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This discussion of two related papers on political activism by Bettina von Lieres and Afarin Kohan focuses on the mechanism of transformation from psychic experience into political action. In both papers, the move to political action is seen as a consequence of collectivization, politics being understood as a function of groups, but a distinction is made between brute politics and the elaboration of the political as a psychoanalytic process. The original papers are seen as furthering the aims of social psychoanalysis and community psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers presented at the conference cut across five thematic areas, including Democracy and Dialogue Engagements in Africa, Historical Perspectives of Democracy and Dialogue in Africa, Biblical Hermeneutics of Dialogue in Africa, Youth Participation in Dialogue and Democracy in Africa, and Indigenous Perspectives on Dialogue and Peace in Africa. The nexus between religion and democracy has hardly been adequately explored. This conference was one of the high points of Dr. Effiong Udo's sabbatical research initiative with the Dialogue Institute (D.I.). [Extracted from the article]

Dyrness and Sepúlveda suggest that the long history of US intervention together with Salvadoran youth participation in transnational social fields allows them to recognize the contradiction between (north) American discourses of democracy and freedom. In Chapter three, Dyrness and Sepúlveda analyze the ways immigrants, race, and cultural differences are treated in popular and policy discourses in Madrid. Dyrness and Sepulveda indicate that these projects can be a good tool to translate youth awareness into political action. [Extracted from the article]

Democracy is considered to be the ideal foundation of societies today. In a democratic society, news media play a highly relevant role as avenues by which public and political powers can interact with society and facilitate civic participation. The public’s perception of the news media’s reputation is a crucial factor for enhancing trust and citizen engagement. This article presents a study of the reputation of the media (paper press, digital press, radio and television) in ten European countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. A quantitative method was applied to the results of a survey conducted to determine the reputation of news media among a sample of the informed population in those countries (1,000 residents of legal age who used media at least two or three times a week). The concept of reputation is thereby characterized in its association with the media, identifying its integrating attributes and assessing its incidence in each type of medium. The results indicate that, although television is the most widely used medium, the printed press enjoys a higher reputation in most of the countries studied, being seen as having the attributes of credibility and informative rigor. This study provides a detailed analysis of the scores given to media reputation attributes in the considered countries. It also offers a ranking of the media with the highest reputation in the countries examined, as well as a description of the reputational position of each medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012 the series has produced 13 volumes, the latest being I The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales i by Hermynia zur Mühlen (1883-1951), which Zipes both translated and edited. The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales: by Hermynia zur Mühlen, edited and translated by Jack Zipes, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2020, ix + 216 pp., $19.95/£16.99 (paper) In his series, I Oddly Modern Fairy Tales i , published by Princeton University Press, Jack Zipes, a prominent folklore and fairy-tales scholar, revives narratives written by talented but neglected or forgotten authors of the first half of the twentieth century that resonate with political and social conflicts of our times. [Extracted from the article]

Moreover, Tripp thoroughly examines the three cases of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to explain why they have diverged from the rest of the MENA yet converged with each other in adopting women's rights policies. To answer the question, Tripp argues that the authorities in the Maghreb have adopted women's rights policies to strengthen their domestic and international legitimacy. [Extracted from the article]

This paper explores the intersection of age bias and gender bias in relation to female leadership. "Cheat codes" is a term originally applied to computer and video games to describe a code that, when used, allows the player to access features, level skips, or capabilities not otherwise available (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). As a metaphor, the term is meant to suggest a shortcut in decision-making toward a desired conclusion or outcome. In the context of this article, "faulty cheat codes" refer to society's use of misinformed and unfair stereotypes as specious shortcuts to judge the abilities or qualifications of individuals based on their age, leading to incorrect conclusions or inappropriate actions. This piece highlights the detrimental effects of age bias on prominent female politicians, including Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and emphasizes the need for authentic conversations about cognitive abilities. The paper challenges the use of age as a flawed measure of competence and advocates for retiring negative stereotypes about aging. It also discusses the delayed entry of women into political office and the compounding effects of age and gender biases. By promoting positive narratives about aging and addressing ageism in our political discourse, society can create a more fair and inclusive political landscape that values the capabilities of individuals of all ages. The paper concludes by urging a shift in focus toward substantive political discussions and away from shallow indicators of competence based on age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any progress in shaping up an externalist psychiatry, so previous discussion suggested, must begin from questions about the ontology of social causation. So far, research and theory have adhered to a naturalistic approach to the social causes of illness, concentrating mostly on the 'social determinants of mental health' (inequality, discrimination, housing insecurity, etc.). The paper starts with an assessment of 'social determinants' through the lens of epidemiology and critical psychiatry. It illustrates existing practical and political approaches that fight these constraints and it highlights their therapeutic value. It argues, though, that a focus on social determinants is not sufficient for fully realizing externalism because a great portion of sociogenic illness remains causally indeterminate. Alongside political action, externalism requires a social etiology that is established by virtue of the meaning that it holds for patients, rather than by virtue of its capacity to identify objective social causes of illness. This entails abandoning naturalism about social causation and embracing constructivism. The paper shows that this methodological shift is less contradictory and more effective than it is commonly imagined. Drawing from further anthropological evidence, it concludes that only by lending support to projects that balance a focus on constraints with social construction will psychiatry be truly externalist. At stake is a prospect of effective treatment for sociogenic illness for the countless in struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Green Deal (EGD) represents the most ambitious environmental policy framework in European history, aimed at improving the health and well-being of citizens and future generations through climate action and becoming the first climate-neutral region in the world by 2050. The EC has initiated the European Democracy Action Plan and the European Climate Pact to include the participation of citizens in a meaningful way to help achieve these goals (i.e. not simply a tokenistic gesture or box-ticking exercise). While these efforts to ensure greater citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy are good first steps, there is still a lack of clarity about what meaningful citizen engagement should look like. This paper will propose that for such efforts to be successful, we need to assess different perspectives in the debate and provide recommendations based on this. This paper provides a systematic review of various approaches within the academic literature on citizen participation and deliberation in environmental policy (ecocentrism, biocentrism, ecomodernism, ecofeminism, environmental pragmatism, environmental citizenship, environmental rights, and environmental justice). Following this, we provide a list of 16 criteria (in five thematic sections) for policymakers, civil society organisations (CSOs), and society, to ensure meaningful citizen participation and deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores politics and political participation from the voices and perspectives of migrant slum dwellers in Agbogbloshie, the most populous migrant slum in Accra. Using in-depth interviews, the paper found that residents' conception of politics is couched in a pejorative sense as they view politics as a "dirty and deceitful game." While most migrants see politics as contested elections in which political elites struggle for power, they participate in politics mainly by voting in periodic elections. The main driver of migrants' political participation is the need to vote for political parties and governments that protect them against forced eviction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU). This outcome was not only unexpected but also had clear geographical and age‐bound divisions. While people over the age of 65 tended to vote to leave, younger voters were more likely to vote to remain a part of the EU. Reflecting on 7 years of journalism, this paper explores the ways in which young people have been represented by the news media with regards to the issue of Brexit. It analyses a database of 700 news media articles published from 2016 to 2022 across the UK, equating to 100 articles per calendar year and ranging from regional sources to those with an international reach. The paper showcases how young people occupy liminal spaces within the news media through an analysis of the language used to describe their political participation, and a focus on their role within political activism. As it is this media that dominates hegemonic narratives within traditional political spheres, the retelling and representation of young people's engagement serves, we argue, to reinforce their liminality as citizens apart. Reflecting on 7 years of journalism and analysing 700 news media articles related to Brexit and young people, this paper showcases how these media reinforce the liminal spaces occupied by this demographic in political discourse. As it is this media that dominates hegemonic narratives within traditional political spheres, the retelling and representation of young people's engagement serves, we argue, to reinforce their liminality as citizens apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an autobiographical studies framework, this paper outlines the persistence of a Malayan nation-of-intent through contemporary life-writings which revisit the 1950s–60s. The imagined nation constituting the Federation of Malaya and Singapore is central to two texts by ethnic Chinese writers with contrasting ideological leanings—Home is Where We Are by Wang Gungwu and Margaret Wang, and The Mighty Wave by He Jin. As putative citizens of this nation-of-intent, they textually perform nation-building by narrating their involvement in formal institutions and grassroots capacity-building. In outlining key elements of nationhood such as language, political participation, and historical consciousness in both texts, distinct conceptions of Malayan political subjectivities emerge through the performative and relational aspects of both texts. Overall, this paper draws attention to political implications while demonstrating the relevance of the “Malaya as method” approach in literary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to demonstrate characteristics of interaction between governmental efforts to maintain national security and the situation with freedom of religion in Ukraine. To answer the questions of how political decisions have influenced the religious sphere in Ukraine over the past five years including wartime and whether there is a balance between national interests and freedom of religion we apply event impact assessment comparing trends of transitions of parishes and people attitudes towards different Orthodox churches before and after political actions and governmental decisions during 2018–2023. The paper confirms that although religion was repeatedly brought into the political sphere religious pluralism persists in Ukraine on the territories that are under government control. We demonstrate that establishing the Orthodox church that was independent of Russia bolstered freedom of religion and full-scale Russia invasion caused a steep increase in many religious transfers from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UPC MP) to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Despite an increased role of the state and issues of national security due to Russian aggression, the religious sphere was quite autonomous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar published in 1948, translated as Bina Das: A Memoir, and Kamala Dasgupta’s Rakter Akshare (Written in Blood) in 1954 to argue how their subjective desire and experience dismantle the gendered rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal. The accounts of Bina and Kamala present their involvement in militant activism and subsequent imprisonment. Notably, there is an inherent urge in their writings to sacrifice life for the nation and a determination not to retreat from the torturous conditions of the colonial prison. The paper contends that the rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal is embedded in hegemonic masculinity that initially confined women to the spiritual and domestic realm and later allowed them to be educated and modern without acknowledging their subjectivity. Activities of these political women thus destabilise the gender discourse prevalent in the private and public sphere of colonial society, which calls for a revision of the nationalist historiography. So, this essay will examine how tropes of the body, self-sacrifice, and penal experience, as produced in these memoirs, negotiate the nationalist ideology, subvert the binary of masculine and feminine, and establish their political subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities increasingly adopt diverse ethnic, social, and cultural characteristics, there is an emerging logic for planning and policy to reflect this hyper-diversity (inclusion) while resolving the looming sustainability-related challenges. However, what is not adequately addressed in the current literature on urban planning – which could also solidify the justification for more citizen inclusion – is what happens when citizens are involved in planning from the perspective of sustainability. In response, this paper asks a key question: "What are the implications, in the case of urban foodscape, when citizens are involved in planning from the perspective of sustainability?" This question is investigated in this paper in the domain of urban foodscapes and through qualitative interviews, with the support of maps, in the Dutch city of Almere. A novel theoretical combination of just sustainabilities and social licence to operate (SLO) was utilised to frame citizen inclusion in foodscape planning. The findings showed that based on everyday practical experiences of food access in the city, citizens were more concerned about social interaction, the representation of food from cultural origins, and local food production. This theoretical combination, as a way of deepening inclusion, would help avoid the tendency of urban planning being used as an instrument for glossing over social injustice under the guise of citizen participation. This paper, therefore, argues that SLO can be a key pathway for actualising just sustainabilities in both urban planning research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores policy makers’, health-care professionals’ and senior volunteers’ perceptions of senior volunteers. Two Norwegian government white papers regarding older adult care and welfare services, which were published over a period of 19 years, were selected for close examination. Furthermore, focus group interviews with a purposeful sample of five senior volunteers and 15 health-care professionals were conducted. The study explores the discursive formations of senior volunteers in the government white papers and how they are negotiated in the senior volunteers’ and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Two dominant discourses were presented in the white papers: a prevention discourse (in which volunteering was presented primarily as a means to prevent volunteers’ loneliness and need for care services) and a sustainability discourse (in which the volunteers were presented as instrumental in future sustainable care services). Both discourses echo a common overarching discourse about a capacity crisis due to the ageing population. The senior volunteers were positioned as partners and active agents in both their own narratives and the health-care professionals’ narratives. Their position as independent and as spokespersons for the less empowered were evident only in the senior volunteers’ own narratives. Only the health-care professionals referenced the prevention discourse and capacity issues. The senior volunteers presented themselves as competent, efficient political actors, and they resisted both the prevention and sustainability discourses. In the senior volunteers’ narratives, social and political participation were interrelated. The study demonstrates that new discursive landscapes must be created to capture the diversity among senior volunteers and their efforts. While senior volunteers must be meaningfully involved in decision making, planning and design, their positions as independent and active agents must also be ensured. Authentic partnerships between senior volunteers and public care services involve a balance between involvement and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the notion of normalcy within the discourse of the European Union (EU), with a focus on its response to transformative dynamics and challenges, especially post-2008. I analyse how the EU, facing diminishing ideological supremacy, has reinforced its institutional power through the framework of normalcy. By emphasizing constitutionalisation and integration through legal means, bodies such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have expanded their roles, promoting "integration through law" to counter alternative political projects invariably labelled as populist, thereby giving rise to anti-populism as a discursive tool. Drawing on crisis discourse and diagnostic practice, this paper explores how normalcy legitimises and perpetuates existing power structures within EU governance, subtly coercing member states and citizens into accepting its norms and values, thus shaping perceptions of normalcy and also inevitability. At the core of this framework lies the rule of law (RoL), which establishes legal boundaries in the first place, but in the same move shapes political contexts. My paper argues that the exclusive focus on legalistic interpretations obscures the underlying structural factors perpetuating power dynamics and economic disparities among member states, constraining adaptive responses. I examine the narrative of "growing up to democracy" and its impact on the European project discourse, particularly in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. I then scrutinise the roles of experts and the "juristocracy" in reinforcing this narrative while simultaneously masking underlying inequalities and power differentials. Furthermore, the paper explores the strategic deployment of language and discourse by EU institutions during crises, highlighting their implications for public understanding, political action, and outcomes. Finally, it investigates the EU's strategic use of crisis discourse and diagnostic practices, focusing particularly on the ascendancy of the judiciary, but also highlighting how this trajectory may also have negative influence of legislative and executive bodies as their role diminishes in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Early Years' Learning Framework aspires to put democratic participation at the centre of policy and practice by positioning children and families as able, and children as contributing citizens from birth. Examination of current pedagogical efforts to achieve this aspiration are needed to expand knowledge of the supports and challenges experienced in positioning early childhood education settings as democratic learning spaces. This paper contributes to this endeavour by exploring the participatory pedagogies exercised by adults and children to re-imagine mealtimes in an Australian birth-five setting. The research employed relevant aspects of Dewey's experiential education theory, case study and multiple perspectives to provide a holistic view of participants' various lived experiences. The paper critically examines elements within early childhood educators' professional identities and discourses that enabled and constrained one setting's reimagining and transformation of their micro-everyday practice of mealtime. Findings demonstrated how bringing multiple perspectives into dialogue was significant to participants' journey in prioritising democracy in mealtime experiences. This research also highlights the importance of recognising the pedagogical role of the physical environment, and the leveraging of positional leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

JOHN BAXTER AND JOSEPH STANLEY, "The Time Draws Nigh, It Is Close at Hand": The Road to Insurrection in the Industrial West Riding 1819-1820: Borthwick Paper 131 (YORK: BORTHWICK INSTITUTE FOR ARCHIVES 2020. In the year 1820 Britain experienced a political crisis at the top, with the Queen Caroline affair, and turbulence from below, with insurrections in London, west Scotland, and the West Riding. When is a riot more than a temporary threat to law and order; when does an armed demonstration become an uprising or an insurrection; and how do these relate to elite political polarisation?. [Extracted from the article]

Rebel groups often develop governance during war by establishing administrative structures, engaging in taxation, and providing social services to the local population. Rebel governance structures, however, vary depending on the extent to which they include participatory arrangements. Some rebel groups allow civilian participation in their governance during the war, while others have highly hierarchical structures strictly limiting civilian participation. This paper examines whether and how the governance activities of rebel groups and participatory arrangements and institutions that they adopt during the war affect the durability of peace. I argue that participatory rebel governance can be particularly effective in establishing durable peace after the war. Civilian participation under rebel governance facilitates civilian political participation after conflict ends, which, in turn, discourages the use of political violence in response to grievances. Using rebel governance data between 1945 and 2012, I find strong empirical support for my argument. I then demonstrate the plausibility of the causal mechanism in the case of Indonesian and the Philippine civil wars. By establishing a strong positive empirical relationship between rebel wartime governance and the durability of peace, this paper identifies another important effect of rebel governance on conflict processes and outcomes in addition to its demonstrated effect on negotiations between warring parties and post-war democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Hong Kong identity has traditionally been positioned in a local–national dichotomy, where Hong Kong identity is viewed primarily as a local identity while the label of national identity is reserved for identification with the Chinese nation. Hong Kong nationalism, on the other hand, is generally considered a new phenomenon, the study of which has focused predominantly on the political activities in the post-handover period. Drawing on Partha Chatterjee's theory of anti-colonial nationalism, this paper seeks to broaden the understanding of Hong Kong nationalism by examining the nationalistic sentiments manifested during the Chinese language campaign (1964–1971). This paper draws on archival materials to shed light on the presence of anti-colonial nationalism in colonial Hong Kong, an aspect often overlooked or considered a mere extension of Chinese nationalism from mainland China. This paper also discusses the distinctions between anti-colonial nationalism in Hong Kong and Chinese nationalism, highlighting the intricate nature of the concept of Chineseness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Abbé Sieyès is usually portrayed as a thoroughly modern thinker and a critic of the nostalgic Classical Republicanism of some of his contemporaries, in favour of a "modern republicanism", founded upon the division of labour and commercial sociability in a nation composed of equal labourers and producers. But Sieyès's unpublished manuscripts suggest he, in fact, regarded modern labourers as unskilled "Machines du Travail", dulled by work and incapable of exercising the duties of citizenship, a critique grounded in a critical account of commercial society as compared to the ideal republican polity. Where most scholars regard this as either a simple contradiction or a passing juvenile nostalgia, this paper argues that, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieyès consistently sought to counteract the degrading effects of the inequalities generated by commercial society and the division of labour. It was on this basis that Sieyès sought to construct a new political system which would reconcile participatory politics with representative government, enabling all citizens to enjoy a life of Active Citizenship. Based on these insights, this paper reinterprets Sieyès's political project as an attempt to reconcile the classical conception of citizenship with the demands of a commercial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diasporas are often viewed as mirrors for their homeland's politics. The Lebanese diaspora's involvement in the 2019 Thawra , however, established the diaspora as a locus for autonomous and disruptive political action. Through an analysis of the spatialities of protest, this paper analyses the diaspora's involvement in the Thawra , its implications for the protest movement, and for the diaspora itself. It argues that diaspora protests gave rise to new tactics and protest repertoires. These mirrored protest activity on the ground, supported protestors in Lebanon, and constituted the diaspora as a locus for contestation and claims-making. Moreover, the diaspora's mobilization in the Thawra contributed to the consolidation of diasporic identity and the construction of alternative societal imaginaries and conceptions of citizenship that challenge Lebanon's state-centric and sectarian citizenship regime. This paper thus makes the case for reassessing the autonomous political role of diasporas to gain a fuller understanding of transnational protest dynamics, solidarities, and citizenship beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines disabled people's digital political engagement in China, which is a largely overlooked issue. Current studies about disability politics often focus on manifest political behaviours in western democratic societies, while the literature on technologies and China lacks the examination of everyday politics of specific identity groups, such as disabled people. This paper attempts to fill the gaps with a broader framework of political engagement. Based on long-term ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, the paper presents a variety of political activities in China's cyberspace, including everyday presence, campaigning for policy changes, networking for disability constituencies, and organised online activism. These suggest both latent and manifest forms of political engagement, which are equally 'worthy' in understanding disability politics in China. The forms also interact with each other to build Chinese disability politics in the digital world. New information and communication technologies, such as the internet, have changed the ways we engage in politics. However, how the technologies have been used by Chinese disabled people for politics is a missing topic. The paper uses a broader framework to examine disabled people's online political engagement. The findings suggest a variety of activities that have explicit or implicit relations to disability politics. The study found Chinese disabled people use the internet to document their everyday life, and, to interact with others and create disability groups. These activities suggest no obvious political targets. The study also found actions with clear political purposes, for example personal or group activities to aim to change discriminative policies. The paper argues all these forms of engagement are meaningful. They interact with each other and contribute to the building of disability politics in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how research advisory groups can be a vehicle for youth activism. It draws on our experiences with young activists, aged 15–26 years, in India and Brazil, who were advisors on a research project focused on youth livelihoods in cities. These young people played a vital role in supporting youth researchers, identifying research themes and developing engagement and advocacy strategies. Through this paper, we explore how the Youth Expert Group advisory model evolved differently in each location and examine how these were shaped by the context, the 'adult' research team and the youth activists themselves. A critically reflexive response in intergenerational partnership is essential to support youth activists in research activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents research into communication pathways between young people and political decision‐makers. The aim of the study was to give young people a platform to challenge how they are perceived in urban public space. Using innovative creative mapping methods, a group of teenagers shared insights into their everyday experiences of their urban neighbourhood with elected political representatives. This paper argues that the perception of young people within the political establishment inhibits engagement and change, but that the participation process is an important step towards reframing perceptions and affecting change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for greater attention to the interpersonal aspects of youth activism through a sociological and Black feminist exploration of peer relationships within youth political engagement. Drawing on a multi‐method qualitative research, the work foregrounds the perspectives and experiences of Black girls and girls of colour involved in an anti‐racist Scottish youth work charity. I argue that community and friendship ties cultivated participants' activism. Moreover, participants sought to enact social change by undertaking activist educational practices with their peers. This paper demonstrates how studying young people's peer relationships can engender a better understanding of youth activism and support it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS‐based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines migrant placemaking in South Korea as a proactive response to governing power that works through making (im)mobilities. Unlike previous discussions that have viewed migrants' empowerment in political activities and identity‐related in a particular type of enclaves, this study sees migrant placemaking as a proactive response to governing through mobilities and comprehensively embraces various types of placemaking in South Korea. Based on mix‐up of various qualitative research methods, this study documents the migrant placemaking practices over time of two representative and quite different migrant groups: Chosǒnjok's enclave in Kuro‐Taerim area of Seoul and Latin Americans' digital communities. The former represents a big migrant group's physical and discursive migrant placemaking. Chosǒnjok migrants struggled with their stigmatised images and mistrust towards both China and Korea. The latter represents a small migrant group's digital placemaking. Latin American migrants were left without much knowledge about and recognition from the Korean society. We demonstrate how in seeking a community for themselves they adapt their environment, thereby empowering themselves. In demonstrating the interrelation of migrant placemaking and governing power, this study contributes to the understanding of the circuits of power, mobility and place in the case of migrants in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how social identity, moral obligation and the relationship between the two shaped support for the 2016 Academics for Peace petition in Turkey. We examine the pre‐trial statements of nine defendants charged for signing the petition and appearing in court on the same day in December 2018. We first conduct an inductive thematic analysis on one statement, and then, using the themes from this analysis, we conducted a deductive thematic analysis on the remaining eight statements. In line with the existing studies, we find considerable evidence that social identity and moral obligation are invoked as key reasons for signing in this highly repressive context. However, rather than these being separate factors, the two are reciprocally constitutive. That is, social identities define moral obligations and, at the same time, enacting moral obligations defines identity (both the position of the individual in the group and the nature of the group in the world). In discussion, we consider the broader implications of a moralized view of social identities for our understanding of both collective action and social identity processes more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances the understanding of the linkages between trust in government and citizen participation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using machine learning techniques and Latinobarómetro 2023 data. Empirically, we predict citizen participation based on trust levels, characteristics and circumstances of citizens. Proponents of the concept of stealth democracy argue that an inverse relationship exists between political trust and citizen participation, while deliberative democracy theorists claim the opposite. Based on our estimates, trust in national governments and other governmental institutions play neither a dominant nor consistent role in driving political participation. Interest in politics, personal circumstances such as experience of crime, and socioeconomic characteristics appear to drive citizen participation much more strongly in LAC. This is true across models imposing simple linear trends (Logit and Lasso) and those allowing for complex relations (decision trees). Results vary across types of participation—signing a petition, participation in demonstrations, or involvement in community issues. Ultimately, political trust can only influence political participation when certain other drivers are combined in some specific ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has been conducted on job insecurity and participation in the workplace. However, to date, empirical research on the relationship between job insecurity and citizen participation is extremely scarce. To fill the void, the aim of this study is to examine the nexus between job insecurity and citizen participation in Chile and South Korea where embraced the New Public Management principle. Grievance and resource theory of participation offer contrasting predictions for the influence of job insecurity on citizen participation. Analyzing the wave 7 of the World Values Survey, this paper verifies the two lines of enquiry in examining the influence of job insecurity on citizen participation. The results of an ordered logit regression model demonstrate that the impact of job insecurity on citizen participation varied depending on the types of job insecurity and citizen participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To overcome financing barriers and to ensure that the progress towards energy transition will continue, alternative financing concepts are required. A promising alternative may be financial citizen participation, where private individuals will contribute to the deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) by investing via various business models and financing concepts. This paper aims to promote energy transition by informing the design of policies and strategies for mobilizing citizen investment. Specific objectives are to investigate citizens' willingness-to-invest (WTI) and to compare the factors influencing WTI in five renewable types, wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric energy and biomass. To meet these objectives, our study collected a representative sample of 1,536 citizens in Greece, an EU member state that stands at a critical point in energy transition due to financing barriers and social opposition to renewable projects. Our results showed that most citizens were willing to invest, but would invest mainly low sums pointing at the need to establish investment mechanisms suitable for citizens. Moreover, the factors influencing willingness-to-invest differ significantly for each renewable type highlighting the need to leverage this differentiation in marketing strategies. While perceived barriers and economic motives were important for almost all renewable types, environmental attitudes were less influential suggesting that strategies using the argument of environmental benefits may be ineffective. Findings from this study provide a precise idea on the factors affecting WTI in five renewable types and can offer significantly higher precision for the design of policies and strategies aiming at mobilizing citizen investment in renewables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Word embeddings provide an unsupervised way to understand differences in word usage between discursive communities. A number of papers have focused on identifying words that are used differently by two or more communities. But word embeddings are complex, high-dimensional spaces and a focus on identifying differences only captures a fraction of their richness. Here, we take a step towards leveraging the richness of the full embedding space, by using word embeddings to map out how words are used differently. Specifically, we describe the construction of dialectograms, an unsupervised way to visually explore the characteristic ways in which each community uses a focal word. Based on these dialectograms, we provide a new measure of the degree to which words are used differently that overcomes the tendency for existing measures to pick out low-frequency or polysemous words. We apply our methods to explore the discourses of two US political subreddits and show how our methods identify stark affective polarisation of politicians and political entities, differences in the assessment of proper political action as well as disagreement about whether certain issues require political intervention at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic innovations aim to strengthen citizen participation in democratic decision‐making processes. Building on theories of deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and direct democracy, different types of democratic innovations have been developed, ranging from mini‐publics, to participatory processes and referendums and citizens’ initiatives. Over the last four decades, an expanding number of scholars have investigated the effects of these democratic innovations on citizens. However, even though a considerable amount of research has been done, there currently exists no overview of the effects of different types of democratic innovations on citizens’ attitudes, behaviour and capabilities. In addition, it is unclear which effects prove robust across studies, and which effects require more investigation.The aim of this paper is to systematically evaluate what we know and what we do not know yet about the effects of democratic innovations on citizens who participate in them. In order to do so, we conduct a meta‐analysis of 100 quantitative empirical studies published between 1980 and 2020. We find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that mini‐publics are widely researched for their effects on citizens, whereas studies into the effects of participatory processes and referendums and citizens’ initiatives on participating citizens are much less frequent. We also find that participation in mini‐publics changes citizens’ policy attitudes and positively affects citizens’ political attitudes, knowledge, internal efficacy and reasoning skills. For participatory processes, our analyses indicate that they appear to have a positive effect on participants’ political attitudes and knowledge and no effect on participants’ internal efficacy, but there are too few studies to draw robust conclusions. Participation in referendums and citizens’ initiatives appears to have a positive effect on participants’ knowledge and internal efficacy, even though these findings should also be considered preliminary due to the limited number of studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT LGBTIQ+ research acknowledges shared experiences of groups marginalized due to gender identities, sexualities, and sex characteristics. This universalist coalition approach has resulted in much affirmational research and progressive policy development. However, it risks homogenizing the unique experiences and needs of specific groups; a risk lessened by a particularist subgroup approach. In this theoretical paper, we reflect on the challenges of a coalition or subgroup approach by considering interdependencies and boundaries between sex, gender, and sexuality‐based identities. Through tracing the historical development of LGBTIQ+ research and activism and using examples from intersex studies, intersectionality, and political actions, we explore tensions between the collective identities that make up the LGBTIQ+ acronym. We further offer suggestions for reimagining LGBTIQ+ research, advocating for community‐driven approaches that respect the situated knowledge of LGBTIQ+ individuals, and use adaptable and inclusive research practices that bridge academia and activism that aim to improve the lives of the marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of social media in mobilizing environmentalism amid authoritarian restrictions, focusing on the Vietnam coastal pollution of 2016. It contributes to current academic debates by showing how elements that are apparently mundane and irrelevant become the stage for political action within social media. We examined the interface of connective actions (social media activism) – collective actions (protests) and the role of food symbolism in translating digital activism into physical resistance that bridges the distance between rural and urban areas. Data were collected from Facebook and Twitter, as well as semi-structured interviews, policy documents, and national newspapers and broadcasts. Food symbolism, exemplified by #ichoosefish, helped personalize grievances and materialize protest actions amid the government's countermeasures. The results further show that by using social media, especially Facebook, the activists managed to rationalize their political engagement in a non-participatory context and mobilize protests during political restrictions by arguing that their 'apolitical' actions were motivated by food-based grievances associated with personal, environmentalist and nationalist concerns. Food symbolism is thus essential in transitioning from connective actions to collective actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore how a Citizens' Assembly project in Auroville – the largest intentional community in the world – sought to prefigure new practices in collective decision-making. A Citizens' Assembly model is a democratic innovation that enacts a deliberative mode of political decision-making by everyday citizens. It has been used by diverse bodies, from social movements to nation-state governments around the world. Auroville's 2021 Citizens' Assembly pilot – concerning a water vision for Auroville – is a unique case study that enables us to make a distinctive contribution to the existing academic scholarship concerning Citizens' Assemblies and prefigurative politics on two grounds. Firstly, Auroville is an intentional community shaped by specific spiritual and self-governance values – an uncommon setting for a Citizens' Assembly that supports us to make specific empirical offerings not seen in the literature on Citizens' Assemblies to date. Secondly, given that Auroville's pilot Citizens' Assembly sought to prefigure the community's foundational ideals of "human unity" and "unending education" in its collective decision-making practice, we connect our analysis to the academic scholarship concerning prefigurative politics. In doing so, we uniquely draw together the scholarship concerning Citizens' Assemblies and the literature concerning prefigurative politics to explore whether such democratic innovations have a transformative effect on the political contexts they are embedded in, which we freshly consider with a focus on local scale, and the role that institutionalisation might have in terms of ensuring the reproduction, and thereby lasting impact of such experiments, or conversely their nullification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance and impact of political scientists' professional activities outside of universities has become the focus of public attention, partly due to growing expectations that research should help address society's grand challenges. One type of such activity is policy advising. However, little attention has been devoted to understanding the extent and type of policy advising activities political scientists engage in. This paper addresses this gap by adopting a classification that distinguishes four ideal types of policy advisors representing differing degrees of engagement. We test this classification by calculating a multi-level latent class model to estimate key factors explaining the prevalence of each type based on an original dataset obtained from a survey of political scientists across 39 European countries. Our results challenge the wisdom that political scientists are sitting in an "ivory tower": the vast majority (80%) of political scientists in Europe are active policy advisers, with most of them providing not only expert guidance but also normative assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American Indian students continue to experience marginalization in settler-colonial school systems in the United States. American Indian students receive disciplinary punishment more frequently and harshly than white peers. Overrepresentation of American Indian students in school discipline is a byproduct of a long history of oppressive settler-colonial schooling. To address racial disproportionality in school discipline, the Indigenous Learning Lab was enacted through building a university-school-family-community partnership at a rural high school. Learning Lab is a community-driven problem-solving process through which multiple school stakeholders take transformative actions, including identification of systemic challenges entrenched in the settler-colonial school system and design of a new, culturally responsive support system. White administrators and teachers, along with students, family, and community members from the local tribal nation, engaged in prefigurative political action as they participated in the collective design process of the new system. Prefiguration is a present embodiment of new social relations, allowing participants to try new decision-making structures that may lead to what can be considered possible futures. The purpose of this paper is to examine how school stakeholders exerted their collective agency to unpack systemic contradictions in the settler-colonial school system and design a new culturally responsive support system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon recent insights in the social movements literature that have been looking at different facets of radicalisation, this paper explores processes of identity formation and 'emotion transformation' happening at the collective level and expressed through forms of non-conventional political participation. The key case study that is taken as an example is that of the recent pacific protests that took place at Boğaziçi University. Similar to recent studies that shed light on the study of radicalism in peaceful protests, we look at the main frames through which demands for social change by young activists participating in the protests are constructed and at the emotional frames that express grievances. In doing so, we focus on the representation of the movement on Twitter. These have the aim of challenging hegemonic discourses promoted by the status quo through forms of 'radicalism through protest' rather than 'radicalism through violence'. In exploring this area, we conduct a qualitative analysis of social media content looking at the use and reproduction of key messages meant to share common frames that construct processes of collective identification but also at the processes of 'emotion transformation' that shape radical collective claims and which seek to challenge the dominant political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Assam Movement (1979–85) was one of the most significant political developments in the history of Assam. It demanded the detection and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam. The movement passed through several phases, many of which involved violence. It includes the clashes between the agitators and the left-leaning political parties and organizations, which resulted in severe violence and even several fatalities. Certain works related to the violence and the Assam Movement provide information on the nature and timelines of those violence. However, there is a gap in the analysis of the reasons behind this development. Therefore, this paper attempts to understand the said gap historically. The primary sources for the study are archived files and documents. The study argues that the violence broke out as a result of the development of left politics, the emergence of regional political parties, and the left's involvement in the Assam Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic participation is of great significance to urban management decision-making. In order to facilitate citizens to participate in city management decision-making, this paper proposes a large-scale group decision-making (LSGDM) method based on multi-granular probabilistic linguistic preference relations (MG-PLPRs). First, each decision maker selects a language terms set from the multi-granularity language terms set to represent individual preference relations, and the MG-PLPRs are obtained by statistical calculation to represent sub-group's preferences information. Then, an optimization model based on the expected consistency of PLPR and consensus measure of groups is established for achieving consensus-reaching processes, which can ensure satisfactory individual consistency and group consensus. Finally, the validity and applicability of the proposed method is verified by a case of a city "shared garden" site selection with the participation of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To speak of citizen participation in public policies implies discussing the different ways in which society can have access to or interfere in the content of administrative decisions made by the Public Power. When it comes to access to information, it can be said that this element belongs to the field of passive transparency, which takes place, in Brazil, primarily, through the Access to Information Law (LAI). This paper sought to investigate how passive transparency occurs in the sphere of the Judiciary, specifically about the socio-educational measures of admission and substitution for measures in the open environment, due to the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus. Through documentary analysis and a survey application, compliance with CNJ Recommendation 62/2020 was analyzed, which determined specific rules about the socio-educational measures of admission during the pandemic. For this purpose, questions were developed with the LAI support and forwarded to the Brazilian Courts of Justice through their websites, aiming to understand how compliance (or lack thereof) with the resolution in question has occurred. The results show that there are still challenges to guaranteeing passive transparency, with barriers that weaken access to information, making it difficult to monitor the Judiciary's actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen participation among children and adolescents is key for the development of society. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the legal and ethical recognition of public, education, and social policies for children is vital for ensuring an active and critical society. The aim of this research paper is to analyse the characteristics and challenges of citizen participation during childhood as an educational process. The methodology employed was a systematic review carried out using the WOS, SCOPUS, and ERIC databases, taking into account the PRISMAS 2020 protocol. The results show that the incorporation of a culture of participation in children and adolescents will guarantee the persistence of democratic systems, although there are still challenges to overcome. The conclusions suggest that it is crucial that educational institutions, families, and society as a whole commit to promoting the philosophy of citizen participation at an early age in formal and non-formal educational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study whether present‐day women's political participation in sub‐Saharan Africa is associated to the temporary gender ratio imbalances caused by the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, taking into account pre‐existing gender norms influenced by kinship structures. To study the interrelatedness between historical exposure to the slave trades, patrilineality and their association to contemporary women's political participation, we use individual‐level data for 35,595 women from 28 sub‐Saharan African countries from three rounds of Afrobarometer surveys, georeferenced to historical ethnic region kinship and slave trade data. Our findings suggest that a woman's ethnic region historical exposure to the transatlantic slave trade is associated with an increase in her likelihood to vote today, however, only in non‐patrilineal ethnic regions. This effect is mitigated in patrilineal ethnic regions, where women have less decision‐making power. This paper contributes to the literature on the contemporary sub‐national effects of the slave trades and the historical causes of gender gaps in political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of absolute income has consistently been highlighted in the literature as an important factor shaping individuals' propensity to engage in political participation. However, considerably less research has been done on the relationship between relative income and individuals' propensity to engage in both conventional and unconventional forms of political participation. Using relative income to quantify relative standing, this paper explores the relationship between relative standing and political participation in South Africa. Results show that individuals' relative standing had a divergent relationship with their propensity to engage in voting and protest. More specifically, the results showed that South Africans with a higher relative standing, i.e., those who experienced relative privilege were more likely to engage in voting, while those with a lower relative standing, i.e., those who experienced relative deprivation, were more likely to engage in protest participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policymakers widely view identity as a key driver of African citizens' political engagement. In doing so, however, they have emphasized ethnicity and largely sidelined other identities, including gender, local origin, shared residency, and partisanship. In this paper, we explore which identities drive political engagement and why they do so. We employ an original survey experiment that includes various identities and other incentives that may drive citizens' participation around Zambia's 2021 national elections. We find that partisanship most influences individuals' stated willingness to campaign for a candidate or meet with an MP, while ethnicity and social incentives play less significant roles. Finally, we explore the mechanisms underpinning these results and find that citizens anticipate sanctions if they fail to support a co-partisan but not a co-ethnic candidate. These findings have important implications for understanding political engagement and democratic development throughout the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, Facebook's news feed algorithm began weighting emoji reactions (e.g., love and angry) as five times more valuable than the like button. Such a change is theoretically intriguing because existing research largely suggests that women tend to use emojis more than men on social media. Within the context of political campaigns, prior work has revealed a host of other "gender gaps," from documenting men's and women's differing tolerance for negative campaigns, to examining variations in online political participation and—more broadly—charting gendered imbalances in party demographic support. To date, however, no study has looked to investigate this potential gender emoji gap within the online political environment. This paper explores just such a gap, combining data across three US election cycles (2016–2020), over thirty million individual observations, and thousands of (federal and state) candidates. The data shows that women exhibited a greater preference for emoji reactions than men in response to posts from the 2016 presidential election candidates. Party, and candidate negativity, also appeared to moderate this effect. Likely due to this (moderated) gender gap, Democratic candidates continued to see a much higher proportion of emoji reactions to their posts, than Republicans in 2018, and 2020. In turn, the results offer clear evidence of a persistent emoji gender gap in US political campaigns on Facebook. Such findings strengthen our theoretical understanding of political communication and behavior online, and prompt important questions going forward for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food has become a privileged space for analyzing different forms of citizen participation. This paper reviews typologies of political participation to determine which of them is more useful to classify the strategies of food-based engagement. We propose a taxonomy of civic and political food actions, with particular reference to Spain, integrating traditional and modern actions as well as and collective, online and offline dimensions. We applied a mixed methodology, based on primary sources – a survey of 1,0005 people and 22 in-depth interviews with different profiles of food activists- and secondary sources. The proposed taxonomy of food political participation is useful to map different forms of (non-) participation, latent participation and political participation in food issues that are currently being developed. This classification, by including civic and latent forms of involvement, can serve to guide future empirical studies about food participation that consider not only formal participation, but also factors as: showing propensity to search for information about food issues from an ethical, political, or environmental perspective; identifying with an ideology that promotes ethical, politically and socially responsible food decisions; or developing a political food lifestyle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]