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AbstractSleep changes predate shifts in mood/affect, thought processing, mental and physical health, civic engagement, and contextual circumstances, among other things. Theory predicts that these changes may lead to shifts in political and social beliefs. Do sleep disruptions shape how individuals see the world, the people around them, and themselves in relation to others? In this article, we use daily survey data from the 77 waves (N$ \approx $ 460,000) of the University of California, Los Angeles's 2019–2021 Nationscape Survey—a nationally representative political survey—to examine the effect of an exogenous short-term sleep disruption on measures of political views, polarization, and discriminatory beliefs. Using this data set, we leverage the modest sleep disruption that occurs at the start (and end) of Daylight Saving Time (DST) and employ a regression discontinuity in time design around the precise DST cutoff (which we supplement with event study models). Despite strong theoretical expectations and correlational connection between measures of sleep and many outcomes related to social fragmentation, we find that the DST change has little to no causal effect on citizens' levels of polarization or their discriminatory attitudes. These effects are precise enough to rule out small effects, robust to a host of specification checks, and consistent across potential subgroups of interest. Our work adds to a small but growing body of research on the social and political effects of sleep disruptions.

The audit study design offers researchers a powerful tool to measure discrimination. Yet ethical concerns surround the use of this design. In this article, we introduce a cost–benefit framework that researchers should consider when conducting audit studies. One key insight of this framework is that when researchers evaluate audit studies due to ethical concerns, they must also evaluate the relative benefits of studying discrimination through other means. Building on this framework, we provide a set of practical recommendations that researchers can adopt to (1) minimize costs (i.e. ethical harm) and (2) maximize benefits (i.e. quality of their research). We hope that our suggestions contribute to the ongoing, important discussion about ethical issues involving audit studies and generate better work on discrimination.

Territorial contenders are political entities that control territory but differ from sovereign states in that they lack diplomatic recognition as legal members of the international system. One consequence of this difference is that international relations data sets have historically excluded information about them. And yet, as evidenced by the Islamic State's impact on politics in the Middle East and beyond, territorial contenders are important actors in the international system. In this article, we introduce a new data set of territorial contenders, compare territorial contenders to other categories of territorial nonstate actors, explore how the presence of territorial contenders affects the probabilities of civil war and state failure, illustrate the conditions under which territorial contenders are more likely to emerge, and discuss a series of studies now possible given the existence of this new data set.

States often seek to regulate the use of police force though citizen complaint systems. This paper examines these systems, specifically, whether patterns of bias found in other juridical contexts are mirrored in the adjudication of police assault. The analysis focuses on prosecutors as the first instance of adjudication who determine whether to move forward with investigation, effectively deciding the majority of cases. We ask whether prosecutor sex is associated with the probability that a police assault claim will be investigated. We leverage a natural experiment in Sweden where prosecutors are assigned through a modified lottery system, effectively randomizing appointment. Our findings suggest that prosecutor gender plays a role in judicial outcomes: women prosecutors are 16 percentage points more likely to investigate claims of police assault than their male counterparts. These findings have implications for scholars interested in state human rights abuses, democratic institutions, and judicial inequality.

Territorial contenders are political entities that control territory but differ from sovereign states in that they lack diplomatic recognition as legal members of the international system. One consequence of this difference is that international relations data sets have historically excluded information about them. And yet, as evidenced by the Islamic State's impact on politics in the Middle East and beyond, territorial contenders are important actors in the international system. In this article, we introduce a new data set of territorial contenders, compare territorial contenders to other categories of territorial nonstate actors, explore how the presence of territorial contenders affects the probabilities of civil war and state failure, illustrate the conditions under which territorial contenders are more likely to emerge, and discuss a series of studies now possible given the existence of this new data set.

In June, following a massive public outcry, President Donald Trump suspended his administration's policy of forcibly separating immigrant families who had crossed the US-Mexico border. Despite the backlash, a majority of Republicans supported Trump's family-separation policy. In new research based on a recent survey, Kevin Cope and Charles Crabtree take an in-depth look at what drives people's positions on family separation. They find that, more than many other factors, reading Breitbart and watching Fox News were significant predictors of support for members of both the Republican and the Democratic parties.

In their 2014 article in the British Journal of Political Science, Eleanor Neff Powell and Joshua A. Tucker examine the determinants of party system volatility in post-communist Europe. Their central conclusion is that replacement volatility – volatility caused by new party entry and old party exit – is driven by long-term economic performance. This article shows that this conclusion is based entirely on a miscalculation of the long-term economic performance of a single country, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The study's reanalysis suggests that little is known about what causes party system volatility in post-communist Europe. Given the negative consequences traditionally associated with party system volatility, this area of research cries out for new theoretical development.