A recent wave of survey experiments has advanced scholarly understanding of public attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. In this article, we address the central question: can public opinion influence decision-makers’ views on nuclear weapon use? We bridge this critical gap in the literature with a survey experiment conducted on samples of UK parliamentarians and US and UK government employees in official policy roles. We varied public support for nuclear strikes in realistic scenarios to examine participants’ responsiveness to public preferences when considering nuclear first use, nuclear retaliation, and third-party nuclear threats. We show that high public support notably increases willingness to endorse nuclear first use against non-nuclear adversaries. Furthermore, public backing shapes beliefs about national leaders’ willingness to order nuclear strikes. However, the effect of public opinion is weaker in nuclear retaliation contexts, suggesting that different considerations become prominent when the ‘nuclear taboo’ has been breached. Importantly, sympathetic public opinion strongly influences perceptions of the credibility of third-party nuclear threats, carrying implications for the practice of nuclear deterrence. Our findings highlight the role of public opinion as both an enabling and constraining force on nuclear use and provide new theoretical and empirical insights into elite decision-making in nuclear politics.

Strategic messaging can be used to build support for racial equity policies, but most research has found that linking issues to race is ineffective. What if using strategic messages to increase support for racial equity policies is not simply a matter of whether racial appeals are present in a message, but how they are framed? Evidence from an original survey experiment conducted among a highly diverse group of 2,320 randomly sampled voters in Los Angeles County demonstrates that the most effective messages are those that discuss both race and class—with distinct outcomes on message favorability and anti-carceral policy support. In addition, we find the effect is moderated by ethnoracial identity, racial resentment, and personal contact with the criminal legal system. Our findings suggest that how racial appeals are framed—not simply whether racial frames are present—is important in shaping the impact of a message; they also highlight the need for more research innovation with a variety of ways to link issues to racial inequality with the aim of building support for racial equity policies.

In recent years, scholars have investigated the ‘corruption voting puzzle’, ie why, despite an overwhelming distaste for corruption, voters often collectively fail to ‘throw the rascals out’. While previous literature has largely investigated why voters support corrupt incumbents, our focus lies on nonvoters. Using an original two-wave panel data with Romanian voters just prior to and after the 2020 municipal elections, we test three hypotheses. First, that there is a discrepancy between voters’ intentions and their actual voting behavior (e.g. ‘norms versus actions’). Second, that those most pessimistic about other voters’ intentions to come out to the polls to vote out corrupt incumbents are most likely to abstain. Finally, building on the collective action literature, whether providing such pessimistic voters with information about the intentions of other voters will decrease abstention and increase opposition voting. Using original observational and experimental data, we demonstrate empirical support for our three hypotheses.

How does the form of community dissent shape public support for coercive state policies? This article addresses this question through a vignette experiment on coca forced eradication in Colombia. Participants were randomly assigned to scenarios in which communities either verbally objected to or mobilized against coercive eradication efforts. Exposure to mobilization, compared to verbal objection, reduces support for both unconditional eradication and outright opposition. By contrast, it increases support for eradication conditioned on community consent. These effects are consistent across racial frames, suggesting that the impact of dissent form may transcend ethnic boundaries. We interpret these findings as evidence that visible, organized community dissent can shift public preferences toward more community-centered and conditional approaches. These findings contribute to research on protest, state coercion, and public opinion by showing that the form of dissent shapes support for coercive state interventions.

What is the effect of exposure to contested commemorations? Previous research has mostly found that removing these objects generates backlash. However, I argue that non-intervention can itself have detrimental effects as citizens are exposed to them in their daily lives. Empirically, I leverage a survey experiment where the treatment is administered via an originally created video that resembles a tour guide of an American city. With minimal manipulations, respondents in the treatment group are exposed to Confederate commemorations, while those in the control group are not. I find that these symbols signal the town’s history and predominant ideology. They also negatively shape observers’ emotions, political efficacy, trust in the town residents, and donations to local schools. The effects are moderated by partisanship. Republican respondents are either unaffected by the treatment or move in the opposite direction. These results highlight the potential negative consequences of maintaining controversial commemorations.

Can monuments to victims of authoritarian regimes promote more tolerant societies? We look into the case of Stolpersteine, small memorials commemorating victims of the Nazi regime in Germany. Unlike other monuments, Stolpersteine are dedicated to specific individuals who were victims of Nazi violence. In a pre-registered survey experiment, we showed treated individuals pictures of the stones. Our results show that exposure to Stolpersteine strongly increased negative emotions and reduced positive ones. The results on attitudinal and quasi-behavioral outcomes are mixed, likely driven by ceiling effects. We find a positive effect on tolerance toward the only minority group that faces low tolerance in the control group. However, there is no statistically significant effect for other groups.

Theories of representative democracy emphasize the importance of electoral pledges for informed voting and government accountability. Recent studies have highlighted citizens’ tendency to impose electoral punishments when parties fail to fulfill their pledges. However, conditions under which citizens consider non-fulfillment acceptable have received little attention. Specifically, multiparty government makes it less likely that an individual party fulfills its pledges, but whether citizens take such obstacles into account when evaluating the acceptability of non-fulfillment has remained largely untested. We theorize that both the coalition negotiation context and the negotiation outcome influence citizens’ evaluations. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two vignette experiments in Finland and Germany. The results revealed that, regardless of their opinion about the substance of a pledge, voters were more accepting of unfulfilled pledges when party or coalition characteristics created obstacles to fulfillment. The findings suggest that voters possess a nuanced understanding of the constraints of coalition government.

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.

It is widely believed that high inflation reduces the popularity of incumbents, and contributed to poor incumbent performance in recent elections in the United States and elsewhere. Existing research shows that voters’ inflation perceptions are associated with their evaluations of incumbent parties, but these observational studies cannot eliminate the possibility that the causal relationship runs the other way, where opposition to incumbent governments causes individuals to report higher price increases. To help overcome this inferential challenge, this study draws on a pre-registered experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey fielded just days before the 2024 US Presidential election. We find that priming Americans to think about inflation reduced support for the incumbent party. This effect is most pronounced among Independents and Democrats. These findings suggest that inflation likely contributed to the Democrats’ 2024 electoral defeat, and provide novel evidence that inflation has a causal effect on support for incumbent parties.

Redistricting is often a hotly contested affair within states as the party in power attempts to maximize its chances for electoral success through injecting partisanship into the process. Previous works have evaluated how different redistricting practices can influence elections, but little is known about how redistricting can impact citizen attitudes toward government. Using an original survey with a unique experiment, we evaluate the relationship between how redistricting is performed and how satisfied citizens are with the state of democracy in the United States. We find that the mere perception of redistricting being done in a partisan manner leads to decreased levels of system support. Furthermore, our models show that independent redistricting commissions tend to reduce the perceived prevalence of gerrymandering and boost citizens’ evaluations of the democratic process.

While political opposition to economic globalisation has increased, several governments have adopted stricter unilateral interventions in global supply chains in the name of sustainability, despite their potentially significant economic costs. We argue that these policy choices are partly driven by politicians’ incentives to align with domestic public opinion. In particular, new information disclosure rules enable governments to implement market access restrictions compliant with binding trade liberalisation commitments while (a priori) obscuring their costs to voters. We assess the latter argument with original survey data and experiments with representative samples from the twelve major OECD importing economies (N = 24,000). Indeed, citizens expect substantive benefits while discounting costs from these new regulations, resulting in majority support for rather stringent standards. We further observe that these relationships are muted in countries with high trade exposure. These findings suggest that governments may strategically implement unilateral policies with high-cost obfuscation to garner domestic voter support, driving regulatory proliferation in international economic relations.

Rising inequalities have been described as fertile ground for populist parties across the world. In this article, we investigate the role that inequality perception plays in strengthening populist attitudes and increasing support for populist parties. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, we find that those who perceive greater inequality in society are more likely to support populist parties. To explore the causal relationship, we also conduct a survey experiment in Denmark, Germany, and Italy, randomly exposing participants to factual information about the wealth distribution. The results show that the perception of inequality can increase populist attitudes, but does not immediately affect the likelihood of voting for populist parties in this context. The findings speak to current debates on how inequalities and their perception became a pre-condition for the rise of populist parties all over Europe.

Commemorations of the Confederacy remain pervasive throughout the Southern U.S. Historians have long established that many of these symbols were erected during the Jim Crow era to reinforce white political dominance in public spaces. Yet, little is known about how these enduring symbols shape perceptions among people of different racial identities today. This study examines Confederate monuments where they are most prominently placed: courthouse grounds. Using an original survey experiment of Black, white, and Latino Southerners, it investigates whether the presence of a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse influences feelings of personal safety and welcomeness, as well as perceptions of the fairness of the court system. Findings reveal that a Confederate monument made Black and Latino Southerners feel less safe and welcome at the courthouse and led Black Southerners to perceive the court system as less fair toward people like them. In contrast, Confederate monuments had no overall effect on white Southerners’ perceptions of courthouses or the judicial system. These results underscore the role of contentious symbols in reinforcing inequalities in public spaces.

Solar geoengineering offers a speculative means to cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation into space. While some research suggests that awareness of solar geoengineering could reduce public support for decarbonization through a moral hazard mechanism, other studies indicate that it could serve as a “clarion call” that motivates further action. Using a pre-registered factorial design, we assess how sharing balanced information on solar geoengineering affects attitudes toward decarbonization policies and climate attitudes among 2,509 US residents. We do not find that solar geoengineering information affects support for decarbonization on average, though it may increase support among initially less supportive subgroups; moreover, this information tends to increase the perception that climate change is a daunting problem that cannot be resolved without decarbonization. Our results suggest that concerns about moral hazard should not discourage research on solar geoengineering – as long as the public encounters realistic messages about solar geoengineering’s role.

This paper examines the effectiveness of media literacy interventions in countering misinformation among in-transit migrants in Mexico and Colombia. We conducted experiments to assess whether well-known strategies for fighting misinformation are effective for this understudied yet particularly vulnerable population. We evaluate the impact of digital media literacy tips on migrants’ ability to identify false information and their intentions to share migration-related content. We find that these interventions can effectively decrease migrants’ intentions to share misinformation. We also find suggestive evidence that asking participants to consider accuracy may inadvertently influence their sharing behavior by acting as a behavioral nudge, rather than simply eliciting their sharing intentions. Additionally, the interventions reduced trust in social media as an information source while maintaining trust in official channels. The findings suggest that incorporating digital literacy tips into official websites could be a cost-effective strategy to reduce misinformation circulation among migrant populations.

This study examines whether Americans are more supportive of immigration when migrants share their partisan preferences. To address this question, we embedded a preregistered experiment in a nationally representative survey that was fielded the week before the 2024 US Presidential Election. The main experimental treatment provided information that some immigrant groups tend to favor Donald Trump and the Republican Party. This information reduced support for immigration among Democrats and increased support for immigration among Republicans. Our findings suggest that immigrants’ political identities impact public support for immigration. They also suggest that Trump’s apparent gains among immigrant voters in the 2024 election have the potential to reduce partisan polarization over immigration in the future.

Scholarship has identified key determinants of people’s belief in misinformation predominantly from English-language contexts. However, multilingual citizens often consume news media in multiple languages. We study how the language of consumption affects belief in misinformation and true news articles in multilingual environments. We suggest that language may pass on specific cues affecting how bilinguals evaluate information. In a ten-week survey experiment with bilingual adults in Ukraine, we measured if subjects evaluating information in their less-preferred language were less likely to believe it. We find those who prefer Ukrainian are less likely to believe both false and true stories written in Russian by approximately 0.2 standard deviation units. Conversely, those who prefer Russian show increased belief in false stories in Ukrainian, though this effect is less robust. A secondary digital media literacy intervention does not increase discernment as it reduces belief in both true and false stories equally.

While individuals are expected to perceive similarly identical quantities, regardless of the used units (e.g., 1 ton or 1000 kg), several scholars suggest that consumers over-infer quantities when they are presented in bigger and phonetically longer numbers. In two experimental studies, we examine this numerosity bias in the context of household food waste. Unlike previous scholars, manipulating numerosity revealed no effect: perceptions of food waste volume and likelihood to reduce it are not influenced by the used numeric value (2500 g vs. 2.5 kg; Study 1) nor the number of syllables (two kilos eight hundred seventy-five grams vs. three kilograms; Study 2).

Globally, prejudicial attitudes toward women persist. By taking anti-discriminatory stances, value-oriented organizations – e.g., political parties and religious denominations – can tap into group identities to shape their members’ attitudes. We know much less about the role of organizations that are not inherently value-oriented – such as sports teams – in accomplishing the same. Yet, as various campaigns by sports teams worldwide indicate, this is precisely what non-value-oriented organizations increasingly attempt to do. Can football team fandom be leveraged to promote gender-egalitarian attitudes? We address this question with data from a national survey in Brazil and a survey experiment conducted in partnership with a major Brazilian football club. We find that while football team identity is salient and may be leveraged to change displayed social attitudes, the Club’s anti-sexism campaign inadvertently increased men’s expressed prejudice toward women in football – although it may have also improved institutional trust among women.