An energetic scholarly debate discusses possible reforms of representative democracy. Some support participatory forms of democracy, others a more elite-driven or technocratic democracy. This study contributes to the growing literature on the subject by emphasizing political sophistication as a theoretically relevant predictor of attitudes to democracy: different models of democracy make different demands regarding the political sophistication of citizens. The analysis includes two dimensions and three measures of sophistication: personal sophistication measured as political knowledge and internal efficacy, and impersonal sophistication measured as assessment of others’ political competence. Using the 2011 Finnish National Election Study, we find that perceptions of the sophistication of others have a substantial impact on preferences for political decision-making, and that politically sophisticated people support representative democracy. The analysis shows that perceptions of others’ political competence, which has been largely neglected by previous research, is a both theoretically and empirically relevant predictor of preferences for political decision-making processes.

It is common wisdom that the increase in the number of women in parliament brought along a new diversity of perspectives presented in legislatures. So far, however, we know little about the implications of women's presence on party cohesion. Moving towards a more complete understanding of how women affect political processes, this article addresses the question, does gender affect vote defection from party lines, and if so, under what circumstances? We argue that the actual and perceived risk associated with vote defection in roll-call votes is gendered and that this is constraining the leeway of women to rebel. Analysing roll-call vote data of the German Bundestag (1953–2013) provided by Bergmann et al. (2018), we show that gender exerts a consistent effect only if electoral safety and policy content are considered: it is in feminine policy areas and at high levels of electoral security that women are more likely than men to rebel. This finding implies that taking different incentive structures into account is key if we want to understand gendered legislative behaviour.

As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade.

Does the demand for more direct democracy by populist parties have any implications for their internal decision-making? To answer this question, a novel large-scale research project analyses the 2017 candidate selection of all Bundestag parties, including the populist Alternative for Germany. Some 1,334 individual nominations of seven parties are compared using quantitative indicators along three dimensions of intra-party democracy (IPD): competition between aspirants for candidacy, inclusion of members and nomination-related communication. It shows that the AfD is living up to its promise of practising grassroots democracy: in all results it ranks at the top by a wide margin. A new populist organizational model seems to have emerged following neither the classic hierarchical and leader-oriented mode of many other European right-wing populist parties nor the delegate assembly mode typical of German parties. Our further development of IPD concepts, newly elaborated measuring methods and surprising empirical evidence improve the understanding of democratic decision-making in populist parties.

Existing studies of ethnic voting mainly focus on democratic elections. In electoral autocracies, politically subordinate ethnicity can help citizens coordinate against the incumbent. However, we argue that collective action will be constrained when the group grows large, as it becomes costly for its members to form common behavioural norms and carry out effective sanctions through shared ethnic ties under authoritarian repression. Drawing on unique historical surveys in Taiwan, we study how Taiwanese ethnicity and local ethnic demography jointly induced voters' defection against the hegemonic KMT regime. We find that the pro-defection or anti-incumbent effect of Taiwanese ethnicity fell as the share of Taiwanese citizens in a township increased. However, the relative size of the Taiwanese group no longer undermined pro-defection ethnic voting after the KMT lifted the ban on opposition parties. Our results illustrate that formal organizations play a critical role in sustaining the informational salience of ethnicity in the elections.

By the early 1990s, the core executive was established as the ‘new orthodoxy’ in the study of British government at the centre. Thirty years on, this article avers that its main assumptions are increasingly questionable in the light of more recent empirical evidence. The core executive approach may well have outlived its usefulness. This claim is derived from analysis of the Cameron premiership from 2010 to 2016. The focus is on how Whitehall reform radically altered the relationship between politicians and civil servants, reshaping prevailing public service bargains and rules of the game. Ministers identified mechanisms to rebuild political capacity, augmenting partisan control of the bureaucracy. They drew on resources from outside the core executive while politicians increased their sway over civil service appointments. As a result, officials felt they should be ‘responsive’ to ministers. The cumulative effect was to replace interpersonal and institutional resource dependency with a ‘them and us’ model. Consequently, the risk of policy disasters and fiascos grew.

This article aims to discuss to what extent populist parties with opposite ideological backgrounds have differed in their policies towards inherited external financial liberalization (EFL). Building upon a comparative case study centred on Argentina under Kirchnerism (2003–15) and Hungary under Viktor Orbán (since 2010), I conclude that both experiences led to a partial EFL reversal. However, reflecting their opposite ideological underpinnings, each subtype of populism opted to restrict a different dimension of EFL. Argentina's left-wing populism re-regulated cross-border capital flows, harming financial operators, foreign investors and primary exporters through capital controls and export surrenders. These interventionist capital account regulations were needed to shield expansionary macroeconomic policies that attended the interests of subordinate socioeconomic strata, fuelling the tension with financial markets and domestic economic elites. Conversely, Hungary's right-wing populism focused on the ownership structure of the banking sector, aiming to redistribute assets from foreign to domestic private banks and improve the credit conditions for native capitalists. In this case, even when resorting to macroeconomic heterodoxy, the maintenance of fiscal balance and price stability retained support from both foreign investors and domestic business groups, mitigating tensions derived from financial nationalism.

A voluminous literature documents that citizens' perceptions of democracy are shaped by electoral victories and defeats, but what reasoning do citizens use to evaluate parties as winners or losers? Drawing on research on partisan-motivated reasoning, I propose an own-party bias in winner–loser evaluations according to which voters evaluate the electoral fate of their party more favourably than that of other parties. Data gathered in the aftermath of the Danish parliamentary election in 2015 support this expectation. Citizens are more inclined to interpret the election outcome as successful for their preferred party, regardless of the actual election result. This is more pronounced the stronger their partisan attachment and among the less politically knowledgeable, who also assign less importance to objective indicators of electoral success. The findings have implications for our understanding of electoral winners and losers and of how electoral results shape party support and polarization.

Since the third wave of democracy, term limits have become a popular fixture of most constitutions intended to constrain the executive. Yet, recent constitutional reforms around the world show that presidents seeking re-election sometimes overturn the entire constitutional order to extend their power. What is the impact of these constitutional manipulations on the longevity of the executive in office? Using survival analysis of all political leaders and national constitutions from 1875 to 2015, this article demonstrates, for the first time, that when ‘authoritarian-aspiring’ presidents remove constitutional term limits, they increase their stay in office by more than 40%. Our findings contrast with a widely held position in the comparative authoritarian literature suggesting that dictators survive longer under institutional constraints. On the contrary, we argue that by removing constitutional barriers, rulers consolidate more power at the expense of their most ambitious allies and can stay in power longer.

Many countries have constitutional rules, granted to prime ministers, presidents or cabinets, that govern early parliamentary dissolution. Although there are sharply divergent theoretical expectations about the consequences of such powers for both democratic representation and accountability, there have been no empirical examinations of these arguments. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–16) in 26 European countries, we test whether such provisions for early election calling affect citizens' satisfaction with democracy, and if so, which rules and how. While it appears that no form of constitutional rules for early election is directly related to citizen satisfaction with democracy, when early elections are called by prime ministers or presidents, democratic satisfaction drops significantly, and this effect is more pronounced the later in the term the early election is called. These findings have important implications for academic and policy debates about the desirability of constitutional change designed to limit early election calling for opportunistic purposes.