Recent studies suggest that value orientations, both pro-environmental values and concerns and left–right ideology, strongly predict climate policy support in some settings, but not in others, and that institutional quality determines the strength of these associations. These studies are based on a limited number of countries and do not investigate the mechanisms at work nor what aspects of quality of government (QoG) matter more specifically. Analyzing data from 135 European regions across 15 countries, this paper finds that QoG moderates the relationships of pro-environmental values and left–right ideology with climate tax support and suggests that political trust is an underlying individual-level mechanism. Moreover, corruption seems to be the most important aspect of QoG for policy support. In regions where corruption is prevalent and trust in state institutions is low, support for climate taxes is low even among those who are generally concerned about the environment and climate change and who favor state intervention. The study suggests additional analyses, adopting quantitative and qualitative approaches, to inform policymakers on how to increase public support for climate taxation and improve policy designs to mitigate policy concerns across various segments of the population.

This study uses a rational choice approach to argue that an under-theorized and rarely tested cause of governmental discrimination against religious minorities is its popularity. Specifically, we argue that self-interested politicians are more likely to enact discriminatory policies when they believe said discrimination will be popular. These policies, in turn, have payoffs via increased public perceptions of governmental legitimacy. Using the Religion and State project, round 3 and World Values Survey data for members of the majority religion between 1990 and 2014 in 58 Christian-majority countries, we demonstrate that prejudice against members of other religions predicts increased governmental religious discrimination, which is, in turn, associated with higher confidence in government, legislatures, and political parties. While our results are specific to discrimination against religious minorities, this suggests that when discrimination against minorities in general is popular, politicians are likely to oblige.

This article examines the relationship between term limits in parliament and “electoral disconnection,” the notion that legislators constrained in their ability to run for office face diminished incentives to perform strategic activities to boost their chances of securing candidacy and re-election. We leverage the case of the Italian Five Star Movement’s party-imposed limit of two terms for affiliates seeking to gain or retain a parliamentary seat. We exploit an original dataset of parliamentary activities covering both chambers of the Italian Parliament between 2013 and 2022. We estimate a series of mixed-effect regression models to assess the performance of MPs who were elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2018. In line with our expectations, the evidence suggests that term-limited representatives serving their second mandate tend to become less productive when it comes to “electorally lucrative” activities and more prone to rebelling than their non-term-limited colleagues. These findings contribute to our understanding of the incentives that drive parliamentary behavior.

Many citizens in liberal democracies are concerned about immigration and its impact on their countries. Governments often seek to address these concerns by restricting the post-entry rights of immigrants such as the right to permanent settlement or access to welfare benefits. Thereby, it is expected that immigrants with an inferior legal status are (perceived as) less threatening to natives and, as a result, make the latter more willing to accept new immigrants. Does this policy rationale indeed attenuate public opposition to immigrant admission and thus allow for the reconciliation of the economic need for immigrants with the political concerns of domestic constituents? This study advances the theoretical argument of a rights-conditionality in citizens’ immigration preferences and provides empirical evidence on the phenomenon. A factorial survey experiment among citizens in the United States and Switzerland tests the effect of residence and welfare rights on the public opposition to immigrant admission. The results show that restricting immigrants’ welfare rights does significantly decrease public opposition towards immigration across the two countries. In contrast, restricting immigrants’ residence rights does not, and in the context of Switzerland, even increases opposition to immigrant admission. Citizens critical of immigration are thus not per se more welcoming to immigrants if they receive an inferior legal status but seem to care about immigrants’ contributions and commitment to the receiving society. The findings highlight the importance of immigrants‘ post-entry rights in the view of citizens and show how the design of immigration policies may help to understand public immigration preferences.

In Europe, the integration process has domesticated international relations, safeguarded member-states’ democracies, and enabled collective action and supranational problem-solving. It has brought about the European Union (EU) and a democratic ‘surplus’. How has this been possible when the binding effect of EU law is grounded neither in the sovereign’s monopoly on power at the European level nor in the final decision-making authority of the EU? An answer to this puzzle is found in the fact that a public coercive framework has been established, which aims at solving the indeterminacy and assurance problems facing international cooperation. The enabling condition of sovereignty is replaced by those of co-legislation and a binding judicial process. The latter creates reasons for deference to legitimate authority and hence a compliance condition. However, since the Union falls short of meeting certain democratic standards, oversteps competences, and is plagued with inertia, there is a call for constitutional reform.

Control over the legislative messaging agenda has important political, electoral and policy consequences. Existing models of congressional agenda-setting suggest that national polarization drives the agenda. At the same time, models of home style and formal models of leadership hypothesize that legislators shift their messaging as they balance coordination and information problems. We say the coordination problem dominates when conditions incentivize legislators to agree on the same message rather than fail to reach consensus. Conversely, the information problem is said to dominate in circumstances where legislators prefer to say nothing at all rather than reach consensus on the wrong political message. Formal theories predict that when coordination problems are pressing, legislative members follow the policy positions of party leaders. When their party’s information problem is acute, party members instead rely on the wisdom of the caucus to set the party’s agenda. To test these theories, we analyze the Twitter accounts of U.S. House members with a Joint Sentiment Topic model, generating a new understanding of House leadership power. Our analyses reveal complex leader-follower relationships. Party leaders possess the power to substantially affect the propensity of rank-and-file members to discuss topics, especially when the coordination problem dominates; these effects are pronounced even when coordination problems are pressing. That said, when the underlying politics are unclear, rank-and-file members exert influence on the discussion of a topic because the information problem is more acute. At the same time and for these uncertain topics, leadership influence decreases, consistent with theory. We show these results are robust to the underlying dynamics of contemporary political discussion and context, including leading explanations for party leadership power, such as national polarization.

Can public diplomacy in times of crisis shape citizens’ attitudes towards international politics? Using a survey experiment in Italy, we evaluated whether information cues about public diplomacy efforts by the United States and China to assist the country in dealing with the COVID-19 emergency shifted the importance citizens attached to Italy’s international allies being democracies. We found that citizens who receive positive cues about USA efforts to assist Italy report a stronger preference for Italy interacting with democracies. At the same time, when they received positive cues about China’s efforts to assist Italy, they discounted the importance attached to international allies being democracies. We further found that these effects are conditional on the participants’ support for democracy at home. We argue that these findings are consistent with a cognitive dissonance framework where citizens update their attitudes to decrease dissonant cognitions when they receive information that challenges prior beliefs or expectations.

The article examines the key factors influencing women’s electoral success in European Parliament (EP) elections. We present a new conceptual approach and a novel model that simultaneously incorporates trends in party characteristics, institutional and socio-economic factors and cross-country trends in women’s representation. The model provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships between party-level and Member State-level factors and the election of women to the EP. The study is based on an original dataset of 450 observations on national political parties from all Member States, spanning four European elections from 2004 to 2019.

Our results show that party characteristics such as incumbency rates, party size and ideological orientations (i.e. the party’s position on the GAL-TAN scale or its attitude towards European integration) play a key role in shaping women’s representation. This article provides novel insights into the unique features of Central and Eastern Europe, elucidating divergent patterns of women’s electoral prospects in conservative and progressive parties in Western democracies and Central and Eastern European post-communist EU Member States.

In exploring deliberative dynamics within mini-publics, it has been observed that initial group-building activities play a crucial role in enhancing deliberative reasoning. However, the influence of liberal democratic practices such as voting mechanisms and the inclusion of strategic or representative stakeholders, on deliberative processes is not well understood. This study undertakes a comparative configurational meta-analysis (CCMA) of 22 minipublics to investigate how these liberal democratic elements influence deliberative reasoning. Results indicate that participants’ deliberative reasoning is significantly enhanced in contexts where initial group activities are coupled with prolonged periods of deliberation and where voting is minimised or absent. In contrast, the presence of voting mechanisms, strategic stakeholder involvement, and a high impact of minipublics on decision-making processes are associated with weaker, negative, or stable participant deliberative reasoning. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on the integration of deliberative and non-deliberative components within minipublics, highlighting the potential negative impact of strategic behaviour on the quality of deliberation.

The literature on the Council of the EU has proliferated over the past twenty years thanks to the publication of voting records and an increased proportion of official documents. However, these sources continue to be affected by significant limitations, and researchers have therefore had to turn to expert interviews in order to understand decision-making within the institution. This research note aims to assess the progress enabled by this method, by identifying the main datasets produced with it and their contributions. What kind of data have been explored? Are they sufficient for deciphering the explanatory mechanisms behind EU negotiations? What are the practical advantages and disadvantages of this method? Will it continue to hold such an important place in the EU studies literature in the foreseeable future? This review explores these questions, identifying five widely-used interview-based datasets and the findings they have led to, then introducing a debate about the future of this type of research in an ever-evolving technological landscape.