Polihot

JOP 88/2 pp. 647-665 2026-04-01 Original How Exiles Mobilize Domestic Dissent Elizabeth R. Nugent, Alexandra A. Siegel Abstract How can exiles mobilize dissent back home? We argue that internet communication technologies enable exiles to play an instigator role in domestic contentious politics. Analyzing the behavior of three types of social media users—influencers, amplifiers, and consumers—we explore how Egyptian exiles participated in a cascade of online dissent that culminated in sizable anti-regime protests in September 2019. Analyses of large-scale digital trace data from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube demonstrate that exiles were central to the introduction and amplification of oppositional content, facilitating its circulation among a domestic audience that then localized the content by linking it with place-based calls for protest. Our findings suggest that content produced and amplified by exiles facilitates coordination among domestic opposition and challenges the supporting role typically ascribed to opposition abroad.

JOP 88/2 pp. 882-887 2026-04-01 Original Executive–Legislative Policymaking Under Crisis Nathaniel A. Birkhead, Jeffrey J. Harden, Jason H. Windett Abstract Does conventional wisdom explain policymaking during a domestic crisis on a novel issue? We consider executive–legislative interactions in the American states during the COVID-19 pandemic to address problems in the study of unilateral executive action. Empirical analyses of crisis policymaking often examine wartime presidents or localized natural disasters but confront difficulties in identifying the status quo policy. COVID-19 created a large-scale domestic crisis and a status quo that was known with relative certainty. We develop a canonical theoretical account of executive–legislative interaction and test it using COVID-19 executive orders issued and legislation introduced and passed during 2020 to 2022. Results show that governors’ proposals met expectations, but legislatures’ responses did not. Instead, partisanship and ideological factors, which crystallized over time, largely determined legislative policy choices. We conclude that standard theory does not adequately account for preference dynamics that might emerge due to delays between the executive’s proposal and the legislature’s response.

JOP 88/2 pp. 732-745 2026-04-01 Original Effects of Popular Legitimacy on International Organizations: An Elite Survey Experiment Thomas Sommerer, Jonas Tallberg Abstract Whether or not popular legitimacy matters for international organizations (IOs) is a topic of extensive assumption but little rigorous research. A key obstacle has been the methodological difficulties of establishing legitimacy’s effect using observational data. This article offers the first experimental study of the effects of popular legitimacy on IOs. Theoretically, we propose that popular legitimacy affects IOs through the mechanism of government responsiveness to public opinion. Empirically, we test this expectation by presenting elected politicians in Sweden with a scenario of proposed reforms to the World Health Organization (WHO) and randomized information about the organization’s degree of popular legitimacy. The results show that higher levels of popular legitimacy made politicians more willing to confer additional authority and resources on the IO. The effects were particularly large among politicians with positive pretreatment attitudes toward the WHO and leftist ideological orientations. These findings suggest that popular legitimacy matters by affecting national decision-makers’ willingness to empower IOs.

JOP — 2026-04-01 Original Does Youth Representation Matter for Social Spending? Charles T. McClean Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 青年代表性对社会支出重要吗？ Charles T. McClean 摘要 原文未提供摘要 关键词 青年代表性、社会支出、描述性代表、福利国家、代际政治、公共政策 DOI: 10.1086/741605 查看原文 →

JOP 88/2 pp. 586-600 2026-04-01 Original Do Politicians Listen to Youth Wings? Evidence from an Elite Experiment Henrik Bech Seeberg Abstract Most political parties have youth wings. They are major recruitment and campaign vehicles for parties, but do politicians listen to them when it comes to policy positions? Short of research, I provide a first answer to this question via a large-scale survey experiment of politicians across a range of issues. I show that politicians listen to their youth wings not because of who the youth wings are but because of what they say. The politicians do not adjust because the argument comes from the youth wing but because the youth wing takes a more ideologically pure and, therefore, radical stance than the mother party or refer to their expertise on the issue. These results apply particularly to politicians who applaud the youth wings’ policies in general and politicians who are electorally vulnerable. This has important implications for research on political representation and our understanding of preference aggregation in political parties.

JOP 88/2 pp. 526-540 2026-04-01 Original Do External Threats Reduce Affective Polarization? An Experiment on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

JOP 88/2 pp. 826-838 2026-04-01 Original Defending Elections Against the Oligarchic Charge Palle Bech-Pedersen Abstract This article counters the claim, advanced by lottocrats, that elections are inherently oligarchic. I begin by examining the theory of elections that sees them as a superior mechanism for selecting candidates, showing that this implication fails to render elections as inherently oligarchic because superiority is context dependent. Next, I demonstrate that the advantage of wealth arising from the cost of disseminating information is empirically contingent and, thus, not attributable to the nature of elections. I then offer a pathway for the deoligarchization of elections, distinguishing between doxastic and structural obstacles to inclusion. I demonstrate how ideology critique and certain structural reforms offer solutions to these obstacles. I conclude by addressing the rebuttal that elections remain very likely to be oligarchic and that sortition fares comparatively better on this front. I argue that this line of argument overlooks the undemocratic implications and risks of oligarchization that would emerge from adopting sortition.

JOP 88/2 pp. 479-492 2026-04-01 Original Cycles of Silence: Police–Citizen Cooperation in Communities with Criminal Groups

JOP 88/2 pp. 465-478 2026-04-01 Original Commodity Booms, Conflict, and Organized Crime: Logics of Violence in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Plantation Economy

JOP 88/2 pp. 681-697 2026-04-01 Original Candidate Positions, Responsiveness, and Returns to Extremism Mellissa Meisels Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 候选人立场、回应性与极端主义的回报 Mellissa Meisels 摘要 原文未提供摘要 关键词 候选人立场、回应性、极端主义、选举回报、政治行为 DOI: 10.1086/738505 查看原文 →