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Corruption in Ukraine is recognized as a threat to national interests, sustainable development and European integration. Despite the significant efforts made by the state and international institutions to overcome corruption in the main spheres of public life, its level still remains high. When defining the essence of corruption, one should first of all proceed from the fact that it cannot be reduced to any specific socially dangerous act, to a specific offense. Corruption is the result of the historical development of society and the state, including Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian state. At the same time, in the last decade, corruption in Ukraine gained an unprecedented scope and influence on political, economic and other social processes. It is found that the problems of countering corruption in Ukraine in many respects coincide with similar problems in other countries. This coincidence is caused by the same social essence of corruption as the corrosion of power, which consists in the abuse by officials of state authorities and local self-government bodies of power or official position for selfish or other personal interests. Regardless of the differences in the state system, the main socio-economic prerequisites of corruption are the same in principle for all countries -- the imperfection of the mechanism of the exercise of power, the desire of subjects endowed with power to use this power for personal purposes, and the main directions of combating corruption -- restrictions, neutralization and elimination of its social prerequisites, causes and conditions of corrupt acts, determination of restrictions and prohibitions for civil servants, establishment of responsibility for their violation. The reduction of corruption to a certain type of offense by a certain part of scientists and practitioners is one of the most significant mistakes in the understanding of corruption. Corruption is a social phenomenon that has social conditions, social patterns of development and exerts a negative influence on social processes. Existing in society and being a product of social relations, it permeates various social spheres of society, deforming social relations in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years of scholarship in the history of sexuality and gender studies have delivered a considerable amount of knowledge, framed by an encompassing premise: power is paramount. A preferred object of this kind of attention are the erotic cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. The focus on power leads contemporary scholars to adopt binary thinking, namely the attribution to ancient writers and thinkers of dichotomies such as domination versus subjection, or activity versus passivity. This is a fixist view that obliterates the dialectic of desire and, therefore, its fundamental mobility. Desire aims at the other person's desire; roles are exchanged; age and social status can play in surprising ways; hyperactivity can become subjugation. It is time for a change. It is time to look at what mattered for the Ancients themselves: the subjective experience of sensations, bodies and situations; the felicitous, ironic, or tragic reversals of intersubjective games. More importantly: the quest for pleasure, rather than the use of pleasures. The Greeks thought the sexual experience as sensuality. And sensuality inflects what they thought about gender. In poetry, narrations and philosophy, concrete details draw our attention to the felt phenomena of lived bodies – in the plural. When we look for the logic of gender, we discover that bodies can be compared, not as totalities, but as bundles of multiple discreet qualities, ready to be combined and recombined, allotted and exchanged. Qualities can be bits and pieces of anatomy, manners and garments; but also fragments of experience, moments of sensory awareness. The logic of the concrete meets the phenomenal body. For the body is a challenge, to be taken up – as a cinematic life, frame after frame. Sensations can be shared across the boundaries of female and male, which are adjectives, not substances. A granular, corpuscular, pointilliste redistribution of traits, distinctive – or not. Sensuality is queer. Like Plato's pharmacy, erotic materialism can deliver us, beautifully, cathartically, refreshingly from the modern strictures of binary thinking. This is what the Greeks have to tell us. Let us listen! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Berliner Journal für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The British government used to herald shale gas as a bridge fuel to a zero-carbon economy, trying (and ultimately, failing) to incorporate this hydrocarbon into a punctuated energy transition that is still under way in the country. On the one hand, planning translated central political decisions into local priorities, but on the other hand, it politicized public opposition to fracking. Although, there have been considerable criticisms of the planning process for fracking in Great Britain, we still lack a grounded understanding of how planning influenced the wider dynamics of public engagement with shale gas development. Drawing on ethnographic and participatory research across three locations in northern England, I explore how the planning process was experienced by the public and how its local participants were impacted by it. The ways in which planning dealt with evidence, public perception and democratic legitimacy suggested that planning was reinforcing the governmental pro-fracking policies while simultaneously undermining its own legitimacy, as questions about validity, impartiality and democracy were being raised. Rather than merely a technocratic arena for adjudicating between private and public interests, planning had a transformative effect on local participants and served as an important moment for mobilizing more politicized forms of public opposition against fracking, which undermined the energy-transition narratives touted by the government. I use anthropological theorizations of ritual to explain the concrete local dynamics that led to this unintended effect. This case study suggests that centrally orchestrated energy transitions may fail when they are enacted through local processes that foster experiences of injustice and lack of local control among the opposing publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jurnal Sosial dan Sains (SOSAINS) is the property of Green Publisher and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The vote of no-confidence is the primary mechanism through which the principle of government accountability to the legislature – the defining feature of parliamentary democracy – is achieved. Yet, no research has been devoted to its influence on the relations between the government and the mechanism's main users – the opposition. This article attempts to fill this lacuna by theorising how restrictiveness in the vote of no-confidence influences the opposition's strategies vis-à-vis the government in legislative voting. We delineate the influence of the vote of no-confidence on the opposition via its preference to pursue more cooperative strategies, as opposed to conflictual ones, distinguishing between the two stages of the vote of no-confidence – initiating and voting. We empirically explore the relation between the vote of no-confidence and the voting behaviour of 59 opposition parties in 16 countries, showing that greater restrictions on both stages of the vote of no-confidence correlate with less conflictual opposition behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Car-based automobility remains dominant across Europe despite the high energy requirements such a system embeds. This system is becoming increasingly problematised. As part of an alternative vision for everyday mobility, an aspiration for vélomobility appears to be growing. In light of the persistent subordinate status of cycling across much of Europe relative to driving, attempts to lay the foundations for everyday cycling are often pursued through the implementation of redistributive cycleways and broader public space measures that prioritise active travel. These important attempts to change public space can be blocked through public opposition, which can feature as part of broader social practices that may politically sustain automobility as a dominant system. In this study, we explore how automobility is politically sustained in discourses of opposition to a major active travel scheme proposal in the context of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland. We uncover how a normatively car-centric discourse of everyday mobility constructs driving as the essential mobility practice for the functional tasks of everyday life, while cycling is relegated to recreational and conditional mobility, and briefly consider how an alternative discourse of everyday mobility that decentres the car may be advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treaties are concluded by States but often impose rights and obligations directly upon private parties. Can private parties contract out of a treaty including States' oppositions without explicit permissions granted by the treaty? The complexity between party autonomy and State sovereignty is reflected in recent cases and unsettled debates regarding the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extra Judicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters of November 15, 1965 ("HSC"). The HSC contains a large number of oppositions made by 65 Contracting States including China, Germany, India, and Singapore. Combining public and private international law, this paper aims to explore the correlative relationship between party autonomy and State sovereignty in applying the HSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay thoroughly examines the OTPOR! movement's strategic and tactical endeavors from 1998 to 2000, when it played a pivotal role in challenging and eventually overthrowing Slobodan Milošević's autocratic regime. The paper critically dissects the movement's strategic and tactical frameworks, elucidating their interconnectedness within nonviolent struggle. Central to OTPOR!'s effectiveness was its deliberate avoidance of overt political ambitions and alignment with the youth demographic. The movement projected itself as singularly committed to unseating an autocratic leader, countering regime propaganda by foregrounding the nation's welfare above narrow political interests. The trajectory of the OTPOR! movement underscores the intricate interplay between strategy and tactics in successful nonviolent movements. By orchestrating a meticulously constructed long-term strategy alongside various innovative tactical maneuvers, OTPOR! effectively harnessed public sentiment, countered regime dominance and decisively contributed to Serbia's democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key defining features of Westminster-type democracies is the acknowledgement of an official Opposition and a Leader of the Opposition typically referred to as a 'prime minister in waiting'. This article focuses on this crucial element of Westminster democracy and applies a gender perspective, looking into women Leaders of the Opposition in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (1975–2022). As this inquiry reveals, there have been few and mostly short-lived women Leaders of the Opposition. Further, contrary to plausible assumptions, there have been more women Leaders of the Opposition from conservative than from left-wing parties. In particular, however, the office of Leader of the Opposition has, with few exceptions, not proven to be a springboard to the premiership. In fact, a majority of women prime ministers were 'takeover prime ministers', inheriting the office from a predecessor from their own party, rather than former Leaders of the Opposition, while many women Leaders of the Opposition were not even given the opportunity to lead their party into a national election campaign. The article discusses possible explanations for these patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Ablai Khan KazUIRandWL: Series 'Philological sciences' is the property of Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations & World Languages and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Why is there sometimes limited mobilization against autocratization, particularly when it involves major human rights violations? Some scholars emphasize the loss of political space through repression as the major cause while others emphasize strategic considerations such as divisions and abandonment of moderate tactics. A third view stresses popular support for strongman rule. Viewed in this light, the weakness of pushback against Rodrigo Duterte, Philippine president from 2016 to 2022, presents a challenge to existing theories. Despite the bloody "war on drugs" during his presidency, there was no violent government crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, and centrists eventually coalesced with left-wing activists around moderate strategies. But public backing for Duterte does not explain how he was able to defuse popular outrage over drug war killings, particularly after the high-profile police murders of several minors. This paper offers a relational explanation utilizing competing framing analysis. This better elucidates how, with Catholic bishops and community organizations politically weakened and international organizations denounced for interfering in domestic politics, Duterte was able to tactically outmaneuver his opponents and "frame" human rights advocates as coddling criminals while he protected law-abiding Filipinos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Young Intellectuals / Genç Mütefekkirler Dergisi is the property of Journal of Young Intellectuals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Poland is a case of a state in which the role of legislative bodies in the political system has been gradually reduced at the various levels – national, regional, and local. Recently, this process has been related to executive aggrandisement observed in Poland, but the roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the political transformation of this country observed after 1989. At the national level, the deteriorating legislative role of parliament manifests itself in four general processes: (1) The executive power treats the Sejm (lower chamber) as a subordinate institution. This involves formally introducing laws forced by the government in the form of proposals written by members of parliament (MPs) (as a way to shorten the legislative process and limit public consultations required by law); (2) Speeding up of parliamentary works – the Sejm is treated as a voting machine and not as a forum where debates and discussion take place; (3) Public consultations are superficial and the regulatory assessment impact is minimal; (4) The influence of the opposition on legislative processes is reduced to almost zero. Similar processes can be observed at the regional and local levels. The subnational legislative bodies are often under the control of executives. Instances of voting with no or limited discussions (favouring the governing majority) can be sometimes observed during the sessions of local and regional councils. This paper analyses the weakening of the legislative function in Poland at different levels, using a qualitative approach and data from desk research, media analysis, in-depth individual interviews and focus group interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The 2023 Turkish elections marked a historic juncture in the nation's political trajectory. Amidst economic, social, and political upheavals, coupled with a devastating earthquake, the elections served as a decisive evaluation of the newly inaugurated presidential system. With the incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) lagging in polls for the first time in over twenty years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the People's Alliance faced formidable opposition yet managed to score a victory in the second round. This article delves into the contrasting campaign strategies of the two leading candidates, Erdoğan and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. We argue that while Erdoğan's campaign leaned on negative tactics and exclusionary populism, emphasizing counter-terrorism, identity politics, and regime maintenance, Kılıçdaroğlu's strategy championed positive messaging buoyed by inclusive populism, spotlighting democratization, good governance, and regime change. Within an overarching competitive authoritarian context, these distinct strategies highlighted the intricate dynamics between campaign narratives and voter perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual dissent in the USSR has been an important feature of the political scene there since the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, in February 1966, and the appearance of the Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968. Inevitably it has generated a wide ranging debate in the West, not only about its character and long term perspectives, but also about those forces of the society which produced it. Indeed, the manifestation of intellectual discontent appeared to some as sui generis; a sudden, unannounced, but welcome relief. The dissidents seemed like a godsend. Academic empiricists, starved of reliable data; at last had some hard facts to work on. Professional anti-communists, possibly worried about the Soviet Union's apparent and disconcerting stability, could point a knowing finger at what they considered to be a significant 'anti-Soviet' tendency. Marxists, critical of the USSR, but still optimistic about its socialist potential thought that they could detect a force ready and willing to take up the fight for Leninism and the reconstitution of a genuine communism. The dissidents were indeed all things to all people in 1968. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As usually presented, octagons of opposition are rather complex objects and can be difficult to assimilate at a glance. We show how, under suitable conditions that are satisfied by most historical examples, different display conventions can simplify the diagrams, making them easier for readers to grasp without the loss of information. Moreover, those conditions help reveal the conceptual structure behind the visual display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of 'Green Fuse' in The Irish Press in 1974, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne has built up an impressive oeuvre of short fiction. The recent Selected Stories, published by Blackstaff Press in 2023, pays tribute to that achievement. As the collection follows the trajectory of Ní Dhuibhne's career, with two stories from each of her six collections, it allows one to trace both recurring elements and patterns of development in her work. Ní Dhuibhne's sustained exploration of women's lives, dreams and desires, for instance, can be seen to take distinct emphases in each of the collections. This essay argues that binary oppositions are used as structuring models in Ní Dhuibhne's first four collections – in juxtaposed plotlines, stories and endings as well as contrasting characters, places and times – but, in her later collections, these oppositions move to the more subjective realm of inner reflection and imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on party leader questioning in legislatures usually focuses on single case studies, less-than-ideal behaviours across leaders, and often post-election periods. Our article compares hostility and positivity in behaviours across three parliaments and, because of the COVID-19 crisis, across different time periods and modes of operation (live, hybrid, and online) while controlling for the same leaders. Using content analysis at the sentence level (N = 3554), our data contrast parliamentary leader hostility and positivity levels in the UK, Scottish, and Welsh Parliaments across three time periods: pre-COVID-19, initial, and lockdown COVID-19. Findings for positivity are mixed, but for hostility, we find that while the initial shock of the COVID-19 crisis suppressed hostility, Westminster has higher ratios of hostility across all three time periods, and that format of operation has little effect on behaviour. Findings suggest less hostility in Scotland and Wales than in Westminster adding possible weight to 'new politics' arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bilimname is the property of IBAV (Research Foundation of Theological Science) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Rezső Rudai is one of the important, albeit forgotten figures of Hungarian social science. The first part of the essay provides a brief introduction to the author's work between the two world wars, followed by an analysis of those essays of Rudai which give a historical explanation based on large datasets to why large governing parties remained in power for a long time. Rezső Rudai comes to the conclusion that between 1867 and 1935 there were always large governing parties because they were seen as the effective representatives of the public interest, as opposed to the opposition parties which represented sectional interests. In the final part of the essay I highlight the contemporary lessons that can be drawn from Rudai's work, especially in light of the fact that between 2010 and 2024 a large governing party once again dominates Hungarian politics. The conclusion of the essay is that while naturally we do not have to accept all aspects of Rudai's trail of thought, it is enough if we recognize one of his possible explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Journal of Public Law / Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht is the property of Verlag Oesterreich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Committees of inquiry, in related literature, are often called as 'sharpest sword' of the opposition. However, this sharpness is highly dependent on how much rights the opposition is effectively provided by the fine details of the procedural rules, and whether these rights are justiciable. According to the German model, the inquiry must be launched if a quarter of the MPs require it, and the opposition enjoys minority rights also during the inquiry. Many countries implemented the first, but not the second element in their parliamentary procedures (Hungary, Kosovo, Albania, Lithuania), which led to ineffective inquiries. The only positive example for a successful transplant of the mandatory minority initiative for launching an inquiry is the neighbouring country, Austria. In most of the other countries, the majority is more effective in conducting inquiries, and, lacking judicial remedies, the opposition cannot put its right to inquiry in practice effectively. It seems that the mandatory minority initiative hardly works properly outside its original home country, Germany, and the only successful transplant country, Austria. Another evidence that legal transplants cannot survive if the legal environment and culture is not fertile and developed enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vital political opposition is one of the cornerstones of democracy, yet we know surprisingly little about the conditions that shape it. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive assessment of the drivers of parliamentary opposition in European Union (EU) politics in five countries: Denmark; Germany; Ireland; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Based on an extensive hand-coded data set of 7,520 statements made by members of parliament (MPs) during both plenary sessions and deliberations during European Affairs Committee (EAC) meetings, we examine how institutions and party characteristics shape two types of oppositional behaviour: the expression of critique and the presentation of alternatives. We find that both factors are important for understanding to what extent, and how, opposition is voiced in national parliaments. Oversight institutions' strength and a party's degree of Euroscepticism jointly function as significant determinants of the likelihood that MPs will express opposition in the form of critique. However, when it comes to the likelihood of offering alternatives, oversight institutions' strength fails to explain variations in the share of alternatives, while degree of Euroscepticism remains a significant predictor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is oppositional behaviour in legislatures gendered? Despite a growing literature on gender and legislative behaviour, there is a conspicuous absence of research on differences between female and male members of parliament (MPs) when it comes to one of the key aspects of parliamentary debates: the voicing of opposition. This article connects the literature on gender and legislative behaviour with opposition scholarship. We examine the role of gender for oppositional behaviour in four legislatures with a focus on debates concerning European Union affairs. Our results show that female MPs generally are equally likely to express opposition as their male colleagues. This result, however, is conditioned by government status. Whilst there is no significant difference between the proportion of opposition expressed by female and male MPs from opposition parties, we find that male MPs representing government parties express more than twice as much opposition as their female colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Investigaciones Historicas is the property of Universidad de Valladolid, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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This article examines Spain's COVID-19 pandemic recovery from the perspective of politicisation as a form of political activity. The main argument is that politicisation must be considered more broadly as a part of democratic politics, as distinct from the too narrow theoretical framework of European Union (EU) politicisation. The analysis builds on recent conceptual research into politicisation and asks: Has Spain's pandemic recovery become politicised and, if so, in what way did this politicisation occur and to what extent have politicising strategies been used? In Spain, political parties have not openly engaged in conflict about the country's membership of the EU, but they do have a clear tendency towards a deeply partisan and highly polarised approach to domestic politics, aggravated since the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis focuses on opposition strategies during the period from the beginning of March 2020 to the end of December 2023. The main conclusion of the analysis is that politicising strategies were used by the opposition parties in contexts that gave them opportunities to exploit the situation in a novel way. On those occasions, it is possible to identify four different dimensions of politicisation. This illustrates that by attempting to utilise novel ways of acting politically, politicisation effectively becomes an intervention in the current state of affairs for political purposes. This conclusion can provide a useful conceptual framework for future research into pandemic recovery in a comparative sense and also into the concept of politicisation within democratic politics in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Local governments were on the front line in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also had to rethink their action mode and carry out a swift digital transition. These changes affected the performance of local democracy, in particular, the nature of Local Executive-Opposition Institutional Relations (LEOIR). Using new survey data on the perceptions of local elected representatives, we run an ordered probit regression model to understand the perceived effect of exceptional measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on LEOIR in the Portuguese context. The results show, through the lenses of local key informants, that the Executive's capacity to explain to its constituents the exceptional measures adopted and its formal duty to communicate these decisions to the Municipal Assembly have aggravated the conflictual nature of LEOIR. This study contributes to local governance research by elucidating how accountability and communication practices can soothe or aggravate Executive-Opposition institutional tensions in extraordinary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Political communication is central to the electoral ascension of populist parties across the world. Several studies investigate how communication is used by populists to gain power, but we know very little about how the communication varies when moving between opposition and government office. The few studies on the topic focus exclusively on right-wing populist parties and neglect left-wing populism. This article addresses this gap in the literature and analyses the political communication of left- and right-wing populist parties by comparing their periods in opposition and in government. It focuses on the Northern Ireland case and compares Sinn Féin and the DUP and uses deductive thematic analysis for each election manifesto for the Northern Ireland Assembly between 1998 and 2022. The analysis includes four themes: people-centrism, anti-elite bad manners, crisis talk and volonté générale solutions. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that the right-wing populist DUP has changed more substantively its political communication than the left-wing Sinn Féin when moving from opposition to government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from a critique of existing classification schemes in work on 'militant' and 'defending' democracy, the article presents a new typology for classifying initiatives opposing populist parties (IoPPs). The typology incorporates public authorities, political parties and civil society actors operating at state and supranational levels along one dimension, and tolerant and intolerant modes of engagement with populist parties on another dimension. The six types of opposition identified—rights-restrictions, ostracism, coercive confrontation, ordinary legal controls and pedagogy, forbearance, and adversarialism—are illustrated with empirical examples of opposition from populist parties in opposition and government, and by domestic actors and international organisations. The article then turns to outline methods for collecting data on IoPPs in contemporary Europe using a newspaper sampling techniques inspired by protest event and political claims analysis as a starting point. The final section presents four patterns of opposition to populist parties, 'adapted-militancy' (Germany), 'political competition' (Denmark); a 'pincer-movement' (Poland), and 'differentiated ordinary opposition' (Italy) models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Polish experience demonstrates, populists can become a genuine challenge for democracy. This raises the question of whether and how democracy can defend itself when a majority populist government holds power. Data on initiatives opposing the Law and Justice government between 2015 and 2020 show that a 'pincer movement' of opposition emerged. It involved a combination of initiatives from international and domestic actors, including civil society and EU actors. Yet we do not know much about how these actors interact to put pressure on populists in power. By using the concept of Europeanisation and social movement theories, we analyse how and why non-governmental organisations reoriented their opposition to the rule of law crisis in Poland at the European level. We analyse NGOs' strategies and argue that three factors help to explain the Europeanisation of the opposition to populist party: the changing multi-level structure of opportunities and threats, the construction of national and transnational coalition for democratic defence as well as NGOs' common pro-European frame and their commitment to democratic values. The article applies a thematic content analysis based on press articles and semi-structured interviews conducted with Polish NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Italian civil society has used differentiated forms of opposition against the populist parties Lega and Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), more often using intolerant, coercive forms of engagement against Lega than M5S. The article asks why some actors have used intolerant opposition in connection with these populist parties, while others used tolerant forms. Using Bourne's typology, this article presents the results of an empirical analysis on forms of opposition to Lega and M5S between 2013 and 2019. Using framing analysis, it addresses the research question by comparing claim-making in Italian civil society protests against Lega and M5S. I argue that actors mobilizing consensus toward intolerant initiatives justify coercion as a defensive tool to oppose an illegitimate, threatening antagonist. Conversely, actors adopting tolerant forms of opposition do not delegitimize their antagonist nor consider coercion an available tool for protest. The article examines four case studies: the 2014 exclusion of M5S representatives from Tor Sapienza, the 2015‒2017 Mai con Salvini movement, the 2019 anti-vaccination protests opposing Grillo, and the 2019 Sardine movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proverbs is among the terms that researchers disagree on both defining and determining its examples, to the extent that some believe that it can never be defined. Due to these ambiguities, some have mixed it with other realms such as irony and allegorical metaphor. It seems that the researches in this field have not sought a systematic and well-founded framework for all kinds of parables. Researchers in linguistics and literature in the 20th century tried to extract general rules for both and present them under the title of "Grammar" considering the similarities of types and literary works, analyzing their structure, and defining different types in the form of a few simple forms. One of these forms is proverb the “grammar” of which can be obtained by analyzing its structure and extracting its components, and by putting them together. It seems that one of these basic components, which can be seen in different forms in proverbs, is opposition. In this research, while categorizing and criticizing the definitions of proverb, examining the types of oppositions in philosophy and semantics, about a thousand Persian and Chinese proverbs have been classified with a descriptive-analytical method. The result of the research shows that in every proverb we are dealing with some kind of opposition, but the frequency of opposition is different, so that types of connotational opposition and complementary opposition are the most frequent, and lexical opposition is placed in the next category, although we have proverbs that have several types of opposites. Also, in the current research, there was no example of the symmetrical opposition or gradable opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs survey data to characterize a new kind of strategic voting behavior in post-2012 Japan. Since the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) returned to power in 2012, it has been winning every national election, while the opposition camp has been fragmented into many parties, none of which has been seen as a viable contender to the LDP. In this situation in which the LDP will certainly win, there are citizens who vote for an opposition party, especially the largest one, though they do not believe it is capable of governing the country. Their concern is the balance of seats among the parties. These strategic voters tend to be older, more educated, richer, and more attentive to political news than those who genuinely support the opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a forthcoming project on the episcopalian spiritual vocation in the period c.1640 to 1662. It explains the rationale for the project and its place within the historiography. The article argues that seventeenth-century clergy may have conceptualised spiritual vocation in the light of the bishop's charge in the ordinal, and that the actions and words of episcopalian clerics after 1646 frequently referenced its command 'to teach, to premonish, to feed, and provide for the Lords family, and to seek for Christs sheep that be dispersed abroad.' The project seeks to explore that argument and to examine how clergy and laity responded to the loss of episcopalian vocation during the Interregnum. The article briefly discusses potential printed and manuscript sources to be examined, as well as possible approaches to be taken in relation to the evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-objective optimization (MOO) issues that are encountered in the realm of real engineering applications are characterized by the curse of economically or computationally expensive objectives, which can strike insufficient performance evaluations for optimization methods to converge to Pareto optimal front (POF). To address these concerns, this paper develops a guided multi-objective golden jackal optimization (MOGJO) to promote the coverage and convergence capabilities toward the true POF while solving MOO issues. MOGJO embeds four reproduction stages during the seeking process. Firstly, the population of golden jackals is initialized according to the operational search space and then the updating process is performed. Secondly, an opposition-based learning scheme is adopted to improve the coverage of the Pareto optimal solutions. Thirdly, an elite-based guiding strategy is incorporated to guide the leader golden jackal toward the promising areas within the search space and then promote the convergence propensity. Finally, the crowding distance is also integrated to provide a better compromise among the diversity and convergence of the searched POF. To evaluate the MOGJO's performance, it is analyzed against sixteen frequently utilized unconstrained MOO issues, five complex constrained problems, four constrained engineering designs, and real dynamic economic-emission power dispatch (DEEPD) problem. The experimental results are performed using the generational distance (GD), hypervolume (HV), spacing (SP) metrics to validate the efficacy of the proposed methods, which affirms the progressive and competitive performance compared to thirteen state-of-the-art methods. Finally, the results of the Wilcoxon rank sum test with reference to GD and HV exhibited that the proposed algorithm is significantly better than the compared methods, with a 95% significance level. Furthermore, the results of the nonparametric Friedman test were performed to detect the significant of average ranking among the compared algorithm, where the results confirmed that the proposed MOGJO outperforms the best algorithm among thirteen state-of-the-art algorithms by an average rank of Friedman test greater than 41% while outperforming the worst one, MOALO, by 84% for ZDT and DTLZ1 suits. Additionally, the proposed algorithm saved the overall energy cost and total emission of the DEEPD problem by 1.89%, and 1.48%, respectively, compared with the best existing results and thus, it is commended to adopt for new applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]