Various robust communication effects have been identified, but evidence is overwhelmingly based on artificial survey treatments with limited real-world insight. I conducted a natural experiment on the impact of the European–Turkey statement closing the Balkan route during the 2015/16 European refugee crisis in Germany. This design tests the lasting effect of the statement's framing on public sentiment. I identify treatment and control groups based on timing to demonstrate its effect on perceptions of the crisis, asylum attitudes, and policy preferences. Effects are largest immediately following the announcement but decline rapidly. This shows political communication can significantly change opinion within a limited time frame. This study enhances our understanding of real-world communication effects and offers a broadly applicable methodology.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision withdrawing federal constitutional protection for reproductive rights, the United States is in the throes of federalist conflicts. Some states are enacting draconian prohibitions of abortion or gender-affirming care, whereas other states are attempting to shield providers and their patients seeking care. This article explores standard arguments supporting federalism, including that it allows for cultural differences to remain along with a structure that provides for the advantages of common security and commerce, that it provides a laboratory for confined experiments, that it is government closer to the people and thus more informed about local needs and preferences, and that it creates layers of government that can constrain one another and thus doubly protect rights. We contend that these arguments do not justify significant differences among states with respect to the recognition of important aspects of well-being; significant injustices among subnational units cannot be justified by federalism. However, as nonideal theorists, we also observe that federalism presents the possibility of some states protecting rights that others do not. Assuming that movement among subnational units is protected, those who are fortunate enough to be able to travel will be able to access rights they cannot access at home. Nonetheless, movement may not be readily available to minors, people without documentation, people with disabilities, people who lack economic resources, or people who have responsibilities that preclude travel. Only rights protection at the federal level will suffice in such cases.

Environmental uncertainty is at the core of much of human activity, ranging fromdaily decisions by individuals to long-term policy planning by governments. Yet,there is little quantitative evidence on the ability of non-expert individualsor populations to forecast climate-related events. Here we report on data from a90-year old prediction game on a climate related event in Alaska: the Nenana IceClassic (NIC). Participants in this contest guess to the nearest minute when theice covering the Tanana River will break, signaling the start of spring.Previous research indicates a strong correlation between the ice breakup datesand regional weather conditions. We study betting decisions between 1955 and2009. We find the betting distribution closely predicts the outcome of thecontest. We also find a significant correlation between regional temperatures aswell as past ice breakups and betting behavior, suggesting that participantsincorporate both climate and historical information into theirdecision-making.

Does a universal basic income (UBI) affect voter turnout? This article argues that the introduction of an unconditional cash payment—where citizens receive money independent of employment status, age, or indigence—can have a turnout-enhancing effect. I evaluate the argument using the introduction of the Permanent Fund Dividend in Alaska. Differences-in-differences estimates covering November general elections from 1978 to 2000 provide compelling evidence that the Alaskan UBI has a significant positive effect on turnout. The results further suggest that the turnout increase was not a one-off effect but persists over a period of almost 20 years. Thus, a UBI has the potential to positively affect turnout among an entire electorate, adding to the discussion around potential welfare reforms in western democracies.

This article provides causal evidence on a long-standing controversy in the finance and labour literature, namely, whether better health and safety in the working environment is in the best interests of firm owners. While, on the one hand, an influential strand of the literature argues that improvements in workers’ health and safety provision can increase costs and harm the market value of equity, another well-consolidated strand of the literature argues that such improvements can reduce costs and create shareholder value. It is empirically challenging to study the relation between the work environment and equity value due to their endogenous relation. To overcome this challenge, I utilize a historic natural experiment that uniquely isolates the effects of mandated investments in health and safety provision on firm market value: on 27 March 1974, the Swedish hung parliament drew a lottery ticket to decide on a legislative proposal that mandated companies to improve their employees’ work environment. The lottery resulted in the approval of the proposal. I find that this outcome led to an immediate and sizable decrease in the market value of Swedish companies that persisted for several days.

Does attending communal religious services heighten the tendency to express exclusionary attitudes? Drawing on responses from thousands of Muslims, we identify how the ritual Friday Prayer systematically influences congregants' political and social attitudes. To isolate the independent role of this religious behavior, we exploit day-of-the-week variation in survey enumeration, which we assume to be plausibly uncorrelated with likely confounders, including self-reported religiosity. In our primary analysis, six variables charting various modes of intolerance each indicate that frequent attenders interviewed on Fridays (that is, proximate to the weekly communal prayer) were significantly more likely to express sectarian and antisecular attitudes than their counterparts. To test the potential mechanism behind this tendency, we rely on a controlled comparison between Egyptian and Algerian subgroups, as well as an original survey experiment in Lebanon. Evidence from both analyses is consistent with arguments that elite political messaging embedded in religious rituals spurs much of the observed variation.

Access to information about candidates' performance has long stood as a key factor shaping voter behaviour, but establishing how it impacts behaviour in real-world settings has remained challenging. In the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, unpredictable technical glitches caused by the implementation of biometrics as a form of identification led some voters to cast ballots after official tallies started being announced. In addition to providing a source of exogenous variation of information exposure, run-off elections also enable us to distinguish between different mechanisms underlying the impact of information exposure. We find strong support for a vote-switching bandwagon effect: information exposure motivates voters to abandon losing candidates and switch support for the frontrunner – a finding that stands in the second round, when only two candidates compete against each other. These findings provide theoretical nuance and stronger empirical support for the mechanisms underpinning the impact of information exposure on voter behaviour.

Twin studies function as natural experiments that reveal political ideology’s substantial genetic roots, but how does that comport with research showing a largely nonideological public? This study integrates two important literatures and tests whether political sophistication – itself heritable – provides an “enriched environment” for genetic predispositions to actualize in political attitudes. Estimates from the Minnesota Twin Study show that sociopolitical conservatism is extraordinarily heritable (74%) for the most informed fifth of the public – much more so than population-level results (57%) – but with much lower heritability (29%) for the public’s bottom half. This heterogeneity is clearest in the Wilson–Patterson (W-P) index, with similar patterns for individual index items, an ideological constraint measure, and ideological identification. The results resolve tensions between two key fields by showing that political knowledge facilitates the expression of genetic predispositions in mass politics.