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Group identities that are chosen, rather than inherited, are often associated with cohesive political attitudes and behaviours. Conventional wisdom holds that this distinctiveness is generated by mobilization through processes such as intra-group contact and acculturation. This article identifies another mechanism that can explain cohesiveness: selection. The characteristics that predict whether an individual selects a group identity may themselves determine political attitudes, and thus may account substantially for the political cohesion of those who share the identity. This mechanism is illustrated with analyses of the causes and consequences of the acquisition of lesbian, gay or bisexual identity. Seldom shared by parents and offspring, gay identity provides a rare opportunity to cleanly identify the selection process and its implications for political cohesion.

We present a theory that addresses the question of why autocracies with a regime legitimation which ties the destiny of the members of the ruling elite, namely the nobility or ideocratic elite, to the survival of the autocracy, namely (ruling) monarchies and communist ideocracies, are more durable than other kinds of autocracies. Using logistic regression analysis and event history analysis on a dataset on autocratic regimes in the period 1946 to 2009, we are able to show that ruling monarchies and communist ideocracies are indeed the most durable autocratic regime types.

Few political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a party's voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns. ; Representative Democracy in Europe ; The Politicization of Europe - A comparative study of six West European countries, 1970-2010

We present a theory that addresses the question of why autocracies with a regime legitimation which ties the destiny of the members of the ruling elite, namely the nobility or ideocratic elite, to the survival of the autocracy, namely (ruling) monarchies and communist ideocracies, are more durable than other kinds of autocracies. Using logistic regression analysis and event history analysis on a dataset on autocratic regimes in the period 1946 to 2009, we are able to show that ruling monarchies and communist ideocracies are indeed the most durable autocratic regime types.