bread-and-butter” policies like single market governance. These results are particularly surprising given that we would expect utilitarian expectations to be particularly prominent for these kinds of economic policies.

Citizens with high populist attitudes are ‘dissatisfied democrats’ because they desire more power to the people. PB apparently addresses this desire, since it takes power away from the elite and gives it back to the people. However, are populist participants indeed more willing to accept the outcome of alternative decision-making procedures when they themselves contributed to it? Taking a mixed-methods approach, combining survey data with interviews with participants to three Dutch PBs, this paper assesses how the populist legitimacy framework works out in practice. The quantitative analysis finds no evidence that populist participants are more (or less) willing to accept the outcome of PB. The interview analysis, however, shows that the underlying mechanisms differ between populist and non-populist participants, indicating a ‘populist experience’. While both populists and non-populists lauded the overall process, populist participants in particular felt heard by their fellow participants and were happy that they got what they wanted and this increased their overall satisfaction. The non-populist participants were more focused on the organisation, and highlighted that the participants were often not entirely representative of the broader population, but they were satisfied with the process, and this trumped the other considerations.

Which social groups do citizens view as deserving of beneficial policy? Research on welfare deservingness has long emphasized relatively homogeneous deservingness perceptions, raising concerns that groups widely seen as undeserving could be systematically disadvantaged in policymaking. More recent findings point to variation in deservingness perceptions across geography, time, and individuals. Building on these insights and on studies that examine specific groups in isolation, we claim that ideology systematically shapes divides in how social groups are perceived. Because left-wing and right-wing individuals prioritize different considerations—groups’ needs on the left, merit, reciprocity, and identity on the right—we expect them to differ in the level of deservingness attributed to most groups. Drawing on survey data collected among 5,541 German and 6,020 French citizens, we provide unique evidence on perceived deservingness for a broad range of politically salient target groups by adopting a cross-group perspective in two different contexts. Crossed random effects models depict the expected ideological divides for most groups. These divides create incentives for political parties to compete over “who gets what” and, thereby, to represent diverse interests including those of groups perceived as less deserving on average.

This article develops an innovative quantitative analysis of the drivers of state–NGO relations in the field of human rights, specifically focusing on their political drivers. Drawing on cross-national survey data from 2,000+ reported interactions between NGOs, national and EU governmental actors in 26 EU Member States, we examine how national governments’ political orientation, the level of politicisation of human rights issues, and multilevel governance dynamics shape the frequency and nature of state-NGO and EU-NGO interactions. Our multilevel regression models show that NGOs’ relations with conservative governments are less collaborative, though not less frequent, than with progressive ones. For highly politicised human rights issues, interactions between governmental actors and NGOs are less frequent and less collaborative. NGOs facing conservative governments report more frequent and more collaborative interactions with EU institutions, consistent with multilevel ‘venue-shopping’ strategies. These findings highlight the role of political context in shaping European human rights governance.

Over the past decade, high rental prices have become an increasingly serious problem in major Western European cities. While political science research has started to explore the broader political consequences, the local effects on renters in particular remain understudied. Furthermore, little is known about the influence of additional local characteristics that potentially impact the political consequences of high rental prices. This study addresses these research gaps by examining how local rental prices affect renters’ satisfaction with the local public administration, using large-N geocoded survey data collected in forty neighborhoods across ten major German cities. Multilevel regression results reveal a negative relationship between high rental prices and satisfaction with the local public administration that is not offset by greater rental housing availability or the provision of public services. In practical terms, these findings highlight the far-reaching consequences of high rental prices for the political satisfaction of renters, underlining the need for policies that ensure affordable urban housing.

Legislators may consider the preferences of both business actors and citizens when making trade policy decisions. But when business and citizen preferences diverge, what makes legislators more responsive to one side or the other? We argue that when levels of political engagement are kept constant, legislators are more responsive to citizens than business. This effect should be particularly large for left-leaning legislators and legislators who conceive of themselves as delegates. We use three survey experiments with over 1000 legislators from 47 countries across the globe and qualitative evidence from an open survey question and 30 interviews with legislators to test our expectations. Based on this unique evidence, we find strong support for our expectations. These findings contribute to research on trade policy-making, the interaction between elites and the public in international relations, and responsiveness.

Concerns are rising over far-right support among security forces, given their role in upholding the state’s monopoly on violence. Such support raises fears that far-right ideologies could shape law enforcement practices and undermine democratic norms. Existing explanations often attribute this alignment to authoritarian and law-and-order preferences. Using data from the European Social Survey, this research note examines whether security forces are more likely than the general electorate to vote for far-right parties and identifies the attitudinal drivers of such support. The analysis finds no systematic evidence that security forces vote for far-right parties at higher rates than the broader population. Moreover, immigration attitudes—not law-and-order preferences—emerge as the strongest predictor of far-right voting across both groups. These findings challenge the common view that security forces are uniquely drawn to the far right for authoritarian reasons and underscore the central role of immigration politics in shaping far-right support more broadly.

In federal systems where multiple orders of government share authority, do citizens care about which order makes a policy? To investigate whether citizens place importance on the order of government and whether if they do, this reflects principled preferences or implicit assumptions about policy performance, we conducted a vignette experiment in Germany. The design of the study disentangles the effects of policy adoption and financing from the expected effectiveness of a policy and its impact on regional differences. Our findings show that citizens are largely indifferent regarding the order of government that adopts a policy, but they show a modest preference for financing by the federal government. These results suggest that previously observed preferences for federal policy-making in other studies may reflect citizens’ implicit assumptions about policy performance rather than principled support for centralization.

Parliaments at all levels of government do not necessarily resemble the society they represent. Such parliaments are generally more masculine, less diverse in terms of ethnicity and region, and older than the population. Focusing on youth’s underrepresentation, we are interested in why young people do not get elected. Using the German local elections as a case and looking at a random sample of 100 German municipal elections comprising more than 6400 candidates, we find that youth’s underrepresentation stems to a large degree from their underrepresentation in the candidate pool. In addition, we also discover that youth face some disadvantages in the electoral process. However, these disadvantages are subtle, in that parties are less likely to put young candidates on the top and most electorally advantaged list positions. Voters, in turn, do not generally vote less for young candidates, but they vote less for them if youth occupy a top list position.