Partisans tend to be skeptical of governments only when they are led by the other side. This president-in-power effect threatens democratic functioning by limiting partisans’ ability to hold their own party accountable. As polarization rises, the problems associated with this phenomenon are likely to intensify. This article examines the evolution and drivers of the president-in-power effect since 1974. Mirroring the general rise in polarization, we document a steady increase in the president-in-power effect. Our research demonstrates that this increase can be attributed to an intensification of partisan identification, combined with a growing perceived ideological distance from the opposed party. Contrasting the narrative that polarization is stronger on the right, however, we find evidence that the president-in-power effect has grown faster for Democrats than for Republicans. To explain this pattern, we show that highly educated people, who display a stronger president-in-power effect, have shifted toward the left in recent years.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Partisanship, political alignment, and charitable donations","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01215-8","cta":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-024-01215-8","slug":"donations","authors":"Bouke Klein Teeselink, George Melios","journal":"Public Choice, Vol. 203, pages 523–538","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/donations.bib","code":null,"pdf":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01215-8"},"html":"This paper examines how alignment with the government influences beliefs about the efficiency and role of government, and examines the behavioral consequences of these beliefs. In particular, we examine how support of versus opposition to the government affects people’s charitable donations. For both Republicans and Democrats, we find that alignment with the government leads to a reduction in charitable donations. Specifically, when accounting for government spending, supporters of the incumbent government decrease their charitable contributions, while detractors increase theirs. We explain this result by documenting a shift in people’s beliefs about the efficiency and normative role of government.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Weather to Protest: The Effect of Black Lives Matter Protests on the 2020 Presidential Election","tech":["Political Behavior","Event Studies","Spatial Analysis","Difference-in-Differences","R"],"github":null,"external":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-024-09953-7","cta":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-024-09953-7","slug":"blm-protests","authors":"Bouke Klein Teeselink, George Melios","journal":"Political Behavior, Vol. 47, pages 1829–1851","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/blm-protests.bib","code":null,"pdf":"/papers/blm-protests.pdf"},"html":"Do mass mobilizations drive social change? This paper explores this question by studying how the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death influenced the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Using rainfall as an instrument for protest participation and complementary difference-in-differences analyses, we show that protest activity significantly increased Democratic vote share in affected coun- ties. Our research makes three key contributions. First, we show causal evidence for the effect of one of the largest protest movements ever recorded on electoral out- comes. Second, we provide evidence of novel temporal dynamics: while protests ini- tially triggered a conservative backlash, they ultimately generated progressive shifts in voting behavior. Third, we identify mechanisms driving these effects, showing that rather than merely mobilizing existing Democratic voters, protests substantively shifted political preferences and beliefs about racial inequality.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Sleeping With the Enemy: Partisan Sorting in Online Dating","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/sleeping-with-the-enemy-partisanship-and-tolerance-in-online-dating/628B2BD08EA384301E87E577305F4865","cta":"https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2025.30","slug":"dating","authors":"Yara Sleiman, George Melios, Paul Dolan","journal":"Political Science Research & Methods","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/dating.bib","code":null,"pdf":"/papers/dating.pdf"},"html":"How do politics affect non-political decisions? A key aspect of this question concerns the extent to which partisan biases stem from out-group animus or assumptions about associated traits. To address this question, we focus on online dating to identify factors that mitigate these biases. Through a conjoint experiment with 3,000 UK participants, we disentangle the influence of partisanship from political and non-political confounding factors. We show that partisanship and physical appearance equally influence dating decisions. At the same time though, political tolerance has a significantly stronger effect. Our results also indicate important asymmetries in preferences among partisans. While both exhibit an in-party bias, Labour supporters were roughly twice as likely to choose co-partisan dates compared to Conservatives. Counter-stereotypic traits mitigate partisan biases among Conservatives but exacerbate them among Labour supporters. The overarching theme discerned is clear while partisanship undoubtedly holds sway in the dating realm, other factors — many previously overlooked or under-emphasized — can meaningfully mediate its influence.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Not as bad as I thought: Economic attitudes and motivated reasoning in coalition governments","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.70022","cta":"https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.70022","slug":"germany-coalition","authors":"G. Kavetsos, C. Krekel, George Melios","journal":"Political Psychology, Vol. 46, Issue 6, pages 1987-2006","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/germany-coalition.bib","code":null,"pdf":"/papers/germany-coalition.pdf"},"html":"Two prominent mechanisms have been advanced to explain the effects of election outcomes on economic attitudes/perceptions: partisan competence attribution, based on voters' genuine belief of an elected party's competence; and partisan motivated reasoning, where voters change their economic attitudes so as to remain consistent with their past behavior/view. To date, these two mechanisms have not been considered jointly. We draw on a unique, closely spaced, panel dataset around the 2013 German general elections to consider retrospective (past evaluations) and prospective (future expectations) attitudes about both one's personal economic situation and that of the national economy. We find no evidence for competence attribution; voters of the future coalition parties do not expect higher household incomes nor their job situation to improve. We find changes in retrospective attitudes about the national economy, explained by partisan motivated reasoning given a political alliance that was negated and depreciated throughout the pre-election period. We discuss the implications these results have.
"}}]},"workingPapers":{"edges":[{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"The Will of the People? Backsliding, norms violation and democratic erosion in 18 Countries","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"","cta":null,"slug":"backsliding","authors":"George Melios","journal":"Working Paper","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":null,"code":null,"pdf":null},"html":""}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Propaganda, Mobilisation, and Repression in Greece","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"","cta":null,"slug":"greece-civil-war","authors":"Vassileios Logothetis, George Melios","journal":"Working Paper","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/greece-civil-war.bib","code":null,"pdf":null},"html":"We study how clandestine communist radio propaganda shaped mobilisation, repression, and electoral outcomes in Greece during the Cold War. Exposure to the broadcasts increased the legal Left’s (EDA) vote share in 1958 by about 1.5--2.5 percentage points (~16% of its mean). The Left’s gains were met with a coordinated state campaign of arrests, intimidation, and assaults ahead of the 1961 election: the probability of at least one incident in a municipality rose by roughly 12.8 percentage points, with repression concentrated in actions by police and auxiliary paramilitary groups. Repression reduced subsequent Left vote share by about 1.2 percentage points and left a durable footprint in institutional trust and participation. Together, these results show how propaganda‐induced mobilisation can provoke coercive backlash within competitive elections, with persistent democratic costs.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Religion, Identity, and Preferences","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"","cta":null,"slug":"religion-identity","authors":"Bouke Klein Teeselink, George Melios","journal":"Working Paper","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/religion-identity.bib","code":null,"pdf":null},"html":"This paper provides causal evidence on the impact of religious identification on political preferences, gender norms, societal beliefs, and group behavior. Exploiting clergy sexual abuse scandals as a source of exogenous variation in Catholicism, we demonstrate that religious de-identification leads to significant shifts in individual attitudes and political alignment. Using data on millions of U.S. college freshmen and county-level voting records, we find that secularization causes more progressive positions on issues like abortion rights and same-sex marriage, but more conservative views on universal healthcare and military spending. The net effect is a substantial leftward shift in overall political orientation. We also document more progressive gender attitudes, particularly regarding women's workforce participation, among those who deidentify as Catholic. Notably, religious de-identification reduces individuals' propensity to engage in other group activities. Additional analyses suggest that as individuals disaffiliate from Catholicism, they increasingly identify with their social class, which polarizes economic preferences between high and low-income groups.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"The Employment Effects of Disability Benefits Without Work Restrictions","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5378340","cta":null,"slug":"benefits","authors":"Bouke Klein Teeselink, George Melios","journal":"Working Paper","year":"2025","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/benefits.bib","code":null,"pdf":"/papers/benefits.pdf"},"html":"Disability benefits can reduce work via income and substitution effects. Distinguishing them matters: income effects are non-distortionary; substitution effects create deadweight loss. We isolate pure income effects of the UK’s Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which compensates disability costs without work restrictions or earnings tests. Exploiting the 2013 reform, we combine differential condition-specific eligibility changes with quasi-random regional assignment to assessment providers in a difference-in-differences design. Despite substantial benefit receipt changes (1.8-5.9pp across strategies), we only find positive employment effects in stricter assessment regions. For individuals who gain/lose benefits due to condition-specific eligibility changes, the effects are close to zero.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Who Needs Security in a Crisis? Evidence from an In-the-Field Choice Experiment in Lebanon","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4479897","cta":null,"slug":"lebanon-security","authors":"George Melios, Yara Sleiman, Elisabetta Pietrostefani, Henrietta Moore","journal":"R & R - Journal of Development Studies","year":"2024","badge":null,"bib":"/papers/lebanon-security.bib","code":null,"pdf":null},"html":"This paper investigates job preferences during economic crises using a novel in-the-field choice experiment conducted in Lebanon during the 2019-2021 compound crisis. Respondents made real job choices across multiple attributes including job security, salary, formality, and sector. We find that preferences for job security increase substantially during crises, particularly among those with greater economic vulnerability. However, the premium placed on security varies significantly across demographic groups and is mediated by access to informal safety nets. Our findings highlight how crises reshape labour market preferences and have important implications for employment policy design in fragile contexts.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Do People Get Used to Working Long Hours?","tech":null,"github":null,"external":"","cta":null,"slug":"working-hours","authors":"Christian Krekel, Tim Kremser, George Melios","journal":"R & R - Social Science and Medicine","year":"2026","badge":null,"bib":null,"code":null,"pdf":null},"html":""}}]}},"pageContext":{}}, "staticQueryHashes": ["1994492073","337208257","3747424157","3825832676"]}