Open research questions in Electoral Systems and Political Participation
1,653 gap statements mined from Electoral Systems and Political Participation papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 15,392 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.
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What the literature leaves open
The study highlights the need to distinguish between general opposition to religious expression and prejudice as predictors of disapproval. The study aims to fill this gap by using a split-ballot experiment to assess acceptance of government employees wearing different religious symbols.
Navigating secularism and diversity: understanding the disapproval of government employees wearing majority and minority religious symbols in Belgium · 2026 · DOIIt must address the issue of territorial cohesion, which remains a major challenge despite significant efforts by the EU. The analysis must consider the complexities of combining regional indicators across different dimensions to understand their impact on party competition.
The limited understanding of how individuals experience and make sense of their first voting experience. The lack of research on the psychological aspects of first-time voting. The need to move beyond structural conditions and strategic reasoning in understanding youth political participation.
First-time voters in Türkiye: a thematic analysis from a political psychology perspective · 2026 · DOIExisting accounts have overlooked the role of comparative advantage in agriculture in shaping the rural-urban divide. There is a need to analyze the interaction between rural status and regional agricultural competitiveness. The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of the underlying economic forces that contribute to the rural-urban divide.
While much remains to be learned about the political consequences of sibling dynamics, our results suggest that who we grow up with—even something as seemingly simple as a sibling’s sex—can leave a lasting mark on our democratic engagement.
To what extent does partisanship bias copartisans’ responses to corruption? While existing research shows that partisanship can shield politicians from the consequences of corruption, the conditions under which this varies remain unclear.
How do sudden coalition breakdowns shape affective polarization in multiparty democracies? While a growing body of work examines how coalition cooperation structure partisan affect, comparatively little is known about how citizens react when coalitions break apart.
This paper examines the immediate political effects of large-scale emigration and argues that emigration alone is insufficient to mobilize participation.
However, little is known about the relevance of these non-political perceptions beyond political ones, whether different types of non-political traits matter equally, and how these dynamics unfold beyond the U.
Divided beyond politics: How perceptions of non-political differentness are linked to affective polarization among citizens · 2026 · DOIYet their effects on turnout remain poorly understood and have been studied mainly in majoritarian contexts.
Small time costs matter: Reform-induced polling station congestion reduces turnout in a high-turnout PR system · 2026 · DOIWhile the influence of Donald Trump's second presidency on the 2025 Canadian federal election is widely acknowledged, the specific mechanisms of this influence remain underexplored.
Rally around the Liberals or a conservative pushback? Understanding the Trump effect in the 2025 Canadian federal election · 2026 · DOIVoters are often at a disadvantage in assessing policies when possessing limited information.
Despite their demonstrated importance, for example, in structuring issue attitudes, evidence regarding their ability to shape partisanship is surprisingly under-examined, with limited evidence to date finding, in the United States, that partisanship structures core values, with little reciprocal influence.
Using novel survey measures and open questions on a representative sample of Irish respondents (1547), we find that sympathy for Palestinians is broad-based, deeply held, and closely tied to perceptions of Irish historical oppression and unity.
The long shadow of the past: How Irish history shapes attitudes towards the Israel–Palestine conflict · 2026 · DOIWhile prior studies show that discrimination mobilises ethnic and racial minorities toward protest, the political consequences of class‐based discrimination remain underexplored.
Everyday Discrimination as a Driver of Political Protest Among the Lower Social Class: Evidence from Germany · 2026 · DOIYet, we lack evidence documenting that democratic dissatisfaction indeed results from citizens’ disappointment with the ways in which democratic institutions realise representation.
The Expectation Gap: Citizens’ Expectations for and Evaluations of Democratic Representation · 2026 · DOIThis lack of agreement poses a particular challenge in studying generational effects in China, a society experiencing rapid social and political change.
Understanding Generational Shifts and Democratic Support in China: Value Change Vs. Life Satisfaction · 2025 · DOIWhile research shows that obtaining a degree tends to make students more socially liberal, little is known about what drives this effect.
While prior studies have examined whether voters prefer candidates who share their gender or age, findings remain mixed and are often based on experimental designs.
Our findings demonstrate that symbolic politics may activate latent undemocratic impulses across ideological lines, posing underrecognized risks to democracy.
Democracy and the Commemorated Other: Public Memory, Status Threat, and Democratic Backsliding Among White Americans · 2026 · DOIAlthough scholars have examined a variety of issues associated with mail voting, including postal delays and signature deficiencies, few studies have probed the subjective nature of validating VBM ballots, specifically matching a registered voter’s signature on record with a signature on a VBM return envelope.
The postulated link between this low perceptual accuracy and substantive representation has rarely been explored empirically.
Future research should examine whether a correlation between (dis)liking and (dis)satisfaction is normatively good or bad, - Future research should examine this possibility, - Existing research on party cues suggests that heuristics can be helpful when accurate, but harmful when they…
Slovenia was excluded due to lacking congruence of regional development indicators and election data, - Greece and Croatia are not part of the analysis because of missing regional data…
Our study underscores social identity as an underexplored mechanism for enhancing regime legitimacy in China.
Most-cited papers in Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- “Effective” Number of Parties · Comparative Political Studies · 1979 · 2,340 citations
- Affect, Not Ideology · Public Opinion Quarterly · 2012 · 2,327 citations
- When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions · Political Behavior · 2010 · 2,166 citations
- The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States · American Political Science Review · 1969 · 2,138 citations
- Political Uncertainty and Corporate Investment Cycles · The Journal of Finance · 2012 · 1,986 citations
- A Theory of the Calculus of Voting · American Political Science Review · 1968 · 1,933 citations
- Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation · American Political Science Review · 1995 · 1,900 citations
- Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy · American Political Science Review · 1993 · 1,867 citations
- When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change · World Politics · 1993 · 1,743 citations
- Levels Issues in Theory Development, Data Collection, and Analysis · Academy of Management Review · 1994 · 1,428 citations
Most recent work
- Artificial Intelligence in Election Campaigns: Perceptions, Penalties, and Implications · Political Communication · 2026
- Election Outcomes and Affective Polarization in the United States · Political Research Quarterly · 2026
- VRscores: A New Measure and Data Set of Workforce Politics Using Voter Registrations · Organization Science · 2026
- Abortion policy preferences are structured, stable, and consequential · American Journal of Political Science · 2026
- Restructuring party systems in Northwestern Europe: A comparative analysis of six countries · Party Politics · 2026
- Electoral mobilisation in turbulent times · Party Politics · 2026
- “Compensate the Losers?” Economic Policy and the Origins of U.S. Partisan Realignment · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2026
- Beyond Numbers: Ideological Motivations in Local Coalition Formation in Flanders · Government and Opposition · 2026
- You and whose economy? Group‐based retrospection in economic voting · American Journal of Political Science · 2026
- Are Single‐Party Voting Advice Applications Useful? Comparing Voter Preferences in the BSW‐O‐Mat With a Probability Sample · Politics and Governance · 2026
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