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AbstractWhat are the conditions that promote gender equality in political participation? In this article, I propose that the presence of direct democracy expands gender equality in political participation by signaling the system's openness to women's voice, confirming their political competency, and highlighting their stake in political decisions. To test this argument, I leverage a quasi‐experiment in Sweden in the aftermath of the introduction of universal suffrage, where the type of municipal political institutions was determined by a population threshold. My findings lend strong support to the effect of direct democracy on the political inclusion of women. I find that the gender gap in electoral participation was smaller in municipalities using direct democracy than in similarly sized municipalities that only had representative institutions.

Why are there so few working-class women in politics? While white-collar representatives dominate legislatures in general, the deficit of working-class members is particularly pronounced among female politicians. To answer this question, this study examines the influence of class and gender in voter evaluation. Through the cross-country comparison of conjoint experiments in the U.S. and the U.K., we find that working-class backgrounds disadvantage women candidates in a way that they do not disadvantage their male counterparts. Voters tend to prefer white-collar candidates to working-class politicians. Such a negative effect of working-class backgrounds is particularly evident for female candidates because the negative traits associated with the lower economic class, such as incompetence and lack of ambition, exacerbate voters' questions about female candidates' qualifications for political leadership. By contrast, for male candidates, whose qualifications are rarely questioned based on their gender, candidates' working-class background has a less negative impact.

Despite increasing efforts to implement legislative gender quotas, many countries still encounter substantial popular opposition to this policy. Previous work cannot explain why opposition to legislative gender quotas persists, particularly among young men, a group believed to be open to diversity. We develop and test a theoretical framework linking group threat to men's attitudes toward legislative gender quotas. While the salience of perceived group threat could trigger men's opposition to legislative gender quotas, we expect that this effect will be more profound among young men due to the heightened degree of economic insecurity experienced by younger generations. Using original survey experiments in South Korea, this study demonstrates the strong influence of group threat in the formation of negative attitudes toward legislative gender quotas among young men. These effects, however, are not mediated by traditional gender norms. Our findings have significant implications for the study of gender and politics and democratic representation.

Previous studies have shown that America generally has a low level of support for redistribution, in large part due to racial prejudice, particularly toward the poor. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has increased public attention to low-income workers' essential roles in society. Has this increased attention to low-income workers promote public support for redistribution? This article examines how priming about low-income workers' (1) essential roles and (2) race, shaped individuals' redistributive preferences. Our findings demonstrate that an emphasis on essential workers increased appreciation of their contribution to society and support for pandemic-related benefits for these workers. However, it did not increase support for redistribution or welfare programmes in general. In addition, while we found negative effects of a Latino cue, particularly among white respondents, this effect weakened when information about workers' work ethics and other attributes was provided. Our findings have implications for understanding public support of redistribution and communicating government social welfare programmes.

Abstract
Highlighting the local impacts of climate change has the potential to increase the public's awareness of and engagement with climate change. However, information about local impacts is only effective when delivered by trusted sources such as copartisan political leaders. Is information about climate change conveyed by local media sources similarly beneficial? We argue that local media are well positioned to communicate the local implications of climate change, thereby enhancing the public's risk perceptions of climate change and willingness to take climate action. We further hypothesize that climate coverage by local media, the media type that is more trusted across party lines, will have a significant influence on Republicans' climate attitudes. Using the case of Louisiana, we first demonstrate that local and national newspapers cover climate change in substantially different ways, with local media more consistently focused on local impacts. Our survey experiment of Louisiana residents reveals that Republicans viewed the coverage of a hurricane in the region more positively when it came from a local newspaper rather than a national newspaper. Furthermore, local newspapers' climate coverage increased Republicans' willingness to take action to mitigate climate change. These results provide insights into the effective communication of climate change to the public and the role of local media in mitigating partisan polarization.

ObjectiveThis article examines how people's lived experience of local weather might influence climate policy preferences in the presence of strong partisan bias.MethodsUsing a comprehensive dataset combining four‐wave panel survey responses from U.S. residents over three years with geocoded data on their local weather experience, we evaluate the impacts of local weather variations on beliefs about climate change, risk perceptions of climate change, and climate policy preferences. The panel structure of our data allows us to causally identify how one's actual experience of weather modifies climate change opinions over time.ResultsWe find that both long‐ and short‐term unusual local weather experiences change individuals' climate change opinions and preferences on climate change policy.ConclusionOne's lived experience alters beliefs in climate change, risk perceptions of climate change, and preferences for government climate policy even in the context of strong partisan bias.