Politicians often implement popular changes in public policies prior to elections, with the aim of improving their Election Day outcome. This research note evaluates whether such "electioneering" carries over also into politicians' extra-parliamentary activities. Evidence from the UK House of...

Conventional wisdom holds that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. We argue that the strength and even the direction of these effects is inherently context-dependent because the perception of casualties varies over time and space, affected by historical developments. While intuitive,...

Extensive research demonstrates that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. The present study argues that analyses of the political costs of warfare should also account for the financial toll of wars since a) financial costs of wars are substantial, b) these costs are publicly observed and...

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own - a strategy known as ‘selective emphasis'. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating "your" themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be...

Though a vast amount of empirical work stresses the beneficial effects of social capital, the recent literature has explicitly recognized the importance of distinguishing different types of social capital. Particularly, a distinction has been made between homogeneous (or bonding) and...

German municipalities are expected to suffer from (often significant) population losses in the upcoming decades. We assess these local governments' vulnerability to the fiscal consequences of this demographic decline through two means (using a sample of 1021 municipalities in the state of...

Extensive research demonstrates that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. The present study argues that analyses of the political costs of warfare should also account for the financial toll of wars since a) financial costs of wars are substantial, b) these costs are publicly observed and...

While numerous studies analyse the determinants of the level and composition of local public spending, little attention has been given to what shapes the choice of tax instruments used by decentralised governments. This paper bridges this gap by investigating the economic and political...

Theoretical work based on social identity theory and in-group favoritism predicts that increased population diversity (e.g., due to immigration) reduces support for redistributive public policies. In this article, we add to the empirical literature testing this prediction in three ways. First,...