A key component of the authoritarian worldview is social conformity, which manifests in a need to minimize threats to social order. This desire for stability often leads authoritarians to hold systematic and approving attitudes toward law enforcement. Previous scholarship suggests that authoritarianism is linked to attitudes shaped by the social dominance of one’s group identity. We extend this framework to Hispanic populations, whose identities historically fall outside the dominant social order, to examine whether authoritarianism predicts support for law enforcement. Using data from the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES), we employ regression models to examine the relationship between authoritarianism, ethnicity, and attitudes toward law enforcement. Results indicate that authoritarians express more favorable views of law enforcement across non-Hispanic white and Hispanic respondents, with a stronger effect among Hispanics. Positive feelings toward whites are also associated with higher levels of authoritarianism and greater support for police, underscoring the importance of white identity salience in shaping political attitudes. These findings demonstrate that authoritarianism functions as a psychological orientation emphasizing order and conformity rather than a defensive response to marginalization. Our results contribute to understanding how racial identity salience and acculturation processes shape the relationship between worldview and support for state authority.

Questions about race and representation often hinge on the public’s beliefs about which policies affect different communities, yet there is limited evidence on how these associations are actually perceived. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we examine how the issue priorities of political candidates shape perceptions of who they represent. Most policy areas are perceived to benefit White Americans; only a few, especially criminal justice and poverty, are strongly associated with African Americans. We also show that perceptions of candidate ideology and race correlate with perceptions of Black representation, but mediation analysis reveals that criminal justice is associated with Black representation above and beyond ideological inferences. Finally, analyzing nearly 200,000 congressional newsletters and find that while race is rarely explicitly mentioned, Black Americans are most frequently referenced in the context of criminal justice and poverty. Together, these results underscore how race-policy associations operate through both public perception and elite messaging, shaping broader understandings of political representation.

Local prosecutors in the United States have significant discretion in the criminal legal system and have traditionally wielded their power in a way that contributes to mass incarceration. Since 2016, however, “progressive” prosecutors have been elected in growing numbers on pledges to mitigate the racialized harms of mass incarceration. While scholars tie progressive prosecutors’ elections to the Movement for Black Lives (BLM), less is known about countermovement efforts—including recalls, impeachments, and suspensions, examples of extra-electoral challenges—opposing these prosecutors. To address this gap, I constructed an original database of all local prosecutors in 2012 and/or 2022 in the country’s 300 most populous jurisdictions. Findings reveal that extra-electoral challenges disproportionately target women of color, disproportionately occur in Republican-controlled states, and have nearly tripled over the last decade. I argue that extra-electoral challenges constitute a novel movement repertoire used by the political right to challenge racial justice efforts following BLM.

Turnout appeals are amplified in highly polarized, hotly contested elections like 2020. The political environment included social justice unrest, overt appeals to white male voters, and new voting procedures which resonated differently across intersectional identities. Gender and race politics intertwined to create a charged environment for mobilization and for social pressure to vote. We expect the nature and effectiveness of turnout appeals to have varied by race and gender intersections. In addition, given past behavior and the climate of protest, we expect individuals under 30 were less responsive to social pressures to vote. Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS 2020), we examine whether individuals with different intersectional identities varied in their perception of social pressure to vote as well as in the effectiveness of that pressure. We find that voters are sensitive to social pressure appeals, but both perception and responsiveness vary with intersectional identity.

Do appeals to Black voters necessarily detract white voters from supporting the left? Extant studies have yielded mixed answers to this question by examining voter turnout data. We use two survey experiments to test how framing politicians as either supportive of or hostile to the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) and #SayHerName (SHN) movements affected the willingness of voters to support them during the 2020 Senate runoff elections in Georgia. We find that Democratic-leaning respondents in both a national sample of Black respondents and a sample of White respondents in Georgia were more likely to support politicians whom we framed as supportive of the BLM and SHN movements. These findings illustrate the potential potency of messaging strategies grounded in racial justice themes for mobilizing Democratic-leaning voters in American elections.

A large body of research shows that members of Congress disproportionately represent the interests of copartisans and affluent Americans. Is there also racial disparity in representation? I draw on three standards of political equality—proportionality, race-conscious egalitarianism, and pluralism—and assess the extent to which minority representation satisfies each. To do so, I match roll-call votes in the U.S. House of Representatives to survey data fielded prior to each vote (2006–2016) and use multilevel regression and poststratification to estimate racial subgroups’ opinions. I then examine how closely House members’ voting aligns with these opinions, focusing on districts where White and minority preferences differ. My analysis rules out “coincidental representation’ driven by similar opinions across groups and accounts for how much of each racial group’s national population resides in each district. Among districts where racial group opinions differ, I find strong support for the proportionality over the race-conscious egalitarian standard: Racial minority representation is substantially greater in majority–minority districts than in those that are not. However, I find strong evidence for the race-conscious egalitarian standard among Democratic legislators and moderate evidence for the pluralist standard among all legislators, as voting tends to align with racial minority opinion on explicitly race-targeted bills.

The insurrection and its aftermath remain salient to contemporary American Politics. Existing scholarship has shown the insurrection was fueled by an effort to return Donald Trump to power while also protesting the decline of the non-Hispanic white population. Scholars also discuss the impact of continuous division across partisan and ideological lines. We are interested in exploring if these divisions are visible across attitudes of non-Hispanic white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American/Pacific Islander respondents in a nationally representative survey. We explore the following research question. Does the impact of partisanship, ideology, and attitudes toward Trump’s responsibility affect the attitudes of respondents from various racial and ethnic groups? We use the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to complete our analyses. We contribute to the existing literature by examining whether partisanship, ideology, and attitudes toward Trump lead to potential differences across race and ethnicity. We find that respondents across all racial and ethnic groups share similar evaluations of the insurrection, the president’s role, and the rioters, particularly when they hold identical partisan and ideological views and identify the president as the cause of the insurrection.

Recent debates over how to address racial injustice in the United States often center on two types of policies: redistributive measures that redress material inequities between groups and symbolic reforms that challenge dominant racial narratives. How do citizens evaluate these differing approaches to advancing racial justice? How do recent removals of Confederate symbols shape support for each of these policy types? In a survey of American adults, we find that support for redistributive and symbolic policies is positively correlated across partisan, racial, and regional lines. However, when pressed, respondents express a stronger preference for redistributive measures, often viewing symbolic reforms as insufficient or distracting. In an experimental framework, we find that informing respondents about recent Confederate statue removals does not significantly alter support for either policy type. Looking at qualitative reactions to the treatment, we identify a plausible explanation for this null finding: most respondents see the removals as a fight over history and less directly relevant to a broader racial justice policy agenda.

Central to the UK’s Referendum on EU membership, immigration concerns underpinned support for Leave. This article examines ethnic minority support for Brexit, comparing their immigration attitudes with white British voters. Why immigrants and ethnic minorities would support immigration controls through voting Leave presents a theoretical puzzle with existing research finding they generally hold positive attitudes to immigration. Drawing on focus groups and interviews, I find opposition to Eastern European immigration motivated ethnic minority Leave support, who bolstered their own position as “good” immigrants while denigrating Eastern Europeans as “bad” immigrants. This echoes emerging trends of minoritized groups opposing newer migrants, including increased Latino/x support for Trump in 2024. White British Leave voters, however, rarely distinguished between EU and non-EU migrants, often including British ethnic minorities in their “mental image” of immigrants. Thus, tighter borders may do little to quell qualms over immigration which (partly) reflect concerns over rising racial diversity.

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.

Existing studies of EU foreign policy often contrast its normative and geopolitical ambitions while overlooking its colonial entanglements. Although recent scholarship has interrogated the Union’s neo-imperial tendencies, the structuring role of race in external relations remains underexplored. This article introduces the concept of the “Mediterranean colour line” to capture how the EU’s relationship with its Southern Neighbourhood has consistently cast the region as politically marginal, economically extractable, and epistemically devalued. These hierarchies are not incidental: they are central to the reproduction of capitalism within racialized global orders. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) provides a key site to examine these dynamics. Through a critical discourse analysis of the 2021 New Agenda for the Mediterranean, the article shows how colonial logics are retooled in the language of reform, resilience, and partnership. By focusing on digital transition and green growth—domains rarely read through race—the analysis demonstrates how racial capitalist governance persists precisely where its effects are most obscured.

Discriminatory encounters are commonplace for Muslims living in the West. How do these experiences impact the political behaviors of Muslims within these societies? Scholars have examined the effects of Islamophobia on Muslims’ civic engagement and found mixed results. Some researchers argue that discrimination triggers demobilizing psychological processes, while others contend that discriminatory experiences motivate active citizenship as a corrective to injustice. Still others suggest that distinct experiences with discrimination mobilize differently. This article engages with original survey data from Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US to explore whether and how individual experiences with societal and political discrimination, and perceptions of group discrimination, influence Muslims’ political activities. It reveals that societal, political, and group discrimination are associated with greater breadth of mainstream political activities, while experiences with political discrimination and perceptions of group discrimination correlate with protest activities. These results suggest that Muslims discern the specific nature of discriminatory experiences and respond accordingly through democratic means.

Studies indicate that sexism played a prominent role in the 2016 US Presidential election (Frasure 2018; Glick 2019; Ratliff et al. 2019). President Trump’s 2024 victory signifies a tendency wherein Trump prevails upon facing a female candidate. This paper examines sexism’s influence in favorability toward Vice President Harris relative to President Trump across race and gender given Trump’s gains in minority supporters (Geiger & Reny, 2024; Robertson & Tesler, 2024). Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey I examine these attitudes across four racial groups, Asian Americans, Latinos, White, and Black U.S residents between men and women. Drawing on theories of modern and benevolent sexism, I find benevolent sexism is positively correlated with Harris favorability among men of color whereas among White men these attitudes are correlated with Trump favorability. White women high in modern sexism are less likely to favor Harris than some women of color, particularly Asian women. Notably this relationship between Trump favorability and modern sexism extends across race and gender. Such gender attitudes can inspire protective instincts toward Harris or seemingly bolster the public’s preference for male leadership, offering potential insights into the 2024 Presidential election.

Much of the existing behavioral political science literature ignores Black motherhood as a salient factor of political identity and mobilization. However, Black mothers are often at the forefront of numerous political movements, including ones to end police violence against Black Americans. Due to the disproportionality of police contact in Black communities, Black mothers have a personal stake in ending police abuse that is twofold. First, Black mothers are often victims of sexist and racist policing practices, facing verbal, sexual, psychological, and economic abuse at the hands of law enforcement. Second, while dealing with their own oppressive relationship with the police, they must simultaneously take action to protect their loved ones from potential violence and harm at the hands of the state. The goal of this research is to examine how community-based politics serve as an opportunity for Black maternal status to be manifested as a form of resistance. I focus on what I refer to as community-based political activity because it is deeply rooted in the fabric of Black women’s political activism and produces more immediate benefits than other forms of political engagement. To examine the effects of direct and indirect police encounters on Black mothers, I pose several questions: How does negative police contact affect Black mothers’ community-based political activity? Does this difference apply to Black women who are not mothers? Using data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Elections Survey, my analysis demonstrates that maternal status has a significant impact on Black mothers’ community-oriented political engagement, particularly for those affected by indirect police contact.

Recent voter turnout data has revealed a consistent and growing turnout gap between Black and White Americans since the 2012 Presidential election. Scholars have attributed this gap to an increase in restrictive voting laws. However, few have considered the decreased effectiveness of long-standing models of political behavior on Black voter turnout as the American political landscape has shifted. This note seeks to uncover patterns in recent Presidential elections that display a lack of effectiveness of prominent voter turnout models for Black Americans due to disparate socializing experiences in a post-Obama context like voter suppression and a global pandemic. It employs models previously used by Leighley and Vedlitz (1999) to evaluate and compare turnout models for Black and White individuals with mini-meta analysis. This paper utilizes the 2016 and 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey (CMPS) and the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Study to establish models and measure their impact on Black and White voter turnout. I find support that prominent turnout models behave differently in a post-Obama context like income, length of residence, group consciousness, and group threat while some models behave differently for Black and white voters like political interest and political efficacy. These findings assert that new turnout models need to be established to better understand the Black electorate in a post-Obama context.

This paper explores diversifying legislatures within a context of ethnonationalism, populism, and democratic erosion. Although diversity and inclusion are often viewed as symbols of democratization, research increasingly challenges this. In fact, diversity and inclusion can occur in tandem with democratic erosion—how so? How do minorities navigate hostile environments? To answer this question, I analyze how women politicians with intersecting identities strategically use their gendered and racialized identities. I conduct a qualitative study of four different women politicians in the Israeli Knesset—Miri Regev of Jewish Mizrahi [Moroccan] descent, Pnina Tamano-Shata of Jewish Ethiopian descent, Merav Michaeli of Jewish Ashkenazi [European] descent, and Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian-Israeli. I find that women will highlight the aspects of their identities that they believe will benefit them the most, resulting in their promotion of ethnonational divisions and reducing opportunities for solidarity among minority populations.

The experiences of Latina women and girls with state surveillance, and their responses to unfair policies and practices, remain underexplored. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Latinas—primarily of Mexican descent—living in San Diego, we examine how encounters with local police and immigration enforcement shape their political practices. Participants described repeated negative encounters with police and immigration enforcement agencies over the life course. These cumulative experiences fostered distrust of police and critical views of surveillance practices designed to restrict the mobility of immigrants and other systematically minoritized groups. In response, many of the women engaged in community organizing and adopted counter-surveillance strategies. Our findings show how patterned experiences with state surveillance generate political critique and action.

In this article, we address the role that European bordering and migration policy play in the broader construction of the European project by defining who does and does not belong in Europe. This question, and the policy answers to it, are shaped by a variety of different political and economic interests and factors, such as racialized narratives of border protection, labor market needs, and the securitization of borders. We tackle this question by examining the role that categories and figures of migration—such as the “genuine” and “bogus” asylum seeker, the refugee, and the economic migrant—play in European border policy and how they are changing in the present conjuncture. We argue that a redefinition is taking place of who counts as a “good” and “bad” migrant, which responds to the changing political economy of contemporary European capitalism and is reflected in the growing prominence of the dichotomy of “legal” and “illegal” migration. This, we argue, reconfigures the existing categories of economic migrant and asylum seeker and speaks to the emergence of new forms of racialized disposability at Europe’s borders. We do this by developing a critical political economy perspective that builds on our previous work and draws on the literature on racial capitalism and the concept of disposability.

This cross-national study examines how ethnic resources shape access to financial capital among first-generation Punjabi-Pakistani immigrant entrepreneurs in the precious metals industries of Manchester (UK) and Dubai (UAE). Based on 50 semi-structured interviews (August 2022–July 2023) and analyzed through Template Analysis, the findings show that while co-ethnic social capital is widely mobilized across both contexts, significant intra-ethnic variations emerge between Khandani (lineage-based) and non-Khandani entrepreneurs. Khandani entrepreneurs rapidly accumulate start-up capital by leveraging their reputational credibility and transnational embeddedness, securing preferential access to large-scale financing through Rotating Credit Associations (kameti). By contrast, non-Khandani entrepreneurs face delayed entry, relying on modest loans from kin and co-ethnic migrants, with limited capacity to scale. The study highlights how lineage-based prestige intersects with broader kinship networks (Biraderi), producing differentiated trajectories of immigrant entrepreneurship. By foregrounding intra-ethnic stratification, this research extends debates on ethnic resources and mixed embeddedness, demonstrating that not all co-ethnic capital is equally accessible, and that transnational contexts reproduce rather than neutralize status hierarchies.

This article examines how the California Reparations Task Force (2021–23), a government advisory body, grappled with the question of which Black Americans should be eligible for reparations. Some Task Force members and activists advocated a lineage approach that restricts eligibility to people whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States. Others supported a Pan-African approach that includes all Black residents. The Task Force voted narrowly for the lineage approach. Surprisingly, however, and not acknowledged by most observers, most of the Task Force’s Final Report implicitly adopted a tiered approach, which follows the lineage approach for some policies and the Pan-African approach for others. It also includes universal policies for all, as long as they include a reparatory dimension. The Final Report thus challenged the assumption that all reparations policies would follow a single standard of eligibility. The tiered approach emerged in part because it complies with United Nations guidelines on reparations. It appears more likely than the other approaches to increase public support for reparations.