Abstract Concerns that terrorist attacks reduce citizens’ support for democracy and hinder democratization are widespread. Contrary to these concerns, we show that reported support for democracy is not lower after terrorist attacks across 10 cases of unexpected events during surveys in 10 African countries. In three cases, we detect significantly higher support for democracy after attacks. Jointly analyzing the 10 cases reveals that particularly respondents who evaluate their state as undemocratic report more support for democracy after attacks. Among individuals who perceive their state as democratic, we find no difference in support for democracy. Trust in the president and the ruling party is generally lower after attacks. We propose that citizens respond adversely to limited capacities to express dissatisfaction with the government under perceived non-democratic rule, and thus support democracy more after terrorist attacks when the political system is perceived as undemocratic. In contrast to prior research, our results provide a positive outlook on the resilience of support for democracy in the face of adversity.

Abstract There have been growing concerns that political polarization is intensifying. These concerns, however, are primarily based on anecdotal evidence, aggregate measures related to political competition, or survey data that aim at eliciting public opinion. We adopt a different approach and look at polarization among the political elite. We examine the degree of consensus in parliamentary voting in the Polish parliament between 2005 and 2023. We find that political polarization was on the rise and that reaching agreement between the parties was more difficult when the votes concerned economic issues. Our results also demonstrate that voting in Parliament essentially became one-dimensional in that it was mainly driven by the government-opposition divide. We also document that voting against the party line was extremely rare, whether the MPs were in the government or an opposition party. This suggests that party discipline may be an important driver of political polarization.

Abstract This paper builds on the literature about mixed-member electoral systems, exploring how ballot design interacts with voter behavior. We present a theoretical model for vote decision-making in mixed-member systems that takes into account the interaction between both tiers. The model is grounded in a spatial model for vote decision-making under risk and inspired by the logic of portfolio diversification under risk. Accordingly, voters are modeled as risk-averse decision-makers who may prefer diversified vote packages (i.e. split-ticket) when party and candidate uncertainties are highly correlated. The risk diversification strategy abates when voters cast their votes sequentially. This finding provides a potential explanation for the impact of vote sequence in mixed-member systems, an under-investigated topic in the literature. It thus links the established literature on mixed-member systems with scholarship on ballot design and its effects. Additionally, the paper’s analysis explores the implications of combining the proposed model with the well-established wasted vote model.