When people learn that demonstrators are being subjected to harsh treatment by police, sometimes their reaction is to join demonstrations. What explains the potentially mobilizing power of repression? Information-oriented theories posit that repression changes people's beliefs about the likely success of the protests or the type of the government, thus encouraging them to join. Social-psychological theories posit that repression provokes a moral and emotional reaction from bystanders, and these emotional reactions are mobilizing. Our research offers a rare opportunity to test these theories, empirically, against one another. We offer experimental evidence from Turkey after the 2013 Gezi uprising. In this setting, emotional reactions appear to be the link between repression and backlash mobilization. Information-oriented theories of backlash mobilization may be less germane in democracies, in which people already have access to information about their governments, and in highly polarized polities, in which few people's political affinities are up for grabs. 1 Our usage follows that of the sociological literature, as in studies like Francisco's (2004) "After the Massacre." We do not intend to signal counter-mobilization in opposition to protests.

Understanding the dynamics of vote-buying is essential to improve accountability of elections in developing democracies. While list experiments are useful for attenuating social desirability bias associated with measuring vote-buying, they are not conducive to multivariate analyses, and the question of what types of individuals are targeted is left inadequately explored. We overcome this limitation by combining a population-based list experiment with an estimator (LISTIT) that allows for multivariate analyses in an efficient manner. Our analysis suggests that in the 2011 parliamentary elections of Turkey over one-third of the electorate was targeted for vote-buying, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit when asked directly. Additionally, we find that strong partisans of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), less-educated individuals, and urban residents are significantly more likely to be targeted for vote-buying. We present compelling evidence for the hypotheses that parties target their core supporters and socio-economically vulnerable individuals. The strength of our evidence derives from the use of original data on vote-buying that has been collected in an unobtrusive manner and analyzed at the level of individuals. WORD COUNT: 86671 This is because the probability of misrepresentation of true behavior might not be orthogonal to important covariates such as income, education, or partisanship (Gallego and Wantchekon 2012).

How can voters make sense of economic outcomes they observe when deciding whether to reelect the incumbent? I propose a reference point theory of economic voting that emphasizes voters' need for reference points when evaluating incumbents' performance. Consideration of economic outcomes during the incumbent's term relative to recent past outcomes in the country and in a cross-national perspective provides two such reference points, enabling a better assessment of incumbent competence. Analyses of 475 elections in 62 countries over 40 years provide evidence for my theory. Incumbents who preside over relatively better (worse) economic outcomes in domestic and international contexts are rewarded (punished) at the polls, regardless of election-year performance. I also show that cross-national benchmarking is not a universal phenomenon and identify the conditions that are positively associated with the electoral salience of relative international performance. My theory and accompanying evidence highlight that economic voting is driven by incumbents' relative performance.

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How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influences voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, the inter-election period witnessed an upsurge of terror attacks and casualties. A three-wave panel enables us to track how voters’ electoral preferences changed over this period. Our analyses suggest that the terror attacks led voters to prioritize parties’ perceived competence in addressing security concerns at the ballot box. The abrupt change in issue salience has bolstered support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party which was evaluated by voters as more competent than other parties.

Are people under economic stress more or less likely to vote, and why? With large observational datasets and a survey experiment involving unemployed Americans, we show that unemployment depresses participation. But it does so more powerfully when the unemployment rate is low, less powerfully when it is high. Whereas earlier studies have explained lower turnout among the unemployed by stressing the especially high opportunity costs these would-be voters face, our evidence points to the psychological effects of unemployment and of campaign messages about it. When unemployment is high, challengers have an incentive to blame the incumbent, thus eliciting anger among the unemployed. Psychologists have shown anger to be an approach or mobilizing emotion. When joblessness is low, campaigns tend to ignore it. The jobless thus remain in states of depression and self-blame, which are demobilizing emotions.

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Elected governments sometimes deal with protests by authorizing the police to use less-lethal tools of repression: water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and the like. When these tactics fail to end protests and instead spark larger, backlash movements, some governments reduce the level of violence but others increase it, causing widespread injuries and loss of life. We study three recent cases of governments in new democracies facing backlash movements. Their decision to scale up or scale back police repression reflected the governments’ levels of electoral security. Secure governments with relatively unmovable majorities behind them feel freer to apply harsh measures. Less secure governments, those with volatile electoral support, contemplate that their hold on power might weaken should they inflict very harsh treatment on protesters; they have strong incentives to back down. Our original survey research and interviews with civilian authorities, police officials, and protest organizers in Turkey, Brazil, and Ukraine allow us to evaluate this explanation as well as a number of rival accounts. Our findings imply that elected governments that rest on very stable bases of support may be tempted to deploy tactics more commonly associated with authoritarian politics.