Find here. How do young politicians perceive their function as representatives? Do they prioritize their own, their party’s or their voters’ views? I argue that young politicians should be more genuinely motivated to prioritize the views of voters due to their experience of belonging to an underrepresented group. I use data from a candidate survey in Germany 2021 to estimate the probability that politicians report prioritizing their voters’ views across different candidate ages. I find that, while all candidates are most likely to focus on their own views, young candidates are more likely than their older colleagues to prioritize the views of voters over their own or their party’s. Variation in incumbency and prior political experience explains parts of this effect. This finding advances our understanding of how young politicians perceive their function as representatives and the role young politicians play in substantive youth representation.

Find here. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has significant implications not only for foreign, defence, economic and energy policies of European democracies, but also for their societal cohesion. While the debates about sanctions against Russia are mainly structured along partisan lines, with supporters of far-left and far-right parties tending to be against harsh responses, we argue that also a specific migrant background and an ethnic identity matter for the position on this highly salient and polarizing issue. Using original survey data from Germany, we find that respondents with a Russian or a Turkish ethnic background are less in favour of sanctions against Russia. This finding remains robust when considering respondents’ party preferences, education level, age, religious affiliation, and their region of residence, whether in Western or Eastern Germany. The results suggest that Russia’s war against Ukraine is likely to create tensions not only between individuals with different ideological orientations, but can also result in conflicts between citizens with and without a Russian or Turkish migrant background or identity.

Find here. Why do politicians interrupt each other? Previous research has studied how personal characteristics of politicians, especially their gender, influence interruption behavior. However, we lack knowledge regarding how strategic incentives arising from political competition influence whether two politicians will interrupt each other. I argue that interruptions are a tool to disrupt the communication of other politicians, attack their public image, and boost one’s own reputation. Based on strategic incentives, I expected three groups of factors to drive interruptions. First, politicians who are experts on the same topic should be more likely to interrupt each other. Second, career status could influence how likely new parliamentarians are to interrupt and how likely frontbenchers are to be interrupted. Third, opposition parties may use interruptions to attack members of government parties, whereas members of government parties should be least likely to interrupt their coalition partners. I used data on interruptions in the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021, employing logistic and network regression models, and found support for shared topic expertise and government-opposition dynamics driving interruptions. New parliamentarians seem to be less likely to interrupt, but I found no robust evidence for an effect of frontbencher status. These findings enrich knowledge about the strategic role of interruptions in parliamentary communication and legislative behavior, demonstrating the roles of topic expertise and government-opposition dynamics in interruptions, which should not be disregarded in future studies.