📢 Call for Papers – Special Issue on China: Politics and Policy
Guest Editors: @ettensperger.bsky.social & Lars Konheiser

📅 Submission deadline: January 16, 2026
📩 Submit your manuscript here: mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dgspp
📧 Questions? Contact us at: spp@politik.uni-freiburg.de

In issue 1/2025, Muchamad Bachtiar, Irdam Ahmad, Zainal Abidin Sahabuddin, and Trismadi Trismadi conduct a meta-analysis of military expenditure determinants across 15 studies. They find war, ongoing spending, and external threats to be key drivers - while national conditions correlate negatively.

In issue 1/2025, Osafu Augustine Egbon and Ezra Gayawan present a spatio-temporal model of violent conflict and fatalities in Nigeria. Using a Cox point process and SPDE approach, they analyze georeferenced conflict data to identify regional patterns and high-risk areas.

In our issue 1/2025, Aaron Cooke and John Vivian develop a restricted data-rich dynamic factor model to evaluate vaccination efficacy during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Their model can be used for other populations, as they provide an open-source Python package.

In issue 1/2025, John O’Reilly proposes the County-Elector Plan to revitalize the Electoral College. Implementable by states, it would avoid a constitutional change and future gerrymandering. Thereby, electoral competition would be shifted from a few battleground states to several hundred counties.

📢 Call for Papers – Special Issue on Elections

We welcome contributions on:
🔹 Electoral outcomes & voting behavior
🔹 Campaigns & debates
🔹 Electoral systems & reforms
🔹 Comparative perspectives
🔹 Innovations in electoral analysis

📩 Submit your manuscript here: lnkd.in/e23ee9ik

Issue 1/2025 of SPP is available online! It features 4 articles showing the power of quantitative methods in addressing some of the most pressing political challenges:

📌 Electoral Reform
📌 Pandemic Response
📌 Conflict Analysis
📌 Military Expenditure

Access: www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

What drives GDP growth in Ghana? Emmanuel Amoako Koranteng, Gideon Mensah Engmann, and Dioggban Jakperik apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to analyze key macroeconomic variables in our issue 3/2024: real exchange rates, manufacturing, and government expenditure positively impact GDP growth.

Declining U.S. influence, particularly in Asia, and rising Chinese engagement: in their contribution to our issue 3/2024, Elizabeth G., Steven Kim, Nicholas Sobrepena, Stone Goethe, and Eric E. analyze media coverage across 96 African and Asian nations and find geopolitical influence.

How can we better predict municipal solid waste? In issue 3/2024, Chellai Fatih explores the power of hybrid modeling techniques to forecast municipal solid waste (MSW) generation across OECD countries. The article's findings highlight the need for data-driven waste management policies.

How predictable are election outcomes? In issue 3/2024, Richard J. Heggen and Alfred G. Cuzán develop a geometric model to analyze 1,825 elections across five federal democracies. The model incorporates the rate of incumbency decay and predicts election outcomes within a 2–3 point margin.

Can Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) capture party relations? In our issue 3/2024, Felix Wieland analyzes data from 63 editions of the German Wahl-O-Mat to track party proximities. His findings suggest that design changes have significantly altered measured proximities between major parties.

Talknice Saungweme, Glenda Maluleke, and Nicholas M. Odhiambo of the University of South Africa use a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to study the impact of financial development on Mauritius' economic growth. The results reveal an asymmetric relationship between the two.

Marwah S. Siam, Hussein A. Sayed, and Laila O. El-Zeini of Cairo University apply a mixture-function mortality model to examine lifespan length and variation in Egypt from 1950 to 2021. The study reveals increasing longevity and a declining variation in age at death over time.

Addressing the pension conundrum, Gustavo De Santis of Università di Firenze explores a novel approach, called IPAYGO. Including demographic and economic challenges, like differential mortality and low fertility rates, IPAYGO offers a sustainable and equitable approach to pensions.

The impact of an aging electorate on democratic processes is at the core of Christopher-David Preclik's introduction of "political adultism". He describes "the socially-accepted interpersonal, structural, and institutional discrimination of young and younger people in politics".

Is Intending to have children rightist? This is explored by @brunoarpino.bsky.social and @ryomogi.bsky.social who find that individuals on the far-right of the political spectrum are more likely to express positive intentions to have children, controlling for socio-demographic and economic factors.