Political polarization is a group phenomenon in which opposing factions, often of unequal size, exhibit asymmetrical influence and behavioral patterns. Within these groups, elites and masses operate under different motivations and levels of influence, challenging simplistic views of polarization. Yet, existing methods for measuring polarization in social networks typically reduce it to a single value, assuming homogeneity in polarization across the entire system. While such approaches confirm the rise of political polarization in many social contexts, they overlook structural complexities that could explain its underlying mechanisms. We propose a method that decomposes existing polarization and alignment measures into distinct components. These components separately capture polarization processes involving elites and masses from opposing groups. Applying this method to Twitter discussions surrounding the 2019 and 2023 Finnish parliamentary elections, we find that (1) opposing groups rarely have a balanced contribution to observed polarization, and (2) while elites strongly contribute to structural polarization and consistently display greater alignment across various topics, the masses, too, have recently experienced a surge in alignment. Our method provides an improved analytical lens through which to view polarization, explicitly recognizing the complexity of and need to account for elite-mass dynamics in polarized environments.

Amid declining public standing, many political parties seek to regain disaffected voters through various institutional strategies. One key approach is democratizing legislative candidate selection to grant party members or voters greater influence and signal improved responsiveness, transparency, and legitimacy. Yet does this strategy pay off electorally? The growing literature on this topic provides conflicting answers and limited evidence. We argue that more inclusive candidate selection does not have meaningful effects at the polls despite its merits. Whereas voters favor such procedures in principle, as some suggest, they underprioritize them in favor of other considerations when electing parties. We support this argument with observational and experimental data, including a matching difference-in-differences estimation of party performance across thirty-four democracies and a survey democracies and a survey experiment in three countries. This article contributes to our understanding of the relationship between party institutions and voter behavior in an age of eroding public trust and rising anti-establishment sentiment.

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.

This research note introduces a new publicly available dataset identifying which federal candidates are out as LGBTQ2S+. The dataset comprises 4,201 candidates who ran in 2015, 2019 and 2021 for the five parties that won seats in the House of Commons. In this research note, we describe the replicable procedure we followed to identify out LGBTQ2S+ candidates, which involved systematic individual candidate searches. This procedure identified 176 LGBTQ2S+ candidates in total, which is more than in previous datasets. We illustrate how the data can be used by documenting how LGBTQ2S+ candidates changed over time relative to straight cisgender candidates. This dataset will allow researchers to examine a range of questions about LGBTQ2S+ representation as well as conduct intersectional analyses.

Indonesia’s population skews young, so political analysts are increasingly concerned with what the “youth vote” looks like, and what generational change will bring to Indonesia’s democracy. On the one hand, analysts have historically focused on the liberal political activism of more educated cohorts of young people, and especially those in urban areas. On the other, and most recently, young Indonesians overwhelmingly voted for Prabowo Subianto in the 2024 presidential elections, suggesting this cohort to be either unaware of, or unperturbed by, his authoritarian history. This paper examines how young Indonesians perceive their country’s democratic trajectory. We analyze two decades of nationally representative survey data, and examine the democratic preferences of Indonesian voters whose political socialization took place entirely in the post-authoritarian era (1998–). The results suggest both life-cycle and intriguing cohort effects: on average, Indonesians become more positive towards their democracy as they age; but we also find that Indonesia’s Gen Zs are more satisfied with democracy than other generational cohorts—despite a precipitous decline in the quality of Indonesian democracy over the past decade. We argue, therefore, that while all Indonesians show high levels of satisfaction with their weakening democracy, young Indonesians, more than other generations, can be understood as ‘complacent democrats.’

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.

Congruence between the policies implemented by elected representatives and voters’ policy preferences is fundamental to representation and democratic accountability. Can we anticipate a closer alignment between voters’ policy preferences and the policies explicitly adopted by elected representatives on the more electorally significant issues? We address this question using a simple game theoretic model, where we demonstrate that greater salience of a particular issue in elections leads to less congruence between the policies implemented by elected representatives compared to voters’ policy preferences on that very issue. This finding carries significant implications for the connection between electoral salience and representation on valence issues, and has particular relevance for understanding the democratic foundations of security and counterterrorism policies.

Despite a long tradition of research on dominant party systems (DPS), comparative analysis remains limited by conceptual ambiguities, regional and historical biases, and the absence of accessible data. This research note introduces the Global Dominant Party Systems (GDPS) Dataset, which includes 187 cases of executive dominance across 106 independent countries from 1900 to 2024, addressing the regional and historical biases that have traditionally plagued the literature. Drawing on foundational theories and refined concepts, the dataset differentiates between dominant parties and DPS and develops the minimal definition of DPS that focuses on executive arena and at least minimally contested elections. The dataset identifies cases with mechanical properties typical of DPS, that is those in which one party (or coalition) consistently monopolizes executive power and electoral competition fails to produce changes in government leadership. Despite setting permissive minimal criteria, the dataset also offers a broad range of variables on democracy, corruption and institutional features which can be used to set different criteria for case selection and conduct robustness checks. The dataset also includes variables on ethnic and opposition fragmentation, voter turnout, economy and population size, enabling researchers to investigate the institutional and socio-economic foundations of dominance across regime types and world regions. Finally, the proposed model of DPS evolution and change can serve as a useful guide for qualitative research on unpacking causal mechanisms. While limited to positive cases of dominance, the dataset offers new potential for cross-regional hypothesis testing and theory development on executive power, party system change, and democratic resilience.

Milícias are mafia-style organizations, often composed of current and former state agents, that have rapidly expanded in areas with limited state presence and weak legal oversight. In Rio de Janeiro, their territorial control is not maintained by coercion alone, but also through strategic political alliances. This article theorizes and tests a mechanism linking milícia expansion to electoral politics: milícias deliver concentrated electoral support to specific politicians, who in return shield their operations by influencing bureaucratic appointments and law enforcement priorities. Using original geospatial and electoral data, we show that milícia entry into a new area increases electoral concentration and disproportionately benefits milícia-aligned candidates in adjacent territories. We further demonstrate that this electoral capital is converted into political power through key bureaucratic appointments that facilitate further expansion and institutional impunity. Our findings support a theoretical framework in which elections reinforce, rather than constrain, criminal governance in democratic settings.