How do citizens respond to political violence during election campaigns? Previous research suggests such events can increase support for the victim's party through a “rally ‘round the flag” effect, where the public unites against perceived threats, or an “empathy effect,” where individuals sympathize with the victim. Yet it remains unclear whether these effects vary across contexts. This study examines regional variation in public opinion following the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which occurred two days before the national election. Using over 640,000 daily responses from a Voting Advice Application (VAA), we estimate changes in support for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Applying the generalized synthetic control method (GSCM), we find no significant change in public opinion in the area surrounding the assassination site. By contrast, in Abe's home region, support for the LDP temporarily increased and support for rights restrictions declined, suggesting that psychological proximity to the victim briefly influenced public opinion. However, surveys conducted 8 to 9 months later reveal no persistent regional effects, suggesting that neither physical nor psychological proximity to the victim produced lasting changes in political attitudes.

Scholars of electoral reform have long debated the trade-off between accountability and representation in majoritarian versus proportional systems, yet few have examined how voters themselves view this trade-off. We argue that voters who have historically lacked political voice, such as women and young people, are more likely to favor reforms that expand representation, even at some cost to accountability. We test this argument using a conjoint experiment conducted before South Korea’s 2020 election—a moment marked by intense public debate over whether the government should implement electoral reforms to enhance representation or accountability. Our findings show that while women and younger voters lean toward more representative rules, they also value accountability and resist certain reforms that would weaken it. This preference for representation is stronger when considering major electoral system changes rather than minor rule adjustments and is especially pronounced among independent or minor party supporters compared to major party supporters. These insights have important implications for our understanding of electoral reform, voter preferences, and the political inclusion of underrepresented groups.

There is a growing literature that examines how subnational assembly size affects policy outcomes like turnout and women's representation, but also infant mortality and school enrollment. Political scientists know little about what shapes subnational assembly size, however. In this article, I analyse three possible explanations: firstly, building on the work of Taagepera, I propose that population size and assembly size are related: larger populations require greater assemblies following some power relationship. Secondly, I propose that the level of autonomy a subnational entity enjoys may be correlated with the size of the assembly: if a region or municipality has more autonomy, its assembly is likely to be larger. Thirdly, I propose that municipal councils that can determine their own size, will be larger, as representatives seek to ensure re-election. I test these explanations on over 600 regional assemblies in 31 OECD and EU countries and 80,000 municipalities in 31 European countries. I find that population size is the strongest predictor of council size and that the autonomy of the subnational entity is also a significant predictor and that freedom to determine assembly size is not consistently related to assembly size.

Place-based resentment is often used to explain why some populist radical right parties have gained popularity in rural areas. However, few studies have analysed associations between place-based resentment and party support outside of the US. We propose three theoretical scenarios about how the politicisation of place-based resentment could change patterns of party support in multiparty systems. We analyse changes in the individual level relationships between place-based resentment and party preferences in the Netherlands over a period of three elections: 2017, 2021 and 2023. Our findings indicate that voters with higher place-based resentment were more likely to support the radical right in all three elections, but, importantly, these associations disappeared once other political attitudes were taken into account. Place-based resentment does not form a unique explanation for radical right support in the Netherlands. However, after the sudden increase in salience of agricultural policies and urban-rural divides in the Dutch political debate, place-based resentment became a unique additional explanation for party support by 2023. Taking other relevant political attitudes into account, place-based resentment is positively related to support for the agrarian-populist BBB, and negatively related to support for the two largest left-wing progressive parties (PvdA/GL and D66). This study adds to our understanding of electoral consequences of politicization of urban-rural divides, and hopefully paves the way for cross-national comparative research across European multiparty systems.

The cube-root rules of assembly size is one of the strongest relationships in political science. Its theoretical underpinning is given by Taagepera (1972). It is based on the notion that assembly size is optimal when the number of communication channels between representatives among themselves and between citizens and their representative is minimal. This article argues that if one follows the logic of the cube-root rule, proportional electoral systems should be associated with greater assemblies: in that case citizens can communicate with more than one representative. This additional links will result in larger assemblies. This article tests this in 128 national parliaments or lower houses. It finds strong evidence for the importance of electoral systems for assembly size.