We examine the existence and strength of organizational ties between parties and interest groups by innovating on classic resource exchange theory. First, we propose that the nature of interest groups’ policy orientation and their general organizational capacity primarily explain the presence of ties, that is, ties are less likely to materialize when groups lack ideological policy goals and have limited organizational capacity. Second, the size and types of resources on offer from both sides are what principally account for the strength of existing ties. We hypothesize that resources from both parties and interest groups are positively associated with institutionalized relationships, but also that resources are hierarchically ordered, that is, resources that are exclusive for the transaction are particularly important for ties at higher levels of institutionalization. Using data from a novel organizational survey of parties and interest groups in seven Western democracies, we find support for the hypotheses using an integrated design of analysis.

The dominant explanation of public attitudes vis‐à‐vis economic globalisation focuses on re‐distributional implications, with an emphasis on factor endowments and government‐sponsored safety nets (the compensation hypothesis). The empirical implication of these theoretical arguments is that in advanced economies, on which this article focuses, individuals endowed with less human and financial capital will be more likely to experience income losses. Hence they will oppose economic openness unless they are compensated by the government. It is argued here that including social capital in the analysis can fill two gaps in explanations relying on factor endowments and the compensation hypothesis. First, generalised trust – one key aspect of social capital – constitutes a personal endowment alongside human and financial capital. Second, structural social capital – another key aspect of social capital – can be regarded as a nongovernmental social safety net that can compensate for endowment‐related disadvantages of individuals. Both aspects of social capital are expected to contribute, for distinct reasons, to more positive views on economic openness. The empirical testing relies on survey data for two countries: Switzerland and the United States. For both countries, the results indicate that generalised trust has a strong, positive effect on public opinion of economic globalisation, whereas structural social capital has no effect.

The sourcing of exotic raw materials provides a window into the social networks of ancient peoples. Here we source copper from four archaeological contexts at the Mound City Group, a UNESCO World Heritage site and major Hopewell ceremonial site in south-central Ohio, USA. Results of laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry indicate the use of copper at Mound City from both the Great Lakes Copper District and the southern Appalachians. Forty-two percent of the Mound City sample was classified as southern Appalachian copper, a higher percentage than for any other large Ohio Hopewell site tested. The use of Appalachian copper has not been documented in earlier, pre-Hopewell contexts in the central Ohio Valley. This new pattern correlates with both an increased demand for copper and the development of broader-based social networks connecting the central Ohio River Valley with the Southeast. This context is different from and complementary to that of the “copper trail” to the north established hundreds of years earlier.

One of the main supply‐side explanations for women's underrepresentation in politics is the gender gap in nascent political ambition. While this has been examined in terms of electoral ambition, the aspiration to pursue non‐electoral careers within parties has been overlooked. In our study, we therefore investigate whether both types of ambition – electoral and non‐electoral – vary among young women and men participating in a key entry point for political careers in Western democracies: party youth wings. To do so, we surveyed almost 2,000 members of six centre‐left and centre‐right youth wings in Australia, Italy and Spain. We find that while, as expected, women in youth wings display lower levels of electoral ambition, they are almost as likely as men to express non‐electoral ambition. Furthermore, and contrary to our expectations, we show that women in centre‐right youth wings are no less interested in pursuing electoral and non‐electoral political careers than women in centre‐left ones. Our study thus provides new insights into the gendered nature of political ambition, highlighting that women's lower interest in electoral office does not necessarily reflect reduced interest in a political career.

The use of emotive rhetoric in legislative debates has attracted increasing scholarly attention in political science research. Building on recent scholarship, I examine the conditions under which emotive rhetoric dominates legislative speeches in the UK House of Commons between 2001 and 2015. By coding nearly half a million legislative speeches according to Ekman's six basic emotions – anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise – I argue that members of parliament (MPs) strategically use emotions in their speeches to maximize their influence and visibility. The findings reveal modest but discernible effects related to electoral safety, seniority and party status. Specifically, the results show that speeches by electorally vulnerable, junior and opposition MPs contain higher levels of emotive language compared to those by other MPs. Notably, despite considerable similarity in the correlates of individual emotion categories, there are also significant differences. For example, opposition MPs and electorally vulnerable MPs rely more heavily on negative emotions such as anger, disgust, fear and sadness than government MPs and electorally safer MPs. While junior MPs use fear, sadness and surprise at higher rates compared to their senior counterparts, they are statistically indistinguishable from senior MPs in their use of anger, disgust and joy. Overall, these results underscore the need for greater scholarly attention to the communication styles of representatives in legislatures and emphasize the importance of examining the nuanced strategies behind the use of different types of emotions.

Most studies of political participation have either focused on specific political behaviours or combined several behaviours into additive scales of institutional versus non‐institutional participation. Through a multi‐group latent class analysis of participation in 15 different political actions, conducted among citizens from four Western European countries, we identified five empirically grounded participant types that differ in their political engagement, socio‐demographic characteristics and political attitudes: ‘voter specialists’, ‘expressive voters’, ‘online participants’, ‘all‐round activists’ and ‘inactives’. While the same participant types were identified in all four countries, the proportion of citizens assigned to each type varies across countries. Our results challenge the claim that some citizens specialize in protest politics at the expense of electoral politics. Furthermore, our typological approach challenges previous findings on the individual characteristics associated with political (in)action.

The political atmosphere remained tense in 1999 because – as the government side has often been accused of – the governing majority sought to introduce majoritarian practices and acquire domineering positions in the political sphere. These attempts became manifest in several areas. For example, sessions of the parliament were held only every third week after February (previously plenary sessions were held on three days each week). As a result, in 1999 parliament was sitting for 16 weeks as opposed to 37–42 weeks in the previous years. The opposition turned to the Constitutional Court to re-establish the old practice and although the CC ruled that the continuity of the working of the parliament is a constitutional requirement, it did not specify the details. By the end of the year even the coalition partners of the largest governing party (Fidesz-MPP-Alliance of Young Democrats), that is the FKGP (Smallholders) and the MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum), became critical of the new timetable.

The electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long‐term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non‐mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further.

As political polarization increases across many of the world's established democracies, many citizens are unwilling to appreciate and consider the viewpoints of those who disagree with them. Previous research shows that this lack of reflection can undermine democratic accountability. The purpose of this paper is to study whether empathy for the other can motivate people to reason reflectively about politics. Extant studies have largely studied trait‐level differences in the ability and inclination of individuals to engage in reflection. Most of these studies focus on observational moderators, which makes it difficult to make strong claims about the effects of being in a reflective state on political decision making. We extend this research by using a survey experiment with a large and heterogeneous sample of UK citizens (N = 2014) to investigate whether a simple empathy intervention can induce people to consider opposing viewpoints and incorporate those views in their opinion about a pressing political issue. We find that actively imagining the feelings and thoughts of someone one disagrees with prompts more reflection in the way that people reason about political issues as well as elicits empathic feelings of concern towards those with opposing viewpoints. We further examine whether empathy facilitates openness to attitude change in the counter‐attitudinal direction and find that exposure to an opposing perspective (without its empathy component) per se is enough to prompt attitude change. Our study paints a more nuanced picture of the relationship between empathy, reflection and policy attitudes.

Political parties face inherent risks when making election promises, as voters tend to penalize them for unfulfilled commitments. Nonetheless, parties make hundreds of promises. Why do parties engage in such precarious behaviour? I argue that parties employ a policy‐committing strategy when they need to increase the credibility of their policy programme and that they do so more today than previously because the political landscape has changed considerably in many Western democracies (time trend). Moreover, I expect parties to use the policy‐committing strategy more when they operate in a political arena with more competitors (system‐level factor), when they are a mainstream party (party‐level factor) and when they have increased the saliency of an issue (issue‐level factor). I test these four expectations with a unique, new dataset containing 330,850 quasi‐sentences coded from party manifestoes in 11 countries covering several decades of elections. Empirically, I find support for a time trend and show strong effects for the party‐level and issue‐level factors. However, a more competitive environment at the system level makes parties less, not more, likely to use the policy‐committing strategy. These results have important implications for party strategies, issue competition and policymaking in today's democracies.

Past work suggests that support for welfare in the United States is heavily influenced by citizens' racial attitudes. Indeed, the idea that many Americans think of welfare recipients as poor Blacks (and especially as poor Black women) has been a common explanation for Americans’ lukewarm support for redistribution. This article draws on a new online survey experiment conducted with national samples in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, designed to extend research on how racialised portrayals of policy beneficiaries affect attitudes toward redistribution. A series of innovative survey vignettes has been designed that experimentally manipulate the ethno‐racial background of beneficiaries for various redistributive programmes. The findings provide, for the first time, cross‐national, cross‐domain and cross‐ethno‐racial extensions of the American literature on the impact of racial cues on support for redistributive policy. The results also demonstrate that race clearly matters for policy support, although its impact varies by context and by the racial group under consideration.

The consequences of economic globalization on electoral outcomes have recently become a prominent topic of research. We complement the emerging literature on this topic by studying whether changes in a subnational region's trade competitiveness affect the incumbent's vote share in that region. Using a novel dataset that relates subnational trade competitiveness to election results in 29 countries over a 20‐year period, we show that this is indeed the case. We also show that this effect is most pronounced for elections where the clarity of responsibility is high. Finally, we find mixed evidence for a moderating effect of incumbents' economic ideology as a moderator. These findings also contribute to the broader economic voting literature.

This article reconstructs the coming about of the 750 billion EU Covid Recovery Fund. We provide an embedded process‐tracing analysis of the dynamics from mid‐March 2020, when the idea of ‘Corona‐bonds’ was parachuted onto the Heads’ Agenda, up until the ‘historic’ deal on the Multiannual Financial Framework and Recovery Fund of 21 July. Where most media accounts and scholarly assessments focus on the high‐level deal making between political leaders, we trace the proceedings inside the EU's institutional machinery, which produced the solutions and laid out the groundwork for a deal. The reconstruction assesses the role and influence of the EU institutions – the European Commission in particular – in producing this major step. We show that the process was characterized by a handicapped European Council, which hampered the ability of member states to oversee and control developments. The conclusions discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of (institutional) leadership and policy making during crisis.

A 15-year-old female presented with exertional chest pain and near-syncope. Imaging revealed a large left sinus of Valsalva aneurysm compressing the left coronary artery. She underwent successful surgical repair. Intraoperative and pathologic findings confirmed Takayasu arteritis. This case highlights a rare aetiology of cardiac chest pain in adolescents and underscores the importance of evaluating for an underlying vasculitis when a sinus of Valsalva aneurysm is identified.

Since about 1960, the study of petroglyphs and pictographs has escaped the confines of anthropology, art history, and philology and established itself as a discrete field of transdisciplinary scholarship, supported by its own organizations, periodicals, and lexicon. “Rock art research” emerged as the field’s moniker, and “rock art” became the most popular term for describing anthropogenic marks in and on geological surfaces. However, this label has sparked controversy over whether “art” is an accurate, ethical, and inclusive gloss for non-Western and premodern imagery. Although some pragmatic scholars, preservationists, and descendant community representatives accept this nomenclature, others find it imprecise, distracting, and, at times, offensive. We advance this debate with results from two surveys. First, a review of article titles published since 1865 shows that “rock art” is just one of many terms used in the field, and it is one of the youngest. Second, a survey of federally recognized Tribes found strong though not universal dissatisfaction with “rock art” to characterize ancestral petroglyphs and pictographs. As a bridge between field practitioners and descendant communities, we recommend that researchers and organizations work with Tribes to develop and use terms that are respectful, useful, and of mutual benefit.

How can we explain the rise in diffuse political support during the Covid‐19 pandemic? Recent research has argued that the lockdown measures generated political support. In contrast, I argue that the intensity of the pandemic rallied people around political institutions. Collective angst in the face of exponentially rising Covid‐19 cases depresses the usual cognitive evaluations of institutions and leads citizens to rally around existing intuitions as a lifebuoy. Using a representative Dutch household survey conducted over March 2020, I compare the lockdown effect to the dynamic of the pandemic. I find that the lockdown effect is driven by pre‐existing time trends. Accounting for non‐linearities in time makes the lockdown effect disappear. In contrast, more flexible modelling techniques reveal a robust effect of Covid‐19 infections on political trust. In line with an anxiety effect, I find that standard determinants of political trust – such as economic evaluations and social trust – lose explanatory power as the pandemic spreads. This speaks to an emotionally driven rally effect that pushes cognitive evaluations to the background.