Why are political actors interested in certain issues rather than others? For example, the French presidential campaign that has just ended has been criticized for not paying enough attention to climate issues. However, in the democratic models promoted by politicians themselves, supported by parts of political theory, politicians only respond to signals emerging from society and the ballot box. In other words, if we don't talk about climate issues, it's because voters, or at least a large majority of them, aren't really interested in these issues.

Literature on censorship in competitive authoritarian regimes identifies a simple tradeoff: muffling an opposition media outlet can reduce voters’ exposure to anti-incumbent news content, but may also erode the incumbent’s own ability to communicate. This characterization neglects indirect benefits and costs of censoring an opposition media outlet: collateral censorship. By weakening competition in media markets, the incumbent allows allied media outlets to further bend their editorial lines in his favor. But voters may punish the incumbent for restricting access to valued programming.

Voter-endorsed challenges to international institutions present a growing problem for international cooperation. This talk discusses the challenges that unilateral, voter-endorsed attempts by one member state to withdraw from or renegotiate the terms of existing international institutions create for the institution’s other member states.

Do social influencers affect election outcomes? Social influencers can reach millions of people through social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. However, research on social influencers is scarce and so far largely limited to marketing research. I argue that social influencers can influence elections through their role as digital opinion leaders and their power to shape the media agenda. Empirically, I will leverage an event that occurred during the 2019 European election campaign.

Economic issues are often key drivers of policy preferences and voting behavior. Yet only select aspects of the economy are researched, such as general issue salience, retrospective evaluations, and redistributive policy preferences. Specifically, central though the financial industry is to most advanced industrial democracies, we know relatively little about what shapes citizens' preferences about banks and banking.

Africa and Europe stand at a crossroads.

With several key frameworks governing their partnership being changed at fast pace, the stage is set for them to identify, understand, and overcome the self-deceit that has shaped their relations. The two continent’s key actors have an opportunity to reaffirm what was said by the region’s respective leaders in 2017: that their partnership ought to be built on a “spirit of shared ownership, responsibility, reciprocity, respect and mutual accountability and transparency.”

Discussant: Claas Mertens