How do citizens change their voting decisions after their communities experience catastrophic violent events? The literature on the behavioral effects of violence, on the one hand, and on political behavior, on the other, suggest different answers to this question. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we investigate the influence of indiscriminate, rampage-style school shootings on both voter turnout levels and the relative electoral support for the Democratic and Republican Parties at the county level in US presidential elections (1980–2016). We find that although voter turnout does not change, the vote share of the Democratic Party increases by an average of nearly 5 percentage points in counties that experienced shootings—a remarkable shift in an age of partisan polarization and close presidential elections. These results show that school shootings do have important electoral consequences and bring to the fore the need to further examine the effects of different forms of violence on political behavior.

This article develops a framework for the causal analysis of critical events in case study research. A critical event is defined as a contingent event that is causally important for an outcome in a specific case. Using set-theoretic analysis, this article offers definitions and measurement tools for the study of contingency and causal importance in case study research. One set of tools consists of guidelines for using theoretical expectations to arrive at conclusions about the level of contingency of events. Another set of tools are guidelines for using counterfactual cases to determine the extent to which a given event is necessary and sufficient for a particular outcome in an individual case. Examples from comparative and international studies are used to illustrate the framework.

The shared crisis brought on by COVID-19 offers an opportunity to study how economic elites attempt to shape policy responses. In this article, we inquire about the conditions under which economic elites shaped containment and business support measures in Latin America. We argue that wealthier and better-organised elites are more likely to shape policies because they have increased access to policymakers. To test this, we combine regression analysis with three case studies: Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Our quantitative findings align with our expectations regarding containment measures and present mixed results for pro-business policies. Case studies illustrate how elites attempted to influence policy, highlighting the centrality of access to the Executive and the importance of distinguishing between institutionalised or personalised access. The degree to which policy responses aligned with elite preferences varied according to the nature of the ties: ranging from the most alignment in Chile to the least in Peru.

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