Prior research suggests that punitive transitional justice (TJ) may foster a sense of collective exoneration among perpetrator groups, potentially reducing support for remembrance of in-group atrocities in the long term. We test this potential “hidden cost” of TJ in Germany using a vignette experiment manipulating perceptions of the extent of denazification and an observational analysis exploiting variation in denazification intensity across occupation zones. We find that while perceptions of comprehensive Nazi accountability foster beliefs that the German in‐group was fully held responsible, these perceptions do not affect support for commemoration or responsibility toward victims. These results contribute to the broader literature on TJ’s long-term attitudinal impacts and the determinants of support for historical remembrance, emphasizing the enduring importance of moral over legal perceptions of accountability.

The global emergence of authoritarian capitalism warrants analysis of its features, economic pathways, and class basis. We argue that the timing of capitalism’s establishment relative to authoritarianism affects the extent of state capture by business and the regime’s stance towards labor. When capitalism preceded authoritarianism, autocracy arose from a “crisis of capitalism” in flawed democracies, either from fear of communist redistribution or backlash against neoliberalism in post-communist countries. These governments appealed to business and labor interests for electoral survival. Conversely, when authoritarianism preceded capitalism, late industrializing states with weak business and working classes pursued developmental agendas by exercising autonomy over capital and repressing labor. Understanding these historical pathways to authoritarian capitalism provides insight on contemporary democratic backsliding and right-wing populism in the U.S. and Europe.

Under what conditions can repression, generally assumed to induce obedience through violence, consolidate authoritarian power in a non‐violent way? I propose a novel theory of the effects of repression, accounting for regional heterogeneity of state capacity. Failed centralization efforts during state‐building processes lead to the emergence of strong local power structures, fostering persistent resistance against autocratic cooptation strategies. Repression in such “restive” regions has downstream effects that complement autocrats’ cooptation policies by increasing the state’s extractive and informational capacities. To test these predictions, I leverage a legal change resulted in the replacement of pro‐Kurdish mayors with government‐appointed trustees in Turkey’s restive regions. Adopting two‐way‐fixed‐effects models, I demonstrate evidence supporting my theory. This article provides an alternative view about how repression generates favorable outcomes for autocrats.

Right-wing populism, notably Trumpism, has presented a formidable challenge to democracy. We explore the historical roots of Trumpism among the Chinese diaspora by analyzing nearly one million tweets from approximately 200 Chinese overseas opinion leaders between 2019 and early 2021. We develop a novel measure of authoritarian imprints, drawing on the usage of high-frequency words from the political discourse of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966‐1976). Leveraging computational text analysis, we identify both pro-Trump and anti-democratic stances in these tweets. Our analysis reveals that Chinese opinion leaders with strong authoritarian imprints are significantly more likely to support Trump and endorse anti-democratic actions, such as rejecting the 2020 presidential election result and advocating for unconstitutional means to overturn the result.

Understanding recentralization as a vertical phenomenon requires careful attention to the horizontal distribution of power at the national level. We articulate a theoretical argument that emphasizes the content of the coalition that enacts recentralization, demonstrating that politicians can return power to the center without empowering the president. In Mexico, the pluralism of the coalition that pushed for recentralization from 2007 to 2018 led to institutional designs that avoided investing authority in the presidency and opted instead to empower a series of autonomous constitutional bodies. The Mexican case thus points to a simple but powerful hypothesis to add to the literature on multilevel governance: the broader that coalitions that push for recentralization, the wider the set of actors who will be empowered at the center of the political system.

This article investigates the impact of Chinese investment on authoritarianism through the lens of authoritarian linkage, focusing on the first decade of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia and Malaysia. While both countries were electoral autocracies when the BRI was launched in 2013, their regime trajectories diverged. In Cambodia, Chinese investment reinforced elite patronage networks and coercive state-society relations, stabilizing the regime during political unrest. Conversely, in Malaysia, it contributed to the collapse of the long-ruling authoritarian coalition by exacerbating elite fragmentation and popular discontent over corruption, which has led to greater political competition. These findings demonstrate how domestic political economy dynamics mediate the effects of Chinese investment, revealing its variable influence on regime outcomes.

Existing research contends that clientelist parties seek alternative voter mobilization strategies when material exchanges no longer guarantee office. This article argues that engaging in strategic interactions with influential interest groups constitutes an alternative way to mobilize support. Pressured by competition, clientelist parties align policy with interest group preferences and obtain support from members and followers in return. Using a comparative subnational design and primary data, I show how Mexico’s PRI passed a restrictive abortion amendment to obtain clergy support in Yucatan but abstained from reform in Hidalgo where it faced similar competition but perceived clergy as unable to bolster votes. The findings shed light on clientelist parties' voter mobilization strategies and the policy effects of interest group interactions in new democracies and other developing contexts.

Is rising inequality an inevitable consequence of the transition to a knowledge-based economy? Departing from existing approaches in labor economics and comparative political economy, we develop an account of inequality in the knowledge economy that foregrounds the role of labor market institutions. We argue that collective bargaining institutions play a critical role in mediating the skill bias commonly associated with the diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICT), because they determine whether employers have the discretion to selectively reward strategically important high-skilled workers with greater wages and benefits. We then test our argument by carrying out cross-country analyses of both wage premia and non-wage benefits in the OECD countries. We find robust evidence in support of our theoretical propositions across a range of model specifications.

How can we explain the long-term decline in the class-based voting cleavage observed in high-income democracies since the 1960s? The causes of this decline are far from being fully understood. We hypothesize that the decline in this cleavage between the working class and other classes is connected to the shrinkage of the working class, increases in economic prosperity, and a reduction in levels of inequality. To test these hypotheses, we use a newly-assembled dataset including sixteen advanced democracies with a long temporal coverage (1964‐2019) and a class voting index based on the difference between the proportion of a particular social class in a party’s electorate and the proportion of this social class in the electorate as a whole. Models using country fixed effects confirm a decline in the class-based voting cleavage across Western democracies. Controlling for several political variables, the size of the working class constitutes the best predictor of declines in class voting in affluent democracies.

How do political elites in authoritarian regimes shape their public image? Drawing on a unique dataset covering official news releases of the daily public activities of all provincial party secretaries in China from 2016 to 2022, this study finds that authoritarian elites manipulate the propaganda apparatus to project various public images. Text analysis shows that provincial leaders employ a variety of themes and narratives to highlight their activities, resulting in four types of images: competence-oriented, benevolence-oriented, party-loyalty-oriented, and versatile. Case studies reveal how the configuration of conditions, such as the official’s age, professional background, political connections with the top leader, and the socioeconomic characteristics of their province, relate to their image-building strategies. The findings, which are supported by methods including topic modeling, machine learning, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, contribute to the literature on political propaganda by emphasizing the diversity of public images among senior political elites in non-democratic systems.