The Effects of Political Attitudes on Affective Polarization: Survey Evidence from 165 Elections

How do individual-level political attitudes influence affective polarization on a global scale? This article contributes to the debate on the social distance of party affect by testing a set of hypotheses in 165 elections across the world. With a sample of over 170,000 voters, the results of multilevel mixed-effects regressions demonstrate that ideological radicalism, political knowledge, and external efficacy substantively affect how voters see the main political parties in electoral disputes taking place in 52 countries from 1996 to 2019. Satisfaction with democracy, however, is context-dependent; it positively influences affective polarization only when generalized democratic satisfaction is low. Furthermore, I show that these correlations remain stable regardless of the operationalization of affective polarization—that is, based on two dominant parties and weighted for multiparty competition. These findings provide robust inputs to the study of party preferences and social distance in a cross-national longitudinal perspective.

Defense Budget Growth and Inflation: A Wavelet-Based Study of the U.S. and Britain

Despite the extensive theoretical connections between defense budget growth and inflation, empirical findings based on traditional time-domain methods have been inconclusive. This study reexamines the issue from a time–frequency perspective. Applying continuous wavelet analysis to the U.S. and Britain, it shows empirical evidence in support of positive bilateral effects in both cases. In the bivariate context, U.S. defense budget growth promoted inflation at 2- to 4-year cycles in the 1840s and at 8- to 24-year cycles between 1825 and 1940. Conversely, inflation accelerated defense spending growth at 5- to 7-year cycles in the 1830s and at 25- to 64-year cycles between 1825 and 1940. Similarly, British defense budget growth spurred inflation at 8- to 48-year cycles between 1890 and 1940 and at 50- to 65-year cycles between 1790 and 1860. Inflation fueled the growth of defense spending at 7- to 20-year cycles between 1840 and 1870, in the 1940s, and in the 1980s. Preliminary results from multivariate analyses are also supportive, though there is a need for further research that is contingent on advancements in the wavelet method in the direction of simulation-based significance tests.

Improving the Interpretation of Random Effects Regression Results

Mummolo and Peterson improve the use and interpretation of fixed-effects models by pointing out that unit intercepts fundamentally reduce the amount of variation of variables in fixed-effects models. Along a similar vein, we make two claims in the context of random effects models. First, we show that potentially large reductions in variation, in this case caused by quasi-demeaning, also occur in models using random effects. Second, in many instances, what authors claim to be a random effects model is actually a pooled model after the quasi-demeaning process, affecting how we should interpret the model. A literature review of random effects models in top journals suggests that both points are currently not well understood. To better help users interested in improving their interpretation of random effects models, we provide Stata and R programs to easily obtain post-estimation quasi-demeaned variables.

When “Don’t Know” Indicates Nonignorable Missingness: Using the Estimation of Political Knowledge as an Example

The conventional procedure for measuring political knowledge is treating nonresponses such as “don’t know” as incorrect responses and counting the number of “correct” responses. In recent times, increasing attention has been paid to partial knowledge hidden within incorrect and nonresponses. This article explores partial knowledge indicated by incorrect and nonresponses and considers nonresponses as nonignorable missingness. We propose a model that combines the shared-parameter approach presented in the literature on missing data mechanisms and the methods of item response theory. We show that the proposed model can determine whether the people with nonresponses should be treated as more or less knowledgeable and detect whether it is appropriate to pool nonresponses and incorrect responses into the same category. Furthermore, we find partial knowledge hidden within women’s nonresponses, which confirms the possibility of the exaggeration of the gender gap in political knowledge.

Does the Introduction of Online Voting Create Diversity in Representation?

The Internet’s effect on political communication is omnipresent. However, very few jurisdictions around the globe allow their citizens to cast their ballot online. What are the electoral consequences of this reform? Research, so far, has mainly looked at security considerations and effects on turnout. In this research note, we broaden the scope of prior studies by examining the effect of online voting on diversity in representation. Using the voting results of municipalities in the Canadian province of Ontario both before and after the implementation of online voting, we test whether this reform has increased the representation of women and youth. We do not find that Internet voting has any significant impact on which candidates are elected, with both the gender and age of elected mayors being constant across online and traditional elections. We further find that the number of woman candidates does not increase with online voting.

Proposing a Compensation Requirement for Audit Studies

We examine compensation as a tool to encourage the thoughtful use of audit experimentation. If researchers had to compensate subjects or communities, they would be more likely to avoid excessively large studies and to only conduct high-value studies. We build on Desposato and propose that when conducting an audit study, (1) researchers donate time or money to the communities potentially affected by the study, (2) researchers preregister this donation, and (3) researchers provide evidence of the donation they made in publication and presentation.

What Conservatives Value: Reply to Blackburn

In reply to Dean Blackburn’s ‘In the Shadows’, it is argued that the situated nature of the conservative ideology entails that its adherents cannot have a substantive set of shared values, but that their values will typically be a cultural inheritance. The epistemological element of conservatism may not be the most electorally salient in any concrete context, but has strategic value as the common element of conservatism most likely to support a public reason defence.

Climate Change and the Politics of Apocalyptic Redirection

Alison McQueen’s study of the historical role of apocalyptic ideas in realist political theory cautiously proposes the ‘redirection’ of apocalyptic thought as a plausible alternative to its rejection. Apocalyptic redirection, so understood, uses apocalyptic language to describe potential future catastrophes in order to inspire drastic action to prevent them. Although McQueen acknowledges that apocalyptic redirection may have certain risks, she suggests it may be an appropriate response to the crisis of climate change. In this article, I aim to show that this use of the discourse of apocalyptic redirection is ideologically problematic. I argue that it involves conflating the interests of those who are at least moderately materially comfortable with the interests of humanity as a whole. I will also draw on the 2019 ‘Stop Adani Convoy’ in Australia as a case study to show how the ideological character of this discourse renders it ill-suited to generating popular support for action on climate change, and liable to reproduce existing power relations.