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Abstract
We develop the first implicit association test (IAT) to measure general implicit extremist attitudes in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. We find that implicit extremist attitudes are positively but weakly correlated with existing explicit measures. This indicates that implicit measures capture different parts of the population, for example, cases in which associations are based on automated cognitive processes instead of conscious thought. Further results show that particularly the higher-educated and nonreligious respondents score higher on the implicit than on the explicit extremism measures. Our results highlight the importance of studying implicit attitudes of political extremism. We further provide novel insights into how to develop IATs for abstract concepts such as democracy and extremism, for the study of which we cannot use readily available images or concepts.

Exploration of gender and political ambition is a crucial endeavor in liberal democracies like the United States and in electoral democracies with unstable political rights and civil liberties. We use a mixed-methods approach to conduct a political ambition survey of participants in the 2007–2009 Pakistani Lawyers' Movement. We tested eight hypotheses about gender and participation in the movement, whether participants considered running for office (nascent ambition), or have taken steps to run (expressive ambition). Contrary to US findings, among eligible males and females in Pakistan, our logit analysis shows that gender is not significant in explaining nascent ambition among men and women. Running for office has equally crossed women's minds because of female executive role models and women's reserved parliamentary seats. However, elite Pakistani women have lower levels of expressive ambition owing to higher costs women face when challenging informal norms about political participation.

A plentitude of research has analyzed citizens' belief in conspiracy theories and its individual‐level correlates. Yet, the effects of (political) context factors on the causes and effects of individual belief in conspiracy theories are still neglected. However, such context should be especially relevant when it comes to the impact of one's belief in conspiracy theories on one's political preference. In this article, we argue that the communication of governmental actors exerts a moderating influence on the link leading from a belief in conspiracy theories to political attitudes. In a nutshell, the belief in conspiracy theories should make citizens less likely to distrust their government—and the political system in general—in contexts where these theories are shared or at least publicly represented by governmental actors. Using two original data sets with data from Germany, Poland, and Jordan (Study 1) and data from Germany, Poland, Sweden, and France (Study 2), we test our argument based on an overall sample of about 10,000 cases. Our results indicate that higher degrees of generic conspiracy theories beliefs are associated with higher levels of political distrust across countries. Yet, confirming our argument, such an effect takes place less strongly in those countries in which governmental actors use conspiracy theories as a political communication strategy.