In this study, we investigate the impact of the age of prime ministers and ministers on the stability of governments across 21 democracies. We examine this issue by using Cox survival analysis, leveraging an original dataset and adopting a comparative perspective. The findings of the study document that younger prime ministers face a lower risk of government discretionary termination compared to their older counterparts. This effect does not appear to be statistically significant for cabinet ministers. By shedding light on this uncharted relationship, we contribute to the flourishing literature on youth representation in politics and the established research agenda on the factors affecting the survival in office of democratic governments. We conclude the study by discussing the implications of the findings for democracy and suggesting avenues for future research.

Past research on populist supporters’ democratic orientations suggests that populist voters believe in democracy but are dissatisfied with how it is being implemented. However, this research has not adequately grappled with variation in the type of democracy citizens support or the left–right orientations of populists. Using the tenth wave of the European Social Survey (2020–2022), I distinguish between respondents’ feelings about how well their country lives up to the liberal aspects of democracy (including minority rights, media freedom, pluralism, etc.) and the aspects of democracy related to popular sovereignty (rule by the people, referenda, etc.). All populist supporters are disappointed in their countries’ performance relative to popular sovereignty, while only left-populist supporters are disappointed in their countries’ liberal performance.

Moldova’s geopolitical position, caught between Russia and the West, presents a critical, yet often oversimplified, lens through which to understand its post-Soviet development. This article problematizes the assumption, arguing that Moldovan party politics demonstrates a more fluid and contested landscape than commonly portrayed. Through a qualitative analysis of 31 party electoral programmes between 2001 and 2024, we map the evolution of ‘geopolitical codes’ – how parties articulate foreign policy – and examine their impact on consensus-building and strategic choices. The findings reveal nuanced ideological distinctions within both pro-Russian and pro-European factions, and adaptive codes shaped by both domestic competition and transnational pressures. Crucially, we demonstrate how inter-party dynamics – beyond simple geopolitical alignment – mediate external influences and shape Moldova’s foreign policy. This research contributes to the literature by moving beyond deterministic geopolitical frameworks, highlighting the agency of domestic actors in peripheral states, and offering a deepened understanding of how party competition shapes geopolitical orientation and consensus formation.

How did the Swedish labour movement – the Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the blue-collar union confederation, Landsorganisationen i Sverige (LO) – respond to the rise of the radical right-wing party (RRP) the Sweden Democrats (SD) between 2007 and 2018? To address this question, we conduct a chronological, qualitative analysis of textual sources to analyse not only the external responses but also the intra-organizational process that accompanied these responses. The article highlights the role of timing, as well as that of intra-organizational learning for understanding the nature, and indeed the efficacy, of externally observable responses by political actors to RRPs. The SAP and LO learned to acknowledge the outcomes of their past choices and then used this knowledge to adjust their future strategies. We argue that changes to strategy are therefore best understood as a chain of events rather than discrete episodes, and that securing internal consent for such strategic shifts represents a central task in this process.

This study examines how party size shapes voters’ likelihood of engaging in protest, moving beyond a simple winner–loser categorization of parties. In European democracies, where coalition governments are prevalent, policy-making often requires compromises among parties with differing issue positions, leading to varying levels of voter representation. Junior coalition parties, overshadowed by majority partners, have limited decision-making influence, which increases the likelihood that their voters will protest to shape policy agendas. However, smaller coalition parties still offer better representation than those in opposition. As a key indicator of a party’s capacity to represent its voters, party size significantly shapes motivations for protest among both government and opposition parties. Using data from eight waves of the European Social Survey (2004–2018), the article finds that voters of junior coalition parties are more likely to protest than those of senior coalition partners. Additionally, smaller party size correlates with a higher probability of protest participation, particularly among opposition party voters.

Parliamentary oversight, which is an activity that occurs in both congressional and parliamentary settings, faces many challenges. This is especially the case in parliamentary systems. Institutionally, actors in parliament must oversee the government’s use of power, but complex incentive challenges leave only limited room for oversight to occur, or only when it serves partisan purposes. These two behavioural logics, institutional and partisan, are most apparent in parliamentary oversight committees. This article argues that more controlled/stronger institutional settings strengthen the institutional logic relative to the partisan one in parliamentary oversight procedures. The article tests this argument by investigating the outcomes of oversight cases and the degree of unity across governing and opposition party lines while varying the institutional setting. The research design utilizes variations in oversight-related committee systems for the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian parliaments, which are known for their influential political parties. The results show generally high degrees of unity in oversight cases, but that the degree varies depending on the institutional setting: higher in more controlled/stronger institutional settings, and lower in less controlled/weaker ones.

In a semi-presidential system, which is the most common regime type in Europe, a separately elected president shares executive powers with the government. This dual-executive model incentivizes conflicts that reduce the capacity for effective decision-making. Alongside constitutional rules, the intraexecutive power balance is conditioned by informal practices in response to public opinion. Increasing public demand for a more powerful presidential role can thus ‘presidentialize’ dual executives. Utilizing novel survey data from Finland, we examine the factors that condition support for a stronger presidency. Relative to the country’s highly institutionalized and strongly government-driven political system, we find substantial support for a formally stronger and more confrontational presidency. This support is systematically connected with the typical features of a populist electorate (such as, for example, distrust in political institutions, male voters and ‘populist’ concerns) and we demonstrate that such respondents are also more willing to reduce the powers of parliamentary institutions. The strengthening of such attitudes can potentially destabilize semi-presidential regimes.