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Karim Al-Atassi's book, "Syria the Strength of an Idea: The Constitutional Architectures of its Political Regimes," explores the idea that Syria is not just a geographical space, but an idea that emerged after its separation from the Ottoman empire. The book examines the political systems, constitutions, and laws governing political parties in Syria over the past century. It traces the origins and objectives of twenty-five constitutional texts and highlights the key events and figures that shaped the Syrian state. The book concludes by discussing the impact of external variables on Syria's future and emphasizes the connection between Syria's destiny and the resolution of the Palestinian issue. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Parliaments in Latin America in times of pandemic" analyzes the role of parliaments in the presidential systems of Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic. A comparative analysis of parliaments in different countries of the region is carried out, focusing on their institutional performance and their relationship with governments. The book also examines the impact of the pandemic on the functioning of parliaments and the relationships between the legislative and executive powers. Although it does not include an analysis of the political and electoral behavior of citizens, it is considered that the book will be a solid foundation for future research on the subject. [Extracted from the article]

The book also shows that typical levels of congruence between policy proposals and executive and legislator preferences, based on the authors' simulation exercise, occur approximately 0.4 percent of the time. In their strategy to tackle congruence and responsiveness, Crisp, Olivella, and Rosas posit that the chain of representation should enable tracking politician-to-citizen congruence and policy-to-politician congruence, and that as long as we can observe preferences and policy location over time, it should also enable capturing levels of politician-to-citizen responsiveness and levels of policy-to-politician responsiveness. On a more optimistic note, the findings regarding citizen-to- policy responsiveness in the same chapter suggest a more optimistic scenario: observed levels of responsiveness are typically higher than simulated levels, even if with a broader variation range than expected, given simulation values. [Extracted from the article]

Readers who have been fond of Çarkoglu and Kalaycioglu's previous work on elections will not be disappointed by this study, which could be seen as a compilation and cross-time analysis of the data they have collected over the years for the first five elections of the 21st Century (along with notes from the 2018 election). Before delving into the systematic analysis of the election survey data found in the later chapters, the authors begin the work by establishing a framework to understand Turkish electoral behavior and party dynamics over time. One is able to see how factors like age, gender, left-right placement, and religion cluster around party choices in the different elections and are more or less salient at different times, giving us the more careful nuance needed to explain the contextual dynamics of the election environment. [Extracted from the article]