Do sanctions strengthen the targeted regime? I analyze the 2014 imposition of Western sanctions on Russia and its impact on voting. The US and the EU introduced targeted measures against Russian entities and individuals related to Putin's regime. Using polling station-level data I investigate...

We assess the influence of moneyed interests on legislative decisions. Our theory predicts that the vote outcome distribution and donation flows in a legislature feature a discontinuity at the approval threshold of bills if special interest groups are involved in vote buying. Testing the...

The standard assumption of exogenous policy preferences implies that parties set their positions according to their voters' preferences. We investigate the reverse effect: Are the electorates' policy preferences responsive to party positions? In a representative German survey, we inform...

Public preferences for charging tuition are important for determining higher education finance. To test whether public support for tuition depends on information and design, we devise several survey experiments in representative samples of the German electorate (N19,500). The electorate is...

While scholars and pundits alike have been pointing to a trend of increasing partisan affect in the US, there has been very little analysis as to how partisan affect impacts the decisions of voters. We hypothesize that affective polarization may effect voting both through an expressive channel,...

In this paper we analyze the 2019 EP elections from the voters' perspective. It is based on a novel post-electoral survey covering five North West European countries: Austria, Germany, France, Sweden and the UK. In particular we address the following questions: How important were the lead...