Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own - a strategy known as ‘selective emphasis'. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating "your" themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be...

Research linking civic engagement to citizens’ democratic values, generalized trust, cooperative norms, and so on often implicitly assumes such connections are stable over time. This article argues that, due to changes in the broader institutional environment, the engagement-values relation is...

Politicians often implement popular changes in public policies prior to elections, with the aim of improving their Election Day outcome. This research note evaluates whether such "electioneering" carries over also into politicians' extra-parliamentary activities. Evidence from the UK House of...

Conventional wisdom holds that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. We argue that the strength and even the direction of these effects is inherently context-dependent because the perception of casualties varies over time and space, affected by historical developments. While intuitive,...

Extensive research demonstrates that war casualties depress incumbent popularity. The present study argues that analyses of the political costs of warfare should also account for the financial toll of wars since a) financial costs of wars are substantial, b) these costs are publicly observed and...