Redistricting is among the least transparent processes in democratic governance. Often, politicians shape districts behind closed doors with little or no input from the public.1 The resulting lines embody the political goals of politicians and not the public interest, as much as the goals of the two groups do not overlap.2 Politicians use redistricting to realign their constituencies to further...

OBJECTIVE Due to the nature of their work, politicians are at greater risk of stalking, harassment and attack than the general population. The small, but significantly elevated risk of violence to politicians is predominantly due not to organised terrorism or politically motivated extremists but to fixated individuals with untreated serious mental disorders, usually psychosis. Our objective was...

Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters’ ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterproductive. We show that despite the disciplining effect of elections, term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters. By reducing the value of holdin...

We present a tool to generate real world political networks from user provided lists of politicians and news sites. Additional output includes visualizations, interactive tools and maps that allow a user to better understand the politicians and their surrounding environments as portrayed by the media. As a case study, we construct a comprehensive list of current Texas politicians, select news s...

A recent line of research in the field humor has proposed existence two morally based comic styles. One them, corrective (or satire), seeks to ridicule and mock establish justice. In contrast, benevolent attempts correct deviances using a friendly manner understanding human imperfections. Considering their focus on correcting what is perceived as wrong, this study we seek examine how these styl...

The paper aims to determine the extent of rationality Vladimir Putin’s decision begin a war with Ukraine. Its central argument is that this was irrational on three levels. Firstly, Russian decision-making elites failed foresee ability Ukrainian army and people resist efficiently. It might have resulted from imperial superiority syndrome reinforced by experiences 2014. Secondly, treated reports ...

Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters’ ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterproductive. We show that despite the disciplining effect of elections, term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters. By reducing the value of holdin...

This article provides a test of the secularization hypothesis, which argues that economic growth, industrialization, increased literacy and decreasing fertility depress religiosity. It focuses on the elections of the secular politicians who voted in favor of the separation between Church and State in the French Parliament in 1905. If the secularization hypothesis is correct, these secular polit...

I introduce a microfounded model of campaign finance with office-seeking politicians, a continuum of voters, and a large number of heterogeneous lobbies. Lobbies make contributions to politicians according to a common agency framework. Politicians use contributions to finance their electoral expenditures. Voters are not fooled by electoral expenditures: they are influenced in a way that is cons...

While plenty of research has provided important insights into the uses of the Internet by politicians during elections, a relatively scarce amount of work has looked into these uses outside of such parliamentary events. This article seeks to remedy this lack of research by presenting a study on the 'routine' uses of two of the currently most popular social media services - Facebook and Twitter....