Honorata Mazepus
Biographic Data
| ID | 4075174 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Honorata Mazepus |
| GIVEN NAMES | Honorata |
| FAMILY NAME | Mazepus |
| SIGNATURE | MAZEPUS H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5005-9399 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 186 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Do public administration reforms increase trust in government in transitional settings? Evidence from Ukraine
Subverting democracy in the name of democracy
Attempts to subvert democracy are often justified, paradoxically, as an effort to save or improve democracy. Yet, little is known about the effectiveness of these justifications. Here, we conduct two original vignette experiments, where US American and Polish respondents are introduced to a proposal of executive aggrandizement, usurping control over election results and capturing the media, respectively. We manipulate the proposal's party and the…
Motivated causal judgments and responsibility for civilian casualties in military conflicts
Causal judgments are ubiquitous in politics and crucial for assigning responsibility and blame. Cognitive science has demonstrated that people are more likely to pick factors as “causal” when they make a difference for the outcome across a range of counterfactual scenarios, with the scenarios sampled based on statistical and prescriptive normality. We propose that this makes causal judgments susceptible to motivated reasoning and ingroup favoriti…
Are Citizens Vigilant of Changing the Balance of Power? Testing Evaluations of Checks and Balances Reforms
Democratic checks and balances are crucial accountability mechanisms that prevent the abuse of power and protect citizens. Thus, citizens committed to democratic principles should be vigilant of reforms changing the balance of power. Using a mixed-design survey experiment with Polish citizens, this article investigates whether citizens are more vigilant of reform proposals that alter democratic checks and balances than other reforms. It also test…
Bureaucratic Responsiveness and Legitimacy: The Effects of Independence, Competence, and Warmth on Citizens' Legitimacy Perceptions
Bureaucratic responsiveness scholarship focused on examining how independent agencies align with the expectations of political principals and professional standards. However, little is known about how citizens perceive the legitimacy of these different responsiveness behaviors. To address this gap, we draw on insights from political science, public administration, and psychology. We hypothesize that three responsiveness signals increase citizens'…
Cross-cultural evidence that intergroup conflict heightens preferences for dominant leaders: A 25-country study
Across societies and across history, seemingly dominant, authoritarian leaders have emerged frequently, often rising to power based on widespread popular support. One prominent theory holds that evolved psychological mechanisms of followership regulate citizens' leadership preferences such that dominant individuals are intuitively attributed leadership qualities when followers face intergroup conflicts like war. A key hypothesis based on this the…
Citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of independent agencies: The effects of expertise‐based and reputation‐sourced authority
Legitimacy is a central concern for independent agencies tasked with shaping policies. While expertise‐based and reputation‐sourced authority bases are assumed to be relevant for agency legitimacy, their individual and joint effects on citizens' perceptions lack comprehensive examination. To address this gap, the study integrates insights from bureaucratic politics, bureaucratic reputation, and cognitive psychology. Our survey experiment with Dut…
Do Populists Listen to Expertise? A Five-Country Study of Authority, Arguments, and Expert Sources
Across diverse policy domains, there is broad concern about whether trust in science and expertise has eroded during the past decade. Using quota-based surveys with over 7,500 respondents across five countries and preregistered vignette experiments, we investigate what persuades populists and non-populists to accept expert advice. We find first that populism is associated with less willingness to accept expert advice, yet with variation between c…
What traits do citizens value in leaders during war? Experimental and panel-based evidence from Ukraine in 2022
When do citizens want a dominant political leader? A prominent Conflict-Sensitivity Hypothesis suggests such preferences arise during intergroup conflict, yet it remains untested in a real war. We report results from an experiment embedded in a two-wave panel survey with 1,081 Ukrainians (811 re-interviewed) at the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion. We find that respondents generally value competence and warmth over dominance in leaders. Yet, war i…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
What Drives Support for Armed Humanitarian Intervention? Experimental Evidence From Dutch Citizens on International Law and Probability of Success
Under what conditions do individuals support armed humanitarian intervention (AHI) in situations where mass atrocities are ongoing? This article tests several hypotheses about support for AHIs to isolate and interact two potential drivers: international law and the probability of success. It leverages an original, pre-registered experiment from a (quota) representative sample of over 1500 Dutch citizens. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find th…
Chasing greatness: On Russia's discursive interaction with the West over the past millennium
Chasing greatness offers a history of the concept of great power in Russian discourses. It focuses on the origins and different understandings of the concept, examining elite perceptions from the sixteenth century onwards, from tsars and politicians to historians and intellectuals. In the book, Anatoly Reshetnikov aims to differentiate the Russian understanding of great power from the European/western definition of the concept. The analysis of th…
Does Party Identification Matter for Deliberation? Evidence from the Poland Speaks Experiment
Deliberation among the public appears wanting, even in many of the world’s established democracies. This apparent lack of mutually respectful conversation among citizens about politics involving a give-and-take of reasons is often ascribed to growing affective polarisation. The more the citizens come to think of each other as belonging to opposing groups, the less likely it allegedly becomes that they will show respect towards each other or excha…
Framing international cooperation: Citizen support for cooperation with the European Union in Eastern Europe
A widening authority–legitimacy gap in EU regulatory governance? An experimental study of the European Medicines Agency’s legitimacy in health security regulation
Agencification in the EU stretches the confines of the European regulatory state to the maximum by extending to policy domains that were formerly the exclusive terrain of national institutions. Although the challenge to legitimize EU-level agencies is widely acknowledged, scant empirical research has been done on the conditions under which EU-level epistemic authority prevails or fails. To fill this gap, we examine whether EU agencies are perceiv…
Does the Election Winner–Loser Gap Extend to Subjective Health and Well-Being
Political scientists have studied extensively the gap between winners and losers of democratic elections with regard to satisfaction with democracy. We ask whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as well. Building on insights from biology and coalitional psychology, we hypothesize that winning and losing elections could affect one’s outlook on life, happiness, and subjective health. We …
National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during …
Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to Covid-19 pandemic using machine learning
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social…
Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances
Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also f…
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders: Assessment of different elements of state capacity in Belarus and Ukraine
State capacity declines with democratization, yet high state capacity supports the stability of both democracies and autocracies. Ukraine has been a paradigmatic example of capacity decline in democratization and Belarus of an authoritarian regime with high capacity. We set out to discover which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening or stability. Conceptualizing capacity as containing administrative, informational and public servi…
Civil society and external actors: How linkages with the EU and Russia interact with socio-political orders in Belarus and Ukraine
What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate i…
When Should the Majority Rule? Experimental Evidence for Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures
In democracies, majority-rule voting is an esteemed rule for collective decisions, but its hazards have recently become apparent after a series of controversial referendums and ascendant populist leaders. Here, we investigate people’s judgments about when voting is appropriate for collective decisions across five countries with diverse cultures and political institutions (Denmark, Hungary, India, Russia, and USA). Participants read scenarios in w…
Security, Civilisation and Modernisation: Continuity and Change in the Russian Foreign Policy Discourse
This study analyses official Russian foreign policy discourses to contribute to our understanding of how Russia portrays its role in world politics and vis-à-vis neighbouring states. Building on previous studies, we offer a new, comprehensive analysis of Foreign Policy Concepts and the annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly during President Vladimir Putin’s third term (2012–2018). By systematically coding these documents, counting re…
When Business and Politics Mix: Local Networks and Socio-political Transformations in Ukraine
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Fairness matters when responding to disasters: An experimental study of government legitimacy
Governments worldwide are regularly faced with severe weather conditions and disasters caused by natural hazards. Does the way in which governments respond to disasters affect their legitimacy? The current study investigated how evaluations of authorities were influenced by four aspects of a governmental response to a hypothetical disaster. In a survey experiment participants read a scenario in which a government distributed aid in the aftermath …
Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances
Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also f…
Fairness matters when responding to disasters: An experimental study of government legitimacy
Governments worldwide are regularly faced with severe weather conditions and disasters caused by natural hazards. Does the way in which governments respond to disasters affect their legitimacy? The current study investigated how evaluations of authorities were influenced by four aspects of a governmental response to a hypothetical disaster. In a survey experiment participants read a scenario in which a government distributed aid in the aftermath …
A comparative study of legitimation strategies in hybrid regimes
Despite the growing body of research on ‘hybrid regimes’, few studies address the issue of their domestic legitimacy. Targeting this gap in the literature, this article explores the legitimation strategies of three hybrid regimes around the globe: Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles. Although these countries differ markedly in almost every aspect that can be thought of, the political systems of all three cases combine formally democratic institutio…
State-society relations and the sources of support for the Putin regime: Bridging Political Culture and Social Contract Theory
This article evaluates two theoretical approaches to the popularity and resilience of authoritarianism in Russia, namely political culture and social contract theory. These approaches are two of the most important theories of Russian politics and also reflect the general divide in comparative and post-communist politics between political-cultural and rationalist explanations. We demonstrate that these approaches are bound up with different notion…
Does the Election Winner–Loser Gap Extend to Subjective Health and Well-Being
Political scientists have studied extensively the gap between winners and losers of democratic elections with regard to satisfaction with democracy. We ask whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as well. Building on insights from biology and coalitional psychology, we hypothesize that winning and losing elections could affect one’s outlook on life, happiness, and subjective health. We …
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
A widening authority–legitimacy gap in EU regulatory governance? An experimental study of the European Medicines Agency’s legitimacy in health security regulation
Agencification in the EU stretches the confines of the European regulatory state to the maximum by extending to policy domains that were formerly the exclusive terrain of national institutions. Although the challenge to legitimize EU-level agencies is widely acknowledged, scant empirical research has been done on the conditions under which EU-level epistemic authority prevails or fails. To fill this gap, we examine whether EU agencies are perceiv…
Security, Civilisation and Modernisation: Continuity and Change in the Russian Foreign Policy Discourse
This study analyses official Russian foreign policy discourses to contribute to our understanding of how Russia portrays its role in world politics and vis-à-vis neighbouring states. Building on previous studies, we offer a new, comprehensive analysis of Foreign Policy Concepts and the annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly during President Vladimir Putin’s third term (2012–2018). By systematically coding these documents, counting re…
Civil society and external actors: How linkages with the EU and Russia interact with socio-political orders in Belarus and Ukraine
What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate i…
What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes
Because the legitimacy of political authorities exists only in the eyes of citizens, this study investigates which criteria citizens use to decide that an authority is legitimate. By comparing ideas about what makes political authorities legitimate, this study in five European democracies and hybrid regimes illuminates the ‘demand side of political legitimacy’. Using original student survey data, this article compares expectations of students fro…
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders: Assessment of different elements of state capacity in Belarus and Ukraine
State capacity declines with democratization, yet high state capacity supports the stability of both democracies and autocracies. Ukraine has been a paradigmatic example of capacity decline in democratization and Belarus of an authoritarian regime with high capacity. We set out to discover which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening or stability. Conceptualizing capacity as containing administrative, informational and public servi…
Do Populists Listen to Expertise? A Five-Country Study of Authority, Arguments, and Expert Sources
Across diverse policy domains, there is broad concern about whether trust in science and expertise has eroded during the past decade. Using quota-based surveys with over 7,500 respondents across five countries and preregistered vignette experiments, we investigate what persuades populists and non-populists to accept expert advice. We find first that populism is associated with less willingness to accept expert advice, yet with variation between c…
When Should the Majority Rule? Experimental Evidence for Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures
In democracies, majority-rule voting is an esteemed rule for collective decisions, but its hazards have recently become apparent after a series of controversial referendums and ascendant populist leaders. Here, we investigate people’s judgments about when voting is appropriate for collective decisions across five countries with diverse cultures and political institutions (Denmark, Hungary, India, Russia, and USA). Participants read scenarios in w…
When Business and Politics Mix: Local Networks and Socio-political Transformations in Ukraine
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Framing international cooperation: Citizen support for cooperation with the European Union in Eastern Europe
Are Citizens Vigilant of Changing the Balance of Power? Testing Evaluations of Checks and Balances Reforms
Democratic checks and balances are crucial accountability mechanisms that prevent the abuse of power and protect citizens. Thus, citizens committed to democratic principles should be vigilant of reforms changing the balance of power. Using a mixed-design survey experiment with Polish citizens, this article investigates whether citizens are more vigilant of reform proposals that alter democratic checks and balances than other reforms. It also test…
Cross-cultural evidence that intergroup conflict heightens preferences for dominant leaders: A 25-country study
Across societies and across history, seemingly dominant, authoritarian leaders have emerged frequently, often rising to power based on widespread popular support. One prominent theory holds that evolved psychological mechanisms of followership regulate citizens' leadership preferences such that dominant individuals are intuitively attributed leadership qualities when followers face intergroup conflicts like war. A key hypothesis based on this the…
What traits do citizens value in leaders during war? Experimental and panel-based evidence from Ukraine in 2022
When do citizens want a dominant political leader? A prominent Conflict-Sensitivity Hypothesis suggests such preferences arise during intergroup conflict, yet it remains untested in a real war. We report results from an experiment embedded in a two-wave panel survey with 1,081 Ukrainians (811 re-interviewed) at the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion. We find that respondents generally value competence and warmth over dominance in leaders. Yet, war i…
Chasing greatness: On Russia's discursive interaction with the West over the past millennium
Chasing greatness offers a history of the concept of great power in Russian discourses. It focuses on the origins and different understandings of the concept, examining elite perceptions from the sixteenth century onwards, from tsars and politicians to historians and intellectuals. In the book, Anatoly Reshetnikov aims to differentiate the Russian understanding of great power from the European/western definition of the concept. The analysis of th…
Does Party Identification Matter for Deliberation? Evidence from the Poland Speaks Experiment
Deliberation among the public appears wanting, even in many of the world’s established democracies. This apparent lack of mutually respectful conversation among citizens about politics involving a give-and-take of reasons is often ascribed to growing affective polarisation. The more the citizens come to think of each other as belonging to opposing groups, the less likely it allegedly becomes that they will show respect towards each other or excha…
A comparative study of legitimation strategies in hybrid regimes
Despite the growing body of research on ‘hybrid regimes’, few studies address the issue of their domestic legitimacy. Targeting this gap in the literature, this article explores the legitimation strategies of three hybrid regimes around the globe: Russia, Venezuela, and Seychelles. Although these countries differ markedly in almost every aspect that can be thought of, the political systems of all three cases combine formally democratic institutio…
What makes political authorities legitimate? Students’ ideas about legitimacy in five European democracies and hybrid regimes
Because the legitimacy of political authorities exists only in the eyes of citizens, this study investigates which criteria citizens use to decide that an authority is legitimate. By comparing ideas about what makes political authorities legitimate, this study in five European democracies and hybrid regimes illuminates the ‘demand side of political legitimacy’. Using original student survey data, this article compares expectations of students fro…
State-society relations and the sources of support for the Putin regime: Bridging Political Culture and Social Contract Theory
This article evaluates two theoretical approaches to the popularity and resilience of authoritarianism in Russia, namely political culture and social contract theory. These approaches are two of the most important theories of Russian politics and also reflect the general divide in comparative and post-communist politics between political-cultural and rationalist explanations. We demonstrate that these approaches are bound up with different notion…
When Should the Majority Rule? Experimental Evidence for Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures
In democracies, majority-rule voting is an esteemed rule for collective decisions, but its hazards have recently become apparent after a series of controversial referendums and ascendant populist leaders. Here, we investigate people’s judgments about when voting is appropriate for collective decisions across five countries with diverse cultures and political institutions (Denmark, Hungary, India, Russia, and USA). Participants read scenarios in w…
Security, Civilisation and Modernisation: Continuity and Change in the Russian Foreign Policy Discourse
This study analyses official Russian foreign policy discourses to contribute to our understanding of how Russia portrays its role in world politics and vis-à-vis neighbouring states. Building on previous studies, we offer a new, comprehensive analysis of Foreign Policy Concepts and the annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly during President Vladimir Putin’s third term (2012–2018). By systematically coding these documents, counting re…
When Business and Politics Mix: Local Networks and Socio-political Transformations in Ukraine
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business a…
Fairness matters when responding to disasters: An experimental study of government legitimacy
Governments worldwide are regularly faced with severe weather conditions and disasters caused by natural hazards. Does the way in which governments respond to disasters affect their legitimacy? The current study investigated how evaluations of authorities were influenced by four aspects of a governmental response to a hypothetical disaster. In a survey experiment participants read a scenario in which a government distributed aid in the aftermath …
The dual role of state capacity in opening socio-political orders: Assessment of different elements of state capacity in Belarus and Ukraine
State capacity declines with democratization, yet high state capacity supports the stability of both democracies and autocracies. Ukraine has been a paradigmatic example of capacity decline in democratization and Belarus of an authoritarian regime with high capacity. We set out to discover which aspects of state capacity might contribute to opening or stability. Conceptualizing capacity as containing administrative, informational and public servi…
Civil society and external actors: How linkages with the EU and Russia interact with socio-political orders in Belarus and Ukraine
What is the importance of linkages between civil society and external actors? In this article we map the landscape of civil society organisations in Belarus and Ukraine linked to the EU or Russia. Compiling an extensive dataset of organisations, we identify which domains they belong to. We find that linkages with Russia prevail in the culture domain and are based on shared past and exclusive identities. By contrast, linkages with the EU operate i…
National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic
Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during …
Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to Covid-19 pandemic using machine learning
At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social…
Standing up for Democracy? Explaining Citizens’ Support for Democratic Checks and Balances
Winners and losers of elections have different stakes in protecting democratic institutions. We provide new evidence for the effects of partisanship and economic performance on support for checks and balances and acceptance of their infringement. Using survey data from 26 European countries, we show that voters who feel close to a political party that lost the elections support checks and balances significantly more than other citizens. We also f…
Framing international cooperation: Citizen support for cooperation with the European Union in Eastern Europe
A widening authority–legitimacy gap in EU regulatory governance? An experimental study of the European Medicines Agency’s legitimacy in health security regulation
Agencification in the EU stretches the confines of the European regulatory state to the maximum by extending to policy domains that were formerly the exclusive terrain of national institutions. Although the challenge to legitimize EU-level agencies is widely acknowledged, scant empirical research has been done on the conditions under which EU-level epistemic authority prevails or fails. To fill this gap, we examine whether EU agencies are perceiv…
Does the Election Winner–Loser Gap Extend to Subjective Health and Well-Being
Political scientists have studied extensively the gap between winners and losers of democratic elections with regard to satisfaction with democracy. We ask whether the winner–loser gap extends beyond the political domain to subjective health and well-being as well. Building on insights from biology and coalitional psychology, we hypothesize that winning and losing elections could affect one’s outlook on life, happiness, and subjective health. We …
What Drives Support for Armed Humanitarian Intervention? Experimental Evidence From Dutch Citizens on International Law and Probability of Success
Under what conditions do individuals support armed humanitarian intervention (AHI) in situations where mass atrocities are ongoing? This article tests several hypotheses about support for AHIs to isolate and interact two potential drivers: international law and the probability of success. It leverages an original, pre-registered experiment from a (quota) representative sample of over 1500 Dutch citizens. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find th…
Chasing greatness: On Russia's discursive interaction with the West over the past millennium
Chasing greatness offers a history of the concept of great power in Russian discourses. It focuses on the origins and different understandings of the concept, examining elite perceptions from the sixteenth century onwards, from tsars and politicians to historians and intellectuals. In the book, Anatoly Reshetnikov aims to differentiate the Russian understanding of great power from the European/western definition of the concept. The analysis of th…
Does Party Identification Matter for Deliberation? Evidence from the Poland Speaks Experiment
Deliberation among the public appears wanting, even in many of the world’s established democracies. This apparent lack of mutually respectful conversation among citizens about politics involving a give-and-take of reasons is often ascribed to growing affective polarisation. The more the citizens come to think of each other as belonging to opposing groups, the less likely it allegedly becomes that they will show respect towards each other or excha…
Are Citizens Vigilant of Changing the Balance of Power? Testing Evaluations of Checks and Balances Reforms
Democratic checks and balances are crucial accountability mechanisms that prevent the abuse of power and protect citizens. Thus, citizens committed to democratic principles should be vigilant of reforms changing the balance of power. Using a mixed-design survey experiment with Polish citizens, this article investigates whether citizens are more vigilant of reform proposals that alter democratic checks and balances than other reforms. It also test…
Bureaucratic Responsiveness and Legitimacy: The Effects of Independence, Competence, and Warmth on Citizens' Legitimacy Perceptions
Bureaucratic responsiveness scholarship focused on examining how independent agencies align with the expectations of political principals and professional standards. However, little is known about how citizens perceive the legitimacy of these different responsiveness behaviors. To address this gap, we draw on insights from political science, public administration, and psychology. We hypothesize that three responsiveness signals increase citizens'…
Cross-cultural evidence that intergroup conflict heightens preferences for dominant leaders: A 25-country study
Across societies and across history, seemingly dominant, authoritarian leaders have emerged frequently, often rising to power based on widespread popular support. One prominent theory holds that evolved psychological mechanisms of followership regulate citizens' leadership preferences such that dominant individuals are intuitively attributed leadership qualities when followers face intergroup conflicts like war. A key hypothesis based on this the…
Citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of independent agencies: The effects of expertise‐based and reputation‐sourced authority
Legitimacy is a central concern for independent agencies tasked with shaping policies. While expertise‐based and reputation‐sourced authority bases are assumed to be relevant for agency legitimacy, their individual and joint effects on citizens' perceptions lack comprehensive examination. To address this gap, the study integrates insights from bureaucratic politics, bureaucratic reputation, and cognitive psychology. Our survey experiment with Dut…
Do Populists Listen to Expertise? A Five-Country Study of Authority, Arguments, and Expert Sources
Across diverse policy domains, there is broad concern about whether trust in science and expertise has eroded during the past decade. Using quota-based surveys with over 7,500 respondents across five countries and preregistered vignette experiments, we investigate what persuades populists and non-populists to accept expert advice. We find first that populism is associated with less willingness to accept expert advice, yet with variation between c…
What traits do citizens value in leaders during war? Experimental and panel-based evidence from Ukraine in 2022
When do citizens want a dominant political leader? A prominent Conflict-Sensitivity Hypothesis suggests such preferences arise during intergroup conflict, yet it remains untested in a real war. We report results from an experiment embedded in a two-wave panel survey with 1,081 Ukrainians (811 re-interviewed) at the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion. We find that respondents generally value competence and warmth over dominance in leaders. Yet, war i…
Enforcement and public opinion: The Perceived Legitimacy of Rule of Law Sanctions
The EU has powerful enforcement mechanisms to curb democratic backsliding and support the rule of law in its member states. While (the threat of) enforcement is necessary, sanctions might be difficult to accept as legitimate when they hurt a citizen's country. We study the perceived legitimacy of EU enforcement actions. We develop hypotheses about the influence of national identity, party support, procedural fairness, descriptive norm prevalence,…
Political science (19 works) · Politics (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Democracy (9 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works)