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Leadership succession is a perennial source of instability in autocratic regimes. Despite this, it has remained a curiously understudied phenomenon in political science. In this article, we compile a novel and comprehensive dataset on civil war in Europe and combine it with data on the fate of monarchs in 28 states over 800 years to investigate how autocratic succession affected the risk of civil war. Exploiting the natural deaths of monarchs to identify exogenous variation in successions, we find that successions substantially increased the risk of civil war. The risk of succession wars could, however, be mitigated by hereditary succession arrangements (i.e., primogeniture—the principle of letting the oldest son inherit the throne). When hereditary monarchies replaced elective monarchies in Europe, succession wars declined drastically. Our results point to the importance of the succession, and the institutions governing it, for political stability in autocratic regimes.

Building a strong autocratic state requires stability in ruler-elite relations. From this perspective the absence of a successor is problematic, as the elite have few incentives to remain loyal if the autocrat cannot reward them for their loyalty after his death. However, an appointed successor has both the capacity and the motive to challenge the autocrat. We argue that a succession based on primogeniture solves the dilemma, by providing the regime with a successor who can afford to wait to inherit the throne peacefully. We test our hypothesis on a dataset covering 961 monarchs ruling 42 European states between 1000 and 1800, and show that fewer monarchs were deposed in states practicing primogeniture than in states practicing alternative succession orders. A similar pattern persists in the world's remaining absolute monarchies. Primogeniture also contributed to building strong states: In 1801 all European monarchies had adopted primogeniture or succumbed to foreign enemies.

This article investigates the relationship between anti-immigration attitudes and political participation in European democracies. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018), we first show that a participation gap between pro- and anti-immigrant citizens exists for all types of political participation, even though the gap in voting is relatively small. The analyses also show that leftist and centrist anti-immigrant citizens participate less than leftist and centrist pro-immigration citizens, whereas their right-leaning counterparts participate almost as much in politics as do right-leaning pro-immigrant citizens. The observed participation gap points to the fact that there is a reservoir of anti-immigrant leftist and centrist citizens potentially waiting to be mobilized in many European countries.

AbstractEarlier research has shown a strong connection between anti‐immigration attitudes and political trust in Western Europe. In this research note, we examine if nativists' low levels of specific political support translate into a more general scepticism about democracy as a system of government. Using comparative data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the European Values Study (EVS), we investigate the relationship between nativist attitudes and several indicators of principled, or diffuse, support for democracy. The findings testify to a nativist divide in diffuse political support. We find a systematic and significant difference in support for democracy between strong nativists and other citizens. West European nativists are less likely than other citizens to view their country as democratic. They also tend to perceive living in a democracy as less important than people with a more positive outlook on immigrants. Moreover, and maybe more worrying, nativists express lower levels support for democracy in relation to non‐democratic regime alternatives, that is, they are less likely to be "principled" democrats. The found negative associations remain also after controlling for nativists' levels of specific support, which indicates that there may be a more fundamental opposition between nativism and diffuse support for democracy than previously acknowledged. We believe that these findings have important implications for research trying to understand challenges to liberal democracy in a time when nativist parties have been successful in politicizing immigration and continue to score electoral victories all over Europe.

Do nativists differ from other citizens in their attitudes towards democracy? In this article it is demonstrated that nativism goes hand in hand with preferences for a type of democracy where the interests of the natives should prevail, even at the cost of diminished minority rights, checks and balances, and other constraints on executive power. Liberal representative democracy is not for nativists. It is also shown that nativists seem to believe that the end justifies the means when it comes to different forms of decision making, and that this opportunistic trait usually translates into support for more direct democracy and scepticism towards representative democracy, because nativists tend to believe that they are in the majority (even if they are not). This article concludes that this tendency may in fact be a blessing of sorts, as it keeps nativists from supporting alternatives to democracy.

AbstractHistorians have documented that in medieval Europe, bargaining over the loyalty of lay magnates and high clergy was most intense during successions and that this often forced monarchs to give political concessions. We argue that matters related to succession predict short‐term power‐sharing concessions by rulers but that – because they do not permanently alter the balance of power between ruler and elite – they only trigger lasting changes of political institutions if these changes are in the mutual interest of the ruler and the elite groups. It follows that successions are unlikely to have long‐term effects on representative institutions but that they may consolidate the rules regulating succession (the succession order). Using the natural deaths of monarchs as an instrument for successions, we confirm these claims with a new dataset that includes fine‐grained data on succession and parliament‐like assemblies in 16 European polities between 1000 and 1600. These findings shed new light on the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe, on the changes in succession orders that brought about clear rules about primogeniture and on the political leeway of legislatures in authoritarian regimes more generally.

Historians have documented that in medieval Europe, bargaining over the loyalty of lay magnates and high clergy was most intense during successions and that this often forced monarchs to give political concessions. We argue that matters related to succession predict short-term power-sharing concessions by rulers but that – because they do not permanently alter the balance of power between ruler and elite – they only trigger lasting changes of political institutions if these changes are in the mutual interest of the ruler and the elite groups. It follows that successions are unlikely to have long-term effects on representative institutions but that they may consolidate the rules regulating succession (the succession order). Using the natural deaths of monarchs as an instrument for successions, we confirm these claims with a new dataset that includes fine-grained data on succession and parliament-like assemblies in 16 European polities between 1000 and 1600. These findings shed new light on the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe, on the changes in succession orders that brought about clear rules about primogeniture and on the political leeway of legislatures in authoritarian regimes more generally.

This study highlights the impact that medieval patterns of intrafamily inheritance practices wield on contemporary institutional quality. We argue that regions that practiced inegalitarian inheritance developed stronger institutions than regions that practiced egalitarian inheritance, for two reasons. First, we argue that transmitting land to a single heir resulted in a sense of personal ownership and, by extension, encouraged individual property rights. Second, we argue that the fact that disinherited children were incentivized to seek training and employment outside the family domicile in regions practicing inegalitarian inheritance resulted in trust‐building social interactions. We test our argument using data on medieval inheritance patterns and modern‐day institutional quality in European subnational regions and across countries globally. Our results show that historical inegalitarian inheritance practices are strongly positively associated with contemporary institutional quality. We conclude that historical norms at the family level are still affecting important modern‐day societal functions.

Innumeracy among survey respondents in estimating a country's immigrant population is a well-known problem for the social sciences. In general,
individuals have been found to overestimate the immigrant population at the country level. Furthermore, individuals were found to be especially
prone towards overestimating the number if they already were prejudiced against immigrants. If these findings generalize to lower levels of inquiry
such as neighborhoods, then research using subjective assessments of immigrant populations in these contexts might be biased as well. By
distributing a questionnaire among 142 small and mid-sized companies in the city Gothenburg, Sweden, respondent's subjective assessments of
the immigrant population in their neighborhoods was compared to register data of those neighborhoods. Hence, although the sample was only
representative of the working population in small and middle-sized companies in a metropolitan area thus excluding unemployed, retirees, nonworking
students, and the rural population of Sweden, the results demonstrated that subjective assessments could correlate well with objective
assessments. Overall, the results indicated that the disparity between subjective and objective assessments was lower than what could be
expected from previous research findings at the country-level.