Declining civic engagement increasingly strains welfare state institutions. This paper asks whether civic values can be shaped through early educational investments. I study Tax and School, a large-scale program implemented in Italian primary and secondary schools to promote fiscal and civic...

This paper investigates how concurrent national and local elections affect the local political participation and competition. Leveraging a quasi-experimental framework provided by Italy's staggered electoral timing, the paper employs a difference-in-differences design. Estimates reveal that...

We exploit education reforms in Sweden and other European countries to estimate the causal effects of longer and modernized compulsory education on civic engagement. In most countries, compulsory education was extended by 1-2 years, and the curricula were reformed to better foster democratic and...

How does criminal group taxation affect participation in elections? I argue that criminal groups that tax public service provision use it as a technology of governance, which gives them a comparative advantage in voter mobilization. I predict that higher levels of criminal taxes on services...

Women's political participation is essential for robust democratic governance. Despite significant historical progress, women around the world continue to be marginalized in politics and decision-making processes due to persistent structural, cultural, and institutional inequalities. In times of...

This report shows that progress has been achieved in the European Union in many areas connected to political participation of people with disabilities since the agency first reported on this issue in 2010. All Member States and the EU have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also called the 2030 Agenda, introduce a new development agenda focused on long-term articulated solutions. The agenda has adopted an inclusive and transversal project, which considers girls and women as essential to achieve sustainable development....

This paper examines whether granting property inheritance rights to women improves their participation in politics as election candidates in India. In patriarchal societies like India, conservative gender norms often discourage women from active political engagement, reinforced by social...

This report shows that progress has been achieved in the European Union in many areas connected to political participation of people with disabilities since the agency first reported on this issue in 2010. All Member States and the EU have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with...

Over the past century, women have gained formal political rights, yet remain under-represented in leadership-partly due to lower demand for representation among women themselves. In this paper, we shift the perspective from why men extended political rights to women toward what shaped women's...

Neighborhood-based organizations (NBOs) can be powerful political actors, shaping policy outcomes and strengthening accountability. Whose voices do they elevate, and to what extent might they reduce or exacerbate local socio-political inequality? While some NBOs may strengthen social capital and...

Purpose - This study aims to identify the factors affecting the political participation of Jordanian university students, especially their voting in national and local elections. The study examines the impact of gender, age, family income and regional affiliation that represent important social...

The growing middle classes in middle-income countries may play a key role in current trends of democratic backsliding, online activism and lifestyle politics. This contribution uncovers which modes of political participation are prevalent among the middle classes in Peru and the Philippines,...

Climate catastrophe throws into stark relief the extreme, life-threatening inequalities that affect millions of lives worldwide. The poorest and most marginalized, who are least responsible for the consumption and emissions that create climate change, are the first and hardest impacted, and the...

In Deutschland kam und kommt es an Hochschulen auch zu pro-palästinensischen Protesten in Form von Camps und Institutsbesetzungen. Bei vielen der Protestaktionen wurden antisemitische Vorfälle registriert. Der vorliegende Bericht liefert nach einer ersten Datenerhebung im Dezember 2023 eine...

Das vorliegende Policy Paper befasst sich mit dem Zusammenhang zwischen Wahrnehmungen politischer Selbstwirksamkeit und ökonomischer Ungleichheit. Die aktuellen Daten des Konstanzer Ungleichheitsbarometers zeigen, dass viele Menschen ihre Einflussmöglichkeiten auf die Politik und auch die...

We study whether exposure to social movements campaigning against income and gender income inequality shifts individual beliefs about inequality, reshapes preferences for redistribution, and translates into political participation in the UK. Since the Great Recession of the 2010s, the UK has...

Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world's most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal's modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are "induced" by...

This article examines the Participatory Fiscal Control System (SCFP) of the Colombian Comptroller General's Office as an institutional innovation in democratic oversight. While participatory audit mechanisms have expanded globally, the literature still lacks empirical analyses of how Supreme...

Weiss et al. (2023) study the effect of Trump's peace plan announcement on Palestinian political participation, arguing that a threat of exclusion mobilizes minorities. Their study includes: (1) social media analysis showing differential treatment effects, (2) a difference-in-differences (DiD)...

In our article, "How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation," we argue that threats of exclusionary policies can mobilize minority citizens through both electoral and non-electoral channels. Using Donald Trump's 2020 "Deal of the Century" (DOC)- which explicitly...

Das vorliegende Policy Paper befasst sich mit dem Zusammenhang zwischen Wahrnehmungen politischer Selbstwirksamkeit und ökonomischer Ungleichheit. Die aktuellen Daten des Konstanzer Ungleichheitsbarometers zeigen, dass viele Menschen ihre Einflussmöglichkeiten auf die Politik und auch die...

Does electing female politicians increase women’s political representation? Using a difference-in-differences design on a comprehensive cross-national dataset, we find that the first election of a female incumbent systematically increases the share of women in government. To address selection...

Purpose - This paper explores how COVID-19 has impacted the shift from public participation by conventional means to e-participation. Specifically, we investigated to what extent COVID-19 has been a driver for electronic participation in community participatory budgeting, which is a kind of...

Despite progress made in recent years towards more gender balance in political representation, this goal has not been reached yet. Multidimensional indices and scoreboards are useful to keep track of progress and set backs, and identify areas for improvement. The Composite Indicators and...

In Deutschland kam und kommt es an Hochschulen auch zu pro-palästinensischen Protesten in Form von Camps und Institutsbesetzungen. Bei vielen der Protestaktionen wurden antisemitische Vorfälle registriert. Der vorliegende Bericht liefert nach einer ersten Datenerhebung im Dezember 2023 eine...