Political scientists have long been concerned that a popularly elected presidency may destabilize competitive party systems. We develop and test a new theory holding that the impact is more immediate and severe than previously assumed. Coexisting legislative and presidential coalitions first and foremost impede the evolution of predictable party interactions at the executive level, which is the domain of the cabinet. This quality has become accessible for comparative research thanks to the concept of party system closure. Using a new dataset for all European democracies since 1848, we show that presidential elections undermine party system closure in two ways: (1) by confounding patterns of government formation (notably under powerful presidencies) and (2) by disturbing electoral/legislative politics, which in turn affect executive politics. The former, direct effect emerges as dominant from a series of panel analyses and case illustrations. These findings have important implications for current problems of constitutional design and institutional reform.

The Brazilian military has recently executed an unexpected return to politics by engaging more actively in domestic policymaking and implementation both before and during the Bolsonaro government, thus jeopardising democratic consolidation. To help understand this development, we examine why the military openly challenges civilian authority over some issues, while remaining silent on others. Whereas prior work emphasises external factors like civilians’ threats to military prerogatives, we argue that contestation of civilian authority stems in no small part from internal military conflict over how to utilise power. The military uses contestation to coordinate prerogatives with civilians and to communicate within the armed forces to increase cohesion. We illustrate this argument with case studies of military contestation surrounding political leadership selection and internal security, using the Army Commander's discourse via Twitter posts and public statements, plus key informant interviews and military publications.

Research has shown that first-time voting experiences affect subsequent voting behavior, with salient elections boosting subsequent turnout and non-salient ones suppressing it. We challenge this view. Following research on the context-dependent nature of habit formation, we argue that all elections should affect subsequent turnout in elections of the same type. Comparing individuals that differ only in how salient their first eligible election was (Presidential or Midterm), we find support for this expectation. Individuals are more likely to vote for, and be interested in, elections of the same type as their first voting experience. Leveraging voting age laws in the US, we also show that such laws affect subsequent participation by changing the type of election individuals are first eligible for.

El objetivo de este estudio es analizar hasta qué punto los cibermedios han permeado el ejercicio electoral latinoamericano. Los casos de estudio se centran en las campañas políticas presidenciales de los candidatos que disputaron las elecciones de Colombia y México en el 2018, bajo la perspectiva de la comunicación transmedia que permite la expansión de un relato a través de diversas plataformas. Asimismo, se propone de manera innovadora un modelo de sistemas intermediales transmedia como una propuesta metodológica de comunicación en escenarios electorales propios del contexto de la llamada cultura de convergencia mediática. La hipótesis de partida asume que lo transmedia no se hace todavía patente en los mensajes políticos y electorales. La metodología se centra en los casos de estudio de los principales candidatos y el análisis de contenido de sus webs y redes sociales (Twitter, Facebook y YouTube). El resultado evidencia cómo el discurso político usado por los candidatos migró a las plataformas digitales, pero mantuvo la tipología propia de los medios tradicionales, desconociendo aún las posibilidades que ofrece el transmedia storytelling para incentivar la participación activa de los posibles electores en la producción de contenidos para la campaña.

Do messages that evoke a gendered leadership style affect attitudes toward well-known candidates? If so, among what sorts of voters? I show that voters’ evaluations of national politicians, including Hillary Clinton, can be influenced by presenting candidates as stereotypically masculine or feminine leaders. In two survey experiments of California registered voters (n = 1,800 each) conducted at the height of the 2016 presidential election campaign, I find that, on average, voters seemed to prefer both male and female politicians more when they were described as having feminine leadership styles. However, clear heterogeneous treatment effects occurred: Democrats, liberals, and women from all parties evaluated politicians more favorably when they were described as feminine; Republicans, conservatives, and voters for Donald Trump evaluated the same candidates less favorably when described as feminine. The findings have implications for scholarship that links gender stereotyping, partisanship, and ideology to voter behavior.

Until 2008, only White candidates represented either of the two major parties as presidential nominees. Hence, little is known about how race appeals are framed by or against non-White presidential candidates. Barack Obama's election as the Democratic Party nominee allows us to investigate this issue. In this article, we conduct a content analysis of over 160 advertisements from the 2008 U.S. presidential election to examine how race appeals were framed (or countered) by each campaign. We find that the Republican campaign employed implicit racial appeals that played upon stereotypes of non-Whites as “un-American” and “other” and Blacks as “dangerous,” “criminal,” “incompetent,” and “uppity.” In contrast, the Democratic campaign de-emphasized race, portrayed “other” as positive, reinforced American identity, and spoke out against negative advertisements.

In this study we examine black voting in the 2008 presidential election. Recognizing the significance of having an African American win the presidency, we evaluate black political attitudes in 2008 vis-à-vis 2004, place black turnout in historical context, and discuss the problem of vote overreporting. The issue of vote overreporting plagues surveys, and this is particularly notable among African American respondents. The momentousness of Barack Obama's candidacy and subsequent election may further complicate black turnout responses. On the one hand, an African American Democratic presidential nominee is expected to mobilize blacks, but on the other hand this situation is also expected to increase the social desirability to misreport voting. To get around this intractable problem with surveys, we evaluate validated black turnout in the state of Georgia, which provides individual-level data on the population of registered voters. The validated black turnout numbers are much lower than those reported in national studies like the Current Population Survey, but our analysis indicates that compared to 2004, African American registration and voting in Georgia were markedly higher in 2008.