Theoretical models of political agency primarily incorporate elected executives’ self-interest as motivating reelection-seeking behavior. A concerning trend of democratic backsliding and the scholarly recognition that dominant political leaders in democratic regimes are increasingly willing to...

In this paper, I elaborate on three strategies that governments can implement when faced with emotion-driven policy bubbles: the wait-and-see approach, the emotional containment approach, and the bubble-pricking approach. Based on the limited but important literature on this phenomenon and on...

Earlier conceptual studies suggest that the “lifecycle” of a policy bubble moves through three phases: emergence, maturity and lock-in, and termination. Although the best way to move forward is a rigorous empirical investigation, such future endeavors require a theory to guide them. Drawing...