Statistics, Politics and Policy

We welcome contributions on:
🔹 Climate & Energy Policy
🔹 Digital & AI Policy
🔹 Economic Policy & Infrastructure Development
🔹 Demographics
🔹 Media & Internet policy
🔹 Lifestyle governance
🔹 (Geo-)political Influence and Military Capabilities

📢 Call for Papers – Special Issue on China: Politics and Policy
Guest Editors: @ettensperger.bsky.social & Lars Konheiser

📅 Submission deadline: January 16, 2026
📩 Submit your manuscript here: mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dgspp
📧 Questions? Contact us at: spp@politik.uni-freiburg.de

A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of Determinants Influencing Military Expenditure: New Methodological Insights and Implications for Defence Budget Allocation The aim of this article is to conduct a meta-analysis of existing research on the determinants of military expenditure. Using data from an initial screening of 179 studies, 15 studies were selected fo...

Their approach offers new methodological insights and supports a more evidence-based foundation for defense budget allocation.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

In issue 1/2025, Muchamad Bachtiar, Irdam Ahmad, Zainal Abidin Sahabuddin, and Trismadi Trismadi conduct a meta-analysis of military expenditure determinants across 15 studies. They find war, ongoing spending, and external threats to be key drivers - while national conditions correlate negatively.

Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Violent Conflict and Fatality in Nigeria: A Point Process Modeling with SPDE Approach For many decades, Nigeria has been plagued by a consistently high rate of violent events, resulting in countless fatalities and the displacement of citizens. This study aimed to model the spatio-tempo...

Their findings reveal a concentration of violence in the northeast and a 42% chance of at least one fatality per violent event - underlining the urgency for targeted interventions and evidence-based policy.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

In issue 1/2025, Osafu Augustine Egbon and Ezra Gayawan present a spatio-temporal model of violent conflict and fatalities in Nigeria. Using a Cox point process and SPDE approach, they analyze georeferenced conflict data to identify regional patterns and high-risk areas.

Pandemic Intensity Estimation using Dynamic Factor Modeling Individual and policy reactions to the coronavirus pandemic had disparate impacts on viral transmission and were heterogeneous in their influence on economic activity and personal outcomes (Kerpen, Ph...

To enable officials and governments to comprehensively measure disease intensity, they develop their model from various US-American economic and pandemic data series.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-2024-0042

In our issue 1/2025, Aaron Cooke and John Vivian develop a restricted data-rich dynamic factor model to evaluate vaccination efficacy during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Their model can be used for other populations, as they provide an open-source Python package.

A State-Level Policy Change That Would Revitalize the Electoral College The academic literature is rife with analyses of the US Electoral College’s flaws, but proposals to improve the system often rely upon old ideas. For example, the idea of replacing the Electoral Colle...

In detail, he suggests allocating a state’s electoral votes to each county’s plurality winner, proportional to voter turnout in that county.
Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-2024-0058

In issue 1/2025, John O’Reilly proposes the County-Elector Plan to revitalize the Electoral College. Implementable by states, it would avoid a constitutional change and future gerrymandering. Thereby, electoral competition would be shifted from a few battleground states to several hundred counties.

📅 Submission deadline: October 31, 2025
📧 Questions? Contact us at spp@politik.uni-freiburg.de

📢 Call for Papers – Special Issue on Elections

We welcome contributions on:
🔹 Electoral outcomes & voting behavior
🔹 Campaigns & debates
🔹 Electoral systems & reforms
🔹 Comparative perspectives
🔹 Innovations in electoral analysis

📩 Submit your manuscript here: lnkd.in/e23ee9ik

💡 As we step into 2025, we are also excited to share that SPP is transitioning to Gold Open Access
@degruyterbrill.bsky.social, ensuring that all articles are freely available under a Creative Commons license! We’d like to thank our subscribers who made this transformation possible.

Issue 1/2025 of SPP is available online! It features 4 articles showing the power of quantitative methods in addressing some of the most pressing political challenges:

📌 Electoral Reform
📌 Pandemic Response
📌 Conflict Analysis
📌 Military Expenditure

Access: www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

Hierarchical Bayesian Modelling of Macroeconomic Variables in Ghana This study analyzed the impact of macroeconomic variables (manufacturing, real exchange rate, government expenditure, and gross fixed capital formation) on GDP growth in Ghana. Utilizing secondary dat...

At the same time, gross fixed capital formation has a moderately negative effect.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

What drives GDP growth in Ghana? Emmanuel Amoako Koranteng, Gideon Mensah Engmann, and Dioggban Jakperik apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to analyze key macroeconomic variables in our issue 3/2024: real exchange rates, manufacturing, and government expenditure positively impact GDP growth.

The Great Powers Competition and Increasing Entropy in the Local Media Across Africa and Asia The current United States National Defense Strategy prioritizes strategic competition with Russia and China, whereas for the previous two decades, the priority was counter-terrorism. This research aim...

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

Declining U.S. influence, particularly in Asia, and rising Chinese engagement: in their contribution to our issue 3/2024, Elizabeth G., Steven Kim, Nicholas Sobrepena, Stone Goethe, and Eric E. analyze media coverage across 96 African and Asian nations and find geopolitical influence.

Hybrid Modeling Techniques for Municipal Solid Waste Forecasting: An Application to OECD Countries Accurate forecasting of municipal solid waste (MSW) generation is critical for effective waste management, given the rising volumes of waste posing environmental and public health challenges. This stu...

Chellai Fatih of Université Ferhat Abbas, Sétif researches this interesting topic in a time where the transition toward sustainability becomes more central by the day.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

How can we better predict municipal solid waste? In issue 3/2024, Chellai Fatih explores the power of hybrid modeling techniques to forecast municipal solid waste (MSW) generation across OECD countries. The article's findings highlight the need for data-driven waste management policies.

A Geometric Model of Elections in Five Federal Democracies In an analysis of 1,825 state or provincial election outcomes in five federal democracies the rate of decay of incumbency ( K ) serves to partition the distribution of the vote for the incumbent party...

Analyzing state as well as provincial elections, these findings offer new insights into the cost of ruling and the dynamics of electoral competition.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

How predictable are election outcomes? In issue 3/2024, Richard J. Heggen and Alfred G. Cuzán develop a geometric model to analyze 1,825 elections across five federal democracies. The model incorporates the rate of incumbency decay and predicts election outcomes within a 2–3 point margin.

Party Proximities in Voting Advice Applications – Identifying Structural Breaks in Data from the German Wahl-O-Mat Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), such as the German Wahl-O-Mat (WOM), have been examined extensively by researchers in various ways. Here, a subset of research uses data from the Wahl-O-Mat to inves...

His comparative analysis with the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and the Manifesto data set raises questions about the validity of VAAs for longitudinal analyses of party positions. Particularly since 2009, design changes impacted the measurement opportunities.

Read more: doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

Can Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) capture party relations? In our issue 3/2024, Felix Wieland analyzes data from 63 editions of the German Wahl-O-Mat to track party proximities. His findings suggest that design changes have significantly altered measured proximities between major parties.

Talknice Saungweme, Glenda Maluleke, and Nicholas M. Odhiambo of the University of South Africa use a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to study the impact of financial development on Mauritius' economic growth. The results reveal an asymmetric relationship between the two.

Measures of Lifespan Length and Variation Using a Mixture Model: The Case of Egypt Monitoring the changes in mortality patterns and levels requires studying mortality models and measures of lifespan length and variation. Measures of lifespan length and variation can be obtained from...

In their contribution to our issue 2/2024, the researchers offer valuable insights into Egypt’s evolving mortality trends and their implications.
Read more:
www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

Marwah S. Siam, Hussein A. Sayed, and Laila O. El-Zeini of Cairo University apply a mixture-function mortality model to examine lifespan length and variation in Egypt from 1950 to 2021. The study reveals increasing longevity and a declining variation in age at death over time.

Demography, Economy and Policy Choices: The Three Corners of the Pension Conundrum NDC (notional defined contribution) pension systems are usually considered the best in the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) category: they mimic funding, seem to be well balanced, and have very limited distortio...

The paper, which introduces an improved version of the traditional PAYGO system, is a part of the Special Issue on Political Demography by our Guest Editor @kirareneekurz.bsky.social of University of Freiburg.
Read more:
doi.org/10.1515/spp-...

Addressing the pension conundrum, Gustavo De Santis of Università di Firenze explores a novel approach, called IPAYGO. Including demographic and economic challenges, like differential mortality and low fertility rates, IPAYGO offers a sustainable and equitable approach to pensions.

From Gerontocratic Rule to Political Adultism: The Experiential Bias in Germany’s Aging Electoral Democracy and the Limitations of a Vote 16 Policy Rising life expectancies and low birth rates across the Western world have heralded a profound change in the way representative democracy operates. Whereas representative democracy was politics for th...

The article, with a focus on the 2021 federal election in Germany, is the second paper of our issue 2/2024. It is part of our Special Issue on Demography by guest editor @kirareneekurz.bsky.social
Read more:
doi.org/10.1515/spp-...