Polihot

PSJ — 2026-03-12 Original There Is Always a Bigger Fish. Determinants of Power Perceptions in Swiss Biodiversity Policy Alix d'Agostino, Jascha Egli, Daniel Kübler

PSJ — 2026-03-12 Original Cities Creating Citizens: Policy Feedback and the Effects of Local Naturalization Support on Immigrant Civic Engagement Megan Dias Abstract ABSTRACT Despite an increasingly hostile federal stance towards immigrants, cities across the United States have passed policies and implemented programs that help eligible immigrants on their path to citizenship. This paper examines the effects of these local policies on immigrants' political behavior and sense of civic efficacy. Using a multi‐method approach combining national survey data with qualitative interviews and a survey of participants from the City of San Francisco's Pathways to Citizenship Initiative, it finds that receiving local naturalization support affects the way immigrants behave and understand themselves as citizens. Immigrants who received support from their city government through the naturalization process have higher levels of political engagement and civic efficacy than those who navigated the process alone. These findings extend policy feedback to the local level, showing how local policies produce effects for target populations within a conflicting federal context. They have implications for our understanding of policy feedback more broadly, and the role local governments play in helping immigrants become full citizens and political actors.

PA — 2026-03-11 Original Understanding Accountability in AI Use Within the Public Sector: Insights From State Governments in the United States Tzuhao Chen, Mila Gasco‐Hernandez, J. Ramon Gil‐Garcia

JCC — pp. 1-18 2026-03-11 Original Trust Chains and the Resilience of Patronage Networks :The Use of Indirect Guanxi Under Anti-Corruption Ji Ruan, Yuanyuan Lu, Shizhan Ruan

PAR 86/5 pp. 1407-1419 2026-03-11 Original Regulatory Offsetting Schemes as Effective Governmental Self‐Binding Device? Lessons From the German Experience

GOV 39/2 2026-03-11 Original Feeding the Coalition: How Presidents Use State Banks to Buy Legislative Support for Governability Rodrigo B. DeMello, Carlos Pereira Abstract ABSTRACT This paper develops and tests a theory of how presidents use government agencies to manage legislative coalitions in multiparty presidential systems. We argue that agency decisions—particularly subsidized credit from state‐owned development banks—function as retail coalition goods that sustain legislative support. Legislators are more likely to back the president when agency resources benefit subnational politicians who are both partisan allies and vital to their reelection networks. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close mayoral elections in Brazil and loan‐level data from the National Development Bank (BNDES), we find that municipalities governed by coalition‐aligned mayors receive significantly more favorable loan terms. Linking these data to roll‐call votes, we show that legislators become more supportive of the president after loans are granted in their electoral strongholds managed by co‐partisan mayors. These findings reveal how distributive agency decisions translate into legislative support, integrating bureaucratic discretion into theories of coalition management.

APSR — pp. 1-18 2026-03-11 Original Exiting Russia RACHEL L. WELLHAUSEN, BOLIANG ZHU Abstract As of February 24, 2022, over forty thousand foreign-invested firms operated in Russia, a host state that initiated an interstate war—an exceptional shock in the modern era of economic globalization. Using company registration data, we document that after 18 months of war, 33.3% of foreign-invested firms had changed ownership or become inactive. We conceptualize exit as a politicized transaction in which sellers and buyers face external pressures and bargain over terms. Concerning pressures to sell, those in consumer-oriented industries were more likely to exit. On bargaining, we find Russian state interests consequential: foreign-invested firms already under Russian managerial control were more likely to exit, whereas those in Russian strategic industries were not. Despite extraordinary economic sanctions to isolate Russia, and surging social backlash against doing business in Russia, results imply that multinationals are at best unstable tools of economic statecraft, even in the midst of war.

AJPS — 2026-03-11 Original Encouraging crossover voting in the 2024 presidential primary Hayley M. Cohen, Daniel B. Markovits Abstract Abstract Will voters participate in the primary of a party they oppose to prevent the nomination of a candidate they fear? Partnering with a political action committee, we conduct a first‐of‐its‐kind, large, preregistered field experiment ( N = 83,902) in the lead‐up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. A specialized get‐out‐the‐vote intervention increases turnout in the Republican primary among undeclared voters who are modeled as likely to vote for Democratic candidates in the general election. Our treatment increased Republican primary turnout in this sample by 1.6 percentage points while reducing turnout in the Democratic Primary by .5 percentage points. Supplementing our experiment with surveys before and after the primary, we estimate that each vote cast by Democratic‐leaning voters in the Republican primary had between a 78% and 95% probability of supporting the relatively moderate Republican primary candidate. We argue that voters are capable of sophisticated, risk‐mitigating behavior in primaries.

PA — 2026-03-10 Original Social Equity Through Women's Empowerment: Women's Participation in Local Politics, Budgeting and Decision‐Making in Bangladesh

PSJ 54/2 2026-03-10 Original Repeated Modifications in Policy Diffusion: Evidence From River Management Regulations in China's Cities Hu Xi, Hongtao Yi Abstract ABSTRACT Why do local governments repeatedly modify policies after their initial adoption? While policy diffusion research has focused on adoption, far less is known about why and how policies are revised over time. This study analyzes a city–year dataset of 293 Chinese prefecture‐level cities from 1986 to 2022, tracking both the adoption and subsequent modifications of River Management Regulations (RMR). A two‐stage modeling strategy combining a Probit model and a Prentice–Williams–Peterson Cox model is employed to analyze repeated modifications. The findings reveal three patterns. First, policy modifications at the provincial level and amendments to superior laws significantly increase the likelihood of local RMR revisions, whereas central‐level modifications do not exert a direct effect. Second, while neighboring jurisdictions' policy modifications do not significantly affect local revisions, adoption by neighboring late adopters generates a positive effect, indicating a form of “reverse diffusion.” Third, policies issued by local legislative branches are more likely to be modified than those issued by executive agencies, highlighting the role of institutional structure and procedural constraints. By shifting attention from adoption to repeated modification, this study extends policy diffusion theory and contributes to a broader understanding of post‐adoption policy dynamics in hierarchical and decentralized political systems.