Electoral integrity is increasingly being recognised as an important component of democracy, yet scholars still have limited understanding of the circumstances under which elections are most likely to be free, fair and genuine. This article posits that effective oversight institutions play a key role in scrutinising the electoral process and holding those with an interest in the electoral outcome to account. The main insight is that deficiencies in formal electoral management can be effectively compensated for via one or more other institutional checks: an active and independent judiciary; an active and independent media; and/or an active and independent civil society. Flawed elections are most likely to take place when all four checks on electoral conduct fail in key ways. These hypotheses are tested and supported on a cross‐national time‐series dataset of 1,047 national‐level elections held in 156 electoral regimes between 1990 and 2012.

We consider a normal operator $T$ on a Hilbert space $H$. Under various assumptions on the spectrum of $T$, we give bounds for the spectrum of $T+A$ where $A$ is $T$-bounded with relative bound less than 1 but we do not assume that $A$ is symmetric or normal. If the imaginary part of the spectrum of $T$ is bounded, then the spectrum of $T+A$ is contained in the region between two hyperbolas whose asymptotic slope depends on the $T$-bound of $A$. If the spectrum of $T$ is contained in a bisector, then the spectrum of $T+A$ is contained in the area between certain rotated hyperbolas. The case of infinitely many gaps in the spectrum of $T$ is studied. Moreover, we prove a stability result for the essential spectrum of $T+A$. If $A$ is even $p$-subordinate to $T$, then we obtain stronger results for the localisation of the spectrum of $T+A$.

As semi‐presidentialism has become increasingly common in European democracies, so have the debates about the consequences of several of its political and institutional features. In particular, in those regimes, cohabitation between presidents and cabinets of different parties and cabinet dismissal powers on the part of presidents are thought to be a source of inter‐branch conflict and government instability. However, so far, most empirical work on government survival has failed to confirm any of these expectations. This article addresses this disjuncture between theory and empirical results by making a twofold contribution. First, it takes into account the internal diversity within semi‐presidentialism, modeling the implications for government survival of different configurations between presidential powers’ of cabinet dismissal, parliament dissolution and cohabitation in European semi‐presidential systems. Second, it reconsiders traditional government survival using the competing risks framework by adding a distinction between two different types of non‐electoral replacement: those where replacements imply a change in the party of the prime minister and those where they do not. Once such an approach is adopted, that presidential powers of parliamentary dissolution and cabinet dismissal indeed emerge as highly relevant for explaining government survival in these regimes.

The European Union (EU) has laboured hard to gain the right to make oral interventions in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in pursuit of a more active international role. At the same time, though, EU member-states continue to take the floor to make their own interventions, thus differentiating – but not necessarily distancing – their stance from the officially expressed EU position. In that respect, it is important to examine the drivers behind the differentiating activity of EU member-states and their engagement in UNGA deliberations. We identify structural, institutional, political and thematic drivers. They relate to resources, the EU system of external representation in the form of the EU rotating Council Presidency and the opportunities that it provides during each country's period in office, national political aspirations for greater influence, as well as issue-specific assertiveness. We operationalize and control for these drivers by looking at the size and economic resources of EU member-states, their individual statements while holding the EU rotating Council Presidency, their membership in the UN Security Council (UNSC) or candidacy for it, and the issue specificity of each UNGA Main Committee. Our analysis is based on a three-level longitudinal multilevel random intercept model and relies upon a new dataset that compiles the oral interventions made by representatives of EU member-states and by EU officials in UNGA through an automated content analysis of the verbatim records of the UNGA meetings from 1998 to 2017.

This study explores the gender wage gap in Türkiye between 2013 and 2022 using a novel 10-year panel dataset constructed with administrative data compiled for the first time in Türkiye, which includes approximately 14 million full-year workers in 360 subgroups by demographic, sectoral, and occupational factors. The analysis examines the long-term effects of demographic factors, such as age, education, and marital status, as well as the work-related factors, including occupation and employment sector, on the gender wage gap. The findings reveal that men working full-time in formal employment earn 10.1% more than women in Türkiye, and the study shows evidence of how the gender wage gap varies across different demographic groups. The results obtained emphasise the significant roles of marital status, occupation, age, and sector in explaining the wage differential, while education is shown not have a meaningful long-term impact on the wage gap. Moreover, contrary to expectations, the study confirms that occupational experience, the aging labour force, and increased female labour force participation contribute to the widening of the gender wage gap. These findings underline the need for targeted economic and social policies to address gender-based wage differences in a country where the labour force participation of women has traditionally been outstandingly low. This study aims to contribute to the literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of a large-scale dataset that offers new insights into gender wage differences.

When individuals are confronted with information about why and where gender quotas should apply, does it affect their attitudes? A growing literature argues that information affects opinions on gender equality, but so far there is more consensus on who supports such policies than on what type of information convinces those on the fence. Using a survey experiment fielded among Norwegian citizens and elected representatives, we examine the potential of new rationales and different areas of application to find out what makes (some) people more supportive of gender quotas. Overall, we find that citizens are more affected by moral arguments than elected representatives. Among citizens, we find that emphasizing women's distinct insights boosts support among those with less fixed opinions, and that a talent framing hinting at women as an untapped resource might cause the opposite reaction. Representatives are affected by information about where gender quotas apply, as they are particularly sensitive to information on gender quotas in politics. Quite unexpectedly, we find that those on the right are more supportive of gender quotas in the leadership of religious institutions than elsewhere, and that this seems to be driven at least partly by scepticism against migrants.

In research on public economics, climate politics and the welfare state, voters' informational and cognitive biases are commonly understood as impeding future‐oriented policy‐making, by incentivizing policymakers to trade off long‐term investments against short‐term consumption when facing competitive elections or liquidity constraints. Yet, the assumptions about how policymakers perceive these alleged trade‐offs have not yet been verified. This study reports results from a survey of Swedish local government politicians, centring around experiments about environmental‐friendly public investments. We find that most politicians perceive that electoral competition stimulates rather than impedes investments. Politicians are, however, less supportive of investments if these need to be financed through absolute losses rather than gains foregone, which illustrates the relevance of endowment effects in long‐term governance. We furthermore show that our micro‐level observations are consistent with macro‐level investment expenditure patterns. These findings demonstrate that accounting for policymakers' own perceptions is important for advancing our understanding of future‐oriented policy‐making.

A prominent presence in the news media is important for interest groups. This article investigates the development in the diversity of interest group media attention over time. The analysis draws on a dataset of 19,000 group appearances in the Danish news media in the period 1984–2003. It demonstrates how diversity has risen continually over time, leading to a media agenda less dominated by labour and business and more by public interest groups and sectional groups. This development is related to the increasing political importance of the news media and the decline in group integration in public decision‐making processes. The article also shows how the development of group appearances is closely related to changes in media attention towards different policy areas.

In their 2012 publication A Tale of Two Cultures, Gary Goertz and James Mahoney argue that empirical research in the social sciences aiming at causal inference can be differentiated into a qualitative and a quantitative methodological culture. The two cultures differ fundamentally in how researchers approach and implement empirical studies. The argument is well laid out and comprehensively illustrated, but the empirical validity of the two cultures hypothesis has not yet been evaluated systematically. This note introduces a research project that aims to test the two cultures hypothesis via an empirical analysis of how qualitative and quantitative methods are applied. To determine whether there is a qualitative and quantitative method culture, the researchers initially sampled 30 articles from three journals (Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, World Politics) in the 2008–2012 period. Based on this dataset, no evidence was found for the existence of coherent systems of methods practices in political science.

Hyderabad, the fourth-most populous city in India, accounts for the majority of people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (PLWH) in Telangana, likely comprised of two populations with a disproportionately high national HIV prevalence: gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) and those who engage in sex work (SW). Research has shown that engaging in SW increases vulnerability to HIV transmission risk for both women and MSM, but less is known about contributors to non-optimal (ART) adherence. We analyzed data from 45 MSM and 49 women living with HIV who were enrolled in the first year of data collection from an mHealth education study in Hyderabad. Modified Poisson regression was used to measure factors associated with ART adherence measured with a visual analogue scale (VAS) (model 1) and pill count (model 2). Less than half (40.9%) reported ever engaging in SW, including 13 women and 25 MSM. The prevalence of non-optimal ART adherence was 14.9% with VAS and 42.4% with pill count. Engaging in SW was not associated with non-optimal ART adherence. Differences in non-optimal ART adherence measured by VAS and pill count suggest that future studies should utilize both methods to better distinguish the measures.

Representative democracy is perceived to be in crisis in many Western countries. Increasing citizen participation is often considered to be a remedy to close this gap between government and the people. Which instruments should be used to realize this remains, however, open for discussion. In this article, we compare attitudes of citizens, politicians and civil servants towards a number of participatory instruments. We assess to what extent these attitudes are influenced by ‘interests’ (operationalized as the formal position one takes: either politician, citizen or civil servant) and ‘ideas’ (measured as ideological beliefs), while holding the institutional context constant (the local level in Flanders [Belgium]). Analyses based on a large‐scale survey (N = 4,168) show that although the ideological position of the respondents to some extent affects attitudes towards particular participatory instruments, especially their formal position has a considerable impact on how participatory instruments are appreciated. Indeed, different stakeholders distinctly advance different instruments as the best way to enhance citizen participation. This raises questions about the potential of citizen participation to narrow the gap between citizens and policymakers, as diverging attitudes towards particular instruments might create a new gap rather than closing one.

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.

Authoritarian incumbents routinely use democratic emulation as a strategy to extend their tenure in power. Yet, there is also evidence that multiparty competition makes electoral authoritarianism more vulnerable to failure. Proceeding from the assumption that the outcomes of authoritarian electoral openings are inherently uncertain, it is argued in this article that the institutionalisation of elections determines whether electoral authoritarianism promotes stability or vulnerability. By ‘institutionalisation’, it is meant the ability of authoritarian regimes to reduce uncertainty over outcomes as they regularly hold multiparty elections. Using discrete‐time event‐history models for competing risks, the effects of sequences of multiparty elections on patterns of regime survival and failure in 262 authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 2010 are assessed, conditioned on their degree of competitiveness. The findings suggest that the institutionalisation of electoral uncertainty enhances authoritarian regime survival. However, for competitive electoral authoritarian regimes this entails substantial risk. The first three elections substantially increase the probability of democratisation, with the danger subsequently diminishing. This suggests that convoking multiparty competition is a risky game with potentially high rewards for autocrats who manage to institutionalise elections. Yet, only a small number of authoritarian regimes survive as competitive beyond the first few elections, suggesting that truly competitive authoritarianism is hard to institutionalise. The study thus finds that the question of whether elections are dangerous or stabilising for authoritarianism is dependent on differences between the ability of competitive and hegemonic forms of electoral authoritarianism to reduce electoral uncertainty.

Partisan‐based affective polarization has been posited as a key explanation for citizens' tolerance towards democratic backsliding, with voters more likely to overlook democratic violations conducted by in‐party candidates. Our study theorizes and empirically explores the reverse perspective on this relationship: focusing on the role of the opposition, we submit that backsliding may crystallize an affective dislike among opposition supporters towards the governing party and its supporters that stems from a regime divide over democracy itself. To probe the plausibility of this argument, we leverage original survey data collected in Hungary, where democratic backsliding under the Fidesz government has resulted in an extensive remodelling of the political system since 2010. Our results point to a government–opposition divide in partisan affect and show how liberal democratic attitudes, especially among opposition party supporters, play into this dynamic. We suggest that where backsliding persists over a longer period, this process can shift even multi‐party systems towards increasing bipolarity along what we term a ‘democratic divide’. Ultimately, our study proposes a novel lens on the dynamics of democratic backsliding by suggesting that affective polarization may play a positive role in backsliding contexts by uniting the opposition around the defence of democracy. Our findings point to a number of future research avenues to further analyse the interactive relationship between democratic backsliding and affective polarization.

Few political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a party's voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns.

When asked to place themselves on a left‐right scale, men and women tend to take different positions. Over time, however ideological gender differences have taken a different form. While women were traditionally more right‐leaning than men, from around the mid‐1990s onwards they have been found to take positions to the left of men. Using an originally constructed dataset that includes information on the left‐right self‐placement of more than 2.5 million respondents in 36 OECD countries between 1973 and 2018, I empirically verify how the ideological gender gap has evolved since. The results show, first, that while women have shifted to the left since the late 1970s, the pace of this change has strongly diminished since the late 1990s. Second, there is important between‐country variation in the size of the reversal in the ideological gender gap. Third, with the exception of the Silent generation and the Baby‐boomers, newer generations of women have not taken more left‐leaning positions than generations before them.

The existing literature debates how war can precipitate shifts in electoral coalitions. However, what remains unclear are the underlying cultural contestations affected by war, including how homo‐ and transphobia have been weaponized politically as a key social division during wartime elections. We examined original survey data collected before the 2023 Polish parliamentary election, which resulted in the defeat of the anti‐LGBTIQ Law & Justice Party (PiS). In that election, competing coalitions led by the centre‐right‐liberal opposition Civic Platform (PO) and the incumbent right‐wing‐conservative PiS diverged over values like tolerance of LGBTIQ rights, all amid the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Our survey experiment found that informing voters about the PiS's anti‐LGBTIQ rhetoric failed to boost either PiS or PO support. However, the same information coupled with Putin's homo‐ and transphobic justifications for the Russo‐Ukrainian war shifted voter support significantly towards the PO. These findings make an important contribution by showing the limitations of anti‐LGBTIQ rhetoric as a once ‘tried‐and‐true’ electoral strategy and offering a strategy to counter the appeal of political homo/transphobia.