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A record number of candidates contested parliamentary seats in the 2024 general election in the United Kingdom. This article discusses three key aspects that have garnered attention from both academics and practitioners studying the characteristics, motivations and experiences of candidates: gender representation, security concerns and local residency. Candidate data shows that, despite an increase in female MPs, the overall number of female candidates declined, highlighting structural barriers within party selection processes. Second, the rise in harassment, abuse and intimidation has led many candidates, particularly women, to withhold their home addresses on ballot papers, impacting their perceived local connection to voters. Finally, while localism remains a valued asset for candidates, security concerns diminish its role in contemporary campaigns. Challenges for future elections remain for political parties to address gender imbalances during the selection process, enhance candidate safety and reconsider local engagement strategies to foster a more inclusive and connected political landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tuition levels in the US have been rising at an above-the-inflation pace, leading to spiraling student debt levels and negative effects on students' well-being. While student outcomes of rising tuition are well known, the political reasons behind the decisions of policy makers to contain tuition increases or not remain poorly understood. In this article, we focus on electoral accountability that policy makers face for rising tuition by examining voters' reactions. Using a survey experiment with a sample of US adults (N = 1040), we show that clarity of responsibility is an important factor affecting reactions to rising tuition levels. When voters are informed about the role of the government in tuition setting, they are more likely to vote out policy makers responsible for cuts in funding. We show a similar relationship in observational data using a nationally representative survey from Cooperative Congressional Election Study. State governors' approval is lower in states where tuition levels increased recently, and the relationship is moderated by the visibility of government in tuition-setting. By demonstrating that policy makers face repercussions for rising tuition but are able to avoid blame in certain conditions, we contribute to scholarly understanding of preferences of policy makers in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, decentralization has been linked with the stability of the party system because it helps parties to succeed in national elections. Yet, previous research has frequently obviated the intertwined nature of multilevel party competition. This research takes a closer look at parties' subnational electoral trajectories while arguing that decentralization increases the risk of new party demise by making subnational elections more attractive for all kinds of parties to compete in. The argument is tested applying survival analysis to the electoral trajectories of 1235 regional branches of political parties in 12 European countries. Results show that contrary to what has been stated previously on the literature, decentralization increases the risk of parties disappearing. This effect fades away the older and more consolidated the party becomes, and it is of particular relevance for regionalist parties. These findings have important implications for the literature on second-order elections and multilevel party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades several countries around the world have transferred authority from their national to their regional governments. However, not all their regions have been empowered to the same degree and important differences can be observed between and within countries. Why do some regions obtain more power than others? Current literature argues that variation in the redistribution of power and resources between regions is introduced by demand. Yet these explanations are conditional on the presence of strong regionalist parties or territorial cleavages. This article proposes instead a theory that links the government’s risk of future electoral defeat with heterogeneous decentralisation, and tests its effects using data from 15 European countries and 141 regions. The results provide evidence that parties in government protect themselves against the risk of electoral defeat by selectively targeting decentralisation towards regions in which they are politically strong. The findings challenge previous research that overestimates the importance of regionalist parties while overlooking differences between regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]