FEREA 2026

Chasing the Many or the Few: Electoral Incentives and Politicians’ Constituency-Building Efforts

Daniel M. Smith (with Alexander Fouirnaies)

Theories of democratic representation assume that politicians’ constituency-building behavior is shaped by electoral incentives, but causal identification of this relationship is a challenge. We compile detailed data from Japan covering five decades of itemized campaign expenditures, municipality-level votes, and digitized records of parliamentary meetings to investigate how and when vote-seeking incentives shape constituency-building behaviors. Our analysis is based on a difference-in-differences design exploiting within-individual variation stemming from court-induced seat reapportionments (which alter the threshold of exclusion, and hence the size of the constituency needed, to win a seat). The results show that when a district gains [loses] a seat, candidates spend less [more] in campaigns and narrow [broaden] their geographical base of support. In contrast, we find no compelling evidence that legislators respond through participation or policy specialization in parliamentary activities.

Political Polarization and the Right in South Korea: Mapping Ideological Currents in a Changing Democracy  

Yujin Julia Jung

Around the world, the rise of far-right populism has challenged democratic norms and reshaped political discourse. South Korea has not been immune to this trend. During the presidential election that brought the now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol to power, young far-right voters emerged as a decisive force. Yet, who exactly constitutes the far right in Korea, and how do their attitudes compare with those observed in Western contexts? Using original survey data collected before and after the presidential election, this study offers one of the first systematic analyses of far-right sentiment in South Korea. The findings reveal both shared global patterns, such as strong anti-establishment and nationalist orientations, and distinctive local features shaped by Korea’s generational divides, digital culture, and regional cleavages. By situating Korea’s far right within the broader comparative landscape, this research contributes to understanding how democratic backsliding may take unique forms in non-Western democracies.

State-Endorsed Moral Outrage: Crowdsourced Coercion in the Era of Social Media

Xu Xu (with Yingjie Fan)

Social media is often seen as a bottom-up revolutionary force against authoritarian rule. However, this paper shows that such bottom-up mobilization can also be exploited for political and social control. We argue that the vast social networks and interconnectivity of social media amplify moral outrage---public condemnation of perceived moral violations---making it highly contagious. Authoritarian governments can leverage such outrage to suppress dissent or enforce state-sanctioned moral norms. We use a survey experiment with 1,351 Chinese internet users to examine the moral mechanisms through which social exposure to outrage and state endorsement intensify outrage expressions. Using large-scale social media data from Sina Weibo, we analyze two high-profile cases of online nationalist attacks in China to illustrate the contagious nature of moral outrage and the escalating effects of state endorsement. We further estimate that about 16,000 outrage events took place in China between 2012 and 2024, of which roughly 33% were endorsed by the Chinese state. The findings highlight how moral discourse and crowdsourced enforcement are leveraged as tools of authoritarian control in the social media era.

From Empire to Nation-State: Aspirational Nation-Building in China

Peng Peng (with Yingtian He and Haohan Chen)

The rise of nation-states was one of the most transformative developments of the twentieth century. What drives nation-building? Existing theories emphasize enmity: external threats provoke fear, humiliation, and hostility, hardening national identity through opposition. We propose an aspirational theory of nation-building, highlighting a parallel mechanism—emulation. Under threat, elites do not only rally against foreign powers; they also look outward with admiration, comparing their nation to more successful states and seeking to close the gap. This forward-looking ambition can transform crisis into reform. We test this theory by analyzing China’s transition from empire to nation-state (1872–1911), using two original datasets: a complete collection of newspaper titles and full-text articles from Shen Bao, the most influential publication of the period. We find that emulation—particularly of culturally proximate powers like Japan—consistently outweighed enmity. War sparked temporary surges in antagonism, but emulation quickly resurged. This article contributes to scholarship on nation-building and state formation. 

Military Subversion: Evidence from the Imperial Japanese Army

Harunobu Saijo

Why do military officers become political subversives? Soldiers and officers, in particular, are expected to be loyal to their governments. However, there are numerous cases in history of political conspiracies among officers, including plans and attempts to overthrow those in power. This project systematically investigates which biographical characteristics--both personal and career-related--motivate officers to engage in subversive activities directed against an incumbent regime. Empirically, we focus on the Imperial Japanese Army. Our dataset contains systematic information on all 15,000 career-track officers who graduated from the military academy between 1904 and 1932. Importantly, it includes those officers who were members of conspiratorial secret societies and those who were not politically active. The findings have implications for understanding polarization in the security apparatus, military insubordination, and civil-military relations.

Trusting a Government without Women? Lack of Female Leadership and Regime Legitimacy in China 

Hanzhang Liu

This study examines how the absence of gender representation affects public trust in authoritarian governments. Using a survey experiment in China, we assess how citizens respond to the lack of female leadership and identify the political legitimacy channels through which such underrepresentation matters. We find that highlighting performance-related and equality-based consequences of women’s exclusion significantly reduces political trust, especially among regime outsiders and those with lower socioeconomic status. In contrast, appeals to ideology or international standing have no such effect. These findings suggest that, in authoritarian contexts, citizens interpret descriptive representation instrumentally — valuing it for its perceived contribution to effective governance and fairness, rather than for symbolic or ideological reasons. This study contributes to the literature on authoritarian legitimation and gender politics by showing that the absence of representation can erode regime support, particularly when it undermines core expectations of performance and social equity.

Authoritarian-Led Democratization Revisited: Democratic Commitments of Authoritarian Successor Parties Since Democratization 

Myunghee Lee (with Sungik Yang).

Under what conditions do authoritarian successor parties (ASPs) make credible democratic commitments after a democratic transition? In this study, we argue that ASPs that initiate a democratic transition may attempt to reverse course if they perceive deepening democratization as a threat to their interests vis-à-vis the state. In particular, we focus on the degree of fusion between the party and the state. When fusion is strong during the authoritarian period, a transition to democratic rule orchestrated by the party tends to produce higher levels of tolerance by the ASP toward opposition pressures to reform state agencies. The party is more confident in preserving its access to the state through organizations built during the authoritarian period. Conversely, when party-state fusion is weak, the party is less confident and therefore more likely to resist reforms of state institutions and, at some point, may withdraw its democratic commitments. We compare South Korea and Taiwan to substantiate our argument. This study contributes to the scholarship on authoritarian-led democratization by identifying the conditions under which autocrats cease to make credible democratic commitments.

Wired for Influence? Power and Vulnerability in the Global Submarine-Cable Network

Xiaoxiao Shen (with Kellee S. Tsai)

Digital infrastructure has become a foundation of structural power in the global political economy. Submarine cables, the material backbone of the internet, reveal how interdependence creates asymmetric embeddedness among states and firms. This study conceptualizes infrastructural power as the capacity to shape or constrain others through control over connectivity, and vulnerability as the dependence on external systems. Drawing on an original dataset of nearly 600 submarine cable systems, combined with network-analytic and diffusion-modeling techniques, the analysis uncovers a hierarchically embedded structure: Western corporate-liberal actors dominate transoceanic routes, while Chinese state-capitalist networks diffuse regionally through finance, turnkey delivery, and maintenance arrangements that generate strong infrastructural stickiness. These ecosystems enable China to displace Western suppliers by locking partners into path-dependent technological and financial relationships. The findings extend theories of asymmetric interdependence and institutional embeddedness, demonstrating that control over connection—rather than connectivity alone—constitutes the central axis of power in the digital age.

Foreign influencer operations: How TikTok shapes American perceptions of China

Trevor Incerti (with Jonathan Elkobi and Daniel Mattingly)

How do authoritarian regimes strengthen global support for nondemocratic political systems? Authoritarian regimes increasingly outsource content creation to social media “influencers" who are not explicitly tied to the regime but who produce content aligned with the regime's goals. To gain understanding of the extent of this phenomenon and the persuasive capabilities of these influencers, we collect comprehensive data on pro-China influencers on TikTok. We show that pro-China influencers have more engagement than state media. We then create a realistic clone of the TikTok app, and conduct a randomized experiment in which over 8,500 Americans are recruited to use this app and view a random sample of actual TikTok content. We show that pro-China foreign influencers are strikingly effective at increasing favorability toward China, while traditional Chinese state media causes backlash. The findings highlight the importance of influencers in shaping global public opinion.

Sangyong Son, Kyu Sik Yang, Munroe Kim