The Shadow of Confucianism: Traditional Values Condition the Negativity Bias among East Asians Baowen Liang (Université de Montréal) The negativity bias theory contends that people pay more attention to negative than to positive information. It is argued that the bias is a consequence of risk-aversion that developed through evolution and is therefore a part of […] Read more

Party Strategy and Public Mood in Japan Lewis Luartz (University of California, Riverside) What impacts do Japanese party strategies have on their electoral outcomes? Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has a near continuous hold of government in Japanese politics, many have simplified competition to a state of competition among other parties for the opposition […] Read more

Ambivalence Across the Globe:  Investigating the Effects of Political Ambivalence on Vote Switching in Multi-Party Systems Klara Dentler (University of Mannheim) Since the past two decades, vote switching has been on the rise. An under-researched dimension of this phenomenon is the impact of ambivalent political attitudes. Whilst the effects of ambivalence on vote switching have been investigated in the […] Read more

Many disciplines in the social sciences face a ‘credibility crisis’. In response to such crises, the Open Science movement is promoting research practices that are more transparent. In political science, there is a clear trend towards more transparent and replicable research. More and more journals are requiring the pre-registration of experimental work and a few […] Read more

Démocratie et élections libres à travers les yeux des immigrants Anna Zagrebina (Université de Montréal) Les visions de la démocratie changent les orientations des gens vers la démocratie, affectent la satisfaction à l’égard de la démocratie et ont un effet significatif sur le comportement politique et sont donc devenues un sujet de recherche. Sur la […] Read more

Election-related Internet-Shutdowns in Autocracies Kristin Eichhorn (Chemnitz University of Technology) Eric Linhart (Chemnitz University of Technology) Contemporary autocracies face a digital dilemma concerning the provision of access to the internet. General access to free information and instant communication seems to be contradictory to non-democratic governance. Its mobilization potential may destabilize the regime. At the same […] Read more

Evaluating Performance in Opposition Dieter Stiers (University of Leuven) Recent scholarship in retrospective voting has shown that voters do not only evaluate incumbent performance when they go to the polls, but the performance of parties in opposition as well. So far, however, these studies could only speculate what it is exactly that voters evaluate of […] Read more

Social norms and electoral participation: doing what is right or doing like everyone else Maxime Coulombe (Université de Montréal) People tend to behave differently, often more in accordance with social norms, when they feel observed or when they know their behavior is monitored or disclosed to others. In political science, Get-Out-To-Voteexperiments have shown how people […] Read more

Can Part ID be a Proxy? The Measure of Party Ideology with Party Identification Nadjim Frechet (Université de Montréal)Maxime Blanchard (McGill University) Many research questions in electoral studies focus directly or indirectly on political parties’ position on specific issues. Unfortunately, parties do not answer surveys. Accordingly, it is much more complex to determine their position […] Read more

Attitudes towards homosexuality after “Obergefell v. Hodges”. Quasi-experimental evidence of anticipatory backlash from Israel  Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte (University of Southampton) The US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was a landmark judicial ruling that expanded the civil rights afforded to sexual minority individuals by recognising the constitutional and federal right of lesbian, gay or […] Read more