The national election was the main issue during the first two months of 2000. After two minority legislatures, the election had a clear outcome. The Popular Party won an absolute majority (see general election report). Nevertheless, in his investiture Aznar also received the parliamentary support of two nationalists parliamentary groups (Catalans and Canary). The electoral results facilitated the formation of the new cabinet a month after the election. The cabinet of Aznar II has two more ministries and introduced several institutional changes (see report); half of the ministers were continued from Aznar I, although in different ministries.

Although federal arrangements adopt a multiplicity of forms across and within federations, this article suggests that some models of power division are better than others at enhancing clarity of responsibility and electoral accountability. This conclusion is the result of exploring responsibility attribution and economic voting in a state where decentralisation arrangements vary across regions: the Spanish State of Autonomies. Using electoral surveys and aggregated economic data for the 1982–2012 period, the empirical analysis shows that regional economic voting is most pronounced in regions where decentralisation design concentrated authority and resources at one level of government, whereas it is inexistent in regions where devolution followed a more intertwined model of power distribution. The implication of the empirical findings is that the specific design of intergovernmental arrangements is crucial to make electoral accountability work in federations.

This paper applies a conjoint experiment to assess the sources of contemporary social status hierarchies in Western Europe. Social status has become a popular concept in political science to explain resentment against economic and cultural transformations. However, we do not know whether cultural sources like race and gender have an independent causal effect on social status perceptions. Furthermore, these characteristics may be more contested between societal subgroups and thus have a weaker stratifying effect than income or occupation. This study employs an innovative conjoint experiment, conducted in Switzerland, to systematically assess the multidimensional sources of status. The design asks respondents to place profiles with randomized criteria and thus captures intersubjective status perceptions. In contrast to evaluating one's own placement on the social status hierarchy, placing others provides more accurate insights about the structural force of social status. The results show that both economic and cultural sources strongly shape social status, with occupation, race/ethnicity and income being most important. Furthermore, different subgroups agree on the hierarchy no matter their own status. This study helps to understand the structural roots of political resentment by showing that both cultural and economic inequalities are recognized.

Affective polarization – that is, antipathy towards political opponents – sits high on the academic and political agenda. This is because it is thought to have a multitude of damaging consequences, both for how citizens view and approach each other and for how they relate to the political system. This study investigates some of the most mentioned and worrying potential consequences of affective polarization at the individual level. Zooming in on Europe, it sheds light on the substantive relationship between partisan antipathy and three kinds of norm‐breaking escalation in the form of avoidance, intolerance and support for violence against party supporters. Methodologically, it unpacks the affective component of polarization, testing to what extent the traditional feeling thermometer performs as a predictor of these three potential outcomes. It then tests alternative expectations of the antecedents of such escalation derived from the intergroup emotions’ literature and the study of political radicalization. This is done using a broad range of both established and new survey items fielded in nationally representative panels between May and November 2020 in two contexts that score relatively low (Norway) and high (the United Kingdom) on affective polarization. They reveal that avoidance, intolerance and support for political violence can be validly measured, and are manifest, in these two European countries, but that they are only weakly correlated to mere dislike of the outgroup. Instead, more severe forms of norm‐breaking escalation depend on the specific nature of the discrete emotions induced beyond dislike (anger, fear or disgust) and are rooted in factors such as relative deprivation, Manicheanism, and dark personality traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism). We discuss the implications for the way polarization is theorized and measured.

How the recent creation, re‐invention or reinforcement of regional levels of political decision making across Europe compounds political representation is one of the key issues of contemporary democratic government. Despite growing scholarly interest, the critical question as to whether the regional institutional setting has brought about distinct representational roles among sub‐state legislators has yet to be addressed. To advance research in this field, this study bridges the literature on multilevel politics and legislative studies that to date have developed in isolation. Using innovative survey data from 14 statewide and 56 regional legislatures across Europe, it provides the first comprehensive test of how the state structure affects a legislator's views on representation. The results highlight that, relative to legislators in unitary states and national legislators in multilevel states, legislators at the regional level are more constituency‐oriented. Moreover, this heightened responsiveness to constituents at the regional level is not offset by weaker collective representation operating through political parties. Beyond these findings’ immediate relevance to scholars of federalism/regionalisation and parliaments, they also speak to the wider normative debate about the quality of political representation and public policy.

This article contributes to our understanding of the formation of policy networks. Research suggests that organisations collaborate with those that are perceived to be influential in order to access scarce political resources. Other studies show that organisations prefer to interact with those that share core policy beliefs on the basis of trust. This article seeks to develop new analytical tools for testing these alternative hypotheses. First, it measures whether perceptions of reputational leadership affect the likelihood of an organisation being the target or instigator of collaboration with others. Second, it tests whether the degree of preference similarity between two organisations makes them more or less likely to collaborate. The article adopts a mixed‐methods approach, combining exponential random graph models (ERGM) with qualitative interviews, to analyse and explain organisational collaboration around United Kingdom banking reform. It is found that reputational leadership and preference similarity exert a strong, positive and complementary effect on network formation. In particular, leadership is significant whether this is measured as an organisational attribute or as an individually held perception. Evidence is also found of closed or clique‐like network structures, and heterophily effects based on organisational type. These results offer significant new insights into the formation of policy networks in the banking sector and the drivers of collaboration between financial organisations.

What explains far‐right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far‐right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far‐right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far‐right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far‐right protest mobilisation. But far‐right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far‐right success in advanced democracies. They show that far‐right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far‐right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics.

Considerable attention has been paid to the properties of electoral mechanisms used in Western democracies to determine who formally exercises political power. However, attempts to justify preferences among different electoral mechanisms are generally underdeveloped and piecemeal. What is needed is an explicit emphasis on procedural justice as a benchmark for determining the most appropriate means of electing democratic governments. In this paper, concepts of procedural justice are described and applied to electoral systems. It is argued that procedural justice demands recognition of the criteria of representativeness, proportionality, unbiasedness, correctability, and initiative. These criteria imply that constituencies for the election of legislators should be territorial, and that they should be drawn in accordance with communities of conflict, which afford candidates strong incentives to seek and articulate imaginative solutions to major conflicts. These properties of procedural justice are consistent with empirical evidence that citizens demand more decentralized and participation-oriented approaches to representative democracy.

Over the past two decades, extreme parties have gained increasing electoral success in European party systems. While this party polarization is often associated with its negative consequences, recent studies have suggested its potential benefit for remobilizing the electorate by offering clear political alternatives. However, it remains unclear which groups of citizens may be mobilized by broader supply and whether this positive effect is generalizable to multiparty systems. This article contributes to this debate arguing that the system multidimensionality matters when assessing the relationship between polarization and voter turnout. Through a multilevel analysis and two studies at the aggregate and individual levels, this article provides evidence that party polarization is associated with increased turnout only when parties polarize on the cultural dimension of party competition. This effect is moderated by the party system unidimensionality and mobilizes voters at large, regardless of their level of extremism, political awareness or partisanship. These findings support previous research suggesting a ‘realignment’ of party systems, meaning that the main line of political conflict for parties and voters is shifting towards the cultural dimension of party competition across Europe.

While current research shows that the government dominates the policy agenda in parliamentary democracies, little is known about the role of the opposition in challenging this dominance. Taking a closer look at the parliamentary policy‐making process, we examine whether opposition support for partisan control of committee chairmanship makes challenges to government bills through amendment proposals more or less likely. By analysing about 7400 government bills from three parliamentary democracies over 35 years, our results show that, under opposition chairmanship, a high likelihood of opposition support fosters amendment proposals, but, under coalition partner chairmanship, the likelihood of government bills being challenged only increases when the likelihood of opposition support is low. This suggests that a unified opposition not only makes challenges to the government's agenda more likely but also conditions how coalition partners manage collective governance.

This paper presents the results of a conjoint survey experiment in which Swiss citizens were asked to choose among parliamentary candidates with different class profiles determined by occupation, education and income. Existing survey‐experimental literature on this topic suggests that respondents are indifferent to the class profiles of candidates or biased against candidates with high‐status occupations and high incomes. We find that respondents are biased against upper middle‐class candidates as well as routine working‐class candidates. While the bias against upper middle‐class candidates is primarily a bias among working‐class individuals, the bias against routine working‐class candidates is most pronounced among middle‐class individuals. Our supplementary analysis of observational data confirms the bias against routine working‐class candidates, but not the bias against upper middle‐class candidates.

Do gender quotas increase political knowledge? While some studies suggest that quotas can positively impact women's political engagement and participation, others find null or negative effects. This paper focuses on Western Europe and argues that the implementation of quotas serves as an attention and consciousness‐raising event, potentially enhancing awareness of the political sphere. To investigate this, I propose a novel research design that capitalizes on the (quasi) exogenous shock resulting from the introduction of gender quotas. By influencing symbolic representation, quotas may enhance women's sense of empowerment, equality and willingness to engage in politics. Furthermore, the impact is expected to be more pronounced among younger women due to the heightened political socialization experienced during adolescence. Thus, the institutional change brought about by quotas is anticipated to particularly boost political knowledge among (younger) women and subsequently narrow the gender gap. To examine this hypothesis, I analyse data from 1992 to 2018 from 12 countries, of which six implemented gender quotas. Using a hierarchical Bayesian model, I assess respondents' answers to knowledge questions. The findings indicate that the introduction of gender quotas in parliamentary systems has a positive effect on reducing the gender gap in political knowledge among younger individuals, while the effects are statistically insignificant for older citizens.

While Euroscepticism is the most important driver of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) support, other attitudinal drivers – namely dissatisfaction towards mainstream parties and xenophobia – are also important. Examining vote‐switching between first‐ and second‐order elections evidence is found of a distinction between two types of supporter: more affluent and middle‐class ‘strategic defectors’ from the mainstream Conservative Party who support UKIP to register their Euroscepticism, and more economically marginal and politically disaffected ‘core loyalists’ who are attracted to UKIP by its anti‐immigration rhetoric and populist anti‐establishment strategy. UKIP also succeeds in attracting core support from groups such as women who have traditionally rejected extreme right parties such as the British National Party (BNP). This suggests that UKIP is well positioned to recruit a broader and more enduring base of support than the BNP.

Legislative checks give whoever wields them influence over policy making. It is argued in this article that this influence implies the ability not only to affect legislative content, but also to direct public resources toward private ends. Rational politicians should use access to checks to make themselves better off – for example, by biasing policy toward private interests or creating opportunities to draw directly from the public till. Disincentives exist only to the extent that those able to observe or block corruption do not themselves benefit from it. Political opponents thus can use checks to stymie each other, but legislative checks controlled by political allies create conditions for collusion and corruption. Testing this claim against data from a sample of 84 countries, the results presented in this article show strong support for the hypothesised relationship between institutional checks and corruption.

Can constitutional court decisions shape public opinion on a governmental policy? Previous studies have focused on the US Supreme Court, which enjoys a high degree of public support as the major resource of power for courts. In this study, we examine the extent to which courts can influence public opinion regarding a government bill at European courts. First, we argue that the public support for courts also allows them to move public opinion on policies into the direction of their decisions. This works in both directions: they can confer legitimacy to a policy that they support, but they can also de‐legitimize a policy that they oppose. Second, we argue that this mechanism strongly depends on the amount of support that a court receives. It only has an effect for courts that possess a higher institutional legitimacy and among the group of citizens trusting a court.

We test our arguments by combining a most different systems design for France and Germany with a survey priming experiment on a school security bill. France and Germany are selected for a most different systems design as they exhibit different institutional designs as well as different levels of support for the court at the aggregate level. The survey experiment is implemented within large national election surveys, the German Internet Panel and the French National Election Study. Both experiments contain more than 2,600 respondents each. Our survey experiment primes for decision outcomes and different institutions to understand whether there are differences between an institution supporting and opposing a policy and between a court and alternative institutions.

Our findings confirm that with higher public support, courts can move the opinion of citizens to both legitimize and de‐legitimize a policy. This effect can be found at the aggregate level for a court enjoying higher public support, but also at the individual level for respondents with higher trust in the court. Interestingly, courts can even move the opinion of citizens with strong prior attitudes in the opposite direction, if these citizens highly trust the court.

These findings have implications beyond the study itself. First, they confirm that the legitimacy‐conferring effect can also be observed for European courts, not only for the US Supreme Court. Second, they show that the relevance of a mechanism identified for a single case, like the US Supreme Court, might only hold for specific conditions. As public support for courts strongly varies across countries in Europe, we also expect the impact of any mechanism relying on public support to strongly vary, as we can observe in our own analysis.

Partisans view their own candidates through rose‐coloured glasses and see competing candidates much more negatively. However, recent advances in political behaviour reveal that such directional motivated reasoning is not simply about love and hate, but also about more nuanced shifts in preferences. Combining two insights from the psychological sciences – coalitional reasoning and a general dislike of self‐interested leaders – we form the novel prediction that voters pay more attention to out‐party than to in‐party candidates’ warmth. We show firm evidence for this prediction relying on election studies data with candidate warmth impressions from 27 elections from seven countries (Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) between 1984 and 2016; and a re‐analysis of existing experimental data (total N = 140K). Our paper reveals sophisticated psychological mechanisms regulating the importance of candidate warmth and implies that candidates seeking to reduce the partisan gap should establish a warm image.

A considerable body of work explores the relationship between the economy and governmental popularity. These ‘popularity functions’ exhibit a good deal of instability in the economics coefficient, leading some to question its very existence. It is argued in this article that this instability is apparent, rather than inherent. Improvements in model specification, measurement, sample size and estimation reveal a strong and stable economic effect. In particular, fixed and random effects models on pooled time‐series (from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States) are estimated here. The impact of national economic perception on popularity emerges as statistically and substantively significant, across this sample of countries.