While political scientists regularly engage in spirited theoretical debates about elections and voting behavior, few have noticed that elected politicians also have theories of elections and voting. Here, we investigate politicians’ positions on eight central theoretical debates in the area of elections and voting behavior and compare politicians’ theories to those held by ordinary citizens. Using data from face-to-face interviews with nearly one thousand politicians in 11 countries, together with corresponding surveys of more than twelve thousand citizens, we show that politicians overwhelmingly hold thin, minimalist, “democratic realist” theories of voting, while citizens’ theories are more optimistic and policy oriented. Politicians’ theoretical tendencies—along with their theoretical misalignment from citizens—are remarkably consistent across countries. These theories are likely to have important consequences for how politicians campaign, communicate with the public, think about public policy, and represent their constituents.

Are the preferences of women and men unequally represented in public policies? This simple yet fundamental question has remained largely unexplored in the fast-growing fields of women’s representation and inequality in the opinion-policy link. Our study analyzes gender biases in policy representation using an original dataset covering 43 countries and four decades, with citizens’ preferences regarding more than 4,000 country-year policies linked to information about actual policy change. Our analysis reveals clear and robust evidence that women’s policy preferences are underrepresented compared to those of men. While this skew is fairly modest in terms of congruence, women’s representation is driven mostly by the high correlation of preferences with men. When there is disagreement, policy is more likely to align with men’s preferences. Our analyses further suggest that women’s substantive underrepresentation is mitigated in contexts with high levels of female descriptive representation and labor market participation. In sum, our study shows that gender inequality extends to the important realm of policy representation, but there is also meaningful variation in unequal representation across contexts.

Several recent studies have found unequal policy responsiveness, meaning that the policy preferences of high-income citizens are better reflected in implemented policies than the policy preferences of low-income citizens. This has been found mainly in a few studies from the US and a small number of single-country studies from Western Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative studies that stake out the terrain across a broader group of countries. We analyze survey data on the policy preferences of about 3,000 policy proposals from thirty European countries over nearly forty years, combined with information on whether each policy proposal was implemented or not. The results from the cross-country data confirm the general pattern from previous studies that policies supported by the rich are more likely to be implemented than those supported by the poor. We also test four explanations commonly found in the literature: whether unequal responsiveness is exacerbated by (a) high economic inequality, (b) the absence of campaign finance regulations, (c) low union density, and (d) low voter turnout.

Population genetic studies often overlook the evidence for variability and change in past material culture. Here, the authors use a Mesolithic example to demonstrate the importance of integrating archaeological evidence into the interpretation of the Scandinavian hunter-gatherer genetic group. Genetic studies conclude that this group resulted from two single-event dispersals into Scandinavia before 7500 BC. Archaeological evidence, however, shows at least six immigration events pre-dating the earliest DNA, and that the first incoming groups arrived in Scandinavia before 9000 BC. The findings underline the importance of conducting careful archaeological analysis of prehistoric human dispersal in tandem with the study of ancient population genomics.

How should education be structured to most effectively increase civic outcomes such as political knowledge and democratic values? We present results from a field experiment in which we compare the effects of deliberative education and traditional teacher-centered education. The study is the largest field experiment on deliberative education to date and involved more than 1,200 students in 59 classrooms. We test the effects on four forms of civic competence: political knowledge, political interest, democratic values, and political discussion. In contrast to previous research, we find little evidence that deliberative education significantly increases civic competence.

It is well documented that voter turnout is lower among persons who grow up in families from a low socioeconomic status compared with persons from high-status families. This paper examines whether reforms in education can help reduce this gap. We establish causality by exploiting a pilot scheme preceding a large reform of Swedish upper secondary education in the early 1990s, which gave rise to exogenous variation in educational attainment between individuals living in different municipalities or born in different years. Similar to recent studies employing credible identification strategies, we fail to find a statistically significant average effect of education on political participation. We move past previous studies, however, and show that the reform nevertheless contributed to narrowing the voting gap between individuals of different social backgrounds by raising turnout among those from low socioeconomic status households. The results thus square well with other recent studies arguing that education is particularly important for uplifting politically marginalized groups.

To paint a fuller picture of economic voters, we combine personal income records with a representative election survey. We examine three central topics in the economic voting literature: pocketbook versus sociotropic voting, the effects of partisanship on economic evaluations, and voter myopia. First, we show that voters who appear in survey data to be voting based on the national economy are, in fact, voting equally on the basis of their personal financial conditions. Second, there is strong evidence of both partisan bias and economic information in economic evaluations, but personal economic data is required to separate the two. Third, although in experiments and aggregate historical data recent economic conditions appear to drive vote choice, we find no evidence of myopia when we examine actual personal economic data.

Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people’s willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central parts of procedural fairness theory are true, outcome favorability is still overwhelmingly the strongest determinant of individuals’ willingness to accept authoritative decisions. It improves on previous research by locating all key variables into one causal model and testing this model using appropriate data. Findings from a large number of experiments (both vignette and field) reproduce the expected relationships from previous research and support the additional predictions.

Recent research on economic voting has moved beyond the traditional reward–punishment hypothesis, according to which the economy is merely considered a valence issue. Instead, patrimonial economic voting research looks at voters as property owners within the economic system. These studies have relied on survey items that measure whether individuals own different kinds of property to test the patrimonial dimension. This study emphasizes the importance of a surprisingly neglected aspect: the value of assets. It uses official register data files from the Swedish Tax Agency on the value of individuals’ assets merged with survey data from the 2006 Swedish National Election Study. The study finds that the relationship between patrimony and voting behavior in Sweden is similar to that found in other countries, but only when it is tested in a similar way as in these studies – that is, only when it is coded as whether voters own different assets. This study brings three important contributions to the debate. First, it offers a new empirically based categorization of the dimensionality of asset ownership and shows that the previous distinction between low- and high-risk assets is insufficient. Secondly, it shows that merely having assets or not, which is what previous studies have measured, is not what primarily matters; the relevant factor is the value of the assets. And thirdly, it demonstrates that only the value of some kinds of assets matters (especially stocks and real estate properties), while other assets (savings in bonds and funds) do not affect voting behavior or political opinions.

This paper compares the noise performance of two different types of time-domain microwave detection systems: a pulsed system and a pseudo-random noise sequence system. System-level simulations and laboratory-based measurements are carried out in the study. Results show that the effect of timing jitter is more significant on the measurement accuracy of the pseudo-random noise sequence system than that of the pulsed system. Although the signal power density of the pseudo-random sequence system is tens of dBs higher than that of the pulsed system over the frequency band of interest, the signal-to-noise ratio difference between these two systems can be just a few dBs or even smaller depending on the jitter level.

A Hawthorne effect found in election studies is that pre-election survey participation increases voter turnout. Using the Swedish National Election Studies, Granberg and Holmberg (1992) showed evidence in support of this effect. However, their findings have been criticized and more recent studies have failed to find any treatment effect of pre-election survey participation (cf. Mann 2005). This study re-examines an updated version of Granberg and Holmberg's time-series cumulative data file covering eight additional election studies (for a total of 14 election studies from 1960 to 2010). These studies have an experimental component, since half of the sample was randomly assigned to be interviewed before the election and the other half after the election. By comparing validated turnout in the pre-election sample with the post-election sample, it is possible to estimate the causal effect of survey participation on voter turnout. The results show that participating in the pre-election survey indeed has a significant and positive effect on voter turnout. Moreover, this article evaluates whether the treatment effect is unevenly distributed in the population. Results show that citizens with a low propensity to vote are more affected by taking part in election studies than citizens with a high propensity to vote. The study also estimates the long-term effects of survey participation. Results show that participating in an election survey can have significant effects on voter turnout several years later.

What affects who participates in politics? In most studies of political behaviour it is found that individuals with higher education participate to a larger extent in political activities than individuals with lower education. According to conventional wisdom, education is supposed to increases civic skills and political knowledge that functions as the causal mechanisms triggering participation. However, recently a number of studies have started dealing with the question of whether education is a direct cause for political participation or merely works as a proxy for other factors, such as pre-adult socialization or social network centrality. This review article provides an introduction and critical discussion of this debate.

In democratic theory, two frequently occurring ideas are that deliberation and direct voting in referendums can increase perceived legitimacy of democratic procedures. To evaluate this claim, we conducted a controlled field experiment in which 215 high school students participated by being subject to a decision on a collective issue. The decision was made either by direct voting or as a non-voting procedure (decision made by the teacher). Additionally, we manipulated the opportunities for deliberation prior to the decision. Our primary finding is that both voting and deliberation significantly increase perceived legitimacy compared with a procedure in which these components are absent. However, applying both voting and deliberation does not yield significantly higher perceived legitimacy than applying voting without deliberation. We also found that perceived influence in the decision-making process mediates the effect of both voting and deliberation, whereas the epistemic quality of the decision, which is heavily emphasized in deliberative democratic theory, gained no support as a mediator.

In order to combine the merits of both HfO2 and Al2O3 as high-κ gate dielectrics for CMOS technology, high-κ nanolaminate structures in the form of either Al2O3/HfO2/Al2O3 or Al2O3/HfAlOx/Al2O3 were implemented in pMOSFETs and electrically and microstructurally charachterized. ALD TiN film was used as the metal gate electrodes for the pMOSFETs. After full transistor-processing including a rapid thermal processing step at 930 °C, the HfO2 film in the former nanolaminate was found to be crystallized. In contrast, the HfAlOx layer in the latter nanolaminate remained in the amorphous state. Both types of pMOSFETs exhibited a hysteresis as small as ∼20 mV in C-V characteristics in the bias range of +/− 2 V. They also showed a reduced gate leakage current. The pMOSFET with the Al2O3/HfAlOx/Al2O3 nanolaminate was characterized with a subthreshold slope of 77 mV/decade and a channel hole mobility close to the universal hole mobility curve. The pMOSFET with the Al2O3/HfO2/Al2O3, however, exhibited a subthreshold slope of 100 mV/decade and a ∼30% lower hole mobility than the universal curve.