We suggest a probabilistic voting model where voters' preferences for alternative public goods display habit formation. Current policies determine habit levels and in turn the future preferences of the voters. This allows the incumbent to act strategically in order to influence the probability...

Recent years have witnessed a rise in right-wing extremism among German youth and young adults. This paper investigates the extent to which the experience of parental unemployment during childhood affects young people's far right-wing attitudes and xenophobia. Estimates from three different...

Right-wing extremism is a serious problem in many societies. A prominent hypothesis states that unemployment plays a crucial role for the occurrence of right-wing extremist crime. In this paper we empirically test this hypothesis. We use a previously not used data set which includes all...

Homosexuality and homophobia have been the subject of increasingly prominent political debates in Western democracies over the last forty years, as activists and movements struggle for and against greater rights for gays and lesbians (Hardisty 1999, 97-125; Adam, Duyvendak and Krouwel 1999; Durham...

This manuscript analyzes an important dynamic of far-right extremism in the United States. In particular, we seek to understand the relationship between the far-right and the military and how far-right groups have militarized. Using the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent war on terror as an...

We use economic theory to examine the intensity of fundamentalist sects. Leaders work to enhance their followers' observance level. We model three stylized situations under which fundamentalist groups function, examining the intensity of observance in each. We find that, under reasonable...

How does opinion polarization over matters of moral conviction affect the legislative outcome of parliamentary institutions? Analysis reveals that in the relatively common case, in which a party's voting power is positively correlated with the public support of the convictions it represents, if...

Party platforms differ sharply from one another, especially on issues with religious content, such as abortion or gay marriage. Religious extremism in the U.S. appears to be strategically targeted to win elections, since party platforms diverge significantly, while policy outcomes like abortion...