The higher turnout in Iraq’s recent parliamentary elections reflects advances over the past four years, notably in infrastructure development, security, and political stability. The election’s outcome and ensuing coalition-building dynamics underscore trends and challenges that will shape...

Social media platforms are often credited with empowering grassroots movements in the pursuit of political freedoms. In this paper, we show how social media can also be exploited by political elites to undermine democratic institutions, using the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection as a case...

We study the impact of an election campaign on the labor market outcomes of incumbent party supporters. Using unique data on voters' political preferences during a pre-election period in Albania and a DiD design that compares the evolution of outcomes among close neighbours, we show that...

Five years after the bloody military coup and amid a civil war, elections have taken place in Myanmar. They were neither free nor fair, nor was any attempt made to keep up an appearance of even minimum democratic standards. From the outset, the main purpose of the elections was not political...

Using quarterly data for the period Q1:2000–Q4:2024, the study examines whether elections in EU‑27 member states shape the composition and timing of fiscal policy strategies, and how political, fiscal and institutional constraints condition these dynamics. Employing a two‑way...

We study political shocks as potential birth outcomes stressors, specifically the unexpected result of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We investigate this two-sided shock using an innovative data linkage: Colorado voter registrations and birth certificates, matched by sex, birth year, and...

This paper reviews a growing body of theoretical and empirical research on Italian populism through a detailed examination of the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S), focusing on its experience in municipal elections. Using a wide range of administrative and survey data, as well as...

Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970) proposed that organizations persist when loyalty tempers incentives to exit after adverse shocks. We test this argument using newly digitized individual-level voting records from 28 English constituencies (1832-1868), covering 134,000 real votes....

We study whether the partisan affiliation of U.S. state governors affects the outcome of partisan judicial elections. Exploiting close gubernatorial races from 1946 to 2023, we find that electing a Democratic (Republican) governor significantly increases the subsequent vote share of Democratic...

The parliamentary elections held in Bangladesh on 12 February 2026 marked a turn­ing point in the country’s recent history. In August 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had served for a total of 20 years, with one interruption, was removed from office. An interim government led by Nobel...

Viktor Orbáns FIDESZ hat nach 16 Regierungsjahren zum ersten Mal eine Wahlniederlage eingefahren. Vor allem wirtschaftliche Probleme als Folge eines autoritären und interventionistischen Regierungsstils haben den Ausschlag zum rasanten Aufstieg und Erdrutschsieg einer oppositionellen...

We study the communication strategies on Twitter/X of 367 political leaders in 21 countries, focusing on electoral competition between populists and non-populists. We measure polarization by the ease with which the leader can be classified as populist or not, conditional on his tweet. We find...

This paper models theoretically and tests empirically the hypothesis that the decision about the location of a public bad within a multi-tiered structure of government (a facility providing benefits throughout the federation but inflicting damage to the region hosting it) can be driven by...

We study how inflation expectations can be anchored through different forms of communication and whether such anchoring survives political change. Using a two-wave panel RCT around the 2025 German federal election, we show that providing the ECB's target and projections lowers expectations by...

Viktor Orbáns FIDESZ hat nach 16 Regierungsjahren zum ersten Mal eine Wahlniederlage eingefahren. Vor allem wirtschaftliche Probleme als Folge eines autoritären und interventionistischen Regierungsstils haben den Ausschlag zum rasanten Aufstieg und Erdrutschsieg einer oppositionellen...

This paper investigates the causal effect of the term length of political executives on economic policy outcomes. To establish causality, we exploit the staggered adoption of four-year terms for governors across US states, using data for the period 1937-2008. We find that increasing governors'...

In this paper, we study whether local spending of intergovernmental grants is influenced by mayoral elections in the grant receiving municipality. We exploit the implementation of the German federal government's second economic stimulus package of 2009 (K2) in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg as...

We study the degree and nature of political budget cycles in public investments when two instruments are available: investments by core governments and, more indirectly, by state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While fiscal pressure on core budgets may induce politicians to shift election-induced...

We study the possible increase of partisan polarization in the Netherlands over the period 1998-2023, in particular its relationship with the degree of urbanization, the so-called urban-rural divide. Using national election results at the municipal level and municipal characteristics, we show...

The political future is inherently unpredictable, particularly in the run-up to elections. This article analyses whether such uncertainty matters. In this paper, we raise an interesting issue of the impact of political debate on the stock market of a developing country. Specifically, we...

In recent years, academic research and public debate have increasingly focused on the relationship between immigration and support for populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs). This study examines the 2022 Italian National Elections to assess whether the presence of immigrants at municipal...

This paper studies the long-run effects of non-strategic administrative failures on voter participation. I exploit a natural experiment from Berlin’s 2021 elections, in which hundreds of precincts experienced ballot shortages, multi-hour queues, and unlawful polling closures. Using...

We investigate how reducing information costs through forced experimentation with postal voting, while holding administrative rules fixed, affects subsequent voting behavior. Leveraging a natural experiment during Bavaria’s 2020 Mayoral Elections and drawing on municipality-level...

This is the first of four articles on the 2025 German federal elections, continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 elections. We begin with the 2023/24 electoral reform, which aimed to curb the uncontrolled growth of the Bundestag caused by political developments not envisaged in...

Elections in fragile democracies are not merely contests over policy but battles for control over state resources, including foreign aid. Aid provides local governments with substantial discretionary funds, creating strong incentives for rent-seeking political actors to capture political office....

This is the second out of four papers on the 2025 German federal elections continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 Bundestag elections. We estimate the policy representation ability of the 29 parties that participated in the 2025 elections and of the 2025 Bundestag. For this...

This is the third out four papers on the 2025 German Bundestag elections continuing our analysis of the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 elections. In particular, this paper contributes to the discussion of the imperfection of the German 2023/24 Electoral reform in [Tangian 2025a]. We show that policy...

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...