Elections

JOP — 2026-09-14 Original What's in a name? Name recognition, place-based identities, and candidate success Arndt Leininger, Tilko Swalve Abstract （原文未提供摘要） 中文 名字里有什么？姓名认知、地方性身份与候选人成功 Arndt Leininger, Tilko Swalve

AJPS — 2026-07-19 Original Electoral contests over voter beliefs Dan Alexander, Alexander Evert Abstract Abstract Voter perceptions of candidates are the substrate on which campaigns act. It is costly, however, for voters to devote enough attention to politics to change their own perceptions of candidates. This paper views campaigns—and the time, effort, and money they expend—as subsidizing rationally inattentive voters' adoption of new beliefs about candidate platforms. We employ an all‐pay contest to model costly competition over voter perceptions. In our baseline model, campaigns seek to improve perceptions of their own candidates. In a variant, candidates engage in negative campaigning. Among other results, we observe platform divergence under more reasonable informational assumptions than previous spatial models, replacing candidate uncertainty about voters with voter uncertainty about candidates. This model serves as a bridge between behavioral research on campaigns and theoretical literature on elections, offering a richer set of empirical predictions while preserving the insights of the canonical Downsian framework as a limiting case.

JOP 88/3 pp. 1066-1081 2026-07-01 Original Universal Mail Ballot Delivery Boosts Turnout: The Causal Effects of Sending Mail Ballots to All Registered Voters R. Michael Alvarez, Yimeng Li

AJPS — 2026-06-03 Original The demand for elections under autocracy: Regime approval and the elimination of local elections in Russia Quintin H. Beazer, Noah Buckley, Ora John Reuter

PMR — pp. 1-27 2026-04-20 Original Escalation of commitment in the public sector: the impacts of electoral effects and visualization aids on blame avoiding behavior

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. 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 →