Editors’ Note

To study politics and public policy, to understand political behavior and institutional dynamics, it becomes more and more important to include the emotional and perceptual forces that drive people’s and policymaker’s actions. This third issue of the 2025 volume of Statistics, Politics and Policy continues this trajectory with the second part of our special issue on Emotional dynamics of politics and policymaking. The special issue, curated by our Guest Editors Georg Wenzelburger (University of Saarland) and Beatriz Carbone (University of Saarland), brings together contributions that illuminate how emotional processes interact with policy responsiveness and citizens’ reactions to protective policies. We extend our gratitude to our Guest Editors for their intellectual leadership in curating this timely theme and to the contributing authors for advancing a deeper understanding. Complementing the special issue are three articles addressing distinct but equally critical dimensions of political and economic behavior across diverse regional contexts – from West Africa to South Asia.

The first article, “Bringing Emotions into the Study of Responsiveness: The Case of Protected Policies”, authored by Wenzelburger (2025), advances a novel conceptualization of responsiveness by introducing an emotional layer into established frameworks of representative democracy. Traditionally, the “chain of responsiveness” has been studied as a linkage between voter preferences on certain issues or on a general public mood scale and policy outputs. Wenzelburger extends this basic preference-policy-relationship by arguing that citizens’ emotions need to be taken into account more explicitly. He argues that anxious citizens demand protection, and that this demand can be linked to rather different policies that cut across classic issue categories. Using data from the European Social Survey, his empirical exploration highlights the significance of such affective states for understanding the dynamic interplay between citizens’ concerns and policy action. The paper thus marks an important step toward an affectively enriched model of democratic responsiveness.

The second contribution, “Emotional Reactions to Protective Policies on the Political Spectrum” by Penczek and Hamer (2025), complements Wenzelburger’s conceptual innovation through an empirically rich investigation of emotional responses to protective policies among Polish citizens. Drawing on a nationally representative survey, the authors examine how emotions – ranging from anxiety and discouragement to pride and despair – vary across policy domains such as the economy, health, crime, culture, and climate. Their analysis reveals both general emotional trends and domain-specific variations, with age emerging as the most consistent predictor. Notably, protective policies in the realm of climate evoke exclusively negative emotions, while pride predominates in reactions to cultural and traditional protection policies among right-leaning respondents. The study underscores the heterogeneity of emotional responses to state protection and their deep entanglement with ideology and identity.

Together with Katja Stempel’s “A State of the Art on Emotions in the Context of Public Policymaking” (Stempel 2025), included in issue 2/2025 (Wagschal 2025), these contributions complete the special issue on Emotional dynamics of politics and policymaking.

Beyond the special issue, the three regular articles in this issue highlight the global diversity of policy challenges and the analytical power of quantitative and econometric methods.

In “Determinants of Political Instability in ECOWAS (1991–2022)”, Gbemudia and Akachukwu (2025) conduct a comparative analysis of eight West African countries to identify the key economic and structural drivers of political instability. Using time-series models across coup-prone and stable states, the authors find that GDP per capita, military expenditure, and trade openness exert significant effects on instability, though their direction and magnitude vary across contexts. The results indicate that economic performance and defense spending can both stabilize and destabilize regimes, depending on underlying institutional and social configurations. The study’s policy implication is clear: durable political stability in the ECOWAS region depends on equitable growth, adequate investment in security, and reduced external economic vulnerability.

The fourth article, “The Impact of International Remittances on Public Debt Sustainability in Kerala: Evidence from the FMOLS Approach”, by Sabu and Mohandas (2025), examines the fiscal implications of remittance inflows in one of India’s most remittance-dependent states. Despite large and sustained transfers from migrant workers, the study finds that Kerala’s debt sustainability has deteriorated over time. Applying Oates’ fiscal theory and Bohn’s debt-sustainability framework, the authors argue that while remittances provide short-term fiscal relief, they have not translated into long-term debt stabilization. The article concludes with policy recommendations emphasizing the formalization and productive reinvestment of remittances to strengthen fiscal resilience and reduce dependence on market borrowings.

The final contribution, “Bayesian Analysis of Tuberculosis Cases in Bolgatanga Municipality, Ghana–West Africa” by Zamanah and Nasiru (2025), demonstrates the value of advanced statistical modeling in public health policymaking. Employing a Bayesian survival analysis with multiple parametric specifications, the authors identify key demographic and health-related risk factors for tuberculosis onset. The Weibull model emerges as the best fit, revealing that males, individuals with diabetes, and those without formal education face significantly higher risk and shorter onset times. The study not only contributes to methodological innovation in disease modeling but also provides actionable insights for targeted health interventions in high-risk populations within Ghana.

Taken together, the contributions in this issue reaffirm Statistics, Politics and Policy’s mission to bridge disciplinary divides. They invite scholars to continue integrating affective, institutional, and quantitative perspectives in the study of how individuals and governments navigate uncertainty, emotion, and structural constraint in policymaking.