Past Seminars
13 February 2026
Gijs Schumacher, University of Amsterdam
Setting the Agenda for research on Emotions and Politics
Since ancient times it is recognized that emotions play an important role in politics. But what role exactly? In contemporary political science there are several different “affective turns”. These different approaches emphasize different roles. For example, Affective Intelligence Theory links discrete emotions with specific political behavior, the Motivated Reasoning framework connects unconscious affective processes with political cognition, and a more diffuse approach investigates the role of emotion in shaping ideology and political identity. These approaches have three problems: (1) they do not interact and use different concepts and study different causal relations, (2) their core findings are increasingly criticized and, (3) they are out of touch with recent developments in affective science. This paper sets the agenda for how to continue. Specifically, I propose an integrative model that describes the different roles emotions have in politics. The building blocks of this model are (a) a broader definition of emotion that joins psychophysiological and self-report measures, (b) an organization of the different ways in which emotions affect politics and (c) a proposal of how we can integrate findings from different fields. This integrative model will provide a clearer understanding of the field’s findings so far and will elucidate which questions we still need to address.
16 January 2026
Diane Bolet, Sciences Po, CEE
Curbing Citizen Support for Violence Against Politicians (Damien Bol, Diane Bolet and Bjarn Eck)
Rising political violence and affective polarization pose a pressing threat to democratic stability, challenging classic theories of state formation that emphasize the state’s monopoly on legitimate force. Reducing citizen support for violence against politicians is therefore crucial to safeguard democratic institutions. To examine how this can be addressed, we use two pre-registered survey experiments in France and Belgium that manipulate politician characteristics (gender, age, and party) and violence’s severity. We find that extreme violent attitudes remain rare, although support for verbal abuse online is substantial. Importantly, our results reveal that such attitudes are largely unrelated to partisan hostility. We then show that simple interventions (humanizing politicians through perspective-taking or stressing the importance of ideological pluralism for democracy) reduce support for political violence. These findings suggest that protecting institutions requires addressing underlying societal predispositions by promoting empathy and reinforcing norms of political tolerance.
1 December 2025
Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Mainstream Roots, Radical Outcomes: Tracing the Origins of Far-Right Support
We examine the origins of far-right support, particularly voters’ prior partisan or ideological affiliations and how their preferences have evolved over time relative to the general electorate. Using longitudinal data from Chile—where the far right has only recently emerged—provides a unique opportunity to trace these dynamics. Contrary to common assumptions, our findings suggest that far-right supporters primarily come from the mainstream right rather than the center, left, or politically disengaged groups. Moreover, their views on key issues diverged from majority opinion even before the far right’s rise, and these gaps have since widened.
17 October 2025
Charlotte Cavaillé, Toulouse School of Economics (with Victor Gay)
Women’s Suffrage: Explaining the French Exception
Despite its early experiment with male suffrage, France was one of the last countries in Europe to extend the vote to women. Existing accounts of this French exceptionalism argue that members of the Radical party, which controlled the upper house, blocked suffrage extension because they believed women would vote for pro-Church anti-system parties. These accounts focus on opposition to suffrage extension, emphasizing legis- lators’ expected political losses under new electoral rules. In contrast, we examine support for suffrage extension, emphasizing legislators’ expected losses absent institu- tional change. This alternative account does not rely on strong assumptions about women’s perceived pro-Church bias. As this article demonstrates, it better explains differences in voting patterns between the upper and lower houses in the aftermath of World War I, a critical juncture for women’s political rights. It also highlights the link between support for women’s suffrage and support for proportional representation while providing new insights on the relationship between war and suffrage extension.
26 September 2025
Tanushree Goyal, Princeton University
Representation from Below: The Grassroots Origins of Women’s Political Power
After decades on the political sidelines, women are now at the heart of India’s development agenda. Political parties are placing them front and center: shaping platforms, driving mobilization, and crafting electoral appeals around their participation. Representation from Below traces how this transformation began far from the halls of power, taking root in local politics and rising through party organization. It develops a new theory of inclusive party-building to explain how women in local politics transform party organizations to increase responsiveness and advance representation at the highest levels of politics. Drawing on fieldwork, original data, and experimental research, the book shows how women in local politics, responding to career incentives, began building grassroots chapters of women’s wings and recruiting other women into activism, quietly reshaping party structures from the ground up. As women became indispensable to electoral mobilization, party leaders responded strategically: adapting platforms, expanding welfare schemes, and opening paths to higher office. The book challenges the view that political parties stand in the way of women’s empowerment, or that women in deeply patriarchal systems lack agency. Instead, it highlights how the very constraints and spaces once defined by women’s marginalization: households, gender norms, and women-centered networks, become unlikely engines of democratic change. When parties are built inclusively from below through women’s participation, the ripple effects extend far beyond the local level, transforming national politics and offering lessons that resonate historically and well beyond India’s borders.