Research & Politics

Do congressional candidates benefit from rejecting PAC contributions? Evidence from a pre-registered candidate evaluation survey experiment - Michelangelo Landgrave, Nicholas R. Jenkins, Aubree J. Har... Do congressional candidates benefit electorally from the public’s disdain of political action committees (PACs)? Despite the large sums of money given by PACs, ...

@landgravephd.bsky.social, Nicholas R. Jenkins & Aubree J. Hardesty show that voters across parties trust, donate to & support candidates who reject PAC money—penalizing those who accept it. Campaign financing choices clearly shape perceptions.

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New research by Baccini, @costinciobanu.bsky.social & Pelc: Offshoring shocks can increase support for leaders with authoritarian traits, while automation does not. A reminder that different economic changes shape politics in very different ways.

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A new study by Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen, Rasmus Tue Pedersen & Mads Thau shows that while info on online abuse doesn’t reduce tolerance, it boosts willingness to support politicians or report abusive comments.

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Hansol Kwak’s study finds protest mobilization depends not on absolute repression, but on how it deviates from expectations. Results show a U-shaped pattern: participation rises when repression is higher *or* lower than established baselines.

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New study by Ko, Downes, Leung & Ming shows populist governments weaken climate readiness, with left-wing populists driving the sharpest decline. Findings highlight how ideology shapes whether nations advance or regress in climate preparedness.

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Andreas Graefe’s Issues and Leaders model shows how voter perceptions of competence and leadership shape elections. Forecasting the 2024 race, it captured a tight contest and highlights the value of dynamic, forward-looking electoral analysis.

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Taken at face value: Emotion expression and protest dynamics - Ishaan S. Prasad, Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, 2025 Understanding the role of emotions in protest is a growing field of research, but existing research does not address the role of emotions once protests start. B...

In a new study by Ishaan S. Prasad & @zacharyst.bsky.social, they analyze 37k+ faces from protests in 10 countries, showing emotions like anger, fear & happiness co-occur and covary with protest dynamics, rather than directly causing them.

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@sysilviakim.bsky.social finds that in 2020 U.S. races, extreme candidates didn’t ask for smaller donations—supporting the view that small donors aren’t more ideologically extreme than large ones.

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When the party is over: Explaining the rise of the Spanish far-right SALF - Javier Padilla Moreno-Torres, Álvaro Canalejo-Molero, Alberto López Ortega, 2025 Can a second far-right party succeed in a country where the radical right was, until recently, absent? Spain’s 2024 European Parliament elections provided a str...

Can a 2nd far-right party thrive in Spain? SALF shocked in the 2024 EU elections, scoring 4.6% in its debut. New study by Javier Padilla Moreno-Torres, @canalejoalvaro.bsky.social and @bertous.bsky.social analyzes who voted for them—and why.

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@abbymatthews.bsky.social & Rachael Hinkle's analysis of judicial citations demonstrates that diversity in race, gender, *and* partisanship plays a critical role in the evolution of legal doctrine, with judges sharing all 3 salient traits experiencing a 25% increase in citation probability.

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What drives differences between the conflict events datasets UCDP and ACLED? Contrary to previous claims, @magnusoberg.bsky.social and Mert Can Yilmaz find most differences are due to auxiliary coding rules and standards for source evaluation, not sourcing strategies or inclusion thresholds.

Exposure to protests and support for different forms of violence: Evidence from the 2019 social outburst in Chile - Sebastian Rivera, Fernando Severino, Giancarlo Visconti, 2025 People living in communities where protests occur are exposed to various forms of violence, including state-perpetrated violence, such as police brutality, as w...

Sebastian Rivera, Fernando Severino and Giancarlo Visconti find that protest exposure in Chile briefly reduces support for state violence, but doesn’t change views on protester violence. A nuanced look at attitudes in unrest.

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Political science suggests liberals are more tolerant of the Supreme Court when it makes decisions they don't like. Kathryn Haglin, Soren Jordan, Alison Higgins Merrill and @joeura.bsky.social ask: does that still hold up with the new-look Court?

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New research by Laurel Elder, @hankgreene.bsky.social, and Mary-Kate Lizotte shows Americans see 6- and 12-week abortion bans as effectively the same, challenging the idea of "moderate" restrictions. Post-Dobbs, abortion is a binary debate: ban vs. no ban, with framing crucial to public reception.

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Kirill Zhirkov & Robert H. Brehm find that calling immigrants “illegal” or “undocumented” doesn’t affect perceptions in experiments. However, people’s preferences for these terms do reflect their broader attitudes toward immigration policy.

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Sarah Maxey and Taryn Butler ask: does it matter if officials handle classified documents responsibly? Yes, even more than you might think! Classification scandals udermine public confidence in democratic institutions across party lines.

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Islamophobia in Western Europe is unrelated to religiosity but highly correlated with far right attitudes - Kai Arzheimer, 2025 The far right’s relationship with religion has become a major focus of current research. Even in Western Europe, one of the most rapidly secularising areas of t...

@kai-arzheimer.com discusses how far-right actors in Western Europe use "Christianism" to frame Muslims as a threat. Survey data shows religiosity is unrelated to far-right ideology; Islamophobia overlaps with nativism & authoritarianism at micro level.

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ConflLlama: Domain-specific adaptation of large language models for conflict event classification - Shreyas Meher, Patrick T. Brandt, 2025 We present ConflLlama, demonstrating how efficient fine-tuning of large language models can advance automated classification tasks in political science research...

Shreyas Meher and Patrick T. Brandt demonstrate how state-of-the-art language models can be efficiently adapted for political event classification, achieving up to 1400% improvement in accuracy while remaining computationally accessible.

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Depression isn't just a health issue; it's a political vulnerability. In China, Xing Chen & @xiaoxiaoshen.bsky.social find it erodes trust, amplified by inequality—affecting both marginalized groups and regime supporters

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Tapping the untapped potential? A research note on salient ballot initiatives and youth turnout in the 2022 midterm election - Courtney Juelich, Scott LaCombe, 2025 This research highlights the impact of state ballot measures on youth turnout. The primacy of ballot initiatives addressing issues salient to younger demographi...

New research by Courtney Juelich & Scott LaCombe finds that youth-salient ballot measures, like marijuana legalization & reproductive rights, boost turnout among Gen Z, Millennials—especially young women.

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R&P thanks our outgoing Editor-in-Chief, @zeynsom.bsky.social!

Her leadership and expertise in comparative politics have greatly shaped our journal and its growth.

We are grateful for her dedication and wish her all the best in her future endeavors!

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A new study by Niels Bjørn Grund Petersen, Rasmus Tue Pedersen & Mads Thau shows that while info on online abuse doesn’t reduce tolerance, it boosts willingness to support politicians or report abusive comments.

Read more here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

@sysilviakim.bsky.social finds that in 2020 U.S. races, extreme candidates didn’t ask for smaller donations—supporting the view that small donors aren’t more ideologically extreme than large ones.

Read more here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

When the party is over: Explaining the rise of the Spanish far-right SALF - Javier Padilla Moreno-Torres, Álvaro Canalejo-Molero, Alberto López Ortega, 2025 Can a second far-right party succeed in a country where the radical right was, until recently, absent? Spain’s 2024 European Parliament elections provided a str...

Can a 2nd far-right party thrive in Spain? SALF shocked in the 2024 EU elections, scoring 4.6% in its debut. New study by Javier Padilla Moreno-Torres, @canalejoalvaro.bsky.social and @bertous.bsky.social analyzes who voted for them—and why.

Read more: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

@abbymatthews.bsky.social & Rachael Hinkle's analysis of judicial citations demonstrates that diversity in race, gender, *and* partisanship plays a critical role in the evolution of legal doctrine, with judges sharing all 3 salient traits experiencing a 25% increase in citation probability.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

What drives differences between the conflict events datasets UCDP and ACLED? Contrary to previous claims, @magnusoberg.bsky.social and Mert Can Yilmaz find most differences are due to auxiliary coding rules and standards for source evaluation, not sourcing strategies or inclusion thresholds.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

A study by Marianne Kramer, @golovchenko.bsky.social and @fghjorth.bsky.social shows that Large Language Models like GPT-4 & Llama 3 70B can reliably detect pro-Kremlin disinformation, outperforming human annotators and past models—all at lower cost.

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Clareta Treger examines how different outcome variables in conjoint experiments shape political science results. The article urges using both forced-choice and rating outcomes, and reporting descriptive with causal estimates, to gain fuller insights.

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@nilsweidmann.bsky.social and Mina Rulis study the link between university disciplines and political protest in autocracies. They focus on how the composition of academic institutions shapes the likelihood of activism in university cities.

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