Scholars have investigated the characteristics of volatile voters ever since the first voter surveys were carried out and they have paid specific attention to the role of political sophistication on vote switching. Nevertheless, the exact nature of this relationship is still unclear. With increasing volatility over the past decades this question has furthermore grown in relevance. Is the growing unpredictability of elections mostly driven by sophisticated voters making well‐considered choices or is the balance of power in the hands of unsophisticated ‘floating voters’? Several scholars have argued that even under conditions of increasing volatility switching is still mostly confined to changes to ideologically close parties. Most researchers, however, have used rather crude measures to investigate this ‘leap’ between parties. To advance research in this field, this article directly models the ideological distance bridged by volatile voters when investigating the link between political sophistication and volatility. This is done using Comparative Study of Electoral systems (CSES) data that encompass a broad sample of recent parliamentary elections worldwide. Results indicate that voters with an intermediate level of political knowledge are most likely to switch overall. When taking into account the ideological distance of party switching, however, the confining impact of political knowledge on the vote choices made is clearly dominant, resulting in a linear decrease of the distance bridged as voters become more knowledgeable.

Why do some issues receive more interest from the public, while others do not? This paper develops a theoretical and empirical approach that explains the degree to which issues expand from the elite to the public. We examine how candidates in the 2014 European Parliament elections talked about EU issues, in comparison to other political issues. We rely on data collected from Twitter and use a combination of human coding and machine learning to analyse what facilitates interactions from the public. We find that most political actors did not try to engage with the public about EU issues, and lack of engagement results in less interactions from the general public. Our findings contribute to understanding why EU issues still play a secondary role in European politics, but at the same time highlight what low‐cost communicational tools might be useful to overcome this expansion deficit.

The preceding article by Best, Budge and McDonald acknowledges much of the substance of the alternative ‘bilateralist’ interpretation of democratic governance I advocated and attempts to re‐focus the median mandate approach towards a longer‐term, and potentially more productive, understanding of the opinion‐policy relationship. Both are welcome developments. Despite taking these steps, however, the authors choose to allow the fate of the median mandate thesis to rest ultimately on an attempt to re‐establish the short‐term one‐to‐one relationship that I challenged. In this brief note, I argue that this not only undercuts the more positive initiatives noted above, but also is based on a flawed understanding of how the short‐term relationship should be operationalised and tested.

Tropical urban estuaries are understudied, where ecosystem health is often considered through a temperate lens. Here, we use stable isotopes and other biogeochemical parameters to begin to address the hypothesis that the biogeochemical drivers of water column chemistry in tropical urban estuaries are qualitatively different from those in temperate systems. We measured salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, dissolved nutrients, enterococcus concentrations, and suspended particulate stable isotope and nitrogen (N) and carbon concentrations every two weeks for three years in the San Juan Bay Estuary, Puerto Rico. Enterococcus concentrations exceeded acceptable limits (35 CFU 100 ml-1) in all but three water samples measured in a densely populated channel within the estuary that receives urban runoff and untreated sewage (n = 207). The δ15N values were lowest in this channel, highest in the portion of the estuary with open exchange with the sea, and negatively correlated with dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentrations. This observation, is contrary to current paradigms that were developed in temperate estuaries. The source of the low δ15N values is unknown, but consistent with observations in the sediment and consistent with high rates of N fixation. In addition to the need for a basic understanding of the biogeochemical and ecological processes involved, these data serve as a baseline to compare the effects of restoration efforts and climate change.

Drawing on the behavioural immune system hypothesis, we argue that the prevalence of the Covid‐19 pandemic threat in an individual's respective environment relates to exclusive, ethnic conceptions of nationhood. Referring to the affective intelligence theory, we maintain that specific negative emotions are prompted by the perception of being exposed to a pandemic threat, and these emotional states in turn structure political preferences regarding national belonging. Using an original survey in six European countries during the first peak of the pandemic in late April and early May 2020, we analyze both the impact of individual Covid‐19 experiences and the contextual exposure to a pandemic threat through hierarchical analyses of 105 European regions. Our empirical analysis shows that exposure to the pandemic is linked to stronger ethnic national identities for both levels of analysis. We also find that anger substantially mediates this relationship and has primacy over feelings of fear. Taken together, our results indicate that the behavioural immune system appears as a pervasive obstacle to inclusive orientations.

In times of crisis, citizens tend to increase their approval of the government and its leader which can shift the balance of power. This ‘rally effect’ is a persistent empirical regularity; however, the literature is still undecided on its underlying causal mechanisms. We argue that crises induce threat and anxiety and hypothesize that perceived threat increases approval of the incumbent leader, whereas anxiety decreases it. By analysing German panel data from the COVID-19 pandemic, we causally identify both mechanisms and provide systematic evidence supporting this theory. Moreover, we increase the scope of our theory and show that both mechanisms are also at work when citizens approve cabinet members who manage key portfolios. Our findings have highly important implications for our understanding of the rally effect and crises politics in democracies.

Do voters’ assessments of the government's foreign policy performance influence their vote intentions? Does the ‘clarity of responsibility’ in government moderate this relationship? Existing research on the United States demonstrates that the electorate's foreign policy evaluations influence voting behaviour. Whether a similar relationship exists across the advanced democracies in Europe remains understudied, as does the role of domestic political institutions that might generate responsibility diffusion and dampen the effect of foreign policy evaluations on vote choice. Using the attitudinal measures of performance from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends survey collected across 13 European countries, these questions are answered in this study through testing on incumbent vote the diffusion-inducing effects of five key domestic factors frequently used in the foreign policy analysis literature. Multilevel regression analyses conclude that the electorate's ability to assign punishment decreases at higher levels of responsibility diffusion, allowing policy makers to circumvent the electoral costs of unpopular foreign policy. Specifically, coalition governments, semi-presidential systems, ideological dispersion among the governing parties and the diverse allocation of the prime ministerial and foreign policy portfolios generate diffusion, dampening the negative effects of foreign policy disapproval on vote choice. This article contributes not only to the debate on the role of foreign policy in electoral politics, but also illustrates the consequential effects of domestic institutions on this relationship.

Features of electoral systems have been found to have positive effects on evaluations of democracy. This article proposes that there are larger social forces that must be accounted for in such analyses. Using European Social Survey measures of democratic expectations and the ‘satisfaction with democracy’ item, this study tests for effects of electoral rules on perceptions of democracy. It is found that multipartyism/proportionality and preferential ballot structure appear to correspond with positive evaluations of elections and parties, and with greater satisfaction with how democracy is functioning. However, these relationships dissipate when corruption and income inequality are accounted for. This suggests substantial limits to the capacity of electoral reforms to enhance democratic legitimacy. It also suggests that studies of mass perceptions of democratic performance may over‐estimate effects of electoral rules if country‐level corruption and income inequality are not accounted for.

The income gradient in political participation is a widely accepted stylized fact. Based on nine panel datasets from six countries, this research note asks whether income changes trigger short‐term effects on political involvement. Irrespective of indicator, specification, and method (hybrid random effects models, fixed effects models with lags and leads, and error correction models), there are few significant short‐term effects of income changes. In conjunction with earlier research, this finding suggests that the income gradient in political participation is likely to reflect stable differences between rich and poor voters emerging early in the life course.

Domains exhibit a variety of different aspects, some are order theoretical, some are topological, some belong to topological algebra. In this paper, we introduce two kinds of congruence relations on domains: I-congruence relation and II-congruence relation on domains. We obtain that there is a bijection from the set of all kernel operators of domain $P$ preserving directed sups onto the set of all I-congruence relations on $P$ which exclude $P\times P$. There is also a bijection from the set of all closure operators of domain $P$ preserving directed sups onto the set of all II-congruence relations on $P$ which exclude $P\times P$. Furthermore, between two domains, we propose a new homomorphism called I-homomorphism and II-homomorphism, respectively. We conclude that the kernels of I-homomorphisms and II-homomorphisms between domains are I-congruence relations and II-congruence relations on domains, respectively. Therefore, we obtain the I-homomorphism and I-isomorphism theorems, as well as II-homomorphism and II-isomorphism theorems for domains. Besides, we give a positive answer to an open problem on homomorphisms and quotients of continuous semilattices posed by G. Gierz, et al.

In the first comparative study of multidimensional government‐citizen policy congruence, this article shows that citizens are less satisfied with democracy when their views differ from that of the government on policy dimensions beyond the general left‐right axis. Satisfaction is reduced by a government that deviates on European integration and redistribution and partly also on social lifestyle, immigration and environmental protection. Furthermore, this analysis identifies the level of political interest as central moderator of this relationship. Satisfaction of citizens with stronger interest in politics suffers more when there is a politically distant government. Combining data from the 2010 Chapel Hill Expert Survey and two waves of the European Social Survey, the analysis builds on information on citizen‐government policy congruence of some 45,000 citizens and 31 governments in 15 Western and Central Eastern European countries. The article brings a multidimensional perspective to the study of policy congruence between citizens and governments in a time when the preference structure of parties and citizens has become increasingly complex.

Can the diffusion of broadband internet help explain the recent success of populist parties in Europe? Populists cultivate an anti‐elitist communication style, which, they claim, directly connects them with ordinary people. The internet therefore appears to be the perfect tool for populist leaders. This study shows that this notion holds up to rigorous empirical testing. Drawing on survey data from Italy and Germany, a positive correlation is found between use of the internet as a source of political information and voting for populist parties. By instrumenting internet use with broadband coverage at the municipality level, the study then demonstrates that this relationship is causal. The findings suggest that part of the rise of populism can be attributed to the effect of online tools and communication strategies made possible by the proliferation of broadband access.

This paper draws attention to a group of neighborhoods that are the object of heated elite discussions in many European countries. Using Sweden as our case, we demonstrate the feasibility of conducting high-quality surveys with residents in neighborhoods where large shares have an immigrant background and low socioeconomic status. Moreover, we develop a measurement that allows us to assess what residents in two of Sweden's politicized and vulnerable neighborhoods think is needed to improve the social order of their local areas. We find that residents believe that neighborhood problems are generally about a lack of social control between people and that residents are not preoccupied with culture clash issues. Overall, beliefs about what contributes to social order are structured, largely homogenous and independent of elite discourse. Based on a comparison with a nationally representative sample, we conclude that residents in vulnerable neighborhoods and residents in other neighborhoods share a similar worldview and approach to daily life, but that the need for local social order is more keenly felt in the vulnerable neighborhoods.

How much autonomy elected representatives should have in looking after the interests of their constituents is a central question of democratic theory. While much research has been conducted on the representational roles adopted by elected representatives, we currently lack an understanding of citizens’ preferences for contrasting models of representation, more specifically whether they believe representatives should primarily act as instructed delegates, closely following public opinion or rather as trustees, relying on their own convictions and judgement. As a result, we know relatively little about how congruent citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are, whether some subgroups of citizens and politicians are more congruent with each other than others and whether citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are driven by the same determinants. Using data from 13 countries, we assess the level of congruence between voters’ and MPs’ preferences in representational style. In all countries, citizens favouring delegate‐style MPs are poorly represented as the vast majority of representatives display a moderate to strong preference for trusteeship. Analysing subgroups of politicians and citizens according to party family, ideology, inclusion in government, populism and social class reveals that MPs from left‐wing or right‐wing radical and populist parties, representatives sitting on the opposition benches and those belonging to lower classes tend to hold representational preferences that are more in line with the preferences of their own supporters or individuals belonging to the same group as themselves, but also with those of the entire electorate. However, even among these politicians there are few delegates. Examining whether citizens’ and politicians’ representational preferences are driven by similar determinants, we assessed the influence of their ideological orientations, socioeconomic status and support for (or affiliation with) a party in government on their representational preferences. For citizens, our results indicate that locating oneself on the right of the ideological spectrum is related to higher scores on the delegate–trustee scale, while supporting a populist party seems to decrease voters’ favourability toward trusteeship. Politicians’ preferences could not be explained by similar factors as none of the tested factors were significant. In line with our congruence analysis, there seems to be little variation in MPs’ representational preferences. Even groups of MPs that can be thought of as most likely to be delegates turn out to be staunch trustees, potentially causing frustration among citizens preferring delegate‐style representation.

How do people perceive the utility of redistribution? Support for redistribution is commonly understood as being determined by self‐interest in a way that is monotonically proportional to expected net transfers. However, this would imply that average support for redistribution is static and unaffected by changes in the distribution of incomes. This study addresses this incongruence by integrating concepts from the literature on redistribution preferences, namely the diminishing marginal utility of income, inequity aversion and loss aversion. These concepts are formalized by making two distinctions regarding redistribution: absolute versus relative utility and gains versus losses. An analysis of the European/World Values Survey suggests that the preferences of the poor are determined by absolute gains, while the preferences of the rich are determined by relative losses. In other words, the poor care about how much they gain from redistribution, while the rich care about the share of their income that they lose from it. The findings have important implications for the relationships among public opinion, economic development and income inequality.

Growing evidence exists about the importance of dark personality traits – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in political leaders, broadly leading to heightened political aggressiveness and partisan conflict. Building on this expanding research agenda, we study the possible association between dark personality in politicians and deepened affective polarization – that is, increased affective distance between partisan groups coupled with stronger dislike for out‐parties – in the public. We do so by linking a large‐scale expert survey (NEGex) and a collection of post‐election surveys (CSES), including information for more than 90 leading candidates having competed in 40 elections worldwide. Our results show that the dark personality of top politicians can be associated with upticks in affective polarization in the public – but only when it comes to the personality of in‐party candidates (that is, a candidate from voters' preferred party), and only for high levels of ideological proximity between the candidate and the voter.

The EU has become increasingly responsible for the state of national economies over the last decades. Meanwhile, many observers have claimed that this increased responsibility has not translated into more accountability. In this article, we revisit this literature and analyse vote‐popularity functions before and after accession because it provides a situation when the EU is an incumbent and when it is not. Using Eurobarometer surveys from 2001 to 2011, which were carried out in the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, we first show that individuals do not hold the EU accountable for macroeconomic performances before accession, but that they do after accession. Using European Election Studies surveys, we also indicate that the incumbent European Peoples’ Party is held accountable for the state of the economy in countries that are ruled by the EU, but not in countries that have just become EU members.

Notwithstanding the improvement in gender equality in political power and resources in European democracies, this study shows that, on average, declared interest in politics is 16 per cent lower for women than for men in Europe. This gap remains even after controlling for differences in men's and women's educational attainment, material and cognitive resources. Drawing on the newly developed European Institute for Gender Equality's (EIGE) Gender Equality Index (GEI) and on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth wave, we show that promoting gender equality contributes towards narrowing the magnitude of the differences in political interest between men and women. However, this effect appears to be conditioned by the age of citizens. More specifically, findings show that in Europe gender‐friendly policies contribute to bridging the gender gap in political engagement only during adulthood, suggesting that childhood socialisation is more strongly affected by traditional family values than by policies promoting gender equality. In contrast, feminising social citizenship does make a difference by reducing the situational disadvantages traditionally faced by women within the family and in society for middle‐aged people and older.