Political Behavior

Using data from 2006–2020, Cassella & Shepherd examine how partisan policy threats influence firearm purchases following presidential elections and mass shootings, highlighting the role of political context in shaping gun owner behavior. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

What are the long-term political consequences of economic reform? Using evidence from China's state-owned enterprise privatization, Xingchen Lan & Hongshen Zhu examine how large-scale layoffs shaped political trust and political behavior. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

How do Muslim citizens evaluate fundamentalist Muslim immigrants? Using a conjoint experiment in Kazakhstan, Masaaki Higashijima, Akira Igarashi, & Yujin Woo examine how religion and religious intensity shape attitudes toward immigrants. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Using a novel dataset of 450 U.S. sermons, Paul Lendway examines how local sermon rhetoric relates to political attitudes and behavior, highlighting the role of religious messaging in American politics. #ReligionAndPolitics #VotingBehavior Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

What explains opposition to teaching about racism in higher education? Using survey experiments, Adam Thal examines the factors shaping White Republicans' views. #AmericanPolitics Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

📈 Excited to share that Political Behavior’s Impact Factor climbed to 3.5 in 2025 (up from 3.3), keeping us a Q1 journal in Political Science. Thank you to our incredible community of authors and reviewers! 🎉 #PoliSci #AcademicTwitter

Across multiple datasets, researchers find that cross-cutting social ties predict warmer out-party feelings, and Latino Americans, who hold more of these ties, consistently exhibit lower affective polarization. #AmericanPolitics Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

New research on Hong Kong’s 2019 Anti-ELAB movement shows that constituencies exposed to tear gas saw more businesses publicly align with the protest movement. When repression meets pro-movement consumers, activism can become profitable. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Across 38 European countries, network analyses show that programmatic party–citizen linkages are linked to more coherent mass belief systems, especially where symbolic ideological identities anchor the attitude network. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Mass mobilization moves votes. New causal evidence from Weather to Protest shows Black Lives Matter protests increased Democratic vote share in 2020, with short-term backlash but lasting progressive shifts in beliefs about racial inequality. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Does political distrust undermine representative democracy? New evidence from four European countries shows it mainly increases support for direct democracy, especially among politically efficacious and populist voters. #ComparativePolitics Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Do legislators make more reasoned decisions than the public? New evidence shows that while lawmakers do not have stronger policy knowledge, legislative institutions help ensure their votes reflect accurate beliefs about policy consequences. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Why does support for abortion rights change over the life course? New evidence shows that becoming a parent is associated with declining support for abortion, particularly among conservatives and practicing Christians. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

When do voters follow labor or side with big business? Evidence from California’s gig worker ballot fight shows that when attitudes are weakly formed, interest group cues matter greatly and labor unions still guide Democratic voters. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season! See you in the New Year!

When do Americans excuse or condemn political violence? New evidence shows that while who commits the violence matters, what they do matters far more, target and severity drive punishment more than partisan identity, an encouraging finding. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

How powerful are nationalist symbols? Work by O’Brochta & Cunha Silva shows that subtle language cues matter in political context. In Serbia, politicians use Cyrillic to signal nationalism, and these cues make politicians seem more nationalist. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Trials are often seen as a polarizing form of transitional justice, but new evidence suggests they can strengthen democracy. Padialla finds that across Latin America, prosecuting authoritarian crimes increases satisfaction with democracy. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

COVID-19 politics fueled a rise in secularism. New evidence shows the public debate over vaccines and pandemic responses increased Americans’ embrace of secular worldviews, with the strongest shifts among Democrats tied to pro-science attitudes. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

What happens to political trust after a crisis? New evidence from China shows governance failures sharply erode trust, and government corrections don’t work for everyone. “Insiders” with past exposure remain skeptical, while others recover. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.100…