Choosing a candidate can be difficult in open‐list proportional representation systems, with many candidates on display. Under such circumstances, candidates' personal vote‐earning attributes (PVEAs) become useful for voters since PVEAs function as information shortcuts (heuristics) that reduce the cognitive costs of casting a ballot. However, recent research has demonstrated that more cognitively demanding information, namely candidates' ideological positions, also matters for candidates' electoral success. Yet, much is unknown about the circumstances under which ideology comes into play. In this study, we demonstrate that the availability of easily applied heuristics (operationalized via the level of recognizable candidates on party lists) conditions the effect of candidates' ideological positioning on intra‐party success. Our analyses show that ideology matters most when the share of recognizable candidates with typical PVEAs on the list is limited. The effect of ideological distance from the party gradually disappears as the share of recognizable candidates on the list increases. The results suggest that when the supply of candidates with PVEAs is limited, voters use ideological cues as the base for their voting decisions.

Open-mindedness requires us to be receptive to new evidence that contradicts our own views. Laurie Paul (2021) argues that there are situations in which we should, in fact, avoid exposure to putative evidence, as it may undermine our rational abilities. One example she discusses is the sensus divinitatis (SD) as a transformative experience. If an atheist agrees to be exposed to this experience, he may become a theist and, by his pre-transformation atheistic standards, irrational. Paul contends that we have valid reasons to avoid encountering putative evidence in these circumstances. This paper will argue that there are rational strategies to help us determine whether to expose ourselves to transformative experiences like the SD.

Voters behave differently in European Parliament (EP) elections compared to national elections because less is at stake in these ‘second‐order’ elections. While this explains the primary characteristic of EP elections, it has often led to a conflation of distinct motivations for changing behaviour – namely sincere and protest voting. By distinguishing these motivations, this article addresses the question of when and why voters alter their behaviour in EP elections. In addition, it argues that the degree of politicisation of the EU in the domestic debate shapes the extent to which voters rely on EU, rather than national, considerations. These propositions are tested in a multilevel analysis in 27 countries in the 2009 EP elections. The findings have important implications for understanding why voters change their behaviour between different types of elections.

Populist ideology centres around a supposed clash between the ‘honest and upright people’ and the ‘evil and corrupted elite’. Yet, which groups are perceived to constitute ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ likely varies across parties. This research note investigates which factors explain how inclusive or exclusive the conceptions of these two core groups are. Why do some parties define the people in cultural terms, whereas others rely on economic considerations? And why do some parties consider CEOs as elites, whilst others consider academics as elites? We argue that parties’ degree of populism in combination with their ideological orientation allow us to understand these dynamics. In order to investigate these questions systematically, a new wave of the Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) was collected in 2023. Covering 312 political parties in 31 European countries in 2023, a novel module allows us to understand how parties define ‘the people’ and ‘elites’. We find that parties' populism and host ideology are important drivers of their people/elite conceptions. The higher a party's level of populism the more exclusionary its conception of the people is. Nativism is, moreover, associated with the exclusion of societal groups on cultural grounds, while left‐wing economic ideology drives the exclusion of societal groups on economic grounds. With respect to elites, populism is the most important determinant for parties' conceptions of the elite. By contrast, party ideology plays a subordinate role in parties' elite conceptions. This investigation has important implications for our understanding of populist parties, what the nature of their populist appeal is, and how they seek to mobilize in the political arena.

The literature suggests two major theoretical explanations for public resistance to taxation. The first emphasizes a cognitive, instrumental, utility-maximizing response to objective elements of taxation and government spending. The second treats contemporary tax revolts as the result of more enduring ideological predispositions, disaffection from politics in general and the result of social mobilization by anti-government protagonists. In this article we confront the self-interest model and the symbolic politics model with empirical evidence at both the aggregate level and at the micro-level. In the macro-analysis we examine the relationship between the level of taxation and the acceptance of tax cheating in twelve Western nations; in the micro-analysis we perform a more detailed study of Norway, employing survey data. The over-all results clearly show the strongest support for the symbolic politics model, while the self-interest explanation is only weakly supported by the data. An important finding is that political attitudes and values have their strongest and most consistent impact among the politically uninvolved. This result further substantiates the symbolic politics model.

Current scholarship increasingly argues that international factors and, more specifically, authoritarian collaboration fundamentally affect the persistence of authoritarian rule. In order to generate a better understanding of the nature and effects of these international dimensions of authoritarianism, this article provides a conceptual framework for various aspects of authoritarian collaboration to prevent democracy, particularly the relationship between authoritarian regime types and their international democracy‐prevention policies. It differentiates between authoritarian diffusion, learning, collaboration and support, as well as between deliberate efforts to avert democracy and efforts not explicitly geared towards strengthening autocracy. The article further distinguishes between crisis events and normal conditions where authoritarian rulers' hold on power is not in danger. It is argued that authoritarian powers' motivations to provide support to fellow autocrats are self‐serving rather than driven by an ideological commitment to creating an ‘authoritarian international’: authoritarian rulers first and foremost strive to maximise their own survival chances by selectively supporting acquiescent authoritarian regimes, maintaining geostrategic control and fostering their developmental goals.

Despite decades of research on the nature and characteristics of populism, and on how political actors interpret populist attitudes, the study of how the public identify populist politicians remains a largely unexplored topic. Is populism in the eye of the beholder? What causes voters to perceive a political actor as populist? Is there any systematic heterogeneity in the evaluation of candidates among citizens according to their individual characteristics? We fill this gap by analysing what characteristics of politicians, and the political statements they make, drive citizens to classify them as populist. Furthermore, we investigate how the cognitive, ideological and attitudinal profiles of citizens shape their perceptions. To this end, we report results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of Italian citizens. Respondents were asked to evaluate different political statements by politicians, of whom we manipulated a variety of relevant attributes (e.g., their ideological profile, gender, previous occupation). Results indicate two clear trends: (i) More than the profile of politicians, what matters for their identification as populist is their rhetoric. (ii) The cognitive (with the partial exception of education) and ideological profiles of respondents are largely inconsequential. At the same time, populist voters are substantively less likely to identify populism as such.

This article evaluates whether economic hardship affects social capital in Europe. Comparing 27 European countries, it evaluates the impact of personal experiences of economic hardship on engagement in voluntary associations as a cornerstone of civic and democratic life. Empirical analyses of the Eurobarometer data indicate that individual economic hardship has indeed a negative effect on associational volunteering in Europe. However, the result is qualified in two respects. First, it is found that the effect of individual economic hardship is contingent upon education. Second, this effect mostly refers to volunteering for associations providing solidarity goods (Putnam groups). These results have broader implications for understanding how economic hardship shapes the social capital within democratic societies.

For a number of Western democracies, it has been observed that the preferences of poor and rich citizens are unequally represented in political institutions and outcomes. Yet, the causes of this phenomenon are still under debate. We focus on the role of elections in this process, by disentangling biases towards different income groups that stem from the party system and from voters’ behaviour. Our aim is to uncover whether elections as selection mechanisms contribute to unequal representation by analysing factors of the supply and demand sides of the electoral process. On the supply side, we focus on the congruence of parties’ policy offers and voters’ preference distributions. This shapes citizens’ possibilities to express their policy preferences. On the demand side, we are interested in the extent to which citizens from different income groups base their vote decisions on their policy preferences. The empirical analysis relies on the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and covers 13 Western European countries. Our results indicate, first, that the economic and cultural preferences of poor and rich citizens differ significantly, and second, that party systems in the countries under investigation represent the lowest income groups the worst, and the middle income groups the best. This makes it difficult for citizens at both the lower and the higher end of the income distribution to voice their preferences in elections. Additionally, we show that low income citizens tend to take policy less into consideration when making an electoral choice than richer citizens. Thus, while the rich make up for their representation bias by taking policy more into account in their voting behaviour, the electoral stage poses another obstacle for the poor to overcome the representation bias. In summary it can be said that already on the supply side there is an unbalanced disadvantage in terms of representation for the very poor and the very rich, but the pattern leads to an even more asymmetrical misrepresentation of the poor due to the election act.

How do mainstream political executives cue their politicised constituencies on European integration? Moving beyond static expectations that EU politicisation induces executives to either undermine, defuse or defend integration, this article theorises executives’ incentives under different configurations of public and partisan Euroscepticism in their home countries. Expectations are tested on the sentiment and complexity that executives attach to European integration in almost 9,000 public speeches delivered throughout the Euro Crisis. It is found that national leaders faced with sceptical public opinion and low levels of partisan Euroscepticism rhetorically undermine integration, whereas European Commissioners faced with similar conditions are prone to defend it. These responses intensify disproportionally with growing public Euroscepticism, but are moderated by Eurosceptic party strength in surprising ways. When such challenger parties come closer to absorbing the Eurosceptic potential in public opinion, executive communication turns more positive again but also involves less clear rhetorical signals. These findings move beyond existing uniform expectations on mainstream responses to Eurosceptic challenges and highlight the relevance of different domestic configurations of EU politicisation.

While scholars have closely examined the intensification of negative affect across party lines during elections, less is known about the decline of partisan hostility in the aftermath of election campaigns. Synthesizing insights from research on electoral rules and political psychology, we theorize and empirically test two such mechanisms of post‐election negative affect decline. The first is that of winners' generosity: the expectation that self‐perceived election winners will express warmer feelings towards political opponents. The second is that of co‐governance, which predicts that shared coalition status leads to warmer affective evaluations among governing parties. We provide evidence that these mechanisms operate as pressure valves of negative partisan affect. We also show that while co‐governance reduces negative affect between parties who govern together, it fuels negative affect among supporters of opposition parties. The empirical analyses leverage a uniquely uncertain political period following the 2021 Israeli elections, around which we conducted an original panel study. Our findings advance the comparative polarization literature and connect psychological and institutional accounts of temporal fluctuations in partisan affect.

Scholars have long emphasised the consensual nature of the intergovernmental negotiations in the Council of the European Union. Unlike other international organisations, where surface consensus has been found to be merely a cover for the dominance of powerful states, the EU literature describes a norm of generosity that works as a real constraining factor. In contrast, this article warns against descriptions of the EU as different in kind. Based on interviews with 231 EU Member State representatives involved in day‐to‐day negotiations in the Council, it finds a strong bias in generosity on behalf of the three dominant powers: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The ‘Big 3’ are strikingly unwilling to make generous concessions, compared to other states. Furthermore, from a rational perspective, there are good reasons for expecting this pattern. The study also shows that extensive pooling of power in the form of qualified majority rule and hard law commitment is associated with less generosity, while there seems to be no socialising effect towards generosity from exposure to the ‘Brussels community’. These findings cast a new light on the common narrative of the EU as a ‘soft‐bargaining’ anomaly among international organisations, where national interests are upgraded into common interests by a process of norm socialisation. Instead, it seems that the purported ‘consensus norm’ has been far from successful in transcending fundamental power asymmetries between the EU Member States.