Various research have been directed towards investigating the behaviour of political parties engaging in attacks. However, this topic has predominantly been studied in campaigning venues while focusing only on the attacker (parties that are attacking). This study contributes to the existing literature by (i) studying attack behaviour in the parliamentary venue, and (ii) analysing the interactions between both the attacker and the target. To this end, this paper uses longitudinal data on attacks during question time sessions in the parliaments (2010 to 2020) of Belgium, Croatia and the United Kingdom. More specifically, I investigate the conditions that make parties engage in mutual attacks. These conditions can be characterised along three dimensions: time (proximity to elections), status (government vs. opposition), and ideology (close vs. distant). The results confirm the overarching argument that: (i) more attacks in parliaments happen closer to election day; (ii) opposing parties are more likely to attack the government rather than vice‐versa; (iii) governing parties equally attack the opposition and themselves; and finally, (iv) the larger the ideological distance between parties, the more likely attacks happen (with mainstream parties engaging equally in attack behaviour compared to radical parties). As such, these findings contribute to our understanding of attack strategies between parties in regular day‐to‐day politics.

Threat language is an important, albeit ambivalent, element of political crisis communication. It raises public awareness and enhances compliance with emergency measures, but, if overused, it also carries the risk of making governments appear overwhelmed by a crisis. Research on political communication during the COVID‐19 pandemic has so far only produced very limited insights into the use of threat language by governments. To address this gap in the literature, our article analyses which factors influence the likelihood of threat language in the crisis communication of governments. We argue that individual‐level factors (politician vs. non‐politician and gender) shape the odds of including threat language and that contextual factors (time and subject area) determine the probability with which speakers employ this communication tool.

Based on a unique dataset of 1108 press conferences with 433 speakers in 17 OECD countries and three US states, we demonstrate that men are slightly more prone to employ threat language than women. The most important determinant of its use, however, is the subject area that speakers are addressing. In particular, in the context of the health system and public management, speeches are likely to be associated with risks, dangers, and threats. Overall, our findings imply that crisis communication across countries is not as diverse as indicated by previous literature. Once countries are facing a comparable challenge, political actors largely communicate in a similar manner.

Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID‐19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witnessed a higher excess mortality. Second, we argue that it is not only levels, but also polarization in trust among citizens – in particular, between government supporters and non‐supporters – that matters for understanding why people in some regions have adopted more pro‐healthy behaviour. Third, we explore the partisan make‐up of regional parliaments and the relationship between political division – or what we refer to as ‘uncooperative politics’. We hypothesize that the ideological positioning – in particular those that lean more populist – and ideological polarization among political parties is also linked to higher mortality. Accounting for a host of potential confounders, we find robust support that regions with lower levels of both social and political trust are associated with higher excess mortality, along with citizen polarization in institutional trust in some models. On the ideological make‐up of regional parliaments, we find that, ceteris paribus, those that lean more ‘tan’ on the ‘GAL‐TAN’ spectrum yielded higher excess mortality. Moreover, although we find limited evidence of elite polarization driving excess deaths on the left‐right or GAL‐TAN spectrums, partisan differences on the attitudes towards the European Union demonstrated significantly higher deaths, which we argue proxies for (anti)populism. Overall, we find that both lower citizen‐level trust and populist elite‐level ideological characteristics of regional parliaments are associated with higher excess mortality in European regions during the first wave of the pandemic.

This research note investigates whether external military crises, short of war, in the neighbourhood of the European Union (EU) affects attitudes toward the EU. Specifically, I explore whether the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 fostered higher levels of trust in the EU and support for deeper integration among European citizens. Methodologically, I exploit the coincidental timing of the Russian annexation of Crimea on 18 March, 2014 with the fieldwork of the Eurobarometer survey (81.2) conducted in the spring of that year. The quasi‐experimental evidence establishes that European citizens who were surveyed after the Russian annexation became more trusting of the EU and presented a greater willingness for further European integration, particularly so among EU‐15 members. Moreover, the treatment effects were strongly moderated by individuals’ education levels, with the intervention exerting its greatest effect among the higher educated.

How do political parties speak about education? While struggles over education played a foundational role in structuring modern partisan cleavages, scholars debate the extent to which parties still adopt distinct rhetorical stances on education. Existing data, however, is limited to studying broad public support or opposition to educational expansion, restricting both our empirical knowledge of the politicisation of education and our ability to theorise parties’ incentives to speak publicly about it. This paper provides the first systematic examination of the post‐war evolution of partisan rhetoric about education in advanced democracies. We develop a novel dataset (Education Politics Dataset EPD) based on hand‐coded manifesto speech of the largest centre‐left and centre‐right parties for 20 countries in Europe and beyond, from 1950 to the present. The EPD distinguishes nine educational issues, grouped under the three fundamental policy dimensions of distribution, governance and curricular content. We theorise that parties use educational speech both to signal competence to a broader electorate and to signal credibility to a narrower base. The result is three distinct patterns of speech: consensual, differentially salient and polarised. Where education policies cross‐cut existing cleavages, parties devote similar attention to issues and adopt similar stances, creating a consensual pattern. We find this pattern for issues of participation and quality in education. Where education policies are universal but offer specific benefits to a partisan base, we find patterns of differential salience: some parties devote more rhetorical attention to the issue than others, but parties adopt common stances. We find this pattern for questions of spending and access. Finally, where education policies align with broader political cleavages and provide targeted electoral benefits to partisan bases, parties adopt distinct public stances leading to more polarised rhetoric. We find this pattern for issues related to academic tracking and traditional curricular content. In developing the first multidimensional theorisation and measurement of partisan rhetoric on education, the paper provides insight into parties’ evolving approaches to an area increasingly crucial to electoral and social life.

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat‐rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party‐year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom‐made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.

This article investigates citizens’ refusal to take part in participatory and deliberative mechanisms. An increasing number of scholars and political actors support the development of mini‐publics – that is, deliberative forums with randomly selected lay citizens. It is often argued that such innovations are a key ingredient to curing the democratic malaise of contemporary political regimes because they provide an appropriate means to achieve inclusiveness and well considered judgment. Nevertheless, real‐life experience shows that the majority of citizens refuse the invitation when they are recruited. This raises a challenging question for the development of a more inclusive democracy: Why do citizens decline to participate in mini‐publics? This article addresses this issue through a qualitative analysis of the perspectives of those who have declined to participate in three mini‐publics: the G1000, the G100 and the Climate Citizens Parliament. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, six explanatory logics of non‐participation are distinguished: concentration on the private sphere; internal political inefficacy; public meeting avoidance; conflict of schedule; political alienation; and mini‐public's lack of impact on the political system. This shows that the reluctance to take part in mini‐publics is rooted in the way individuals conceive their own roles, abilities and capacities in the public sphere, as well as in the perceived output of such democratic innovations.

The focus is on the problem of dimensionality of left–right evaluations in mass publics. Starting from findings of earlier research showing that the left–right dichotomy can be interpreted in terms of a partisan and a value/issue component, it is argued here that the latter component has to be further differentiated into a more general value preference and a pro-/anti-establishment component. A subsidiary hypothesis maintains that the establishment component shows substantial life-cycle effects. This differentiation thus can help to clarify conceptually the aging–conservatism thesis. The analysis reveals an age-specific split on the meaning of Left and Right. While older cohorts interpret these terms predominantly via the traditional partisan frame of reference, in younger cohorts the value- and anti-establishment components overwhelmingly explain left–right evaluations. These effects are strongest in the group of university-educated younger-age cohorts. This is a reversal of the traditional alignments of the better educated; in Germany they have had a position closer to the Right. Education thus has become the basis of a new left–right conflict. In addition, in all the younger cohorts, the value components are increasingly detached from the traditional partisan frame. The ‘floating’ New Left has distanced itself from the established Left–Right camps to focus upon the new German party, the Greens.

Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1787), the first comprehensive antislavery treatise authored by a black writer in the West, was quickly published in an anonymous French translation, Réflexions sur la traite et l’esclavage des Nègres, Traduite de l’Anglais, d’Ottobah Cugoano, afriquain, esclave à la Grenade et libre en Angleterre (Paris, 1788). Marshalling several forms of evidence—bibliographical, book-historical, biographical, and textual—this article argues that it seems highly probable that the French politician and abolitionist the Marquis de Condorcet was the principal agent in bringing Cugoano’s jeremiad to the French reading public. Tendering the first scholarly assessment of the publication and reception of this translation, the essay situates the Réflexions in the contexts of Condorcet’s own abolitionist writings and the work of the Société des amis de noirs, which he helped to found.

Veto player theory generates predictions about governments’ capacity for policy change. Due to the difficulty of identifying significant laws needed to change the policy status quo, evidence about governments’ ability to change policy has been mostly provided for a limited number of reforms and single‐country studies. To evaluate the predictive power of veto player theory for policy making across time, policy areas and countries, a dataset was gathered that incorporates about 5,600 important government reform measures in the areas of social, labour, economic and taxation policy undertaken in 13 Western European countries from the mid‐1980s until the mid‐2000s. Veto player theory is applied in a combined model with other central theoretical expectations on policy change derived from political economy (crisis‐driven policy change) and partisan theory (ideology‐driven policy change). Robust support is found that governments introduce more reform measures when economic conditions are poor and when the government is positioned further away from the policy status quo. No empirical support is found for predictions of veto player theory in its pure form, where no differentiation between government types is made. However, the findings provide support for the veto player theory in the special case of minimal winning cabinets, where the support of all government parties is sufficient (in contrast to minority cabinets) and necessary (in contrast to oversized cabinets) for policy change. In particular, it is found that in minimal winning cabinets the ideological distance between the extreme government parties significantly decreases the government's ability to introduce reforms. These findings improve our understanding of reform making in parliamentary democracies and highlight important issues and open questions for future applications and tests of the veto player theory.

This article analyses the mechanisms establishing time consistency of constitutions. It explains why shorter and more locked constitutions are more likely to be time consistent (change less) and that long constitutions are more time inconsistent (change more, despite locking). Empirical evidence from all of the democratic countries in the world indicates that the length and locking of constitutions are not independent criteria, and that their combination leads to less time consistency. To address this inter‐relationship, a measure of time inconsistency (a combination of locking and amendment rate) is developed and it is demonstrated that it is connected with the length of constitutions. The article shows how time inconsistency is incompatible with theories of ‘constitutional amendment culture’ not only at the theoretical level, but also empirically. Finally, the article proves that the empirical finding that the length of constitutions is related to lower per capita income and higher corruption are not only in agreement with time inconsistency arguments, but this also extends beyond OECD countries to all democracies.

This article analyses how high‐level bureaucrats evaluate the leadership of technocrat and partisan cabinet ministers in different roles of policymaking. The argument is that bureaucrats perceive ministers with policy expertise to have a central role in policymaking, especially in policy‐directing tasks. Despite their essential contribution to coalition formation, ministers with political experience are negatively evaluated in all policymaking roles. The article presents evidence based on an endorsement experiment conducted with the high‐level bureaucracy in Brazil. The results show that ministers with policy experience receive positive evaluations from the bureaucracy in policy formulation and implementation roles but not to carry out political coordination activities with the presidency or the legislature. Ministers with a partisan profile receive negative evaluations in all tasks of the policy process. Exploring the mechanism, we show that the negative assessment of ministers with a partisan profile is maintained even when the profile of the bureaucrat is considered. These results show the negative attitudes of high‐level bureaucrats towards partisan ministers in contexts of substantial patronage and corruption and contribute to the debate on ministerial appointments and their implications for policymaking.