Even though the Parti Conservateur du Québec (PCQ) did not manage to elect any members to the Assemblée nationale in Quebec's 2022 general election, this political party nonetheless received nearly 13 per cent of the popular vote. The party mainly campaigned on issues related to the economic right, but also discontent with the Legault government's COVID-19 health measures. We assess the extent to which these different drivers of support explain vote choice in favour of the PCQ using individual-level survey data from the 2022 Quebec Election Study. We find that the PCQ did succeed in gathering support on the basis of these issues, but that it was also able to attract voters with a lesser appetite for climate change mitigation as well as a populist and cynical outlook on politics. The party also appears to be especially popular among younger, male and less educated voters living outside the Greater Montreal region.

In discussions about the possibly ideological character of ideal theory in liberal political philosophy, one worry concerns the underlying social ontology and how it can serve to make important structural injustices less visible. More recently, similar concerns have begun to appear within social ontology itself, with several authors arguing for a shift from more traditional models to different forms of nonideal or critical social ontology instead. This article develops a conception of ideal theory applicable to both social ontology and political theory, and it is then argued we should take seriously worries about ideal theory playing an ideological role. One consequence of how the ideal/nonideal distinction is understood here, however, is that the line between ideal and nonideal theory is not sharp. What we have is rather a continuum ranging from the strongly ideal to the strongly nonideal, and where the balance then needs to shift away from the former.

The use of religious symbols has sparked heated debate and numerous judicial cases across Europe. Early case law from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been criticised for allegedly employing biased discourses. However, it remains unclear whether such biased discourses are present in recent ECtHR rulings or in comparable decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This article applies Critical Discourse Analysis, a linguistic and social science approach, to examine the narratives used by the ECtHR and ECJ in cases involving religious symbols. It argues that religious and gender biases are pervasive in ECtHR judgements. While the ECJ generally employs neutral language, biased discourses occasionally emerge in the ‘subtext’ of its decisions. These biases are not incidental but serve as strategic tools within judicial narratives, reinforcing the argumentative legitimacy of rulings for audiences influenced by societal prejudices.

Which predispositions drive voters’ policy attitudes? This article tests the role of political values as a driver of attitudes relative to two commonly posited sources – partisanship and symbolic ideology. Past work has found correlations between values and issue attitudes, but these cross-sectional studies have limited causal purchases. I test the effects of traditionalist and egalitarian values on issue stances using six ANES and GSS panel surveys from 1992 to 2020. I find that values drive within-voter changes in policy attitudes under a variety of specifications. Additionally, values shape attitudes on emergent policies, which I test using the cases of welfare reform in the 1990s and transgender policies in the 2010s. In all models, values have as large or larger effects on attitudes as that of partisanship or ideology. I conclude that values are a core predisposition which voters employ to make sense of policy issues.

The Forum Augustum represents one of the most important examples of the public and material dissemination of Augustan ideology. This paper offers a new model for understanding how the Forum's spatial and architectural design communicated that ideology. Departing from scholarly emphasis on the Forum's statuary programme, it examines how the Forum's spaces set up a series of contrasts that structured visitors’ experiences. In the porticoes, the extensive statue programme granted viewers a wide range of choices about what they could see. In the central square and hemicycles (exedrae), however, visitors were compelled by the paucity of material to encounter certain images and ideas. This argument shows a new way of understanding the Forum, where movement into and between certain spaces structured how Augustan ideology was communicated, received, and understood.

Xi Jinping's frequent references to Mao Zedong, along with Xi's own claims to ideological originality, have fueled debate over the significance of Maoism in the PRC today. The discussion recalls an earlier debate, at the height of the Cold War, over the meaning of Maoism itself. This paper revisits that earlier controversy, reflected in arguments between Benjamin Schwartz and Karl Wittfogel, with an eye toward their contemporary relevance.

This study investigates how former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) tried to reproduce and reinforce their conservative and nationalist ideologies from 2012 to 2020. Conducting critical discourse analysis on official statements, speeches, and remarks at press conferences highlights the strategies that Abe and his sympathizers used to promote and legitimize the idea of “Take back Japan (Nippon wo torimodosu).” This study also elucidates the implications of the party's efforts to reproduce and disseminate its campaign slogan in official narratives.

The January 6th insurrection at the U.S. capital was an eye-opening moment for many Americans. With the 2024 election cycle in swing, members of the Democratic Party are using January 6th as a rallying call for the need to protect democracy. But were the events of January 6th viewed equally among liberals? We argue that the events of January 6th resonate for a particular demographic well-informed liberal White voters. We argue that liberal minority voters will feel the racial undertones of January 6th more than White liberals. Furthermore, we examine how voters of different races viewed the events of January 6th and how views on race relations impact their perceptions of January 6th. We find that White liberals are less angry about race relations in the aftermath of January 6th, and while they viewed January 6th as an insurrection and blamed Trump and Republicans in Congress for their role, they are less likely to say that racism and White Supremacy motivated the insurrectionists. This paper indicates that race plays a key role in political perceptions, even among those who hold similar political ideologies.

Most political systems consist of multiple layers. Yet datasets are predominantly situated at a single territorial tier, encouraging methodological nationalism, regionalism, and localism. We present three new integrated datasets that include electoral, institutional, ideological, and government composition data on the country and regional level (RD|CED, RED and RPSD). With this data, we cover 337 country elections on the regional level, 2,226 regional elections, and 2,825 regional cabinets in 365 regions of 21 countries from 1941 to 2019, accounting for 800 political parties and their ideological positions. Combined, these data complement and extend existing datasets and facilitate the study of political interaction across levels. Data are available at http://multi-level-cross-level-politics.eu/ or can be accessed through the Havard Dataverse repository. We conclude with an agenda for future cross-level studies.

Liberals experience more distress than conservatives. Why? We offer a novel explanation, the social support hypothesis. Maintaining social support and avoiding exclusion are basic human motivations, but people differ in their sensitivity to the threat of social exclusion. Among people high in the personality trait neuroticism, exclusion easily triggers feelings of vulnerability and neediness. The social support hypothesis translates this to politics. Concerned with their own vulnerability, we find that neurotic people prefer policies of care – social welfare and redistribution – but not other left-wing policies. Specifically, it is anxiety – the facet of neuroticism tapping sensitivity to social threats – that drives this link. And it is only for people experiencing exclusion that anxiety predicts support for social welfare. Our results come from two experiments and four representative surveys across two continents. They help to resolve the puzzle of liberal distress while providing a new template for research on personality and politics.