Many scholars and citizens are concerned that radical right parties pose a threat to democratic stability and the liberal economic order. Why has their support grown since the 2000s, and why does electoral success vary across countries? Existing research has highlighted who holds radical-right policy preferences and under what conditions those preferences intensify and persist. An overlooked factor is how electoral institutions moderate the translation of voter preferences into electoral outcomes. I argue that radical-right parties succeed when both rising voter demand and permissive electoral institutions are present. Voter demand alone cannot be translated into electoral success; similarly, institutions cannot generate electoral success without underlying demand. Electoral systems with such permissiveness reduce the risk that sincere voting for radical-right parties results in voters' least preferred party winning the election. To test this argument, I analyze district-level data from 13 European countries between 2002 and 2020, using exposure to Chinese import competition as a measure of voter demand. The results show that the electoral effect of economic dislocation becomes stronger as electoral permissiveness increases.

How do governments manage the dual goals of public housing policy? Public housing is a crucial policy area within welfare capitalism, where market mechanisms and state intervention coexist. Existing literature has mostly focused on the role of political ideology in public housing provision. However, empirical evidence for the political ideology argument remains mixed. We argue that government partisanship shapes how public housing is supplied rather than how much is supplied. We expect the quantity of public housing supplied to show limited partisan variation because it is highly visible and can easily generate electoral backlash. We instead expect partisan differences in who delivers public housing, how it is delivered, and which types of public housing are provided. Right-wing governments rely more on private developers, redevelopment, and for-sale public housing, consistent with a strategy that treats homeownership as an extension of the market. In contrast, left-wing governments rely more on direct public provision, construction by state-owned companies, and rental public housing, consistent with treating housing as a service that the state itself should provide. We test these arguments using South Korean data from 2007 to 2026. We find no partisan differences in the quantity of public housing supplied, but right-wing governments are more likely to rely on private developers and redevelopment projects.

We examine the political consequences of renewable energy siting, an increasingly contentious issue in which local communities often bear the concentrated costs of projects, while the benefits of renewable energy development extend beyond host communities. Existing research on the NIMBY politics of renewable energy siting provides mixed evidence on political responses to renewable energy development. We argue that these responses vary depending on who holds authority over siting decisions because state and local governments represent different constituencies and face different political incentives. When siting authority rests with state governments, the costs of individual projects remain concentrated in host communities, while the benefits of renewable energy development, including increased electricity supply and economic and fiscal gains, extend beyond those communities. By contrast, when authority rests with local governments, both the costs and benefits of projects are more likely to be borne within the same community, reducing the divergence between local costs and broader benefits. We test our argument using data on renewable energy permitting and election outcomes across U.S. states.