The extent in which voters from different ideological viewpoints support state interventions to curb crises remains an outstanding conundrum, marred by conflicting evidence. In this article, we test two possible ways out from such puzzle. The role of ideology to explain support for state interventions, we argue, could be (i) conditional upon the ideological nature of the crisis itself (e.g., whether the crisis relates to conservation vs. post-materialist values), or (ii) unfolding indirectly, by moderating the role played by political trust. We present evidence from a conjoint experiment fielded in 2022 on a representative sample of 1,000 Italian citizens, in which respondents were asked whether they support specific governmental interventions to curb a crisis, described under different conditions (e.g., type of crisis, severity). Our results show that the type of crisis matters marginally – right-wing respondents were more likely to support state interventions only in the case of terrorism. More fundamentally, political trust affects the probability to support state interventions, but only for right-wing citizens.

This paper advocates a move beyond the systemic approach in the field of Deliberative Democracy. It argues that the notion of deliberative ecology can deliver the necessary conceptual elements that deliberative democrats seek in deliberative systems without some of the problems they either overlook or embrace. To advocate the advantages of an ecological perspective to deliberation, the article focuses on six axes of comparison: (i) performances of actants (instead of functions of arenas and players); (ii) articulations and translations (instead of transmission); (iii) vulnerabilities (instead of pathologies and dysfunctions); (iv) practice (instead of institutionally-oriented design); (v) diverse temporalities (instead of linear temporality) and; (vi) hologram-based analysis (instead of systemic analysis). In a nutshell, the article claims that the ecological approach to deliberation has the advantage of conceptualizing an ever-changing web of relations of interdependency, which connects diverse entities that are either relevant to a public discussion or that hinder its enactment.

Expectations about ethnic solidarity notwithstanding, Latino support for Donald Trump grew between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Despite his anti-immigration positions and policies, the number of votes cast for Trump unexpectedly increased among members of the group most strongly associated with the issue of immigration. Latinos showed considerably more variance in voting behavior than what would be expected given accounts focused mainly on their ethnic solidarity. We propose a counterintuitive explanation for this trend: due to the activation of dormant political dispositions, it is the very anti-immigration attitudes characterizing Trump that account for his ascendence among Latino voters. Latinos voting for Trump did so because of his anti-immigration positions and not despite those positions. Our findings motivate a reevaluation of standard understandings of the role of minorities in American politics writ large and in American elections more specifically. Furthermore, as anti-immigration Latinos reside disproportionately more in certain swing states, we find them to be a pivotal political force in determining election outcomes, though in unexpected ways.

Affective polarization, a concept that originated in the USA, has increasingly been studied in Europe’s multi-party systems. This form of polarization refers to the extent to which party supporters dislike one another – or, more technically, to the difference between the positive feelings towards the supporters of one’s own political party and the negative feelings towards the supporters of other parties. Measuring this gap in Europe’s multi-party systems requires researchers to make various important decisions relating to conceptualization and measurement. Often, our focus could instead lie on assessing partisan hostility or negative party affect, which is easier to measure. While recent research on affective polarization in Europe has already taught USA lot, both about affective polarization and about political conflict in Europe, I nevertheless suggest that research in this field faces four challenges, namely developing better measures, more sophisticated theories, clearer accounts of affective polarization’s importance and successful ways of reducing negative party affect, if this is indeed desirable.

Investigating the relationship between Islamic religiosity and electoral participation amongst Muslim citizens in Western Europe, this study combines insights from the sociology of religion and Islamic studies with political behavior literature thus creating an improved theoretical framework and a richer empirical understanding surrounding the electoral participation of religious minorities. First, we theorize about three underlying dimensions of Islamic religiosity: frequency of mosque attendance, religious identification, and frequency of prayer. Subsequently, we consider how the religiosity–voting relationship is bolstered or hindered by hostile national environments such as more exclusionary policies and practices (e.g., veil banning or exclusionary citizenship laws).

Empirically, we use a unique dataset that harmonizes five European surveys, resulting in a sample size of just under 8,000 European Muslims. Using multi-level techniques, we find, contrary to research on majority religiosity, that communal religiosity is unrelated to electoral participation. However, individual religiosity bolsters voting in particular among the second generation. Opposite to our expectation, we find that hostile environments do not seem to lead to different impacts of Islamic religiosity within Western Europe. Our results support the taking of a more fine-grained approach when measuring religiosity and also highlight how the impact varies across genders and generations.

In Western European welfare states, research shows that support for welfare chauvinism, or the notion that welfare benefits for immigrants should be restricted, is highest among white, blue-collar working-class voters. On the other hand, higher-educated, middle-class voters are more likely to reject welfare chauvinism and support the inclusion of immigrants into the welfare state. For social democratic parties, this might pose an electoral dilemma between generous welfare states and open borders: They rely on both middle- and working-class constituencies and are ideologically tied both to a universal welfare state and the protection of (national) workers. To what extent does such an electoral dilemma between classes exist for social democratic parties? How do social democratic parties solve this dilemma when in government? In this paper, we postulate that a class divide around welfare chauvinism exists within the electorate for social democratic parties and that these parties’ policies in government reflect these divides: If the social democratic electorate has a high share of working-class voters, they should act more welfare chauvinist than if their electorate is mostly middle class. We test these hypotheses by combining survey and macro-level policy data in 14 Western European countries from 1980 to 2018. We find consistent evidence of the existence of a working-class/middle-class divide regarding welfare chauvinism, even within social democratic electorates. On the macro-level, we find partial evidence that social democratic parties in power respond to the class demands of their electorate: They are less welfare chauvinist when they have a higher proportion of middle-class voters, whereas their working-class vote share does not significantly condition their policies at all, contrary to assumptions in the literature. We therefore conclude that as social democratic parties become parties of the middle classes, the likelihood that they will retrench immigrant welfare rights reduces.

The rise of populism in Western Europe is often portrayed as a reaction to globalisation and supra-national integration processes. However, the domestic-international divide is only one aspect of the scalar organisation of government. In this article, we explore the relationship between populist attitudes and orientations towards state scales more generally. Drawing on a representative survey of 4033 citizens in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland, we show that populist attitudes are linked to preferences for those state territories viewed as ‘closer to the people’ not only in a metaphorical but also in a scalar sense. The results suggest that the rise of populism should not only be considered a response to a crisis of party government in a context of globalisation but also as a response to a crisis of national statehood.

Many citizens feel excluded from political decision-making, which, in their eyes, is dominated by an unresponsive political elite. Citizens with high populist attitudes perceive the world through a populist ‘lens’ and therefore yearn for more popular control and for ‘the people’ to be included in the political process. Participatory budgeting should be particularly suited to address populist demands due to the fact that it is focused on giving citizens actual influence on policy-making. However, so far, no study has examined the effect of participation in a democratic innovation on populist attitudes. This paper empirically assesses if and to what extent participation in a participatory budget affects populist attitudes, and whether citizens with high populist attitudes are affected differently than citizens with low populist attitudes. We analyze panel data on participants of four local participatory budgeting events in the Netherlands before and after participation and find that citizens with high populist attitudes decrease these attitudes significantly after participating in a participatory budget, whereas citizens with low populist attitudes are not significantly affected. Moreover, the significant difference in change between these two groups suggests that citizens with high populist attitudes go ‘through the looking glass’ and become less populist after participating in a participatory budget.

How do citizens react to repeated losses in politics? This paper argues that experiencing accumulated losses creates strong incentives to externalize responsibility for these losses to the decision-making procedure, which can, in turn, erode legitimacy perceptions among the public. Using a survey experiment (N = 2,146) simulating accumulated losses in a series of direct votes among Irish citizens, we find that decision acceptance and the perceived legitimacy of the decision-making procedure diminish with every loss. Three accumulated losses depress the perceived legitimacy of the political system. These effects are mediated by procedural fairness perceptions, suggesting that even when democratic procedures are used, accumulated losses can induce a belief that the process and system are rigged.