Abstract One common explanation for ethnicized politics and limited national identification in Africa lies with colonial boundaries. Europeans frequently divided ethnic groups as they divvied territory in the nineteenth century; this might have long-run repercussions, as individuals prioritize ties with coethnics in neighboring states rather than with non-coethnic co-nationals. Contra these expectations, we argue that divided groups should have weaker attachments to their ethnicity than non-divided groups will, because partition particularly disrupted pre-existing traditional institutions of governance and exchange within these groups. We argue that partition weakened traditional authorities and, consequently, ethnic identities through three mechanisms: (1) administrative shifts that reduced traditional authorities’ power; (2) limitations on leaders’ capacity to raise revenues; and (3) exacerbating intra-group divisions among co-ethnics living on different sides of the borders. We test this using georeferenced data from rounds 3-6 of the Afrobarometer and find support for our argument. These results are robust to different measures of the extent to which an ethnic group was split and various considerations of ethnic groups’ local and national demographic and political power. Our findings have important implications for studies of the legacies of colonialism and identity politics in Africa today.

Abstract Interest in the influence of subjective perceptions of social groups on political behaviour is increasing. While most extant work has focused on voters’ social identities and their related, expressive considerations about the social bases of parties, this article directs attention to two other considerations that may also influence the vote: voters’ evaluations of social groups, as suggested by reference group theory, and their instrumental considerations about the extent to which parties work to advance the interests of specific groups. Using both an observational ( N = 2,065) and a preregistered experimental study ( N = 7,090) about voter evaluations of social classes and the extent to which parties are seen as fighting for them in Denmark, the study shows how these considerations influence party choice over and above the influence of identity-based considerations. Thereby, the study is the first to show experimental evidence for the effect of group evaluations on vote choice.

Abstract Intergroup attitudes and identity ties can shape foreign policy preferences. Anti-Muslim bias is particularly salient in the USA and the UK, but little work assesses whether this bias generalizes to other countries. We evaluate the extent of anti-Muslim bias in foreign policy attitudes through harmonized survey experiments in thirteen European countries (N=19,673). Experimental vignettes present factual reports of religious persecution by China, counter-stereotypically depicting Muslims as victims. We find evidence of anti-Muslim bias. Participants are less opposed to persecution and less likely to support intervention when Muslims, as opposed to other religious groups, are persecuted. However, this bias is not present in all countries. Exploratory analyses underscore that pre-existing intergroup attitudes and shared group identity moderate how group-based evaluations shape foreign policy attitudes. We provide extensive cross-national evidence that anti-Muslim bias is country-specific and that social identity ties and intergroup attitudes influence foreign policy preferences.

Abstract Philosophical accounts of discrimination distinguish the question of what discrimination is from the question of its wrongfulness. This article addresses these two questions in the context of anti-homeless hostile design of public spaces. Regarding the first question, all forms of anti-homeless hostile design amount to discrimination, with typical cases (for example, anti-homeless spikes or benches) being direct discrimination, but with some cases (for example, CCTV not intended to target the homeless) being indirect discrimination. Regarding the second question, it is argued that all major accounts of the wrongness of discrimination identify the usual, directly discriminatory hostile design as wrongful on account of its harmful or disrespectful character. Most accounts also consider the less common indirectly discriminatory hostile design to be possibly wrongful, especially given the severe disadvantages faced by the homeless in contemporary cities.

Abstract Tax collection is difficult in low-income countries, and bureaucracies exist alongside non-state actors that extract revenue and provide services informally. Might weak states leverage these actors’ strengths to collect taxes, or should they invest in building fiscal capacity on their own? We conducted a field experiment in Lagos, Nigeria that randomly assigned market vendors to tax appeals delivered by state or non-state agents. Contrary to expectations, non-state actors were not effective messengers. Tax appeals delivered by representatives of marketplace associations, an important social intermediary in this context, were ineffective even at higher levels of trust and message credibility. Messages delivered by state agents, however, were sometimes effective in spurring registration and tax payments, especially among ethnic minorities. This study underlines the importance of social intermediaries in shaping the social contract, and it draws attention to the uneven effects of these kinds of institutions within populations.

Abstract How does cognitive household labour – the ‘mental load’ involved in anticipating, fulfilling, and monitoring household needs – influence decisions about whether and how to participate in public life? Studies suggest women take on the vast majority of this load, yet the impact of these private sector inequalities on participation in public life is underexplored. To make progress on these questions, we contribute new causal evidence about the effect of prompting respondents to think about their own mental loads in a survey experiment fielded to employed British parents. Our main argument is that priming the mental load will crowd out interest in political and labour market participation. In line with expectations, our survey experiment finds a strong negative effect of mental load priming on intentions to engage in politics and at work. Our results offer new insights about the continuing relevance of household-based inequalities to gender equality in public life.

Abstract This article describes the Global Legislators Database, a new cross-national dataset on the characteristics – party affiliation, gender, age, education, and occupational background – of nearly 20,000 national parliamentarians in the world’s democracies. The database includes 97 electoral democracies with comprehensive information on legislators who held office in each country’s lower or unicameral chamber during one legislative session in 2015, 2016, or 2017. The GLD is the largest individual-level biographical and demographic database on national legislators ever assembled, with a wide range of potential applications. In this article, we provide multiple types of validity checks of the GLD to document the integrity of the data. We also preview three potential applications of the dataset and note other possible uses for this one-of-a-kind resource for studying representation in the world’s democracies.

Abstract Political scientists lack a generally accepted definition of bargaining complexity, and attempts to quantify the complexity of political negotiations as such are rare. We argue that bargaining complexity is best defined as the amount of choice facing the negotiating actors, and best operationalized as the entropy of the probability distribution across potential bargaining outcomes. We apply this general approach to 343 government formation processes in advanced democracies, predicting the selection probability of each potential government using a state-of-the-art government formation model that integrates both arithmetic factors based on the number and size of parties and interparty relations, such as ideological dispersion and pre-electoral coalitions. We then demonstrate how to use our measure to disentangle between different determinants of bargaining complexity. Lastly, we show that bargaining complexity is robustly related to how many potential governments and partners were considered but ultimately set aside during negotiations and to the resulting cabinet’s durability.

Abstract Ageing populations and slower growth have compelled governments in mature welfare states to implement fiscal adjustments, but uncertainty persists about whether these measures have successfully curtailed the size of the welfare state. This letter documents that fiscal adjustments reduce social spending more effectively than previously thought. Using data from sixteen advanced economies between 1978 and 2018 and the narrative identification of adjustment plans, I estimate cumulative multipliers with local projections. I find that fiscal adjustments persistently lower social spending, including key components of social consumption and social investment. To explain why austerity does not shelter the welfare state, I present stylized facts about the timing and composition of adjustment plans. First, while public investment cuts concentrate at the beginning of the adjustment period, social consumption cuts accumulate over time. Second, large budget deficits and financial crises are frequent antecedents of the most ambitious fiscal reforms.

Abstract Since the 1950s, the history of European integration unfolds as a unique social experiment, witnessing the transformation of a non-existent entity into an increasingly institutionalized force. This article delves into the consequences of this ongoing institutionalization on public attitudes towards the institution itself: the European Union (EU). We argue that as European institutional integration advanced, a divide in EU support between more and less educated individuals emerged, with the latter becoming progressively less supportive. Drawing on data from eighty-five waves of the Eurobarometer survey across fifteen countries and over 820,000 individuals from 1976 to 2014, a Bayesian mixed-effects analysis reveals that the gap in support between the more and less educated significantly widened with a country's level of institutional integration. This study emphasizes the necessity of distinguishing institutional effects from temporal patterns in order to enhance our understanding of EU-related public opinion dynamics.