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AbstractHow does women's representation in politics affect working‐class women's attitudes toward political processes? Despite their increasing presence in the workforce, many women continue to concentrate in occupational sectors characterized by high economic vulnerability and low social status. This dynamic has important implications for the politics of representation. Previous studies suggest that women politicians positively affect women voters' political attitudes, but women's representation in politics is likely to have differing impacts on the political attitudes of working‐class and professional women. This study demonstrates that women's representation has a large class impact among women voters. In particular, using cross‐national data from 31 OECD countries as well as panel survey data from the British Election Study, we show that in countries with a higher degree of women's representation, there is more skepticism among women in low‐skill sectors toward voting and leadership than among those in white‐collar sectors. This is because there exist higher standards of accountability and relatability for women representatives among women voters. Given such high expectations, there is greater room for dissatisfaction among working‐class women than among their white‐collar counterparts when they constantly experience occupational segregation despite a high share of women in politics. In these settings, by contrast, women voters with high‐skill jobs are more likely to believe that voting and leadership matter, as they can better associate themselves with women political elites. Since men voters do not have strong expectations for relatability and accountability for public officeholders, the class impact of women's representation is weak among men. These findings have important implications for the symbolic representation of marginalized groups and democratic accountability.

AbstractAmid the COVID‐19 pandemic, people have witnessed a deluge of conspiracy theories and disinformation. As the coronavirus poses a significant threat to individuals' lives, these conspiracy theories are dangerous, as they erode public trust and undermine government efforts to fight the virus. This paper examines the political determinants of COVID‐19 conspiracy beliefs. Particularly, we analyze how government policy responses to the pandemic and individuals' ideological predispositions interact to shape people's tendencies to believe conspiracy theories. Using survey data from 22 advanced industrial countries, we show that political conservatives are more prone to conspiracy beliefs than liberals. More importantly, this tendency is reinforced when the government adopts stringent containment policies. Our results suggest that governments' policy efforts to contain the coronavirus can trigger an unintended backlash from political conservatives. This study has important implications for the behavioral and attitudinal effects of government containment policies that are often overlooked.

Since old-age programmes mitigate life-course risks that are relevant to individuals across socio-economic groups in ageing societies, all parties have a political incentive to support these initiatives. Nevertheless, pre-existing partisan commitments bind the policy instruments that parties use. Cabinet-level analyses of OECD economies demonstrate that left incumbency relies more on public expenditure than right-wing governments. What is more important is that, in the context of large elderly populations, pension coverage is greater under right-leaning governments, while pension replacement rates are higher in left-leaning governments. This shows that party behaviour related to life course-related policies cannot be explained by the conventional pro-expansion versus the pro-retrenchment partisan politics. Rather, a focus on partisan variation in the use of policy instruments is required.1

Deservingness theory contends that spending on the elderly is widely supported across age groups because, unlike other groups such as immigrants or the unemployed, senior citizens are perceived as morally worthy of social aid. However, through a survey experiment in Japan, a prototypical aging society, this study shows that in a state with a large population of senior citizens, there is a significant age gap in policy preferences with the working-age population demonstrating stronger opposition to government support for the elderly. To induce empathetic policy attitudes toward the elderly, therefore, effective issue framing is necessary. However, emphasizing economic need is not enough; it is only when both the elderly's economic need and effort to work are emphasized that we see a positive attitudinal change among the working-age population. In addition, we find that the economically secure are more sensitive to senior citizens' economic need and effort to work in determining their policy support. By contrast, the economically insecure exhibit unqualified support for the elderly. These findings demonstrate that deservingness for the elderly is not innate, but is driven by conditional altruism. Furthermore, our work emphasizes the importance of issue framing in generating intergenerational solidarity in a rapidly aging society.

Many studies emphasize the authoritarian bargain to explain why authoritarian regimes develop social welfare in the absence of democratic accountability. Increased welfare support enhances economic security and, in turn, strengthens public support for the regime. However, few studies have empirically demonstrated the core part of the underlying mechanism that welfare support leads to reduced economic insecurity in non-democratic regimes. By analyzing survey data from China, this study examines how labor market programs affect public economic insecurity. The results reveal that vocational training has a U-shaped impact on risk perception. It alleviates perceived insecurity when the unemployment rate is at the low or high end and has negligible effects at the medium level of unemployment rates. Furthermore, the impact of vocational training is particularly strong for individuals with higher incomes, urban hukou, and public sector employment. In contrast, regardless of the unemployment rate, unemployment insurance has a negative effect on risk perception overall. The results show that the type of social policy and macro- as well as micro-level socio-economic attributes should be taken into account to understand the impact of social welfare. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

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.

How do electoral rules shape the substantive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups? Using an original dataset of introduced and passed bills in the Korean National Assembly, which has both single-member districts and proportional representation, we examine the extent to which institutions condition the relationship between lawmaker gender and the substantive representation of women. While women lawmakers engage in higher levels of substantive representation of women, proportional representation allows both women and men to introduce more women's issue bills than their counterparts elected through single-member districts. Furthermore, legislators elected through proportional representation are more effective at achieving passage of women's issue legislation when compared with those elected in single-member districts, and this effect is especially pronounced for men. Our findings show that electoral systems matter for the representation of marginalized groups and that proportional representation systems allow both female and male politicians to increase their substantive representation of women.

The consequences of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and Great Recession of 2008-2010 continue to be debated among economists, journalists, and policymakers. This text examines how these economic shocks, which originated largely outside of nations, reshaped politics within them.