Political Participation

New research explores how depressive symptoms affect political participation across democracies.

Education is one of the strongest individual predictors of political participation, but the strength of that relationship varies across countries. Drawing on policy feedback and political socialization theories, the paper argues that education policies in adolescence—specifically policies that de‑stratify secondary schooling by promoting more comprehensive models—create lasting feedback effects that shape adult patterns of participation and can reduce political inequality.

Where formal state authority is limited, local leaders often drive political mobilization — but why are some leaders more effective than others? This study introduces the concept of encompassing authority: how widely individuals perceive a leader as influencing multiple domains of their lives. Using original survey data from Zambia’s 2021 elections, the authors compare religious leaders, chiefs, and local councillors and test whether encompassing authority predicts mobilization beyond leader traits and voter characteristics.

This paper asks whether local government policy priorities shape women’s decisions to run for office and offers evidence on how municipal spending patterns relate to women’s emergence as candidates. Using Brazilian municipal-level variation, the authors link policy outputs and communal spending to the number and composition of entrants, arguing that women’s interest in running varies across place and time rather than being uniform.

This study asks whether demand for clientelism among informal workers can be attenuated, and whether reducing that demand translates into support for programmatic alternatives. The authors ran an information experiment with firm owners ahead of Senegal’s 2022 local elections, at a moment when an upstart faction campaigned on programmatic reform. They report that reminding informal workers of their ability to coordinate reduced engagement with dominant clientelistic networks, but that shift generally led to political disengagement rather than mobilization for programmatic candidates.

This article asks whether a concentrated deliberative experience can produce lasting political effects. The case is "America in One Room," a national field experiment that brought together more than 500 randomly selected registered voters from across the United States to deliberate about five major national issues.

This study investigates a provocative link between highly engaged partisans and increased dehumanization. Using survey data from across America, we find that those most passionate about partisan politics demonstrate stronger negative stereotypes toward opposing groups.

Recent work on race, ethnicity, and politics examines how "minority linked fate"—defined by Gershon et al. (2019) as the idea that ethnoracial minorities may feel a commonality that extends beyond their own group to other ethnoracial groups—shapes attitudes about representation and coalition building. This research asks a new question: does minority linked fate also motivate political participation? The argument is that Latina/os, Asian Americans, and African Americans who feel linked to a broader minority community are more likely to take political action because of obligations to, and solidarity with, other racial minorities.

How do mundane household experiences influence political participation? Drawing on three datasets—surveys of Latinx students and young adults, alongside a 10-year longitudinal study—the research explores the connection between children's responsibilities in immigrant families and their subsequent political engagement.

Online surveys increasingly shape political discourse. But do sponsors influence how people answer? This article examines sponsorship effects in survey responses.

Climate change action requires incorporating vulnerable populations into policy responses.

Did Michael Jordan's reluctance to tweet reflect a strategic concern? The rise of social media has fundamentally changed how celebrities interact with fans. This raises an important question: why do politicians and celebrities enter this political fray despite the potential for alienating supporters? Using data from 83 celebrities' approximately 220,000 tweets during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, we analyze both the consequences of celebrity political engagement on Twitter follower interactions AND how these figures approach politics compared to other surrogates.

Estimating direct effects of time-varying factors like childhood wealth on political participation is challenging due to complex confounding. Traditional regression methods face a bias trade-off when baseline treatments affect both later outcomes and their associated variables.

This paper examines how collective identity influences individual voting behavior. Through analyzing survey data from Germany, the author finds that voters significantly influenced by group belonging are more likely to cast ballots together with peers.

How does group deliberation affect political engagement?️ This question has long puzzled scholars and policymakers alike.️ The article examines this by analyzing data from multiple rounds of public deliberations in the United States, focusing on participants' shifts toward activism after discussion sessions.️ Using logistic regression models to track changes over time, it finds that while deliberation does increase awareness, its impact on actual participation is less direct and pronounced than previously thought※ Challenging assumptions about political mobilization through collective dialogue, the findings suggest a more complex relationship between discussion spaces and citizen action.

Scholars traditionally view the income-political participation gap—where wealthier individuals engage more in politics—as rooted in present-day economic resources. However, this analysis reveals that these explanations face a temporal disconnect.

This article explores how negative descriptive social norms—perceptions that others are not acting politically—can paradoxically encourage individual political participation. Drawing on survey data and experiments, the study demonstrates this counterintuitive effect by analyzing responses to hypothetical scenarios involving inaction.

We ran a large-scale experimental intervention during the 2012 French elections. Data & Methods Our study involved randomly assigning 20,500 apartments to different canvassing groups.