(Un)Natural Disasters: Electoral Cycles in Disaster Relief

Emergency spending is often exempt from campaign period restrictions and procurement guidelines, making it attractive for opportunistic politicians, but natural disasters are seen as outside political business cycles. However, droughts are frequent but challenging to measure, so politicians can leverage discretion for electoral gain. This paper analyzes electoral cycles, term limits, and partisan targeting around municipal drought declaration in Northeast Brazil. Two sources of exogeneity (rainfall shocks, electoral calendar) isolate the effect of non-climatic factors on drought declarations. I find that drought declarations, which trigger relief, are more likely in mayoral election years. Incumbents are more likely to win re-election if they declare a drought in the election year, during below or even above average rainfall. The results are consistent with interviews suggesting voters reward competent mayors and mayors trade relief for votes. This study highlights the interaction between distributive and environmental politics, which has increasing consequences due to climate change.

Work and Demand Making: Productionist and Consumptionist Politics in Latin America

How does the world of work in Latin America affect the way workers act to defend their interests? To what extent have “productionist” demands, those concerning jobs, work conditions, and wages, which are highly salient across the region, been “displaced” by consumptionist or political demands? While the literature has distinguished formal and informal work grosso modo, we explore individual traits of work, which cross-cut the formal-informal distinction. Analyzing survey data from four Latin American capital cities, we find, not surprisingly, that both work-based atomization and insecurity depress demand making in the work arena. But these traits of work also affect demand making on the state, albeit in somewhat different ways. Insecurity is associated with a shift from productionist to consumptionist and political demands, while atomization is associated with a more generalized demobilization across issues. These findings have implications for the representation of worker interests in light of current labor market restructuring and raise the question if labor can reclaim an important voice in that restructuring process.

How Voters Respond to Presidential Assaults on Checks and Balances: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey

Why do voters support executive aggrandizement? One possible answer is that they do so because they think this will ease their preferred leader’s hand in putting their partisan vision into action, provided that the leader will continue winning elections. We study this phenomenon through a survey experiment in Turkey, by manipulating voters’ perceptions about the potential results of the first presidential election after a constitutional referendum of executive aggrandizement. We find that voters from both sides display what we call “elastic support” for executive aggrandizement; that is, they change previously revealed constitutional preferences in response to varying winning chances. This elasticity increases not only when citizens feel greater social distance to perceived political “others” (i.e., affective polarization) but also when voters are concerned about economic management in a potential post-incumbent era. Our findings contribute to the literature on how polarization and economic anxiety contribute to executive aggrandizement and democratic backsliding. 1

Moralizing Immigration: Political Framing, Moral Conviction, and Polarization in the United States and Denmark

Morally charged rhetoric is commonplace in political discourse on immigration but scholars have not examined how it affects divisions over the issue among the public. To address this gap, we employ preregistered survey experiments in two countries where anti-immigration rhetoric has been prominent: the United States and Denmark. We demonstrate that exposure to moralized messages leads respondents to place greater moral weight on their existing immigration opinions and become more averse to political leaders and, in the United States, social interaction partners who espouse opposite beliefs. This suggests that political moralization contributes to moral conflict and affective polarization. We find no evidence, however, that moral framing produces attitudinal polarization—that is, more extreme immigration opinions. Our study helps make sense of the heightened intensity of anti-immigrant politics even when attitudes are stable. It also suggests a promising avenue for comparative research on affective polarization by shifting the focus from partisanship to the moralization of existing issue disagreements.

Collusion, Co-Optation, or Evasion: The Politics of Drug Trafficking Violence in Central America

Why do drug traffickers sometimes decide to use violence, but other times demonstrate restraint? Building on recent work on the politics of drug violence, this article explores how Central American drug trafficking organizations’ strategies impact their use of violence. I argue that three inter-related political factors—corruption, electoral competition, and the politicization of the security apparatus—collectively determine the type of relationship between traffickers and the state that will emerge. That relationship, in turn, determines the primary strategy used by traffickers in that country. Drawing on over two years of comparative ethnographic fieldwork in key transshipment points along the Caribbean coast of Central America, I show how co-optation strategies in Honduras have resulted in high levels of violence, evasion strategies in Costa Rica have produced moderate levels of violence, and collusion strategies in Nicaragua have generated the lowest levels of drug-related violence.

How Voters Respond to Currency Crises: Evidence From Turkey

A burgeoning literature shows that international trade and migration shocks influence individuals’ political attitudes, but relatively little is known about how international financial shocks impact public opinion. This study examines how one prevalent type of international financial shock—currency crises—shapes mass political attitudes. I argue that currency crises reduce average citizens’ support for incumbent governments. I also expect voters’ concerns about their own pocketbooks to influence their response to currency crises. Original survey data from Turkey support these arguments. Exploiting exogenous variation in the currency’s value during the survey window, I show that currency depreciations strongly reduce support for the government. This effect is stronger among individuals that are more negatively affected by depreciation, and it is moderated by individuals’ perceptions of their personal economic situation. This evidence suggests that international financial shocks can strongly influence the opinions of average voters, and it provides further support for pocketbook theories.

Revisiting the Impact of Modernization on Support for Women Politicians: The Role of Women’s Political Empowerment

We examine the role of societal modernization and women’s political empowerment in generating support for women politicians amongst citizens. Using a global analysis of 116 countries with a new dataset of micro- and macro-level longitudinal data, we show that societal modernization and women’s political empowerment only have positive effects on support for women in politics when the other is also present. For citizens who experienced either societal modernization or women’s political empowerment, but not both, we do not see this positive relationship. Crucially, these patterns hold when analysing the current social and political context, as well as the context experienced by citizens during their formative years. We argue that both social and political changes are required to develop supportive attitudes towards women in politics.

Who Registers? Village Networks, Household Dynamics, and Voter Registration in Rural Uganda

Who registers to vote? Although extensive research has examined the question of who votes, our understanding of the determinants of political participation will be limited until we know who is missing from the voter register. Studying voter registration in lower-income settings is particularly challenging due to data constraints. We link the official voter register with a complete social network census of 16 villages to analyze the correlates of voter registration in rural Uganda, examining the role of individual-level attributes and social ties. We find evidence that social ties are important for explaining registration status within and across households. Village leaders—and through them, household heads—play an important role in explaining the registration status of others in the village, suggesting a diffuse process of social influence. Socioeconomic factors such as income and education do not explain registration in this setting. Together these findings suggest an alternate theory of participation is required.

Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances

Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also find that higher satisfaction with the economy is associated with lower support for checks and balances. Our experiment in Ukraine shows that supporters and opponents of the governing party have divergent evaluations of a reform potentially infringing on the independence of the judiciary. Those in opposition find such reforms less acceptable and justified. Again, we find that improved economic performance leads to higher acceptance of judicial reform. Our results confirm that citizens’ support for checks and balances is contingent and volatile.

A Decline in the Social Status of the Working Class? Conflicting Evidence for 8 Western Countries, 1987–2017

The consensus view among political scientists is that the subjective social status of low-skilled workers has declined over the last decades, and this status loss of the working class is seen as contributing to the rise of the radical right. We examine the micro-foundation of this claim by tracing the evolution of subjective status for different social classes in Europe and the US. We use all available survey rounds of the International Social Survey Programme 1987–2017 and replicate findings with the European Social Survey 2002–2016. While unskilled workers perceive their status to be lower than members of the middle class everywhere, we find no relative or absolute fall in their subjective social status over time. Unskilled workers were at the bottom of the status hierarchy in the 1990s and 2010s. Our findings throw doubt on the narrative that sees workers’ falling subjective social status as a prominent driver behind the rise of the radical right.