Consider your companions carefully: How voters perceive (coalition) governments’ poor valence images?

Numerous studies of comparative political behavior examine how voters perceive parties’ ideological positions on various policy issues, either in a standard uni-dimensional space or on single issues. These studies assume these ideological positions to be representative of the entire governing coalition, classifying the government as a single unitary. While a common assumption when assessing coalition governments’ ideological positions, it is unclear whether this logic of shared accountability holds for voters’ perceptions of valence. To fill this gap, I use a conjoint experiment to assess the perceptual influence of valence issues on coalitional accountability. Overall, my results show that unlike standard left-right ideological positions, voters project the prime minister’s and (junior) cabinet members’ low valence bidirectionally onto each other. This research has implications for the prime minister’s selection process for (junior) cabinet members and junior parties’ own calculus of whether to participate in a coalition or not.

Emotion and Politics: Noncognitive Psychological Biases in Public Opinion

Contemporary politics is noteworthy for its emotional character. Emotions shape and, in turn, are elicited by partisan polarization, public opinion, and political attitudes. In this article, we outline recent work in the field of emotion and politics with an emphasis on the relationship between emotion and polarization, issue attitudes, information processing, and views on democratic governance. We also highlight a growing body of scholarship that examines the racial and gender differences in emotion's ability to affect political behavior. We conclude with a discussion of unaddressed questions and suggestions for future directions for scholars working in this area of growing importance. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Rewiring Linked Fate: Bringing Back History, Agency, and Power

Linked fate, the concept introduced by Dawson almost three decades ago, reoriented the study of racism and political behavior in the United States. The scholarship traditionally had focused on the racial psychology of whites and how racism seeps into their political views and actions. Dawson proposed the Black utility heuristic theory and linked fate, its associated measure, to investigate the political behavior of Blacks, the minority group most harmed by racism. Since then, linked fate has become a ubiquitous variable of interest in research on minority group politics. Yet the research program around linked fate is due for some extension. Most studies gloss over the fact that the Black utility heuristic theory is historically and socially conditional. We call for bringing elite-level agency and group-level social practices back into the literature to clarify the macro- and meso-level conditions under which a group’s racial status translates into linked fate at the individual level. Greater inquiry into these dynamics is not only warranted but also has broad implications for the research on racial and ethnic politics.

Prejudice, Bigotry, and Support for Compensatory Interventions to Address Black-White Inequalities: Evidence from the General Social Survey, 2006-2020

The General Social Survey (GSS) shows that many self-identified white adults continue to hold racial attitudes that can be regarded, collectively, as a persistent social problem. Similar to findings from the analysis of electoral surveys, the GSS also shows that these racial attitudes have more strongly predicted political behavior since 2012. However, and in contrast to group-identity interpretations of these patterns, the increase in predictive power since 2012 is attributable to a positive development: above and beyond the effects of cohort replacement, support for compensatory interventions to address black-white inequalities has increased substantially, while prejudice and bigotry have decreased slightly. Because these changes have been larger on the political left than on the political right, the attitudes have gained in overall predictive power.

Ideological Preferences of Kaliningrad Residents in the Socio-Political System

The article analyzes the ideological preferences of the residents of the Kaliningrad region through the prism of their socio-economic situation and political behavior. The study is based on the data of a formalized interview (N = 977) according to the age and sex sample, representing the population of four geodemographic districts of the Kaliningrad region. Based on the Nolan Chart, the study determines ideological types according to the respondents attitude to political and economic freedom. The statistical analysis of the data revealed a high degree of pluralism among the residents of the region on the issues under consideration. At the same time, it showcased the prevailing ideas of state regulation of the economy and values of personal freedom. Analyzing the socio-economic situation of the respondents and their inherent ideological attitudes, the author found that the values of economic freedom are more often shared by young people, middle-aged people, residents living in Kaliningrad, with higher income. Ideas of state regulation of the economy prevail among people of retirement and pre-retirement age, residents of the semi-periphery of the Kaliningrad region, with lower income. The study also revealed the relationship between the ideological attitudes of people in the region and their political behavior. In particular, it found that people who share the values of political and economic freedom are ready to take the most active part in protests. At the same time, the study did not identify any significant links between the ideological type of the respondents and their electoral behavior.

Role and Features of Youth Political Online Activism in Modern Russia

The presented article is a study dealing with the role and characteristics of youth political online activism in modern Russia. The relevance, main aspects and criteria of the effectiveness of youth policy in the field of communication are considered. There are following basic steps suggested: to improve the effectiveness of such communication associated with a clear articulation of the needs of various groups of people through competent socio-political monitoring with independent quantitative and qualitative research. Building a constructive dialogue to promote positive, constructive and conventional activation of the political behavior of youth groups; work to overcome the apolitical and absentee tendencies of young people, as well as the expansion of the political and managerial concept of Electronic state not only formally, but also substantively, are among these steps. Further, the study analyzes the structure of protest behavior, distinguishes several levels of protest consideration, each of which has its own specifics and features for the analysis. This is the level of deep reasons and specific motive for the emergence of a public protest; the level of the dominant style of public manifestation of any protest moods, which has its basis in the predominantly psycho-emotional sphere; and, finally, the level of peculiarities of political behavior with very specific tactics and strategies of protest behavior. It draws attention to the fact that youth as a social group is heterogeneous and it seems appropriate to divide its age structure into three stages (from 14 to 20, years old, from 21 to 24 years old, and from 25 to 30 years old). The final part of the article deals with the models of virtual protest behavior. The model of a complete unstructured protest is highlighted; activity-target co-optation; proactive-loyalist; adaptation and frustration; politicized civil and local models. The results obtained to date make it possible to record the essential features of online mobilization, both based on the features of the functioning of the virtual space, and from the point of view of the main object of research: youth and the specifics of its identity and algorithms of political behavior. All this allows us to speak about the relevance of the constructed classification models for various mobilization mechanisms, which determines the practical significance of the study.