While it is generally admitted that governments in most democracies make extensive use of public opinion research, we do not know much about the way they mobilize this resource. When and why do they want to learn about public opinion? What determines differences in the intensity of government polling over the electoral cycle? Are government opinion polls primarily a tool for testing the reception of government proposals or for learning more about issues that are important to citizens? And what does this tell us about the way political representation works? Understanding governments as actors in the production of public opinion, not just as passive consumers, our focus is on polls commissioned directly by governments. We argue that government polls can help us to better understand how contemporary political representation works since they can play an important role as ‘update instrument’ in anticipatory representation or as a decision‐making aid in promissory representation. By studying government polls as dependent variable, we develop an innovative research design and systematically analyse the factors that explain whether the intensity of government polling (the number of questions asked) varies across different stages of the electoral cycle and whether the issues they ask about correspond more to the government's priorities or those of the public. We present evidence from Germany, mobilizing an original database of all survey questions directly commissioned by the German government during the 18th and 19th legislative periods (2013–2021). Our findings help to better understand the factors that determine the intensity of government polling at different moments of the electoral cycle and to identify the different logic of representation behind this activity. The transition from the post‐election period to the routine period and from the routine period to the pre‐election period correspond to turning points in the German government's use of this instrument. While we could not observe any direct effects of the electoral cycle on the intensity of government polling, the interplay between the former and different types of policy issues proves to be insightful. The government commissions significantly more survey questions on government priorities during the first 3 months in office than during routine times and significantly more survey questions on salient issues as federal elections approach. Moreover, we show that governments commission fewer questions on issues they ‘own’, which points in the same direction as previous studies showing that governments are less interested in public opinion on these issues.

Myopia is a critical public health issue, particularly among adolescents. This study investigates the association between adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet with the odds of myopia in US adolescents. A cross-sectional analysis was conducted using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 2005 to 2008, involving 2,473 participants aged 12–18 years. Adherence to the diet was assessed using the alternate Mediterranean Diet (aMED) score. Myopia was defined as a spherical equivalent of ≤ -0.50 diopters (D). Multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for age, gender, race, education level, body mass index, poverty income ratio, and total energy intake were used to examine the association between aMED and myopia. Additionally, restricted cubic spline (RCS) regression was used to explore non-linear relationships, and mediation analysis was conducted to identify potential biological pathways. Of the participants (median age: 15 years; 50.5% male), 41% were identified as having myopia. Participants with myopia had significantly lower aMED scores compared with non-myopic individuals (P < 0.05). Higher adherence to the aMED was associated with lower odds of myopia (OR: 0.830, 95% CI: 0.712, 0.968). A significant dose-response relationship was observed, with adolescents in the highest aMED quintile having a 41% lower odds of myopia compared to the lowest quintile (OR: 0.592, 95% CI: 0.368, 0.952). The association was partially mediated by dietary cholesterol and eicosatetraenoic acid. In conclusion, adherence to a Mediterranean-style diet in adolescents is associated with a lower odds of myopia. Addressing diet quality may mitigate health risks related to myopia development.

The history of global computer networks begins in the middle of the Cold War, in 1957, when US Department of Defense created ARPA, the Advanced Research Project Agency. Internet was born in 1972 as a result of various attempts at electronic data transmission, both in Britain and in the USA. While universities were initiators and benefactors of Internet in its early years of development, academic research and teaching on the net has been progressively joined by commercial services. This ‘privatisation’, which began in 1991, has changed the face of Internet. It is probably one of the main reasons for the most recent quantum leap in popular computer networking, the incorporation of Internet into the World Wide Web (WWW) which, with its associated ‘browser’ software (for example Navigator) has made the global computer network easily accessible to anyone with a computer and the motivation to use it to explore what is available.

This article explores how citizens’ legitimacy perceptions are affected when decision makers deviate from the recommendations of a deliberative mini-public (DMP), and what can be done to mitigate negative consequences. The results of a preregistered vignette experiment in Belgium (N = 2659) support our two main expectations. First, citizens’ legitimacy perceptions decrease when politicians do not follow the outcome of a DMP. Second, when politicians communicate responsively about this – meaning that they show respect for the recommendations and publicly justify why they deviated from them – legitimacy perceptions substantially increase, generally reaching the level of those cases where recommendations are followed. Diving deeper into this result also shows that for this effect to occur, citizens must find the provided reasoning valid and acceptable. Finally, the results hold among both policy winners and policy losers. These findings have implications for the literature on democratic innovations, empirical legitimacy, and political representation, but also for policymakers striving to combine arrangements of public participation that go beyond triviality, with political responsibility for the whole, and sustained mechanisms for accountability.

Despite a rich body of literature on politicisation, knowledge of this process and its driving forces remains limited. Specifically, little empirical analysis has been carried out to assess the impact of focusing events on politicisation within global and seemingly technical venues of policy‐making. Building on existing studies, I conceptualise politicisation as a combination of three components: (1) issue salience, (2) actor expansion and (3) actor diversity. I test the impact of focusing events on the politicisation of one of the most pressing global policy issues of our age: internet regulation, specifically regarding global data protection and internet privacy rules. I use a systematic analysis of news media coverage over a 20‐year period, resulting in an original dataset of 2,100 news articles. Controlling for different factors, my findings reveal that focusing events do contribute to politicisation in technical venues, in particular regarding the actors involved in debates.

Governments around the world vary in their policies affecting lesbian and gay communities. While some states enshrine the rights of their minority citizens, others drum up and enforce oppressive policies toward these groups, termed political homophobia. We are interested in the role such policies play in shaping electoral and non‐electoral political participation. Existing research on this question is often optimistic that proponents of gay rights will steadily out‐participate their opposition, but anti‐gay mobilization remains ubiquitous in many states. Under what conditions might intolerant citizens out‐participate more socially progressive citizens? And how do state policies influence this participation? By engaging literature on sexual citizenship and political efficacy, we argue that a state's policy choices send important signals to citizens that influence their participation. Citizens who are intolerant of homosexuality may be more participatory in states that espouse political homophobia. This study conducts the first worldwide examination of tolerant and intolerant participation with data from the World Values Survey (2010–2020) and a novel application of gay rights measures. We find that outside of gay rights‐respecting states, intolerant individuals are more likely to vote than tolerant individuals. While tolerant individuals generally tend to engage more in non‐electoral participation across states, they nonetheless turn out to the ballot box less in states that are not respecting of gay rights.

Stringent policies that significantly increase the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, such as CO${}_2$$_2$, are increasingly necessary for mitigating climate change. Yet while richer individuals in society generate the most CO${}_2$$_2$ emissions and thus will face the largest absolute cost burden, they also tend to be more supportive of stringent environmental policies. In this paper, we examine how information about the distribution of carbon emissions by income affects support for carbon taxation. While carbon taxation is widely advocated as the most efficient policy for mitigating climate change, it faces significant political hurdles due to its distributional costs. Using original survey data, with an embedded experiment, we find that providing information about the actual distribution of household CO${}_2$$_2$ emissions by income significantly changes individuals' support for carbon taxation. These effects are particularly pronounced at the bottom of the household income distribution, leading to increased support for costly climate policies. However, individuals who believe that carbon taxes will reduce their income continue to hold their level of support for carbon taxation. Our findings have significant implications for understanding the public's response to the distributional consequences of the green transitions and ultimately their political feasibility.

Members of the Eerste Kamer or Upper House of Parliament were elected on 29 May by the 760 members of the twelve provincial councils (Provinciale Staten), who were elected themselves on 8 March 1999.

This is an attempt to formulate a conditional model of coalition formation. Predictions from this model are tested against data on coalition formation in Dutch local government in 1982. Starting from a simple model of the behaviour of party politicians, it is assumed that the coalition behaviour of parties depends on the competitiveness of the (local) political system. The choice of a coalition strategy (minimizing size, minimizing policy range or proportional representation) is contingent upon two dimensions of the competitiveness of local politics. These are the amount of electoral volatility and the extent to which local election results follow national trends. Our conditional theory predicts different coalition behaviour in polities differing with regard to these two factors. Though the hypothesis was falsified, a more detailed analysis showed that (local) political competitiveness did make a difference in the choice of at least some of the coalition strategies. These differences, moreover, were in line with what was to be expected from the theoretical model.

The complexity of public policies has repeatedly been identified as a key challenge for modern democracies. Yet, we know only very little about the origins of this complexity. Controlling for functional and legal explanations, this article investigates whether complex policies have distinct institutional and political origins. The study builds on the assumption that complex policies are communicated in more complex language and uses textual data from 1771 legislative proposals issued by the European Commission since 1994 to demonstrate that the complexity of public policies is strongly tied to institutional and political costs of policy formulation. Collegial cabinets formulate more complex policies whenever they face more inclusive decision‐making processes and struggle with higher internal preference bias and heterogeneity. The implications of these findings reach far beyond the political system of the European Union and highlight that to a considerable degree, complex policies are the price of inclusive democratic decision making.

This study explores the prioritization of urban identity over national identity in the context of the global city. Scholars have extensively discussed the fragmentation of national identity among individuals in the globalized world, and the relative proliferation of other communal identities, whether more cosmopolitan or place-based. As globalization gradually erodes the cultural distinctiveness of nation states, cities are revealed as arenas within which inhabitants nurture a particular collective character, which is used as an attractive source of local, communal belonging. Global cities, in particular, are a compelling case to inquire into the interplay between national and urban identity. Due to their relative independence vis-à-vis the state, the global city can promote the values shared by inhabitants while constituting significant competition for nation-based self-determination and providing a unique source of urban identity that is simultaneously cosmopolitan and place-based.

In this paper we ask whether city-zens living in highly globalized cities are more likely to prioritize their urban identity over their national identity. Utilizing the GaWC Index of cities’ globalization levels, we analyze the results of an original survey conducted among residents of six European cities: Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Utrecht and Glasgow. Our empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that in globalized cities a higher level of globalism accords with a more explicit tendency to prioritize urban identity over national identity. In conclusion, we interpret this evidence as an identities trade-off that challenges the coexistence of urban and national identities within globalized cities, discussing its implications for future studies of contemporary politics.

In the course of archaeological excavations at Metropolis between 1999 and 2004 when the hall of the city council (boule) was unearthed, an important inscription now referred to as the ‘Apollonios Decree’ was discovered on the bouleuterion terrace. This inscription decrees that a statue honouring Apollonios is to be erected ‘in that part of the Agora where it will be the most conspicuous’. Ongoing excavations have revealed a concentration of sculptures in the same area, further strengthening the hypothesis that the Agora was located on the bouleuterion terrace. The present study was undertaken to better understand and interpret the functions of this part of the site based on the findings of excavations on the northern side of the bouleuterion in 2018. It also aims to ascertain if this is the area referred to in inscriptions as the place where public benefactors (euergetai) were honoured with boule-decreed statues, to determine if the statue dedicated to Apollonios of Metropolis was indeed located here, and to propose a possible location for the as-yet unidentified Metropolitan agora.

1999 was an election year par excellence in Luxembourg. Parliamentary and European elections in June were followed by municipal elections in October, which pretty much confirmed the trend, namely a remarkable performance of the Liberal Party, DP, all over the country and especially in the City of Luxembourg where it achieved its best result ever (almost 35% of the votes) with Paul Helminger as main contender for the mayor’s position. Helminger managed to administer a severe blow to his main challenger, Jacques Santer (CSV), President of the European Commission until March 1999, when he was forced to resign prematurely. Santer and the CSV fared so badly that he did not even choose to take up his seat on the Municipal Council of Luxembourg City. The municipal elections of October confirmed as a matter of fact the trend already obvious after the June elections, where the two coalition parties CSV and LSAP were severely sanctioned after fifteen years in power. The Liberal Party DP had waged its electoral campaign on the theme that political change was overdue, concentrating its attacks on the junior partner LSAP. The outcome of the parliamentary elections confirmed the lesson that it is always the junior partner in a coalition government with the CSV that has to take the blame for the shortcomings of the outgoing team. The CSV managed to limit the blow inflicted to the outgoing coalition largely thanks to the remarkable personal performance of Prime Minister Juncker.

This article presents a study of how institutional constraints affect legislative activism and how legislative activism in turn affects policy change through an analysis of the European Union's legislative process. The argument revolves around the key role of the European Commission in advancing policy change, and emphasises that the Commission can successfully push for increased policy change by increasing its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space widens. Using a novel panel dataset covering eight policy sectors from the period 1984–2012, the article shows that the number of legislative proposals significantly affects the extent of regulatory reform in the EU. The rise in the number of legislative proposals, in turn, is affected by the extent of gridlock between the EU's legislative bodies. These findings show that the Commission steps up its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space allows for greater policy change.

This study examined whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection experience enhances preventive behaviour (i.e., hand disinfection and mask-wearing), with risk perception acting as a mediating factor. The study included participants aged ≥18 years residing in Japan, enrolled in a 30-wave cohort study conducted from January 2020 to March 2024. Using propensity score matching, 135 pairs of participants with and without infection were extracted, adjusting for dread and unknown risk perception, preventive behaviours, sociopsychological variables, and individual attributes. Comparisons of risk perception and preventive behaviour were made between groups post-infection experience, and mediation analysis was conducted to test whether risk perception mediated the effect of infection experience on preventive behaviour. Following the infection experience, participants in the infection group reported significantly higher scores for one item of unknown risk perception and a greater proportion of mask-wearing. The indirect effect of infection experience on mask-wearing, mediated by the unknown risk perception item, was significant. COVID-19 infection experience increased perceptions of unknowable exposure, which in turn promoted mask-wearing behaviour. Incorporating insights from personal infection experiences into public health messaging may enhance risk perception and promote preventive behaviour among non-infected individuals, offering a novel approach to infection control at the population level.

In this article it is argued that citizens take into account the degree of a government's political autonomy to implement particular policies when expressing their views on satisfaction with democracy (SWD) but, in order to do so, they need to perceive it. When citizens directly observe the external constraints that reduce their government's autonomy, then variations in levels of regime satisfaction may no longer be exclusively about government performance – as widely argued by political economists – but also about democratic choice. The argument develops after comparing the existing scenarios in the Eurozone before and after the Great Recession. Citizens only began to perceive their own lack of choice to decide between policy alternatives when the sovereign debt crisis broke out in May 2010, the date of the first Greek bail‐out. It is then when citizens started to update their beliefs about the functioning of democracy as a system in which alternative policies can be adopted as bail‐out deals were signed between national governments from the Euro periphery and the Troika. This updating process towards the way democracy works explains the increasing gap in the levels of SWD between bailed‐out economies and the rest of the countries in the Eurozone. Empirical confirmation for this claim is found after analysing Eurobarometer surveys from 2002 to 2014 and using a two‐step difference‐in‐difference analysis that combines individual and aggregate data.