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This paper studies, theoretically and empirically, the role of overconfidence in political behavior Our model of overconfidence in beliefs predicts that overconfidence leads to ideological extremeness, increased voter turnout, and stronger partisan identification. The model also makes nuanced predictions about the patterns of ideology in society. These predictions are tested using unique data that measure the overconfidence and standard political characteristics of a nationwide sample of over 3,000 adults. Our numerous predictions find strong support in these data. In particular, we document that overconfidence is a substantively and statistically important predictor of ideological extremeness, voter turnout, and partisan identification.

LGBTQ+ individuals often display consistent political behaviour despite being internally diverse. We theorize about the importance of group-based heuristics to understand this cohesiveness by proposing the concept of LGBTQ+ linked fate. First, we argue that LGBTQ+ linked fate is stronger among privileged individuals within the LGBTQ+ community (white, cisgender, gays/lesbians) and among those whose life experiences have made their LGBTQ+ identity salient. Then, expanding on social identity theory, we posit that individuals with greater LGBTQ+ linked fate are more likely to hold group-based political attitudes and voice these preferences through electoral participation. We provide support for these claims using a novel oversample of ∼2,000 LGBTQ+ Americans from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. We show that stronger LGBTQ+ linked fate is associated with higher voter turnout, leaning ideologically liberal, and identifying with the Democratic Party. This study contributes to understanding group identity, solidarity, and political behaviour among marginalized communities.

While the study of e-participation has gained increasing attention within political science, our understanding of its underlying structure and relationship to offline participation is limited. This article addresses these gaps by focusing on three interrelated questions: (1) Is e-participation a multidimensional phenomenon (differentiation hypothesis)? (2) If submodes exist, do they mirror existing modes of participation (replication hypothesis)? (3) If offline forms are replicated online, do they mix together (integration hypothesis) or operate in separate spheres (independence hypothesis)? We test our hypotheses through confirmatory factor analysis of original survey data from the U.K. General Election of 2010. The results show that distinct submodes of e-participation, comparable to those occurring offline, can be identified. Support for integration and independence varies according to the type of participation undertaken. Finally our results suggest that the online environment may be fostering a new social-media-based type of expressive political behavior.

Research polls, media interviews, and everyday conversations reveal an unsettling truth: citizens, while well-meaning and even passionate about current affairs, appear to know very little about politics. Hundreds of surveys document vast numbers of citizens answering even basic questions about government incorrectly. Given this unfortunate state of affairs, it is not surprising that more knowledgeable people often deride the public for its ignorance. Some experts even think that less informed citizens should stay out of politics altogether. As Arthur Lupia shows in Uninformed, this is not constructive. At root, critics of public ignorance fundamentally misunderstand the problem. Many experts believe that simply providing people with more facts will make them more competent voters. However, these experts fail to understand how most people learn, and hence don't really know what types of information are even relevant to voters. Feeding them information they don't find relevant does not address the problem. In other words, before educating the public, we need to educate the educators. Lupia offers not just a critique, though; he also has solutions. Drawing from a variety of areas of research on topics like attention span and political psychology, he shows how we can actually increase issue competence among voters in areas ranging from gun regulation to climate change. To attack the problem, he develops an arsenal of techniques to effectively convey to people information they actually care about. Citizens sometimes lack the knowledge that they need to make competent political choices, and it is undeniable that greater knowledge can improve decision making. But we need to understand that voters either don't care about or pay attention to much of the information that expertst think is important. Uninformed provides the keys to improving political knowledge and civic competence: understanding what information is important to others and knowing how to best convey it to them.

Modern campaigns develop databases of detailed information about citizens to inform electoral strategy and to guide tactical efforts. Despite sensational reports about the value of individual consumer data, the most valuable information campaigns acquire comes from the behaviors and direct responses provided by citizens themselves. Campaign data analysts develop models using this information to produce individual-level predictions about citizens' likelihoods of performing certain political behaviors, of supporting candidates and issues, and of changing their support conditional on being targeted with specific campaign interventions. The use of these predictive scores has increased dramatically since 2004, and their use could yield sizable gains to campaigns that harness them. At the same time, their widespread use effectively creates a coordination game with incomplete information between allied organizations. As such, organizations would benefit from partitioning the electorate to not duplicate efforts, but legal and political constraints preclude that possibility.

Recent scholarship in comparative political behavior has begun to address how voters in coalitional systems manage the complexity of those environments. We contribute to this emerging literature by asking how voters update their perceptions of the policy positions of political parties that participate in coalition cabinets. In contrast to previous work on the sources of voter perceptions of party ideology in parliamentary systems, which has asked how voters respond to changes in party manifestos (i.e., promises), we argue that in updating their perceptions, voters will give more weight to observable actions than to promises. Further, coalition participation is an easily observed party action that voters use as a heuristic to infer the direction of policy change in the absence of detailed information about parties' legislative records. Specifically, we propose that all voters should perceive parties in coalition cabinets as more ideologically similar, but that this tendency will be muted for more politically interested voters (who have greater access to countervailing messages from parties). Using an individual-level data set constructed from 54 electoral surveys in 18 European countries, we find robust support for these propositions.

Public opinion polarization is here conceived as a process of alignment along multiple lines of potential disagreement and measured as growing constraint in individuals' preferences. Using NES data from 1972 to 2004, the authors model trends in issue partisanship-the correlation of issue attitudes with party identification-and issue alignment-the correlation between pairs of issues-and find a substantive increase in issue partisanship, but little evidence of issue alignment. The findings suggest that opinion changes correspond more to a resorting of party labels among voters than to greater constraint on issue attitudes: since parties are more polarized, they are now better at sorting individuals along ideological lines. Levels of constraint vary across population subgroups: strong partisans and wealthier and politically sophisticated voters have grown more coherent in their beliefs. The authors discuss the consequences of partisan realignment and group sorting on the political process and potential deviations from the classic pluralistic account of American politics.

This paper presents the first systematic study of the political behaviour of female members of China's national legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC). Women held 23 per cent of seats in the 12th NPC, yet they sponsored 44 per cent of all legislative bill proposals and more than half of the bills relevant to women's interests. Women sponsored more bills (4.8 bills) than did men (3.1 bills). We propose that there are two mechanisms driving women's outperformance: (i) women are more collaborative than men, and (ii) female leadership encourages female participation. We analyse 2,366 bills and show that women are disproportionately more active than men in all issue areas and are particularly engaged with women's issues. Our findings demonstrate that underrepresented regime outsiders (women) can carve out a space to amplify their voices, outperform insiders and shape policy direction to a certain extent within an authoritarian legislature.

01 02 Parliaments around the world are still overwhelmingly populated by men, yet studies of male dominance are much rarer than are studies of female under-representation. In this book, men in politics are the subjects of a gendered analysis. How do men manage to hold on to positions of power despite societal trends in the opposite direction? And why do men seek to cooperate mainly with other men? Elin Bjarnegård studies how male networks are maintained and expanded and seeks to improve our understanding of the rationale underlying male dominance in politics. The findings build on results both from statistical analyses of parliamentary composition worldwide and from extensive field work in Thailand. A new concept, homosocial capital, is coined and developed to help us understand the persistence of male political dominance. 16 02 The readers of the book on Gender, Politics and Institutions by Krook and Mackay (2011, Palgrave Macmillan) should be interested in this book, since it speaks with the same institutional language, but delves deeper into how institutions actually work in specifically gendered ways. It adds a gendered perspective to the growing neo-institutionalist literature on informal institutions, exemplified in Informal Institutions & Democracy by Helmke and Levitsky (2006, John Hopkins University Press). Readers of The Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinity, edited by Kimmel, Hearn and Connell (2005, Sage Publications) have probably noted the absence of political studies. 13 02 ELIN BJARNEGÅRD is Assistant Professor at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests include Informal institutions, Gender issues and Thai Politics. 02 02 In this book, men in politics are the subjects of a gendered analysis with Elin Bjarnegård exploring how male networks are maintained and expanded, seeking to improve our understanding of the rationale underlying male dominance in politics. The role of informal institutions in unpredictable political settings are explored. 08 02 'This fascinating new book broadens our horizons in a number of ways. It firstly challenges us to think about male dominance rather than female under-representation in politics, using a range of methods and data derived from detailed empirical research. Second it develops a concept of homosocial capital and uses it in novel ways to to give us significant new insights into the gendered impact of clientelism and informal institutions on candidate selection. This book is an important addition to the gender and politics scholarship and deserves to be widely read.'   Georgina Waylen, Professor of Politics, University of Manchester, UK      'The relation between gender equality, corruption and clientelism in democratic governance is as important as it is fascinating. In this theoretically sophisticated and empirically impressive work, Elin Bjarnegård presents a novel understanding not only for why male dominance in democratic politics can be reproduced through clientelistic network, but also how the specific mechanisms between informal power and democratic representation operate'   Bo Rothstein, August Röhss Chair in Political Science, Göteborg University, Sweden. 'Throwing fresh light on the age-old puzzle of male dominance in elected office, this book provide a new theoretical framework by developing the concept of homosocial capital, often known as 'old boys networks', which are particularly useful for men seeking to get ahead in countries with clientalistic politics. Drawing upon evidence from global trends, the study also utilizes insights drawn from in-depth case-study of Thai politics. The clear, informative and illuminating study gives new insights into the challenges which need to be overcome to achieve gender equality in elected office'   Pippa Norris, Mcquire Lecturer in Comparative Politics John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA and ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia 31 02 This book explains male dominance in politics by focusing on the role of informal institutions in political recruitment 04 02 Upholding Male Parliamentary Dominance Revisiting Patterns Of Gendered Representation Structure Of The Book Studying Men And Masculinities In Politics Constructing Homosocial Capital Clientelism And Unpredictability Clientelism As A Likely Producer Of Homosocial Capital Clientelism And Male Dominance Institutional Enablers Of Clientelism Combining Methods The Quantitative Approach The Qualitative Approach The Representation Of Men Worldwide Capturing Clientelism – Measuring The Immeasurable? The Models, Data And Operationalizations Clientelism And Male Parliamentary Dominance Results And Implications Of The Quantitative Study Situating The Thai Case The Thai Gender Paradox Democratic Instability In Thailand Informal Influence Assessing The Clientelist Political Logic The Thai Case: Clientelism And Male Dominance Candidate Selection In Thai Political Parties The Importance Of Candidate Selection The Rules Of The Game Who Decides? Summarizing Thai Candidate Selection Clientelist Networks And Homosocial Capital The Role And Function Of Clientelist Networks Network Maintenance And Homosocial Capital Theorizing Homosocial Capital The Gendered Consequences Of Clientelist Competition The Added Value Of Homosocial Capital Concluding Remarks A Summary Of The Findings The Contributions Of The Book Interviews References Notes 19 02 The book addresses an old topic in a new way: gender and politics here means male dominance in politics. The book explains how men have managed to hold on to political power rather than why women are stil largely absent The book combines a statistical analysis of over 400 elections worldwide, with an indepth analysis of localized political networks in Thailand (based on 150 interviews). This combination of methods in one and same book, addressing one and the same research question, is very rare The book launches a new concept: homosocial capital. This concept has a wide applicability across many fields and draws from literature on social capital and homosociality. It is used to explain and rationalize the tendency of men to interact with other men in order to preserve power It is one of few works on Thai politics that focuses on gender. It also ties gender inequalities together with the political turbulence in Thai politics The book takes a new look at democratization and shows that semi-democracies often are weak, both in terms of institutional strengths and gender equality