Leaders and members of parliament serve as a political party's public face. Their image casts a shadow in which observers interpret policy statements. It is hypothesized in this article that media cover and voters understand policy messages through the lens of prominent party members’ characteristics. Easy-to-observe descriptive traits, such as gender or ethnicity, cue parties’ policy priorities. Media are more likely to emphasise party messages on issues historically related to these groups when they are visible in the party's public image. Hypotheses from this theory are tested using data on prominent party members’ descriptive characteristics, policy statements and media coverage of statements from the European Election Studies. Data from the 1999, 2004 and 2009 European elections evidence support for the theory. Parties with more female representatives signal stronger emphasis on gendered issues in media reports. The results hold implications for understanding the ways in which parties deliver and voters receive campaign messages. This research offers an explanation for voters’ limited knowledge of parties’ policy positions; media reinforce existing gender stereotypes and voters’ predispositions by selectively reporting policy statements.

During the last two decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued that civil society is structurally deficient in postcommunist countries. Yet why have the seemingly strong, active and mobilised civic movements of the transition period become so weak after democracy was established? And why have there been diverging political trajectories across the postcommunist space if civil society structures were universally weak? This article uses a new, broader range of data to show that civil societies in Central and Eastern European countries are not as feeble as commonly assumed. Many postcommunist countries possess vigorous public spheres and active civil society organisations strongly connected to transnational civic networks able to shape domestic policies. In a series of time‐series cross‐section models, the article shows that broader measures of civic and social institutions are able to predict the diverging transition paths among postcommunist regimes, and in particular the growing gap between democratic East Central Europe and the increasingly authoritarian post‐Soviet space.

Democracy and gender equality are increasingly contested in European parliamentary contexts, with the rise of political parties and movements that oppose feminist politics and the rights of women, LGBTI* and racialised people. Existing literature exploring far‐right and anti‐gender actors in institutional settings has focused on their discourse and impact on parliamentary politics and governments. Yet, limited attention has been paid to the feminist responses articulated in parliamentary contexts that face active opposition to gender and LGBTI* equality. This article addresses this gap by analysing feminist parliamentary responses to such opposition, and the factors that enable and constrain these responses, by undertaking a multi‐level comparison between the Catalan Parliament (2021–2024) and the Spanish Parliament (2019–2023), based on content analysis of 21 parliamentary debates and 42 in‐depth interviews.

We argue that the capacity of parliaments to respond to anti‐gender, far‐right opposition to gender, racial and LGBTI* equality is structured by macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐level enabling and constraining factors that include the state of democracy and its legacies, state structure, the constellation of anti‐gender and pro‐equality forces, the institutionalisation of equality, and the role of critical actors. By identifying a range of feminist strategies employed in the Spanish and Catalan parliamentary contexts – including ‘knowledge’, ‘coalition‐building’, ‘rule‐making’ and ‘everyday pragmatic engagement’ – this article contributes to developing the emerging scholarly field of feminist institutional responses to anti‐gender politics, thereby advancing the theory of feminist institutionalism, state feminism and anti‐gender politics in parliamentary contexts.

Populist radical right parties are considerably more popular in some areas (neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions) than others. They thrive in some cities, in some smaller towns, and in some rural areas, but they are unsuccessful in other cities, small towns, and rural areas. We seek to explain this regional variation by modelling at the individual level how citizens respond to local conditions. We argue that patterns of populist radical right support can be explained by anxiety in the face of social change. However, how social change manifests itself is different in rural and urban areas, so that variations in populist radical right support are rooted in different kinds of conditions. To analyse the effects of these conditions we use unique geo‐referenced survey data from the Netherlands collected among a nationwide sample of 8,000 Dutch respondents. Our analyses demonstrate that the presence of immigrants (and particularly increases therein) can explain why populist radical right parties are more popular in some urban areas than in others, but that it cannot explain variation across rural areas. In these areas, local marginalization is an important predictor of support for populist radical right parties. Hence, to understand the support for the populist radical right, the heterogeneity of its electorate should be recognized.

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross‐national survey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with a chance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality has no such effect.

As nationalist sentiments gain traction globally, the attitudinal and institutional foundations of the international liberal order face new challenges. One manifestation of this trend is the growing backlash against international courts. Defenders of the liberal order struggle to articulate compelling reasons for why states, and their citizens, should continue delegating authority to international institutions. This article probes the effectiveness of arguments that emphasise the appropriateness and benefits of cooperation in containing preferences for backlash among the mass public. We rely on IR theories that explain why elites create international institutions to derive three sets of arguments that could be deployed to boost support for international courts. We then use experimental methods to test their impact on support for backlash against the European Court of Human Rights in Britain (ECtHR). First, in line with principal‐agent models of delegation, we find that information about the court's reliability as an ‘agent’ boosts support for the ECtHR, but less so information that signals Britain's status as a principal. Second, in line with constructivist approaches, associating support for the court with the position of an in‐group state like Denmark, and opposition with an out‐group state like Russia, also elicits more positive attitudes. This finding points to the importance of ‘blame by association’ and cues of in/out‐group identity in building support for cooperation. The effect is stronger when we increase social pressure by providing information about social attitudes towards Denmark and Russia in Britain, where the public overwhelmingly trusts the Danes and distrusts the Russians. Finally, in contrast to Liberal explanations for the creation of the ECtHR, the study finds no evidence that highlighting the court's mission to promote democracy and international peace contains backlash. We show that the positive effects of the first two arguments are not driven by pre‐treatment attitudes such as political sophistication, patriotism, internationalism, institutional trust or political preferences.

To what extent political parties engage in debates about the same issues and how they respond to each other is highly relevant to democratic processes. Existing research on issue engagement has uncovered several interesting patterns and factors, but has neglected one important feature of contemporary democracies: nowadays, political actors have a wide range of communication channels at their disposal with the use of ‘newer’ forms of political communication (e.g., social media) potentially transforming discursive power relations between political actors. However, it remains largely unclear whether the extent and nature of issue engagement varies between more ‘traditional’ and ‘newer’ forms of political communication. To fill this gap, I apply unsupervised topic modelling to press releases and tweets from political parties in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (January 2019–September 2021). The statistical analysis shows substantial differences in issue engagement between political parties in press releases and on Twitter, now X. First, I find a higher likelihood of issue engagement between parties in tweets. Second, Twitter appears to moderate the influence of party‐level factors on issue engagement compared to press releases. The results show that for issue engagement in tweets, the importance of party size is smaller and the role of government parties is larger than in press releases, while the role of ideological distance does not seem to change. These findings add important insights to our understanding of the potential transformative effect of new communication technologies on party competition and political discourse.

The electoral law in many European countries permits voters to indicate preferred candidates within a party list rather than to make a choice only between parties. This paper examines briefly the various voting arrangements which allow this and considers in some detail the patterns of their utilization and their possible consequences. Whilst such behaviour can be understood as a form of political participation, it is evident that patterns vary and consequences are uncertain due to the complex interrelationship between the different elements in the electoral situation.

In this paper we leverage a sudden shift in refugee settlement policy to study the electoral consequences of refugee settlements. After the 2013 Norwegian parliamentary election, the newly elected right‐wing government made a concerted effort to spread newly arrived immigrants across the country, with the consequence that some municipalities with limited experience in settling refugees accepted to do so. We propose that such policy changes have political consequences, increasing the salience of immigration issues and shifting voters’ preferences to the right. We further propose that successful refugee integration can move (parts of) the electorate to the left, with stronger political polarization as a possible effect of the policy change. Applying difference‐in‐differences techniques, we find no evidence of unidirectional shifts in voter sentiments, but support for the hypothesis of stronger political polarization.

Using evidence from Great Britain, the United States, Belgium and Spain, it is demonstrated in this article that in integrated and divided nations alike, citizens are more strongly attached to political parties than to the social groups that the parties represent. In all four nations, partisans discriminate against their opponents to a degree that exceeds discrimination against members of religious, linguistic, ethnic or regional out‐groups. This pattern holds even when social cleavages are intense and the basis for prolonged political conflict. Partisan animus is conditioned by ideological proximity; partisans are more distrusting of parties furthest from them in the ideological space. The effects of partisanship on trust are eroded when partisan and social ties collide. In closing, the article considers the reasons that give rise to the strength of ‘partyism’ in modern democracies.

Most studies on European solidarity (‘bonding’) during COVID‐19 lack a baseline comparison with outside states. We, therefore, cannot say whether European solidarity is universal or geared towards European Union (EU) insiders (‘bounding’). We thus ask whether European solidarity is ‘bounded’, that is, whether it relies on differentiation between European insiders and outsiders. We argue that if existent, bounded solidarity constitutes a long‐term and thick basis for institutional building. To explore this ‘bonding–bounding’ dynamic, we use a vignette experiment embedded into an original survey collected in eight European countries (n ∼ 8900), covering all European regions. Our design varies the countries receiving solidarity, and the channels (EU level vs. member state level), policy domains (health vs. economy) and instruments (loans, grants, medical equipment, vaccines) through which solidarity is provided. Regarding bounding, we find that most countries are more solidaristic with EU countries than an outsider, baseline state (Peru), Italy excepted. There is, nonetheless, a strong heterogeneity between countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden mostly want to help themselves and Southern member states, but not Central Eastern European member states, which we show is due to their perceived obstructionism related to the Rule of Law debate. Concerning the nature of solidarity, we find that most respondents prefer solidarity to be channelled through the EU and loans, with evidence suggesting a freeriding mechanism behind this preference. All in all, our results indicate that EU citizens form a distinct community of solidarity which, in line with a Rokkanian understanding of polity formation, plays a key role in political development and consolidation.

The accent on status-anxiety factors which shape ideologies and political directions has emerged as a popular, but relatively speculative and untested, theme in contemporary political analysis. This article traces the evolution of the “status politics” theme, from its essayist interpretations of American right-wing radicalism to comparative applications in other Western industrialized societies. The task is to make more organized sense of this theme and to submit several derivative statements to a systematic empirical test. The results are based on a secondary analysis of Lausanne survey data and the preliminary findings of a recent nation-wide survey of the Swiss general electorate. The Lausanne results indicate that emotive dissatisfaction with personal status failures and felt aspiration—achievement discrepancies, especially among occupational skidders and immobile respondents, are among the more influential status-anxiety factors associated with classical conservative ideology. The national survey results point to other related status insecurities and dissatisfactions which distinguish ultraconservative National Action and Republican party supporters from other party supporters in the Swiss general electorate. These results lend some comparative weight to the status politics explanation.

Against premature claims about the declining political relevance of social class in post‐industrial democracies, recent research indicates that class continues to be a relevant determinant of political preferences. In post‐industrial societies ‘old’ class divides on economic issues coexist with ‘new’ class alignments on cultural topics. While there is cumulated evidence of social classes’ distinct placement on these issues, this paper argues that the strength of class divides depends on the extent to which these issues are politicized by political parties. Studying preferences on economic and cultural issues (attitudes towards redistribution, immigration, gay rights and European integration), this study shows that class divides in preferences are context dependent. The multilevel analyses drawing on data from the European Social Survey and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey for 27 European democracies demonstrate that classes’ differences in preferences are accentuated on issues strongly contested and emphasized by parties, and mitigated on issues where party conflict is weaker. Adding to recent literature on parties and class conflict, this study identifies another stage at which parties can affect the strength of class voting. The varying strength of class divides across contexts also has implications for parties’ ability to garner support beyond a single class. This becomes increasingly unlikely in contexts of high issue politicization.

After a discussion of possible components in a definition of ‘cumulation’ and the relative lack of cumulation in political science, a scheme for research strategies is outlined with the aim of facilitating cumulation, or at least facilitating a diagnosis of the state of political science in this respect. The scheme includes three types of studies: (1) analysis of the formal properties of theoretical approaches in political science, (2) content analyses in the form of inventories of problems, propositions and concepts in the discipline, (3) evaluational analysis, i.e. an assessment of what ‘theory criteria’ to use for evaluating the approaches and of the probable relations between these criteria.