For Citizens – European Institute
We do Research & Policy on Political Participation & Civic Engagement
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Influence of digitalization on political participation among young adults in contemporary Europe.
How does digitalization reshape the nature and depth of youth political participation across contemporary Europe? Wara (2026) conducts a systematic qualitative meta-synthesis grounded in mobilization theory to evaluate how digital…
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Online violence against women in politics: What shapes political party responses totechnology-facilitated gender-based violence?
Michalko (2026) explores how democracy-strenghthening programs can better help political parties respond to technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). This phenomenom has gronw into a major worldwide dranger to democracy, weakening political…
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Compliant Women, Constitutive Violence: Rethinking the VAWIP Counterfactual
How has literature broadened our understanding of violence against women in politics? Kuteleva (2026) tracks how research has expanded from physical violence to encompass symbolic harm and everyday phychological abuse.…
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Violence Against Feminist Advocates: Political Violence and Anti-Gender Politics
How does political violence target women’s activism? Reboiro-Río and Rodó-Zárate (2026) examine how violence against women in politics and activist spaces functions as a tool to discipline, silence and push…
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An Early Leak in the Pipeline – Online Abuse as a Barrier for Young Women’s Political Engagement
Does online abuse prevent young women from entering politics? Höhmann, Latteier, and Bailer (2025) show that gender-targeted online harassment pushes young women to leave political work before their careers even…
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Silenced Voices: How Violence Marginalizes Women and Immigrant Politicians in Policy Debates
Does political violence silence certain voices in public debates? Håkansson and Josefsson (2026) show that violence pushes women and immigrant politicians out of policy discussions, reinforcing the political dominance of…
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Attacking Women or their Policies? Understanding Violence against Women in Politics
Are women mayors targeted for their identity or their political actions? Daniele, Dipoppa, and Pulejo (2026) provide causal evidence that women mayors are systematically more likely to face political violence…
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Anti‐LGBTIQ rhetoric and electoral outcomes under the shadow of war: Evidence from Poland’s 2023 parliamentary election
Can wartime conditions weaken the impact of anti-LGBTIQ politics? Ayoub, Page, and Whitt (2025) show that tying a party’s anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric to Putin’s war justifications shifted voter support toward Poland’s…
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Youth Political Culture in the European Union: Welfare Institutions, Political Trust, and Participation
What determines young Europeans’ trust in political institutions—their direct democratic participation or their everyday experience with the welfare state? Broka (2026) investigates the structural and social foundations of youth political…
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Editorial: The role of political influencers in electoral campaigns
How do political influencers reshape electoral dynamics, public discourse, and voter mobilization in hybrid media systems? Mikola (2026) introduces a Frontiers in Political Science Research Topic that investigates how digital…
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The Routledge International Handbook of Gender-Based Violence Research
Borda-Niño-Wildman (2025) provides a comprehensive handbook to guide scholars, educators, and policymakers through GBV research. The volumne offers practical tools and critical reflections needed across every phase of study, from…
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Violence against women active in politics in the EU: A serious obstacle to political participation
Why does violence disproportionately push women out of the political arena? The European Parliamentary Research Service (2025) examines how intersecting political and gender-based violence creates a severe barrier to women’s…
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European Democracy Shield: Empowering strong and resilient democracies
How can democratic socities defend themselves against external and internal pressures? The European Commission (2025) presents the European Democracy Shield to reinforce democratic institutions and resist authoritarian regimes agressive tactics.…
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Political Participation of Marginalized Young People: Examining Funding Programs from a European and National Perspective
How can public funding schemes bridge the gap between high-level policy agendas and grassroots practice to mobilize marginalized youth? Wielath et al. (2025) investigate the role of funding programs as…
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Political Participation of Young Immigrants: Do National Identification and Discrimination Moderate the Relationship?
How do perceived discrimination and national identification condition the political participation of young immigrants compared to the native-born majority? Hoffmann and Benoit (2025) investigate the mechanisms of youth political socialization…
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A roadmap for women’s rights
How is the EU protecting women’s rights against rising global pushback? The European Commission (2025a) outlines a roadmap to reaffirm foundational values and guide its equality policies beyond 2025. Grounded…
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Civic Interest from the Margin: Discrimination and Youth Political Engagement
How do experiences of discrimination and social participation interact to foster political interest among immigrant-origin youth? Agyeman-Osei (2025) examines the cognitive mechanisms underpinning youth political socialization, addressing conflicting empirical literature…
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2025 report on gender equality in the EU
How has the European Commission progressed in protecting women and dismantling gender bias? The European Commission (2025) reviews recent equality milestones, highlighting major legislative breakthroughs alongside widespread violence and persistent…
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Political Participation As A European Value: The Role Of Civic Engagement In Shaping European Union Policies
How has civic engagement evolved from a secondary procedural consideration into a core normative and institutional value of the European Union? Perga and Makhno (2025) examine the historical and institutional…
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The Gendered Representational Costs of Violence against Politicians
How does violence against politicians weaken gender equality? Håkansson (2024) shows that harassment directed at female politicians harms descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation, silencing women and pushing them out of…
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A tutorial for conducting intersectional multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA)
How can researchers better measure overlapping social inequalities? Evans et al. (2024) offer an accessible tutorial on I-MAIHDA, a multilevel approach designed to examine health, social, and economic disparities across…
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Varieties of antigenderism: the politicization of gender issues across three European populist radical right parties
How do far-right populist parties adapt their gender rhetoric across different political landscapes? Reinhardt, Heft, and Pavan (2024) analyze how populist radical right parties (PRRPs) weaponize gender issues on social…
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LGBTIQ equality at a crossroads: Progress and challenges
How is LGBTIQ equality progressing across Europe amidst rising hostility? The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2024) reveals a paradox: while openness has increased, hate-motivated violence, harassment, and severe…
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Institutionalisation Of Youth Political Participation In The Eu: A Neoliberal Attempt To Castrate The Political Engagement Of Young People Outside The Ballot Box
How do institutional participatory frameworks within the European Union govern, absorb, and constrain extra-parliamentary youth activism? Pušnik (2024) critically examines the institutionalization of youth civic engagement at both the supranational…
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Group of experts on action against violence against women and domestic violence. In Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence
How do international treaties and EU directives bind European institutions in combating gender-based violence? De Vido and Frulli (2023) examine how the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention and the…
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Three Dimensions of Gendered Online Abuse: Analyzing Swedish MPs’ Experiences of Social Media
In what specific ways does digital harassment diverge along gender lines for elected officials? Erikson, Håkansson, and Josefsson (2023) examine the experiences of Swedish Members of Parliament, arguing that understanding…
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Gender and Media Representations: A Review of the Literature on Gender Stereotypes, Objectification and Sexualization
How do media portrayals shape societal gender norms and individual aspirations? Santoniccolo et al. (2023) synthesize the literature on gender stereotyping, objectification, and sexualization across media contexts, highlighting their role…
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Gender and Violence against Political Candidates: Lessons from Sri Lanka
Does election violence target women differently than men? Bjarnegård, Håkansson, and Zetterberg (2022) find that while male and female candidates in Sri Lanka face similar overall levels of violence, women…
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The Societal Readiness Thinking Tool: A Practical Resource for Maturing the Societal Readiness of Research Projects
How can research better align with public needs? Bernstein et al. (2022) introduce the Societal Readiness Thinking Tool to help researchers and innovators design projects that actively respond to societal…
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This One’s for the Boys: How Gendered Political Socialization Limits Girls’ Political Ambition and Interest
When and why does the political ambition gap between women and men originate? Bos et al. (2022) develop and test a new framework of “gendered political socialization” to demonstrate how…
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The costs of gender-based violence in the European Union
What is the economic cost of failing to address gender-based violence? The European Institute for Gender Equality (2021) quantifies the financial impact of gender-based and intimate partner violence across the…
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A Union of Equality: Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025
How can the European Union achieve true equality across its member states? The European Commission (2020) outlines its 2020–2025 strategy to eliminate gender-based violence, structural inequality, and persistent gaps in…
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Harassment and Intimidation of Parliamentary Candidates in the United Kingdom
How common is harassment among political candidates in the UK? Collignon and Rüdig (2020) show that four in ten candidates faced harassment in the 2017 election, with women and younger…
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Electoral violence: An introduction
Why do elections frequently lead to conflict instead of peace? Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund (2020) explain that outside established democracies, voting often involves electoral violence, which operates as a distinct…
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How is Political Violence Gendered? Disentangling Motives, Forms, and Impacts
How does gender shape political violence? Bardall, Bjarnegård, and Piscopo (2020) break down this dynamic into three core elements: motives, forms, and impacts, to give researchers and policymakers greater analytical…
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The Methodology of “Varieties of Democracy” (V-Dem)
How can we measure democracy more accurately? Coppedge et al. (2019) detail how the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project provides a new methodological framework to measure democracy using deep data…
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Explaining Public Opinion toward Transgender People, Rights, and Candidates
What shapes how voters view transgender rights and political candidates? Jones et al. (2018) find that while a majority of Americans back transgender rights, support drops sharply for transgender candidates…
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Gender, race, and political ambition: how intersectionality and frames influence interest in political office
How do explanations for women’s underrepresentation shape their desire to run for office? Holman and Schneider (2018) show that framing the issue as supply versus demand changes women’s political ambition,…
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A multilevel approach to modeling health inequalities at the intersection of multiple social identities
How can we better measure how intersecting identities shape health disparities? Evans et al. (2018) show that multilevel models offer an effective, practical way to study health inequalities across multiple…
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Best Practices for Developing and Validating Scales for Health, Social, and Behavioral Research: A Primer
How can researchers properly build and test measurement scales? Boateng et al. (2018) offer a practical primer breaking the process into three phases and nine steps to help scientists develop…
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Violence against Women and Reactions to Gender Equality in Politics
What makes violence against women a systemic social practice? Biroli (2018) explains that it functions as a broad pattern where women live with the awareness that they may face harm…
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Turning the Tide on Violence against Women in Politics: How Are We Measuring Up?
How does violence against women in politics violate basic human rights? Ballington (2018) explains that such violence constitutes a human rights violation specifically because it stops women from exercising and…
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Rethinking Hallin and Mancini beyond the west: an analysis of media systems in Central and Eastern Europe
Can a single model describe media across Central and Eastern Europe? Castro Herrero et al. (2017) test Hallin and Mancini’s framework and find that the region does not have just…
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Intersectionality in Quantitative Psychological Research: I. Theoretical and Epistemological Issues
Can quantitative methods work with an intersectional framework? Else-Quest and Hyde (2016) show how combining quantitative research with intersectionality can expand research tools and deepen our understanding of psychology. While…
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Violence against women: an EU-wide survey
What is the true scale of violence against women across Europe, and why does so much of it remain hidden? The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2014) presents findings…
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Effectiveness-implementation Hybrid Designs – Combining Elements of Clinical Effectiveness and Implementation Research to Enhance Public Health Impact
Can we test if a treatment works and how to deliver it at once? Curran et al. (2012) introduce hybrid designs that blend clinical effectiveness and implementation research to speed…
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Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics
How do political systems shape the way media operates? Hallin and Mancini (2004) identify three core models—Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist, and Liberal—to explain how media systems differ across Western democracies.…
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The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism.
Can sexism involve both negative and positive feelings toward women? Glick and Fiske (1996) present a theory of sexist ambivalence and validate the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), measuring both hostile…
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Comparing Incomparable Survey Responses: Evaluating and Selecting Anchoring Vignettes
How can we fix bias when survey respondents interpret rating scales differently? King and Wand (2007) introduce new methods for evaluating, selecting, and analyzing anchoring vignettes to improve data quality…