The rise of nationalist and populist candidates worldwide provides compelling evidence that parties win elections, not by appealing to voters’ policy preferences alone, but rather by connecting those preferences to group identities. This state-of-the-field article argues that party scholars need to integrate constructivist insights from neighboring fields to better understand the role of group identities in party competition. We review recent demand- and supply-side studies on the role of group identities in elections and bring them into conversation with the literature on ethnic politics and nationalism and political economic models of identity politics. On this basis, we suggest a research agenda that models voters as having both policy preferences and desires for self-esteem and self-consistency, which are mediated by their identification with social groups. Voters want to benefit others they see as being similar to themselves, to raise the status of the groups they identify with, and to maintain self-consistency by narrowing the gap between themselves and members of groups with which they identify. Political parties strategically combine policy offers with group appeals to address – and shape – all these motivations. Shifting from a ‘policy-only’ towards a ‘policy-cum-identity’ paradigm will enable the field of party politics to better understand the dynamics of real-world electoral competition and to reconcile its models with the latest developments in the political theory of representation.

Discussions of social organisation in early complex societies often rely on traditional narratives of a linear progression to hierarchy, but archaeological evidence is increasingly showcasing a spectrum of social structures. Here, examination of burial practices in 50 tombs from Kedurma, Sudan, helps illustrate social stratification and identity negotiation beyond the binary rendering of elite/non-elite during the Meroitic period (third century BC to fourth century AD). The diversity of architectural forms and grave goods highlights the importance of inter-regional exchange networks and a more fluid social dynamic, contributing to our understanding of early African state formation.

Can territorial disputes within countries be a basis for affective polarization? If so, how does it vary across territories? A burgeoning literature on affective polarization has largely focused on partisan divisions; we argue that contentious political issues such as those relating to territorial integrity can also be a basis for such affective polarization, where citizens feel concord with those sharing such policy preferences and animus for those who do not. We specify hypotheses about territorial‐policy‐based affective polarization and bring comparative survey evidence from three European regions with salient and contentious territorial claims: Scotland, Catalonia and Northern Ireland. While these three cases encompass different outcomes of territorial disputes, our results show strikingly similar levels of affective polarization.

This response memo offers a critical reassessment of the claim that ideological self-placement in Chile reflects a form of social identity. While the article under discussion provides compelling evidence of ideological stability, it risks conflating political linkage with social identity formation. In contexts of partisan decline, such as Chile’s post-authoritarian landscape, ideological categories may persist not as thick communal identities but as affective rejection fields. Drawing on insights from political psychology and Latin American party system research, this memo proposes an alternative hypothesis: ideological stability is structured by negative partisan identities—emotionally charged, ideologically coherent rejections that shape voter behavior without requiring strong organizational anchors. A stylized conceptual map illustrates the geometry of rejection in Chile’s political space. These affective coordinates help explain voter alignment in the absence of coherent in-groups or traditional parties. While preliminary, this framework underscores the importance of moving beyond ideological self-placement as a proxy for social identity and calls for renewed attention to the emotional architecture of opposition. In doing so, it invites a broader research agenda on how negative partisanship operates across fragmented democracies in Latin America.

Interest in the influence of subjective perceptions of social groups on political behaviour is increasing. While most extant work has focused on voters’ social identities and their related, expressive considerations about the social bases of parties, this article directs attention to two other considerations that may also influence the vote: voters’ evaluations of social groups, as suggested by reference group theory, and their instrumental considerations about the extent to which parties work to advance the interests of specific groups. Using both an observational (N = 2,065) and a preregistered experimental study (N = 7,090) about voter evaluations of social classes and the extent to which parties are seen as fighting for them in Denmark, the study shows how these considerations influence party choice over and above the influence of identity-based considerations. Thereby, the study is the first to show experimental evidence for the effect of group evaluations on vote choice.

This Registered Report examines urban-rural tensions in Sweden – a historically egalitarian, multi-party welfare state with strong geographical equalization schemes, making it a least-likely case for place-based resentment theories. Using an online survey experiment (n = 2,051), we measured resentment through perceptions of in-group and out-group, and by experimentally varying whether political statements came from rural or urban politicians. Rural respondents showed stronger in-group identification, greater place-based resentment, and more negative stereotypes of their out-group than urban respondents. However, we find no evidence of place-based bias – that is, that rural respondents are less receptive to urban politicians’ statements, or vice versa. These findings reveal clear urban-rural tensions in a context often considered unlikely for such divides, underscoring the role of regional identities in political discourse and policy in multi-party welfare states beyond Anglo-Saxon settings, while indicating that these tensions do not translate into systematic bias in evaluating political statements.

Humans, with their various social identities, form an important part of engineering design. Therefore, designers must reflect on the implications of social identity when designing products. However, little research has examined the quality and content of student designers’ reflections on the importance of social identity in design, and we aim to explore this research gap. The results of our study revealed higher frequencies of responses related to personal experiences and design/action among designers with minoritized social identities. Designers with minoritized identities also provided higher-quality reflections than those in the majority group. These results suggest that designers with different social identities may vary in their ability to critically reflect on the impact of social identity in design and call for the need for new reflective design tools and educational approaches.

Human-centered design involves designing for users who may have social identities that are dissimilar from designers’ social identities. These differences could impact designers’ ability to understand users’ needs and integrate considerations of social identity into design decisions. Reflective interventions could encourage designers to actively consider social identity in design and our aim in this research is to explore this hypothesis through an experimental study. We tested the effects of completing a social identity-based reflection exercise on novice designers’ task clarification behavior. We also qualitatively examined the quality and content of the reflection responses. We find that participants who completed the intervention generated more social identity-focused design requirements, irrespective of the persona provided to them. Additionally, the content analysis revealed that designers who occupy minority identities (e.g., women and students of color) were more likely to provide deeper and higher-quality reflection responses. These findings suggest that reflective interventions could be an effective mechanism to promote inclusive design, leading to the design of products that users across social identities can use equitably. Furthermore, designers with different social identities may require different reflection cues (e.g., ones more focused on their personal experiences), to encourage deeper reflection on the effects of social identity in design.

Past research has documented ingroup favoritism, the tendency to cooperate more with ingroup members than outgroup members, in a wide range of intergroup contexts, and extensively discussed conditions under which ingroup favoritism emerges. However, previous studies have predominantly focused on a simplistic intergroup context, for instance, where group boundaries are static, and one group membership is present. To fill the gap, we leveraged data from professional volleyball players and investigated the influence of (1) varying levels of intergroup conflict salience, (2) past and present group memberships, and (3) national team membership on intergroup cooperation. Contrary to our hypotheses and the social identity perspective, we found that conflict salience and former ingroup membership did not influence intergroup cooperation. Additionally, we found that the more national team players there are in the ingroup, the more cooperative those who play for the national team are with ingroup members, leading to increased ingroup favoritism.