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Weekly issue

本週期刊簡報(2026/08/08)

Updated journals
46
Articles
88

This week, 46 journals published 88 new articles.
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Journals Updated This Week

AI & Society Journal of Asian and African Studies Political Psychology
American Sociological Review Journal of Contemporary China Political Research Quarterly
Asian Survey Journal of Elections Public Opinion and Parties Political Science Research and Methods
Big Data & Society Journal of Human Rights Political Studies
British Journal of Political Science Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology Political Studies Review
British Journal of Sociology Journal of Theoretical Politics Public Opinion Quarterly
Democratization Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society) Representation
Discourse & Society Legislative Studies Quarterly Social Forces
Economic Sciences Research in PNAS Local Government Studies Social Science Quarterly
Electoral Studies Nations and Nationalism Sociological Methods & Research
European Journal of Political Research Nature Reviews Psychology The International Journal of Press/Politics
European Political Science Review Parliamentary Affairs The Journal of Legislative Studies
European Sociological Review Party Politics The Quarterly Journal of Economics
Government and Opposition Policy & Internet 人文及社會科學集刊
International Organization Political Behavior
International Political Science Review Political Communication

📚 AI & Society

📄 A perspective from Nollywood: examining how GenAI is integrated in the Nigerian film industry

  • Author(s): Godwin Simon, Thomas Poell, David Nieborg, Smith Mehta, Lorena Caminhas
  • Link: Read the article
No abstract was provided by the RSS feed or Crossref API.please use the Read the article link above.

📄 Zones of (un)certainty: studying the temporal stabilization of ground truths for medical AI

Medical data annotation is a critical yet contingent process that (re)configures ambiguous medical decisions and data representations into ground truths for artificial intelligence (AI). Extending critical data, AI, and STS research on uncertainty in data annotation, this article develops the concept of zones of (un)certainty to capture the epistemic time-spaces through which annotators transform uncertainty and dissonance into stabilized ground-truth data for medical AI. Drawing on interviews with AI and medical researchers at two Dutch University Medical Centres and complemented by observations at an interdisciplinary workshop on annotation practices, we empirically unfold three such zones : first, we identify an epistemic time–space where ground-truthing is approached spatially as practitioners decompose and recompose data layers, views, and metadata to reach “good enough” certainty. Second, we analyze temporal zones of drift where micro-judgments are routed through negotiations with colleagues, experts, AI suggestions, and automated evaluations. Third, we examine thresholding practices in which uncertain cases are gradually compressed into singular labels. Taken together, this article provides insights into the temporal–spatial dimensions and thresholds that annotators use to settle on ground-truth decisions. Consequently, we open a broader analytical vocabulary for studying how uncertainty and dissonance are operationalized for AI-based medicine and beyond.

📚 American Sociological Review

📄 Relational Roots of Civic Fields: Capital Conversion and Organizational Reproduction in a Developing Country

Social scientists have long studied the emergence of civic organizations through two dominant perspectives: demand-side theories arguing that these groups fill gaps left by government and market failures, and supply-side theories emphasizing resource mobilization and dependence. However, these theories insufficiently account for how contemporary nonprofits and social enterprises arise in increasingly networked, professionalized, and competitive environments. This article interrogates the relational roots of civic fields, centering the concrete ties and interactions through which new organizations are incubated, resourced, and legitimated. Using the case of a dozen new civic organizations in a developing country, I show how founders leverage interpersonal and interorganizational ties to convert social capital into intellectual, economic, human, and symbolic capital. However, this ability for capital conversion depended on actors’ positions in the field and dispositions embedded in their habitus. These processes contribute to the field’s organizational reproduction —that is, reproduction of professional practices, funding models, and state-aligned approaches mirroring founders’ shared social (dis)positions. As civic organizations play increasingly prominent roles in development and governance, understanding their relational origins helps explain whose visions of social change gain organizational form.

📚 Asian Survey

📄 The Effect of Sexual Violence on Chinese Foreign Direct Investment

While much scholarship finds that political risk discourages foreign direct investment (FDI), some studies report that foreign firms frequently increase their investment in high-risk countries. We investigate whether overseas investors are risk-averse or risk-tolerant based on investment flows into host countries whose governments have perpetrated sexual violence, indicating a high-risk environment. Examining Chinese overseas FDI in up to 108 developing countries from 2003 to 2020, we find that Chinese firms are generally risk-acceptant—more sexual violence often corresponds to greater net dollar inflows and percentage of Chinese FDI. But this correspondence seems to apply much more to public firms than to private firms. We include several robustness checks. Our results offer clues as to why the FDI literature has observed different investor responses under high-risk circumstances.

📄 Outward FDI and Alliance Politics

The Trump administration has been pressuring South Korea to increase investments in the US, seeking to increase jobs, revive manufacturing, build resilient supply chains that exclude China, and reduce the trade deficit with South Korea. This pressure has raised concerns within South Korea regarding adverse effects on the domestic economy. But South Korea needs the US for national security as North Korea advances its nuclear capability and as US–China strategic competition intensifies. I investigate whether South Korea’s foreign direct investment in the US has a positive effect on the US stance toward South Korea. I find that increases in both the absolute level and the US share of South Korea’s outward FDI are associated with a more favorable US stance toward South Korea. The findings imply that, despite South Korea’s concerns over the domestic economy, its investments do shift the US stance in a positive direction.

📚 Big Data & Society

📄 Social media as search engines? Manufactured usefulness and the rise of RedNote in mobile search

Seeking information via social media instead of search engines has become increasingly common. This study examines RedNote, a popular Chinese platform that has emerged as a mobile search tool. Arguing that RedNote’s abundance of useful content plays a key role, I propose the concept of “manufactured usefulness” to capture the constructedness of such content. Individual users, the platform, and, increasingly, advertisers have co-constructed a culture of usefulness, embodied in two prominent content genres: instructional and recommendation posts. Instructional posts teach users the skills they want to learn and help them solve immediate problems, while recommendation posts draw attention to things that people may want to use, experience, or own. Useful posts are expected to possess qualities such as authenticity and communicative efficiency, which further break down into factors (e.g., argumentation, discursive style, formatting, etc.) that can be consciously assembled and employed. Thus, usefulness can be manufactured. RedNote monetizes manufactured usefulness by selling “useful” posts to advertisers, but ubiquitous sponsorships raise users’ doubts about authenticity. Paradoxically, RedNote upholds the banner of authenticity to retain users and further monetize this value, with its underlying commercial logic being both restrictive and productive in shaping the culture of usefulness.

📚 British Journal of Political Science

📄 Can Authoritarian Electoral Propaganda Compete with the Opposition? Experimental Evidence from Russia

  • Author(s): Michael Rochlitz, Koen Schoors, Nikita Zakharov
  • Link: Read the article
We examine the effectiveness of electoral propaganda in an autocracy, using Russia as a unique setting. Exploiting the unexpected release of a pro-regime propaganda video about Vladimir Putin shortly before the presidential election, we conducted a field experiment by randomly promoting the video to voters via a telephone survey and measuring self-reported voting behaviour after the election. Our results show that the pro-regime treatment successfully mobilized offline media consumers to vote for Putin, but failed to persuade online media users, and even backfired among respondents dissatisfied with the regime. Using electoral statistics for all major Russian cities and instrumenting public interest in the propaganda video with rainfall, we find a positive, albeit moderate, causal effect of the video on Putin’s vote share. As an alternative treatment, we used a viral anti-corruption video by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which consistently undermined regime support among both offline and online media consumers.

📚 British Journal of Sociology

📄 Valorizing Erasure: Imperial Knowledge Production in Anglo‐American Coverage of Chad's ‘Toyota War’

How does imperial knowledge production operate when Western media coverage of a Global South subject is predominantly admiring instead of hostile? This article addresses that question through critical discourse analysis of sixty‐three Anglo‐American news articles covering the Chad‐Libya conflict of the 1980s, the ‘Toyota War’. Despite Chad's decisive military victory and broadly favourable coverage, systematic coding reveals that Chadian political subjectivity was structurally withheld. Chadian figures appeared as sources in 41.3 per cent of articles but were granted political or strategic interpretive function in only 6.3 per cent: interpretive exclusion despite presence. Western or French officials served as primary interpretive sources in 77.8 per cent of articles, and France was positioned as sovereign arbiter in 82.5 per cent. Three interlocking devices produced this structure: selective valorization, which absorbed political relations into a commodity object; an interpretive hierarchy that routed authority through Western institutional channels; and Orientalist fascination, which made exclusion pleasurable and thereby imperceptible. The article develops a three‐tiered model of differential life‐worth (Libyan soldiers, Chadian soldiers, and Chadian civilians each constituted through distinct textual genres) and argues that valence, the positive or negative tone of coverage, is an insufficient analytic register: the imperial operation runs through how subjects are constituted, not through valence alone.

📄 Beyond the Gig: Selling Intimacy as Labour on OnlyFans

This article develops the concept of total self‐commodification to account for a form of platform labour whose unit of extraction is the creator's continuous intimate self. The empirical case is OnlyFans, the largest subscription‐based adult content platform. Drawing on 45 in‐depth interviews with creators in France, Belgium and French‐speaking Switzerland conducted between September 2024 and March 2025, and a documentary analysis of fourteen versions of the platform's terms of service across 2019 to 2025, the article makes three contributions to the sociology of platform work. First, situating the analysis within recent scholarship on relational labour and its economic‐sociological genealogy, platformised sex work and payment‐ecosystem governance of adult content platforms, the article specifies the value‐form through which the self functions as enterprise: a single platform‐mediated feedback loop in which subscriber dynamics, self‐presentation and earnings become operationally indistinguishable. Second, the article reframes structural vulnerability as a mechanism of platform governance, anchoring the claim in the precarity‐theory tradition and in recent work on the payment‐processor regime that conditions adult platform operations. Third, the analysis offers an infrastructural intensification of the Foucauldian account of the entrepreneurial self: on OnlyFans the regulatory ideal of the enterprising self becomes operationally indistinguishable from the labour process itself, while creators' own recognition of their activity as work remains partial and oscillating: an incompleteness, we argue, that the platform's economic model actively exploits.

📚 Democratization

📄 Democratic erosion and its international implications: how governments in eroding democracies shift their foreign policy behaviour

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📚 Discourse & Society

📄 Selling surveillance: The discursive legitimation of AI control in Japanese convenience stores

AI-driven surveillance technologies are marketed to Japanese convenience stores as solutions to rising crime. This article analyses the marketing materials of one technology company, Vaak, to examine how its system VaakEye is discursively constructed and how it legitimizes AI surveillance. The study is situated within a broader policy context in which the Japanese state promotes AI adoption through initiatives such as Society 5.0, while offering limited regulatory scrutiny. The analysis finds that AI is framed as an autonomous, ‘objective’, and common-sense solution, while customers and staff are represented as unreliable and suspicious, and therefore in need of technological oversight and behavioural managing. These representations draw on and reproduce ideologies of technological solutionism and safety and convenience, while obscuring the social and structural causes of crime. In so doing, they naturalize surveillance as necessary and desirable, and shift authority from human judgement to opaque algorithmic systems. This normalizes the expansion of data-driven monitoring in everyday life, contributing to a redistribution of power toward corporate actors and the infrastructures of surveillance capitalism. By framing these developments as inevitable and beneficial, opportunities for critical debate are foreclosed. This allows systems of behavioural control to become embedded in routine, everyday social practices like shopping.

📚 Economic Sciences Research in PNAS

📄 Oxytocin increases trust in men low in dispositional trust

  • Author(s): Bodo Vogt, Paul Bengart, Carolyn Declerck, Ernst Fehr
  • Link: Read the article
In recent years, increasing skepticism regarding oxytocin’s (OT) influence on social behavior arose. Low power, HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known), and replication failures have clouded the field. Here, we directly address these concerns with a high-powered, preregistered study that offers robust evidence for a causal effect of OT on trust among males with a low disposition to trust. We recruited 359 low-trusting men who participated in a trust game with complete anonymity. Results show that OT administration significantly increased trusting behavior by roughly 15%, with consistent effects across regression models with and without controls for personality traits. A pooled data analysis incorporating a previous sample (n = 219) of low-trusting individuals further strengthens this conclusion, yielding a statistically significant 16.9% increase in trust. No interaction effect was found between OT and the degree of dispositional trust, suggesting OT’s effect may be uniform across the low-trusting spectrum. These findings present a strong case for OT’s selective trust-enhancing role. By isolating OT’s impact within a well-defined subpopulation and experimental context, this study resolves a key question in the debate over neurobiological determinants of trust.

📄 Early-life sugar restriction causally reduces adult cancer incidence and slows biological aging

Excess sugar consumption is implicated in multiple cancers through insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and metabolic reprogramming, yet whether early-life sugar exposure causally shapes long-term cancer risk remains an open question. We exploit the abrupt end of United Kingdom sugar rationing in September 1953 as a natural experiment, analyzing 64,761 UK Biobank participants born 1951–1956. Cohorts whose first 1,000 d of life fell under rationing exhibit dose-dependent reductions in adult cancer incidence: liver/intrahepatic bile duct (IHBD) (hazard ratio 0.31), rectum (HR 0.60), lung (HR 0.59), prostate (HR 0.48), and breast (HR 0.64). We uncover two pathways through which this early-life exposure propagates across the life course. First, a behavioral pathway: Rationed cohorts consume less sugar, eat smaller quantities, and maintain healthier, more diverse diets five decades later, consistent with persistent taste preferences shaped during a critical developmental window. Second, a biological pathway: Rationed cohorts exhibit longer leukocyte telomere length ( + 0.05 SD, approximately 2.2 fewer years of biological aging) and lower Granzyme B, indicating reduced chronic immune activation. These findings provide causal evidence linking early-life sugar intake to cancer and identify a behavioral pathway, consistent with persistent taste preferences, through which early nutritional environments may shape lifelong disease risk. The results carry direct implications for early-life nutrition and added-sugar policy.

📄 Economic preferences predict higher-education choices

  • Author(s): Thomas F. Epper, Ernst Fehr, Kristoffer B. Hvidberg, Claus T. Kreiner, Søren Leth-Petersen, Basit Zafar
  • Link: Read the article
We examine whether individual preferences predict higher-education choices. According to standard human capital theory, differences in individuals’ time and risk preferences lead to differences in educational investments. Testing this hypothesis is challenging, as it requires measuring individuals’ preferences, doing so before they make educational investments, and subsequently observing their educational choices. We combine incentivized, experimentally elicited measures of time and risk preferences for a large, representative sample of 18- to 19-y-old Danes with administrative data on subsequent higher-education choices, program-specific earnings trajectories, prior school performance, and family background. In line with theory, we find that more patient individuals choose longer education programs and programs with steeper early-career earnings profiles, while more risk-averse individuals select programs with lower earnings dispersion and reduced downside risk. These relationships remain strong after controlling for cognitive ability, prior academic performance, and family background. Our findings suggest that preferences have a substantial impact on real-world educational investments and have implications for educational sorting.

📚 Electoral Studies

📄 How snap election calls shape vote intention uncertainty

No abstract was provided by the RSS feed or Crossref API.please use the Read the article link above.

📚 European Journal of Political Research

📄 The winner–loser gap in democratic attitudes among politicians: Individual and collective outcomes

  • Author(s): Erick Stivens Padilla-Galviz, Álvaro Canalejo-Molero
  • Link: Read the article
Rooted in concerns about losers’ consent to electoral outcomes, a vast literature documents a winner–loser gap in democratic attitudes among voters, with winners displaying systematically more positive attitudes than losers across a range of indicators. Surprisingly, we know much less about whether this gap extends to politicians. This paper addresses this question both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, we distinguish between politicians’ reactions to electoral outcomes at the individual level – whether candidates secure a seat in parliament – and the party level – whether their party enters government, and theorise about their interaction. Empirically, we present comprehensive observational evidence from 27 elections showing that losers systematically report lower satisfaction with democracy, weaker support for representative institutions, and lower perceptions of citizens’ trust. The gap is present at both levels, but the individual-level gap is conditioned by party outcomes: it is most pronounced within winning parties and disappears within losing parties. A complementary analysis leveraging close races and administrative data from Iceland provides plausibility that these associations are, at least in part, causal. Taken together, the findings reveal that democratic attitudes among rank-and-file politicians are, like those of voters, highly malleable and responsive to electoral outcomes. While politicians maintain overall positive attitudes towards democracy, this malleability raises questions about when and how such contingency might translate into anti-democratic behaviour.

📚 European Political Science Review

📄 Who cares about politics under authoritarian rule? Evidence from China

Departing from mainstream research on political interest in democratic contexts, this study investigates its evolution in an authoritarian setting. To disentangle temporal dynamics, it applies the age–period–cohort interaction model to repeated cross-sectional data from five waves of nationally representative surveys conducted in China. The results demonstrate distinct effects across age, period, and cohort dimensions. Age effects indicate that younger individuals consistently exhibit lower levels of political interest than older adults. Period effects reveal a downward trend in political interest among the Chinese public between 2002 and 2019. Importantly, cohort effects suggest that, contrary to the linear evolutionary predictions of modernization theory, individuals who underwent political socialization during critical historical periods—such as the Great Famine and its aftermath (1959–1963) and the late Cultural Revolution (1974–1978)—as well as those born in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, exhibit heightened political interest. These findings contribute to theoretical reflections on the evolution of political interest.

📄 How considered interests evolve in deliberation: evidence from Swiss citizens’ juries

Citizens increasingly demand involvement in policymaking, driving the rise of participatory processes like deliberative minipublics. This article introduces a novel longitudinal survey measure to determine the extent to which citizens are more considerate of others’ interests as a result of their participation in such forums. The study explores how participants’ considered interests vary across demographics and process-related factors measured throughout five Swiss minipublics (2019–2023) on different topics and validated using word-embedding techniques on their transcripts. While results show that minipublic participants considered interests different from their own, individuals belonging to less advantaged groups did not consistently show greater consideration of others’ interests. Interest inclusiveness was higher among older individuals, low-income earners and participants in minipublics linked to referendums. This article explains how and why participants in minipublics consider interests beyond their own, which is essential for designing more inclusive participatory processes that engage people from diverse backgrounds in increasingly polarized societies.

📚 European Sociological Review

📄 How do people view income inequality in China? An interactive framework of inequality and economic growth

Economic inequality has become a pressing societal challenge worldwide, yet less is known about how individuals perceive and evaluate it. Drawing on longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS 2012–2018), this study uses modified hierarchical linear models to examine how objective inequality interacts with economic growth in shaping subjective inequality. The results show, first, that the average association between objective inequality and respondents’ severity ratings of inequality (SRI) is weak and not statistically significant. Second, economic growth moderates this association: objective inequality is associated with higher SRI only under low-growth conditions. Finally, this moderating role of economic growth is salient only among socio-economically disadvantaged individuals. These findings enhance our understanding of how individuals view economic inequality in China’s post-high-speed growth era and provide broader comparative implications for societies characterized by different configurations of inequality and economic growth.

📚 Government and Opposition

📄 Shades of Negativity in European Parliament Debates: Exploring the Affective Dimension of Political Conflict in the EU’s Rule of Law Crisis

  • Author(s): Lise Esther Herman, Julian Hoerner, Joseph Lacey
  • Link: Read the article
This article seeks to explore the nature and determinants of political conflict in European Parliament (EP) debates within the unique context of the Rule of Law Crisis (RoLC). While previous research on this topic has mainly studied the ideological dimension of this conflict, we shift focus to the affective dimension, analysing the roles of negative sentiment and motive-based criticism through a quantitative analysis of 53 hand-coded debates. We find that negativity dominates, and that this tone is adopted by Members of the EP (MEPs) irrespective of the ideological orientation or geographical origin of their national party. However, concerning levels of motive-based cynicism are primarily driven by MEPs from more right-wing, Eurosceptic and, to a lesser extent, Central and Eastern European parties. These findings suggest that the EP, an institution traditionally geared towards compromise-building, is becoming increasingly susceptible to the normative jeopardies of negative and attack politics when it comes to the RoLC.

📄 When Do Shadow Ministers Become ‘Realities’? Evidence from the UK, 1964–2024

A characteristic feature of Westminster-style democracy is the convention that the opposition frontbench forms the basis of the new executive following changes in the party of government. Yet we know little about how this convention operates when it comes to individual appointments. This paper examines how frequently opposition frontbenchers have become ministers in the UK, the archetypal Westminster system. Across seven incoming governments, we find that around four-fifths of opposition frontbenchers were appointed to ministerial office, and roughly half retained responsibility for the same policy portfolio they had shadowed. At the government level, prime ministers’ idiosyncratic preferences affected overall levels of continuity, but these choices were constrained by electoral and party factors. At the individual level, we find no evidence that prime ministers retained their supporters in greater numbers, but party seniority, prior ministerial experience and time served in an opposition post were closely associated with portfolio continuity.

📄 Opposition Distinctiveness in Parliaments: A Longitudinal Analysis

There are concerns about the distinctiveness of opposition party behaviour in parliaments, but the literature offers mixed findings. This article analyses how distinctive the opposition is from the government in its voting patterns and speech-making in four parliamentary democracies (Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, United Kingdom [UK]) over a long time span (1945–2020). Our results show a diversity of trends in opposition distinctiveness. Overall, the distinctiveness in terms of parliamentary voting behaviour increased up to the 1980s, and slightly decreased or remained stable thereafter in most countries. Opposition sentiment in speech-making follows a different pattern, particularly in the UK and Canada, where the increasingly positive sentiment of governing party MPs and the increasingly negative sentiment of opposition parties has led to significant divergence over time. These trends in opposition distinctiveness in voting and speech-making are shown to be related most strongly to opposition parties’ prior governing experience, in particular in Denmark and the Netherlands.

📚 International Organization

📄 Revolutionizing Time, Reforging Social Orders: State-Building Success and the Enforcement of Symbolic Programs in Revolutionary France

How do state builders reshape society? While existing work shows they often rely on violence, education, elite co-optation, and institution building, this article underscores the importance of symbolic programs. When intensely enforced, symbolic programs reshape social orders by forging new social bonds and socializing individuals into state builders’ governing principles. I test this argument using subnational variation in the enforcement of the French Republican calendar—a symbolic program that politicized time, labor, and rest, rightfully regulated by the state, rather than sacred duties governed by the Catholic Church—and its association with labor conflicts. In departments where the calendar was more strongly enforced, it fostered political understandings of labor and rest, reduced coordination costs, and increased mobilization potential. Using original data and a difference-in-differences design, I find that more intense enforcement of the calendar is associated with a higher likelihood of labor conflict onset, demonstrating the long-term social effects of symbolic state-building programs.

📚 International Political Science Review

📄 Rivalry, insurgency, and pro-government militias in authoritarian states

It has long been understood that pro-government militia activity and pro-government militia violence increase during civil war. Recent literature contends that pro-government militia activity also rises when a state is involved in an interstate rivalry. We maintain that the combination of these two threats may, somewhat counterintuitively, result in reduced pro-government militia activity in some autocracies. This unexpected outcome can be explained by differences in state capacity and legitimacy. Using Geddes’ categorization of authoritarian regimes, we expect a decline in the number of operational pro-government militias when personalist and military regimes are challenged by both an insurgency and a rivalry. Pro-government militia liabilities are magnified in this context and add to these governments’ already considerable cumulative hazards. Pro-government militia numbers will, in contrast, remain consistent in single party regimes in this same circumstance. Since party governments have ample capacity, well-known disadvantages of pro-government militias rarely pose a threat to these capable regimes. In a sample of 142 autocracies from 1981 to 2010, we find considerable empirical support for our contention.

📄 Financial development, democracy, and income inequality

Does financial development increase income inequality? This topic is theoretically and practically significant given the surge in income inequality across most economies in recent decades and the costs associated with bailing out financial institutions that were ‘too big to fail’ during the 2008 global financial crisis. As the literature has yet to reach a consensus, this study examines the impact of financial development on income inequality by introducing regime type as a conditional factor. Although democracies are expected to be redistributive, the redistributive mechanisms are nullified or even reversed under the perverse influence of capital. Democratic governments may also be less capable than autocracies of limiting the excesses of financial development. By focusing on the interactive effect between financial development and democracy, financial development is shown to increase inequality in democracies but decrease it in non-democratic regimes. Supplementary analysis shows that the development of financial institutions, particularly their depth, drives the results.

📄 Missing ethics: A proposal for responsible conduct of research training in political science in interdisciplinary comparison

Science depends on trust, integrity and accountability. Yet compared to related disciplines, political science has been slow to institutionalize responsible conduct of research (RCR) education. This paper addresses that gap by presenting an empirical audit of RCR training across the top 50 political science graduate programmes in the United States. The findings reveal that while methods and quantitative training are near-universal, formal ethics instruction is rare or entirely absent in most programmes. Drawing on lessons from economics, psychology and biomedical sciences, I show how the lack of structured RCR education threatens the credibility, reproducibility and ethical integrity of political science research. I then propose a modular, credit-bearing RCR course tailored to the methodological and normative challenges faced by political scientists, including fieldwork, experimental design, authorship norms and data transparency. By embedding RCR into graduate curricula, political science can better prepare future scholars to navigate ethical dilemmas, prevent misconduct, and align with evolving expectations from funders and journals. This article extends the recent work of Chekenya and Misra by focusing specifically on graduate education in political science, and offers practical guidance for departments, professional associations and educators committed to cultivating a culture of ethical research. JEL Classification: A11, B41, Q10

📄 The empire’s fading influence: United States soft power in Africa during the COVID-19 era

  • Author(s): Bülent Aras, Alpaslan Özerdem, Ahmet Erdi Öztürk
  • Link: Read the article
This study examines the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (December 2019 to July 2020) and its impact on United States (US) soft power in Africa. It advances theoretical understanding by emphasizing the interplay between perceived leadership credibility, state capacity, and domestic crises. It argues that leadership’s perceived ability to handle challenges during exogenous shocks such as COVID-19 significantly influences soft power. Furthermore, it highlights the significance of emotional resonance and trust, noting that moral authority can be undermined by racial injustice and political polarization. Methodologically, it triangulates Gallup data with computational analysis of news from ten African countries, thereby mitigating survey biases for a comprehensive assessment. The findings indicate a critical perception of US influence, impacted by the Black Lives Matter movement, Donald Trump’s presidency and pandemic management. This study concludes that fostering trust remains crucial and advocates for a nuanced US public diplomacy strategy emphasizing tangible actions and mutual trust.

📄 Who supports multilingual deliberative mini-publics? A relational perspective from Luxembourg

Amid growing dissatisfaction with political systems, deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) have been systematically proposed. Understanding how the broader public evaluates these processes is therefore critical. This study examines public attitudes toward multilingual DMPs in Luxembourg, using original panel survey data linked to the 2022 Climate Citizens’ Assembly. Adopting a relational lens, we show that attitudes are shaped not only by individual traits or procedural features but by individuals’ – perceived – position within broader societal and political structures. Results indicate that personal multilingual ability has little impact, whereas non-nationals and non-native speakers consistently evaluate DMPs more positively than nationals and native speakers. Reactions to linguistic accommodations vary with baseline attitudes, highlighting the conditional nature of public responsiveness. Overall, the findings demonstrate the embeddedness of public evaluations of DMPs, just as DMPs themselves are situated within wider structures, emphasizing the importance of context-sensitive, relationally informed design to foster inclusive and legitimate deliberative processes.

📄 Mapping global sentiments and geopolitical nuances in the Russia–Ukraine war through Facebook narratives

  • Author(s): Mohammad Mahfuzur Rahman, Israt Jahan, Nurul Huda Sakib
  • Link: Read the article
This study examined how Facebook users have expressed sentiments and political bias on the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war. The VADER model and LDA-based topic modeling were employed to analyze 130,133 Facebook posts related to the war over a two-year period. Furthermore, the XGBoost classifier model was used to annotate data on political bias toward Russia or Ukraine. The study found strong polarization, indicating posts were 65.4% negative, 12.4% positive, and 22.3% neutral. While significant proportions of positive and negative discussions (74% and 62%, respectively) showed a pro-Ukraine bias, most neutral discussions (approximately 71%) were leaning toward Russia. The prevalence of negative sentiment suggested that a significant proportion of the data expressed criticism or disappointment, whereas a relatively minor proportion of positive and neutral sentiments were either supportive or did not take either side. The political bias category within 10 countries showed significant differences in sentiments analyzed across different regions.

📄 The politics of giving back: How historical reciprocity and self-interest shape the South Korean public’s aid priorities

An implicit assumption in the literature is that donors recently transitioning from recipients emphasize distinct foreign aid priorities. To what extent does this assumption reflect public preferences? This paper examines public aid priorities through a single-country study of South Korea. I show that although individuals may feel a moral obligation to repay past assistance, perceptions that their country is not sufficiently affluent may also lead them to favor aid that promises significant donor benefits at a low cost. Using a conjoint experiment, I find that support increases when packages signal higher national-interest gains, involve lower amounts, and target countries that assisted South Korea during the Korean War. Further analyses show that self-interest and reciprocity operate as substitutes and that cost-sensitivity is moderated by strategic, but not by reciprocal, considerations. The findings highlight the role of a donor’s developmental trajectory, providing implications for framing aid narratives to build domestic support.

📚 Journal of Asian and African Studies

📄 From wood to war-the science of bow-making in pre-colonial India: Technology, artisans, and the political economy of warfare

The study highlights the science and technology used in bow-making, particularly in regions such as Badaun, where ecological conditions—abundant forests, rivers, and wildlife—provided essential raw materials like wood, horn, sinew, and animal hides. These environmental advantages enabled the production of superior composite bows, especially in comparison with regions lacking such resources. The analysis further shows how regional variations in climate influenced production techniques, such as the use of glue in drier regions like Delhi and nails in humid areas like Bengal. A central focus of the study is the technical training and knowledge transmission within Mughal kārkhānas and artisan lineages. Apprentices underwent rigorous instruction in material selection, bow construction, glue preparation, and string-making, as well as in the precise measurement, balance, and geometric alignment required for effective performance. The craft was governed by a rich technical vocabulary and standardized proportions, combined with empirical methods of testing and refinement. This reflects a high degree of specialization and an applied understanding of mechanics and material science within artisanal practice. The profession of bow-making was further imbued with cultural and moral value, attracting individuals from diverse social backgrounds, including religious scholars and nobles. In addition to their functional role, bows and arrows were also objects of artistic expression and political symbolism. Naqqāshs enhanced their aesthetic appeal through intricate decoration, transforming weapons into markers of prestige and authority. The study thus underscores the interconnectedness of craftsmanship, warfare, and state power, demonstrating that the success of the Mughal military system depended not only on strategic and technological innovation but also on the expertise and labour of its artisan communities.

📄 Rethinking the “international”: Contextualizing Pan-Africanism as an international relations theory in a changing global (dis)order

In this paper, we ask, to what extent can Pan-Africanism constitute a valid theory of international relations? Using a qualitative methodology and a critical analytical framework, we position Pan-Africanism as an international relations theory. This paper argues that Pan-Africanism contains within it unique resources for analysis of global affairs in ways that recenter excluded voices from the Global South. The emerging possibilities of a fundamental shift from the trans-Atlantic world to that of an interlocking regional world of Afro-Euro-Asia make a strong case for the validity of Pan-Africanism as a theory of international relations.

📄 Navigating AI in Digital Leisure: A Qualitative Study on Motives, Engagement Challenges, and Psychological Consequences among Urban Youth

  • Author(s): Syurawasti Muhiddin, Nur Fajar Alfitra, Elvita Bellani, Indrianty Sudirman
  • Link: Read the article
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in digital leisure platforms, yet limited research has examined the psychological dimensions of user experience within algorithmically curated environments, particularly in non-Western contexts. This study examined how Indonesian youth experience AI-mediated features in digital leisure platforms, focusing on motivations, barriers, and psychosocial impacts. An online open-ended qualitative survey was administered to 115 participants aged 18 to 31 years; inductive thematic analysis yielded 13 themes across three domains. Engagement was primarily motivated by practical convenience and psychological gratification, with social influence as a complementary trigger. Barriers included data security concerns, dissatisfaction with the accuracy of recommendations, self-regulation difficulties, economic constraints, and ethical stigma. Psychosocial impacts were ambivalent: Enhanced ease, enjoyment, identity expression, and social participation coexisted with passive engagement, cognitive shortcuts, and habitual consumption. These findings suggest that AI-mediated digital leisure both empowers and constrains users, carrying implications for policymakers, platform developers, and mental health professionals.

📄 Kazakhstan’s multidimensional engagement with Taliban-led Afghanistan (2021–2026)

The Taliban’s 2021 takeover posed a strategic dilemma for Central Asian states engaging an internationally isolated regime. This study analyzes Kazakhstan’s shift from defensive isolationism to functional integration with Taliban-led Afghanistan (2021–2026). Using process tracing, trade analysis, and legal-institutional examination, it develops a “Compartmentalized Pragmatism” framework. Findings show a four-domain engagement architecture, diplomatic, economic, security, and humanitarian, enabled by institutional separation, including terrorist delisting, trade-based structural power, and tacit security cooperation. The ecological dimension, particularly transboundary water insecurity driven by the Qosh Tepa Canal, is identified as a cross-cutting constraint that simultaneously threatens all four domains and represents the primary long-term test of this model’s sustainability. Two further impediments require attention: the Taliban-led government’s limited institutional capacity for complex bilateral arrangements, and the absence of demonstrated political will on the Taliban side to moderate water-competing infrastructure. These gaps expose the fragility of pragmatic engagement with pariah regimes in a multipolar order and require further research before definitive conclusions on bilateral sustainability can be drawn.

📄 Freezing colonial borders: Uti possidetis and the Agacher dispute in postcolonial Africa

This article revisits the Agacher Strip dispute between Mali and Burkina Faso to illuminate the enduring modernity of colonial borders in Africa. By analyzing the 1986 judgment of the International Court of Justice, it argues that the case transformed uti possidetis juris into a foundational doctrine of postcolonial statehood, effectively “freezing” colonial administrative lines into sovereign frontiers. Far from a technical boundary ruling, Agacher reveals how international adjudication converts imperial cartography into contemporary legal geography. Through comparative engagement with later African disputes, the article demonstrates that the stabilizing promise of juridical certainty coexists with persistent tensions in frontier regions marked by mobility, insecurity, and fragile governance. Agacher thus speaks directly to current debates on sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the limits of legal stabilization in Africa.

📚 Journal of Contemporary China

📄 Patriotic Criminals: China’s Covert Netherworld in Southeast Asia and the Pacific

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📄 Legalized Governance in China: Application and Dilemmas

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📚 Journal of Elections Public Opinion and Parties

📄 Support for executive aggrandizement under weak polarization

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📄 Valence strategies and polling support during electoral campaigns

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📄 Mind the gap: turnout gap of local and national elections in Germany from 2000–2019

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📄 Varieties of anti-establishment appeals: valence, ideology, and support for outsiders

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📄 Emotional reactions to referendum campaigns: how news consumption and political orientations made Chileans feel about the constitutional process

  • Author(s): Ximena Orchard, Magdalena Saldaña, Daniela Lazcano-Peña
  • Link: Read the article
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📚 Journal of Human Rights

📄 States of exception: Unpacking mixed citizen reactions to repression

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📚 Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology

📄 Mode Effects on Regression Coefficients Capturing Subgroup Differences: Comparing Regression Models Across the Web-Based American Family Health Study and the Face-to-Face National Survey of Family Growth

  • Author(s): Sihle Khanyile, Shiyu Zhang, Brady T West, William G Axinn
  • Link: Read the article
This article investigates differences between self-administered and interviewer-administered modes in population inferences related to important associations between predictors and outcomes that capture subgroup differences. The study focuses on measures of personal experiences with a range of privacy considerations, from more private measures of sexual partnerships and contraceptive use to less private measures of cohabitation and marriage. We compare the self-administered web/mail approach used by the American Family Health Study (AFHS, 2020–2022) to the interviewer-administered data collection used by the National Survey of Family Growth (2017–2019). The existing mode effects literature suggests that about 20 percent of estimated regression coefficients are moderated by survey mode, and these differences are more likely for sensitive, private outcomes. We investigate multivariable models for these four outcomes, separately for male and female respondents, based on these two nationally representative surveys (AFHS and NSFG) that used the exact same question wording but different survey modes. We test models including the most common predictors in the literature on these outcomes (age, race and ethnicity, and level of education). We compare results, ignoring study-specific weights based on the respective sample design features and then when employing the weights for estimation. We find few significant differences in inference between these two national studies, suggesting that the more cost-efficient AFHS approach can effectively replicate population inferences about important family and reproductive health outcomes.

📚 Journal of Theoretical Politics

📄 Biased learning from elections

  • Author(s): Andrew T. Little, Andrew Mack, Thomas B. Pepinsky
  • Link: Read the article
Political economy models of elections study how electoral incentives encourage parties to be responsive to voters. Election results can be informative about how platforms diverge from voter preferences, but the complexity of the environment and cognitive biases may inhibit learning. We develop a repeated model of elections with motivated reasoning and uncertainty about the fairness of the electoral system. A party who wants to believe the electorate is close to their preferences picks more extreme platforms, which in turn causes the other party to be more extreme as well. Motivated beliefs also allow parties to infer from poor results that elections are unfair rather than that their platforms are unpopular. Repeated elections exacerbate this problem: disagreement about the fairness of the electoral system increases over time, even if platform divergence decreases.

📚 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society)

📄 Agnes Herzberg, 1938–2026

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📄 Modeling smooth and localized mortality patterns across age, time, and space to uncover small-area inequalities

Mortality estimation in small populations is inherently difficult, as random fluctuations from low death counts can obscure real geographic differences. We introduce a flexible model that borrows strength across age, space, and time to estimate mortality schedules and trends in very small populations. The approach ensures smooth patterns across these dimensions while allowing localized breaks from the spatial structure, capturing broad trajectories as well as sharp local contrasts. We implement our model within a Penalized Spline framework and estimate it using Generalized Linear Array Model techniques, resulting in a computationally fast, interpretable, and parsimonious method. Crucially, it can readily incorporate sudden mortality shocks, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, making it highly versatile for real-world demographic and epidemiological challenges. We demonstrate its application by estimating life expectancy and age-specific mortality inequalities in over 4,800 small areas across the Greater London Authority from 2002 to 2024.

📚 Legislative Studies Quarterly

📄 The Legislative Effectiveness of Congressional Oversight Reports

This article assesses the linkage between the House and Senate oversight committees' reports and subsequent legislative efforts in those policy areas from the 106th to the 116th Congresses (1999–2020). The analysis finds support for the three proffered hypotheses. First, the policy topics covered in the reports spur the referral of bills on those topics to the oversight committees. Second, the oversight reports on topics that the majority staff releases are more reflected in downstream legislative activity than the topics covered in the minority staff reports. Finally, the majority's advantage in pushing legislation related to its oversight reports' topics is greater in the House than it is in the Senate. These initial findings substantiate the importance of gathering and coding congressional oversight reports for not only how Congress conducts oversight, but also how it legislates.

📄 The Leadership Premium: Committee Leadership Status and Political Donations to Incumbent Legislators in South Korea

This study investigates the effect of committee leadership positions on political fundraising in the South Korean National Assembly from 2004 to 2019. Drawing upon theories of legislative power and campaign finance, we examine whether acquiring standing committee chairmanships significantly increases political contributions received by legislators, even within Korea's highly restrictive regulatory regime that prohibits corporate donations. Utilizing OLS regression and difference‐in‐differences with Panel Matching methodology, we find compelling evidence of a substantial leadership premium. OLS estimates reveal that committee chairs consistently outraise non‐chairs by 16%–21%; Panel Matching estimates confirm an immediate increase of approximately 1.15 log‐points (a 216% increase) following chair appointment. Event study analysis validates our identification strategy by demonstrating parallel pre‐trends and sharp treatment effects at the moment of leadership transition, with effects dissipating after chairs leave their positions. Split‐sample OLS estimates reveal a cross‐over pattern: the premium is significant for Targeted and Mixed committees in the first half of the legislative term but shifts to Universal committees in the second half, suggesting that the relevant dimension of heterogeneity may be whether a committee holds jurisdictional authority over concentrated regulatory or budgetary stakes. These findings demonstrate that the link between institutional power and political money persists even under highly restrictive campaign finance regimes—reflecting structural features of legislative organization that transcend specific regulatory designs. The individual‐as‐proxy mechanism we identify, whereby organized interest groups circumvent the corporate donation ban through coordinated individual‐level contributions, suggests that regulation reshapes the channels of strategic giving without eliminating its underlying demand.

📚 Local Government Studies

📄 The bottlenecks below: balancing expectations over municipal responsibility for climate adaptation and multilevel governance realities

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📚 Nations and Nationalism

📄 Oscillating Whiteness: A Conceptual Framework for Analysing Transnational Ethno‐Racial Privilege

This article advances oscillating whiteness as a conceptual framework for analysing ethno‐racial privilege across geopolitical settings. The framework theorizes whiteness as a dynamic resource governed by four mechanisms: recognition (how bodies are classified as white), performativity (how whiteness is enacted through cultural scripts), conditionality (how privileges depend on favourable circumstances) and contestation (how racial boundaries are challenged and transformed). Drawing on the experiences of Polish nationals in domestic and Western European diaspora contexts, the article demonstrates how privilege oscillates through labour market hierarchies, national mythologies and political conjunctures, provincializing US‐centric paradigms by embedding whiteness within contexts of postsocialist transition. It specifies the axis of oscillation—attributed recognition moving around a group's structural baseline within intra‐European hierarchies—and the observable patterns the framework predicts and rules out. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine illustrates recognition and conditionality operating at speed, as belonging is extended and rescinded under geopolitical pressure.

📚 Nature Reviews Psychology

📄 Mental health research in a digital ecosystem

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📄 Attitudinal ambivalence and political extremism

Nature Reviews Psychology, Published online: 04 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s44159-026-00602-wAttitudinal ambivalence and political extremism

📄 The role of hippocampus-based developmental changes in paediatric post-traumatic stress disorder

  • Author(s): Jordan C. Foster, Elizabeth V. Goldfarb, Dylan G. Gee
  • Link: Read the article
In this Perspective, Foster et al. spotlight higher-order learning processes that typically develop during childhood to specify intervention targets for young patients.

📄 Prediction in language comprehension across the lifespan

  • Author(s): Kara D. Federmeier, Hui-Sun Chiu, Cynthia L. Fisher, Yukun Yu
  • Link: Read the article
In this Review, Federmeier and colleagues synthesize evidence from children, young adults and older adults to show how prediction is dynamically engaged for language comprehension across the lifespan.

📄 Opportunities and risks of big data for the methods and culture of psychological science

  • Author(s): Gabrielle C. Ibasco, Friedrich M. Götz, Luke Clark, Jessica L. Tracy
  • Link: Read the article
However, the overuse of big data could lead to over-reliance on correlations bereft of explanatory power. In this Perspective, Ibasco et al. describe the methodological and cultural opportunities and risks of big data for psychological science.

📚 Parliamentary Affairs

📄 An expansion to Gamson? ‘dictators’, oppositions, and the distribution of political resources: lessons from Australia

This article extends the proportionality regularity identified in Gamson’s Law to examine how political resources are allocated within an opposition coalition. Using Australia’s Liberal–National coalition, it examines whether shadow ministries and participation in Question Time—key resources for opposition parties—are allocated proportionally to each party’s parliamentary strength. Drawing on a new dataset covering all periods of Coalition opposition from 1983 to 2025, it analyses the distribution of shadow ministerial posts, as well as the distribution of parliamentary questions. The results show a strong proportional distribution of these resources between coalition partners, notwithstanding that the largest opposition party is a ‘dictator’ as defined by Gamson. These findings contribute to research on coalitions, oppositions, and Australian party dynamics, offering new insights into how power-sharing arrangements operate outside government. It also raises important questions about the conditions that Gamson suggested underpinned his theory.

📄 Persistent gender roles in a gender-balanced context: Swedish MPs’ citizen engagement

Distinct leadership styles are expected from women legislators, and research suggests that this is driven by women’s newcomer and minority-status in politics. Do women’s styles differ from men’s in gender-balanced contexts? This paper investigates informal norms on a relatively understudied part of legislators’ role: citizen engagement, using 33 interviews with women and men Swedish MPs. The findings suggest that women MPs experience high expectations on their availability to listen to citizens’ personal problems, while men more easily disregard citizens’ demands on their time and engagement. Compared to men, women also prioritize citizens outside their own electoral district more. This enforces hidden inequalities which continue to shape the gendered conditions for leadership in numerically gender balanced institutions.

📚 Party Politics

📄 Ambition and access: Linking regional opportunity structures and career-ambitious youth party members

Youth party members are primarily driven by intrinsic moral and social motives,  yet ambitions for political and professional careers vary considerably across individuals. Building on findings linking parties' national opportunity structures to having an increase in career-ambitious youth wing members, this research note examines opportunity structures at the regional level. Using a self-collected survey of youth party members in Germany (2017–2018, n = 1216), we show that career-ambitious members are particularly frequent in youth parties that are organizationally strong with numerous local and (sub)regional branches where ambitious youth wing members can make a career. Therefore, this research note provides a key insight into the motivations of young people, and especially those pursuing a political career, for joining youth parties and speaks to a broader literature concerned with political ambition, party organization, and careers.

📄 Ethno-regionalist parties beyond Western Europe: Kurdish parties in Turkey

While there is an extensive literature on ethno-regionalist parties (ERPs) in Western Europe, Kurdish ERPs in Turkey remain undertheorized. Focusing on party ideology, organizational structure, and electoral strategy, this article advances three findings. First, ideologically, Kurdish ERPs consistently articulate a left-leaning program centered on labor and democratization, while increasingly integrating post-materialist tenets such as feminism and environmentalism. Second, organizationally, they function as movement parties with a highly resilient structure. Third, strategically, they expand beyond their ethnic stronghold through broad leftist alliances and a “Turkification” ( Türkiyelileşme ) process, becoming pivotal national actors. These findings underscore the need to account for the interaction between ethno-regional mobilization, political-institutional constraints, and party-movement linkages in understanding ERPs in the European periphery.

📄 Party membership motivations and political activism in a polarized new democracy: Evidence from South Korea

This study investigates party membership motivations in South Korea, a highly polarized new democracy, and how they distinctively shape intra-party and campaign participation. Using survey data from 1,410 Democratic and People Power Party members, we evaluate the General Incentives Model alongside negative partisan motivation. Results show that while altruism is the primary reason for joining, higher affective polarization significantly intensifies negative partisan motivation, making it a key membership driver, particularly among conservatives. Crucially, engagement mechanisms are not monolithic: selective benefits predict both forms of participation, whereas collective policy motives specifically foster campaigning. Conversely, social norms motivation deters visible campaigning due to polarization-induced cross-pressures. Furthermore, negative partisan motivation reduces routine intra-party engagement without increasing campaign involvement. Ultimately, membership surges driven by out-group hostility produce “detached members,” indicating that expanding party rolls in polarized contexts does not automatically deepen democratic participation or organizational capacity.

📚 Policy & Internet

📄 Navigating the Battlefield: How Social Media Platforms Respond to Governance Demands From Legitimacy Communities in Geopolitical Conflicts

Social media platforms have become central actors in governing online speech during geopolitical conflicts, navigating complex governance demands from diverse stake‐holding communities including states, civil society, and users. This paper explores these dynamics through an analysis of Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTokduring the recent Russia–Ukraine war and Israel–Palestine conflict. We develop a framework categorizing platform strategies along two dimensions: activeness and alignment, leading to five response types: proactive, accommodation, avoidance, defiance, and disregard. Through analysis of 126 interaction events, we found three platforms’ distinct strategic approaches. Meta adopted the most proactive measures with clear inclinations to the Western states and calculated defiance against others. X's strategy shifted dramatically after Musk's takeover: from accommodation to defiance and disregard, though it made pragmatic accommodations under severe pressure. TikTok, risk‐averse, and geopolitically vulnerable, frequently employs cautious and ambivalent avoidance and disregard strategies. The findings shed light on how corporate strategy, institutional background, and geopolitical positioning shape how platforms construct their legitimacy in content governance.

📚 Political Behavior

📄 Elite Interactions and Social Bonds: How Partisan Cooperation Shapes Perceptions of Cross-Party Friendships

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📚 Political Communication

📄 The Knowledge Gap in a High-Choice Media Environment: Experimental Evidence from Online Search

  • Author(s): Roberto Ulloa, Leonard Tiedemann, Peter Selb, Celina Kacperski
  • Link: Read the article
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📚 Political Psychology

📄 Consistency, not waste aversion, explains apparent sunk‐cost effects in politics

Do sunk costs shape how voters judge political leaders, or do reputational signals carried by current choices dominate? Across three preregistered experiments (total N  = 1462) using vignettes about a national rail project, we orthogonally manipulated sunk costs (high vs. absent), leaders' decisions (continue vs. abandon), campaign commitments (pro, anti, none), and reminders of prior voting behavior. In Experiment 1 ( N  = 346), Bayesian ANOVA showed that evaluations (vote likelihood, perceived honesty, competence) were reliably higher when leaders continued rather than abandoned a project, with no main effect of sunk costs and no interaction. Experiment 2 ( N  = 719) replicated the null sunk‐cost effect and further found no effect of campaign commitments once the leader's current decision was known. Experiment 3 ( N  = 397) used a structural equation model to test mediation: perceived commitment—but not perceived sunk costs—robustly predicted evaluations, and abandonment sharply reduced perceived commitment; prior‐vote cues were weak and did not mediate effects. Together, the studies indicate that people take continuation to signal commitment and view it positively, whereas abandonment stopping signals a breach of commitment and is penalized. Apparent sunk‐cost sensitivity in politics may often reflect a premium on consistency rather than waste aversion. We discuss implications for designing “face‐saving” off‐ramps and reframing evidence‐based reversals as fidelity to higher order commitments.

📄 Social dominance orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO) refers to how much a person generally opposes group‐based equality and supports group‐based dominance. SDO is measured as an individual difference and pertains very broadly to people's socio‐political attitudes and perceptions, to endorsement or rejection of political parties and candidates, and to behaviors that enforce organizational hierarchies. This paper reviews empirical evidence published from 2010 to 2024 concerning social dominance orientation, first presenting evidence of its stability over time and measurement integrity, next showing that, across numerous cultures and languages and ways of measuring group prejudice and stereotypes, SDO correlates with prejudice favoring people in dominant groups rather than people in subordinate groups, and that this effect is stronger within dominant groups than subordinate groups. Similarly, we review evidence that people higher on SDO are more anti‐social and tend to take hierarchy‐enhancing rather than hierarchy‐attenuating roles. We then delve into the psychology of SDO and summarize the evidence for the relation of SDO and closed cognitive styles, low scores on humility‐honesty, and low concern for other people rather than the self. Using existing adult and child development studies, we outline two processes by which higher SDO may develop: one based on learning to categorize and to rank categories as superior/inferior, and one based on parents' emphasis on obtaining high status to gain approval. We conclude by outlining the next questions that might be pursued.

📚 Political Research Quarterly

📄 I or We? Linked Fate, Self-Interest, and African American Opinion Toward Reparations

  • Author(s): Tatishe M. Nteta, Jesse H. Rhodes, Bel Corder, Seth K. Goldman, Yuen J. Huo, Efrén Pérez, Linda R. Tropp
  • Link: Read the article
Recent years have witnessed renewed calls for reparations to advance racial equality in the United States. In response, a number of localities and institutions of higher education have provided reparations to the descendants of slaves. However, the policy remains controversial as evidenced by a clear racial divide characterized by overwhelmingly White opposition to reparations and strong majorities of African Americans supporting the provision of cash payments to the descendants of slaves. While much attention has been paid to empirical explorations of White opinion, in this paper we investigate the determinants of African American opinion, with a particular focus on the influence of measures of economic self-interest and linked fate in structuring African American opinion. Using data from two large national surveys of Americans, we find consistent evidence that linked fate is a strong and consistent predictor of African American support for reparations, while self-interest is a weaker and less consistent predictor, controlling for a wide array of political, socioeconomic, and attitudinal factors. These findings are reinforced by quantitative and qualitative content analysis of open-ended responses by African Americans to the question why they support reparations. Our results suggest that African Americans’ views on reparations are more strongly associated with the well-being of the African American community and less to do with the individual economic benefits of the policy.

📚 Political Science Research and Methods

📄 How patronage communicates: information campaigns and government responsiveness in China

How do social relationships among government officials shape information flows within bureaucratic hierarchies? Classic principal–agent theories emphasize information asymmetries as a source of inefficiency, yet we know far less about the actual nature of communication within bureaucracies. We argue that patron–client ties embedded within formal hierarchies play a central role in structuring internal information flows. Lower-level officials with patronage ties to higher-level leaders have incentives to conduct informal information campaigns that signal diligence and competence as a way to compete for political favors. Using newly assembled data from China—including a rare corpus of internal emails between city-level patrons and county-level clients, as well as original datasets on county governments’ public responses to citizen complaints—we find that client counties communicate more frequently with higher-level officials, more often highlight their diligence in addressing complaints, and more actively defend themselves against accusations. However, client and non-client counties perform similarly in how they respond publicly to citizen complaints. These findings reveal how patronage relations can increase upward information flows without impacting public-facing performance. More broadly, these results suggest that communication in nondemocratic settings may serve to strengthen informal political ties.

📚 Political Studies

📄 Too burdensome to be acknowledged? How sexism is rendered invisible to women candidates through seven mechanisms

  • Author(s): Clémence Deswert, Robin Devroe, Elise Storme, Emilie van Haute
  • Link: Read the article
Drawing on an inductive analysis of 21 interviews with women candidates at the 2024 elections in Belgium, our article questions how the perpetuation of sexism in politics is facilitated by its invisibilization, even among its victims. First, we show that despite an awareness of the prevalence of sexism in politics, women candidates often struggle to clearly identify its expressions. We show how the type of target (candidates’ profile), the type of sexism (benevolent vs hostile), and the context of its expression (online vs offline) affect the type of mechanisms women candidates turn to, but that it ultimately all leads to the same outcome: the invisibilization of sexism and its disconnect from candidates’ experience. We argue that the mechanisms uncovered can serve as an analytical grid in other contexts. Our findings call for a reconsideration of how sexism in politics is defined, understood, measured, and addressed by actors and institutions.

📄 The undemocratic face of greenwashing and the duty to counter-frame

Normative research on greenwashing has largely focused on the environmental and economic consequences of false or misleading green claims. This article introduces a new perspective that sheds light on its democratic costs. First, I argue that by interfering with the transmission of a public political culture through deceptive claims, greenwashing constitutes a particularly problematic form of corporate capture of democratic rhetoric. I further contend that greenwashing should also be examined against ordinary patterns of language use, given their capacity to shape the range of communicative possibilities available. At the normative level, I then defend a duty to counter-frame: a duty of ordinary citizens to play their part in avoiding reinforcing the communicative conditions that facilitate corporate capture of public rhetoric. This duty aims to initiate processes of reciprocal reason-giving about responsible language use within everyday conversations.

📚 Political Studies Review

📄 Misreading social identity theory: Why affective-polarisation research got it wrong

This paper challenges the theoretical foundation on which contemporary research on affective polarisation rests. Since Iyengar et al., scholars have largely attributed partisan hostility to social identity theory, assuming that group membership automatically produces both in-group favouritism and out-group dislike. I argue that this interpretation is based on a fundamental misreading of Tajfel’s original theory. The minimal-group experiments that gave rise to social identity theory examined behavioural discrimination in resource allocation, not emotional hostility towards out-groups. By conflating discrimination with dislike, subsequent research has overstated the emotional consequences of partisan identity while neglecting the role of intergroup conflict. Drawing on realistic conflict theory, this article develops a conflict-centred framework that distinguishes identity, discriminatory behaviour, and negative affect. It shows that hostile emotions towards out-groups arise from conflict rather than from social categorisation itself. This reinterpretation clarifies a long-standing conceptual error and situates affective polarisation within a broader theory of group conflict and political emotion.

📄 Revolutions or campaigns? Tearing down the Berlin Wall in the study of mass mobilization

  • Author(s): Andrey Korotayev, Ruslan Guseinov, Vadim Ustyuzhanin
  • Link: Read the article
In recent years, a kind of “Berlin Wall” has emerged between the study of “revolutions” and “maximalist campaigns.” Although scholars in these two traditions analyze closely related phenomena, they use different terminology, bodies of literature, and empirical conventions. We argue that this separation is analytically costly and prevents fruitful dialogue. On one hand, this leads to the dismissal of the accomplishments of all four preceding generations of revolutionary theory by the students of “maximalist campaigns”/“organized resistance”/“civil resistance”/“dissident campaigns”/“civilian revolts,” without any justifiable rationale, which leads to the fact that those studies tend to produce rather theoretically shallow results. In the meantime, the revolution students’ ignorance of the findings of the “maximalist campaign” research does not let them understand how well the 21st-century revolutions have already been studied empirically. While revolutions and maximalist campaigns are not conceptually identical, we show that the two traditions study substantially overlapping sets of contentious episodes and arrive at comparable empirical results. For this reason, scholars in each camp should engage more directly with the other camp literature and, where appropriate, use datasets on both revolutions and maximalist campaigns for validation and robustness checks.

📄 Conceptualising and measuring deliberative quality: A review

This article reviews the literature on deliberative quality, a key concept used in deliberative democracy scholarship to assess how closely actual deliberation approximates normative ideals. It traces the development of deliberative theory from early models through to more inclusive and systemic approaches. The review maps the main empirical tools developed to measure deliberative quality, which differ in their normative assumptions, methodological designs, and levels of analysis. While the proliferation of approaches reflects the richness of the field, it also creates challenges regarding empirical comparability and theoretical clarity. The article concludes with a section highlighting a research agenda calling for conceptual alignment and methodological refinement to support future research on deliberation, especially in contexts where deliberative processes are becoming increasingly institutionalised and often proposed as responses to political polarisation and democratic distrust. We provide a comprehensive and systematic overview for scholars interested in deliberative processes and their normative and empirical evaluation.

📄 Speak “As Good As Men”? An empirical study of gender variation in Chinese courtroom audio

Do men and women perform differently within a male-dominated judicial system? We investigate this question by using a machine-learning algorithm to analyze oral speeches in criminal trials in China, measuring judges’ proficiency in Standard Mandarin as an external indicator of linguistic performance and professionalism. Results show little gender-based variation: male and female judges speak Mandarin with comparable fluency. Crime severity, a proxy for political salience and strategic case assignment, is positively associated with linguistic proficiency, suggesting that speech uniformity reflects both procedural norms and institutional symbolism. Rather than implying gender equality, this pattern illustrates how linguistic parity can serve the regime’s performative construction of legitimacy through hegemonic vernacular and gender representation. By combining computational analysis of audio data with theories of language and power, the study provides new empirical evidence on gender and institutional behavior under authoritarianism. It demonstrates the potential of audio data for studying judicial communication.

📚 Public Opinion Quarterly

📄 AAPOR Presidential Address AAPOR Presidential Address 2026: Bearing Witness to This Moment

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📚 Representation

📄 Contested Representation. Swiss Political Parties in Post-war Election Campaigns

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📚 Social Forces

📄 Having a child through medically assisted reproduction: a social stratification perspective

Prior research documents marked social disparities in births through medically assisted reproduction (MAR), which are often attributed to unequal access to treatment. However, social inequalities may also arise from processes operating after MAR treatments begin. We examine this possibility using population-level administrative register data from Finland, a context where MAR treatments are generously subsidized and access barriers are relatively low. Focusing on all childless women who initiated MAR treatments between 1995 and 2019, we analyze whether and why women with tertiary education are more likely than less-educated women to have a child through MAR. The results show that, among childless women who start MAR treatments, those with tertiary education are more likely to have a child after MAR than women with below tertiary education. This educational gradient is partly explained by differences in early treatment discontinuation, uptake of more invasive and more successful MAR treatments, and per-cycle treatment success rates. The results support the hypothesis that social stratification processes in MAR outcomes continues after the start of MAR treatments.

📚 Social Science Quarterly

📄 The Shock That Stayed: The COVID Pandemic and Its Impact on Assessment

  • Author(s): Zoe Bogan, Juntao Chi, Olivia Cutka, Gabe Codada, Janani Eswaran, Nathan Fang, Ralph David Fernando, Nick Foxworthy, Avalin Hess, Ranit Kar, Jennifer Karakash, Warren Kim, Violet Lamptey, Adam Longstreth, Sydney Machado, Riley Odier, Thomas Pigott, David Rasmussen, Sophia Richason, Faith Shands, David Tashjian, Ariana Wagner, Jianhan Yin, William Bianco
  • Link: Read the article
Objective This study aims to explain a sharp increase in average course grades at a large midwestern state university during the COVID pandemic. Methodology The study employed multivariate analysis of average course grades with course–faculty matching and other controls. Results The shock disproportionately affected grades in courses with low pre‐COVID average grades. These courses also retained a larger share of the increase in grades. Conclusion The shock appears to have contributed to grade compression at the high end, with significantly fewer low grades in some STEM gatekeeper classes. However, after 4 years, the overall effect is largely consistent with previous secular trends.

📄 Overlooked and Undervalued: Gendered Prestige Hierarchies Among County Clerks

  • Author(s): Ethan M. Bernick, Chardie L. Baird, Brianne Heidbreder, Andrew Navarro
  • Link: Read the article
Objective While men are disproportionately represented in most elected US political institutions (e.g., Congress and state legislatures), some county‐level offices—such as clerkships—reach gender parity or are disproportionately held by women. Research on gender and work, however, suggests that men often maintain advantages within feminized fields. This study examines whether gender inequality persists within county clerkships, focusing on access to higher prestige positions. Methods Using survey data from county clerks in 14 states, we ask two questions: (1) Are men more likely to hold higher prestige county clerk positions? and (2) Do factors that shape advancement in national and state politics operate similarly at the local level? Results We find that men are more likely than women to hold more prestigious county clerk positions. However, traditional predictors of political careers—such as ambition, tenure, and prior experience—do not explain this disparity. Instead, advancement is primarily shaped by institutional processes, particularly encouragement associated with political party recruitment. These processes structure access to higher prestige roles and generate unequal returns for men and women. Conclusions These findings extend research on the glass escalator into elected office by demonstrating that even in women‐dominated political positions, gender inequality is reproduced through institutional gatekeeping that differentially channels and rewards candidates.

📄 Examining the Dynamics Between Criminal Justice Campaign Messaging, News Coverage, Public Policy Mood, and Voter Participation in Judicial Elections

Objective In low‐information elections, any amount of information can be decisive in voter behavior, including the choice of whether to make a choice in each race. In judicial elections, often low‐information affairs, rhetoric about criminal justice typically attracts the most attention of potential voters. Given the nature of these judicial races, voter knowledge on candidates relies on a variety of state‐ and race‐level contextual factors, including issues of law and order, a key feature of judicial races as highlighted in campaign advertising. We examine the impact of crime rhetoric in judicial campaign ads, front‐page news coverage of criminal cases, and public policy mood on ballot roll‐off. Argument This paper argues that the ubiquity of crime‐related references in judicial advertising leads to the electorate having more information to use at the ballot box. In addition, it also argues that front‐page news coverage of criminal cases also mobilizes voter participation in judicial elections. These increased information avenues lead to higher levels of voter participation in judicial races. Furthermore, conservative constituencies are primed to respond more strongly to crime advertising. Methods The unit of analysis of the dataset in our study is on the ad‐candidate level. As the dependent variable for average ballot roll‐off in an election and ballot roll‐off per race are continuous and our dataset is hierarchical in nature, we estimated our analyses using linear mixed‐effects models with state and year random effects. The time frame of our study is 2000 to 2018. We examine three main independent variables: crime rhetoric in judicial campaign ads, front‐page news coverage of criminal cases, and public policy mood. Results We find that while crime messaging in judicial campaign ads do little to mobilize voters, front‐page news coverage of criminal cases and states that have more liberal (i.e., prefer more government engagement in policy areas)‐not conservative‐public policy moods motivate voter participation in judicial elections. As judicial campaigns pour significant resources to air ads centering on crime and punishment to mobilize voters, our findings suggest crime messaging does not shape voter participation in these races as much as other state‐level contextual factors.

📄 Who Deserves To Belong? Partisan News, Anti‐Immigrant Misinformation, Immigrant Deservingness, and Immigration Policy Preferences

Introduction Anti‐immigrant misinformation has become central to shaping public attitudes toward immigrants in the United States, transforming immigration from a technical policy domain into a symbolic battleground in partisan conflict. Despite the prevalence of misinformation in contemporary immigration discourse, few studies connect misperceptions about immigrants to the moral evaluation framework such as deservingness. This study addresses this gap by examining how partisan information environments shape acceptance of anti‐immigrant misinformation and, through the misinformation acceptance, structure moral evaluations of immigrant deservingness and attitudes toward restrictive immigration policies. Drawing on van Oorschot's CARIN deservingness model, the study extends it by introducing a sixth dimension— safety —reflecting the prominent narrative in the United States linking immigration to crime and public insecurity. Literature Review Three strands of research frame this inquiry. First, misinformation literature shows that falsehoods do more than distort factual beliefs; they also shape moral framework and standards people use when evaluating social groups. Second, existing research often examines anti‐immigrant misinformation within a single media context—typically social media—while far less work compares how different media environments influence its impact. Third, misinformation is deeply rooted in socio‐political identities, with recurrent frames (crime, economic burden, cultural incompatibility) circulating most forcefully in right‐leaning media. The study proposes three hypotheses: (H1) conservative cable news exposure is positively associated with misinformation acceptance, while liberal cable news and traditional news is negatively associated with it; (H2) misinformation acceptance is negatively associated with all deservingness dimensions ( control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, need , and safety ); (H3) higher deservingness perceptions ( control , attitude , reciprocity , identity , need , and safety ) are positively associated with opposition to restrictive policies. This study also asks three corresponding research questions to examine the partisan subgroup differences. Method A nationally representative online survey of 1158 US adults (April 2025) measured media exposure, misinformation acceptance (six items, α = 0.78), deservingness (five retained dimensions after excluding attitude due to low reliability), and policy opposition (three items, α = 0.81). Path analysis with BCa bootstrap CIs and separate models for Republicans ( N = 457) and Democrats ( N = 424) were employed. Findings Conservative cable news is strongly associated with misinformation acceptance ( β = 0.47), while liberal cable news ( β = −0.29) and traditional news ( β = −0.22) reduced it. Misinformation eroded all deservingness dimensions ( β = −0.10 to −0.21). Need, control, and safety increased policy opposition; identity decreased it. Partisan models revealed distinct pathways: Republicans’ misinformation acceptance was driven by conservative cable news and reduced by liberal cable news; Democrats’ was driven by conservative cable news and reduced by traditional news. Policy opposition among Republicans was shaped by need and control; among Democrats, by need and safety, with identity reducing it. Discussion The results indicate that misinformation functions simultaneously as an informational and moral mechanism, reshaping the criteria through which inclusion is morally justified. Conservative cable news amplifies misinformation across partisan lines, while traditional journalism plays a corrective role primarily among Democrats. These findings help explain why factual corrections alone often fail to shift immigration attitudes: When misinformation aligns with underlying moral schemas, correcting facts without addressing moral interpretations is insufficient. Interventions may need to target multiple moral dimensions—particularly safety, control, and identity—to counteract anti‐immigrant misinformation. The study also highlights television's continued role in disseminating partisan misinformation, suggesting that an overemphasis of misinformation studies on digital platforms may neglect populations reliant on legacy media.

📚 Sociological Methods & Research

📄 Evaluating Methods to Prevent and Detect Inattentive Respondents in Web Surveys

  • Author(s): Lukas Olbrich, Joseph W. Sakshaug, Eric Lewandowski
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Inattentive respondents pose a substantial threat to data quality in web surveys. We evaluate methods for preventing and detecting inattentive respondents. First, we test the effect of asking respondents to commit to providing high-quality responses at the beginning of the survey on various data quality measures. Second, we compare the proportion of flagged respondents for two versions of an attention check item instructing them to select a specific response versus leaving the item blank. Third, we propose a timestamp-based cluster analysis approach that identifies clusters of respondents who exhibit different speeding behaviors. Our findings show that the commitment pledge had no effect on the data quality measures. Instructing respondents to leave the item blank significantly increased the rate of flagged respondents (by 16.8 percentage points). The timestamp-based clustering approach efficiently identified clusters of likely inattentive respondents. Lastly, we show that inattentive respondents can have substantial impacts on substantive analyses.

📚 The International Journal of Press/Politics

📄 Anti-Elitism Gets the Views: Populist Communication and Popularity on German Political YouTube

YouTube has become a central venue for political communication, but systematic evidence of how parties employ the platform remains limited. This article examines how German political parties use YouTube and how populist rhetoric shapes engagement. We distinguish between anti-elitism and people-centrism and analyze their prevalence in party videos alongside their effects on video performance. We compile a dataset of official YouTube channels from all major German parties (2017–2025), apply automated transcription, and use a transformer-based model (PopBERT) to detect populist language. Video performance is assessed primarily through views, modeled with quantile regression and hurdle approaches to capture the likelihood of videos reaching the top tier and conditional effects among successful content. Our results show that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) far surpasses other parties in subscribers, video production, and engagement. Content analysis reveals that AfD channels contain markedly higher levels of anti-elitist rhetoric, while people-centrism appears more evenly distributed across the party spectrum. Quantile regression models show that anti-elitism is positively associated with engagement in the upper tail of the view distribution for all parties except the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Hurdle models further indicate that anti-elitism is associated with a higher probability of entering the top performance tier not only for the AfD but also for the Christian Democratic Union / Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), Left, and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Results for people-centrism are weaker and less consistent. The study contributes to research on digital populism by showing that anti-elitist rhetoric, more than people-centrism, is associated with video success on YouTube across populist and nonpopulist parties.

📚 The Journal of Legislative Studies

📄 Quiet power, steady voice: Luxembourg’s parliamentary diplomacy towards Kosovo’s recognition and state-building

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📄 When conflict leaves the rules: party institutionalisation, system closure and legislative violence in Europe

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📚 The Quarterly Journal of Economics

📄 Clause and Effect:* Theory and Field Experimental Evidence on Noncompete Clauses

We study worker noncompete clauses in a large field experiment with two finance firms. Across ~14,000 job offers to freelance recruiters on short-term contracts, we randomize wages and the presence, salience, and duration of noncompetes (all contracts also included a nondisclosure agreement). Removing a noncompete increases mobility between competing employers by 36–52% and raises workers’ total earnings from the two firms by 12–17%. We find no evidence—rejecting even small effects—that removing noncompetes generates secret leakage. We also find no evidence that workers choose noncompete jobs for higher pay. Many workers appear unaware of noncompetes before firms’ post-employment communication. The results align with a model of inattention and uncertainty about enforcement.

📚 人文及社會科學集刊

📄 【預刊】（39卷）Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Crashes: Evidence from Heliobiology

  • Author(s): 鄧家珍 Chia-Chen Teng, 楊智明 J. Jimmy Yang
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📄 【預刊】（39卷）Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility in a Vertically Related Market

  • Author(s): 丁虹仁 Hong-Ren Din, 孫嘉宏 Chia-Hung Sun
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