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This article combines an understanding of British politics grounded in the Asymmetric Power Model with intersectionality to comprehend Muslim women's experiences in the Labour Party. This paper shows that an intersectional framework and an analysis of political parties' relationships with their members are essential to understanding the enduring inequalities of the British political system. Muslim women are under-represented in our political system; they face multiple forms of discrimination (racism and sexism). Some Muslim men have and use their relative power over Muslim women through their use of biraderi-politicking, and Muslim women do not trust the Labour Party to support them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK is characterised by spatial inequality between and within regions, alongside an over-centralised asymmetric model of governance. In England especially, these features are stark, and throughout the last decade, politicians have responded by forging a distinctive programme of English devolution focused on city-regions. In this article, we analyse the core drivers of the English devolution agenda to understand its impact on the future trajectory of British politics. We identify the predominance of a narrow economic vision of devolution that systematically negates other agendas. The result is a failure to address the trade-offs inherent in the devolution process, alongside an inadequate engagement with the growing demand for democratic revitalisation. In the long-term, we argue that the empowerment of the largest cities in England and the relative neglect of non-urban areas will exacerbate power asymmetries within the UK political system in both centre-periphery and centre-local relations, a phenomenon we term 'political spatial inequality'. There is a risk of resurgent 'territorially based populism' stemming from this uneven political geography which has the potential to exacerbate political instability and significantly reshape UK politics in the wake of Brexit. English devolution is a prescient example of how policy 'solutions' can in turn create new problems that pose major challenges for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political discontent, frequently mirrored in voting patterns, extends beyond ballot votes. By focusing on Valparaiso, Chile, we introduce a more comprehensive measure, external political efficacy (EPE), capturing a sense of abandonment and gauging public sentiment towards the political system's responsiveness to their needs. Our analysis addresses individual and area-level factors underpinning individual variations in EPE. The evidence suggests that long-term territorial socio-economic disadvantage, rather than low-paid employment, is significantly related to individual discontent, highlighting lowered beliefs in system responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What drives refugee movements? Focusing on host countries' domestic political institutions, we argue that refugee entry is determined by the political regimes that shape the incentives of both host governments and displaced persons. Specifically, we theorize that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between political regimes and the volume of refugee entries. When the host country is autocratic, refugee volume becomes smaller due to displaced persons' unwillingness to risk the high uncertainty of life under such regimes, and when the host country is democratic, refugee volume is similarly curbed due to democratic constraints on the host government. Consequently, a majority of refugees are clustered into anocratic regimes. Using a global dataset, a series of statistical analyses found strong evidence in support of our theoretical expectations regarding not only the hypothesized correlation between regime type and refugee movements but also the preferences of host governments and displaced persons that we theorize underlie this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on the public opinion mechanism of the democratic peace have demonstrated experimentally that democratic citizens are averse to attacking other democracies. The presence of rivalry, however, has long been recognized as one of the important factors contributing to either initiation or recurrence of international conflict. Despite such importance, our understanding remains limited as to how rivalry affects public opinion, particularly in the context of the democratic peace. In this article, we argue that democratic publics' perception of rivalry weakens the effect of regime type. We expect democratic publics to be less reluctant in terms of fighting other rival democracies. Using an original survey experiment in South Korea, we demonstrate that the South Korean public, similar to those of western democracies, is reluctant to use force against non rival democracies, but less so against rival democracies. Our findings suggest that the scope of the democratic peace should be qualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the transformation of the early U.S. republic into an empire, questioning not how a republic could be an empire, but why it would be structured as one. It argues that extending republican governance was a strategic choice to maintain control over diverse territories and peoples, particularly addressing the challenges posed by white settlers in the West. The Northwest Ordinance was crucial in this effort, imposing temporary, non-democratic rule to shape these territories into a unified republican empire. By framing republican principles as universal, the U.S. policy makers aimed to create a homogeneous political structure, excluding diverse cultural and political forms from full participation in the union.

The rich literature on election trust predominantly uses domestic determinants as explanatory factors. But given the international nature of the autocratization wave, can an autocratization event across borders erode election trust? This article argues that an authoritarian's electoral success in a neighboring country can shatter democratic norms and demonstrate the viability of authoritarians. This autocratization event abroad can thus reduce citizens' principled support for democracy and its political system. Consequently, citizens across borders are less likely to see democratic elections as the "only game in town" and they have less trust in elections. To test this idea, I study the spillover effects of the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, in which an authoritarian candidate won decisively. Using the AmericasBarometer in Colombia that was launched throughout this election, I find that the election trust of Colombian citizens erodes after Jair Bolsonaro's electoral success. To probe into the mechanism, I uncover that his electoral victory leads Colombian citizens to be less supportive of the domestic political system and reduces their principled support for democracy. The causal mediation analysis demonstrates that these two variables mediate the effect of the authoritarian's electoral success on election trust. These findings on autocratization spillover effects illustrate the importance of external autocratization events in the study of election trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how trust in traditional and social media correlate with misperceptions of electoral integrity. Relying on insights from political communication research on exposure to misinformation and selective exposure mechanisms, as well as insights on the different roles of traditional and social media in different regime types, we argue that misperceptions of election integrity are likely driven in large part by the interplay between the trust people have in different media sources and the context (i.e. the level of press freedom) in which the elections take place. Using data from a survey conducted in 25 countries across the world, we find that trust in information from traditional media decreases misperceptions, while trust in information from social media increases misperceptions. However, both these effects are smaller when press freedom is restricted. In countries with low levels of press freedom, trust in social media is even associated with lower levels of misperceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that economic inequality reduces political trust after the public recognizes the inequality and perceives it as a failure of the political system in Western democracies. This study challenges this presumed "output evaluation model" (OEM) both theoretically and empirically. We provide an alternative mediator evaluation model (MEM) contending that objective inequality affects political trust through government-performance mediators, without requiring accurate public perception of inequality or specific regime types. With nationwide economic inequality and public opinion data from China, we examined both the OEM implication and four MEM mechanisms through impartial governance, responsiveness, judicial fairness, and anti-corruption efforts. Findings indicate that the mediating mechanisms, rather than direct inequality, shape political trust, with robust evidence even after addressing endogeneity. This study broadens the understanding of the intricate relationship between systemic conditions and individual perceptions, offering significant insights into the dynamics of trust in political institutions in a general sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the relationship between geopolitics and global economic governance from an international relations perspective, laying stress on the long-term changes that have taken place in the character and dynamics of modern global international society. First, it unpacks what is involved in talk about the 'the return of geopolitics', arguing that the international political system needs to be understood in its own right and according to its distinctive logics and dynamics, separate from those of modern capitalism. The second section shifts the focus from the modern international to the modern global, arguing that the 'we' now involved in both geopolitics and global economic governance has changed in fundamental ways and that the diffusion of power and agency and the revolt against Western dominance are far broader than the rise of China. The final section looks at future pathways: the unlikely possibility of the restoration of US hegemony; the case for the primacy of political order over global governance and for refocusing attention on the primary or foundational institutions on which all more elaborate forms of global governance must depend; and the identification of some of the most important institutional pinch-points where geopolitics and global economic governance intersect and need to be managed, including sanctions, security-related trade measures, and industrial strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most prominent conceptualization of federalism is as a political organization combining "self-rule" with "shared rule". The abstractness that makes this formula so attractive has, however, opened the door to misinterpretation and, in turn, encouraged misconceptions about the essential nature of federalism. "Shared rule" has been misinterpreted as meaning participation of the constituent units in central-government decision-making, or co-determination. This confuses common aspects of federal design, such as bicameralism, or important elements of federal practice, such as intergovernmental relations, with the essential or defining features of a federal system. The analysis here clarifies the meaning of shared rule and confirms that the existence of two constitutionally guaranteed orders of government, each enjoying a direct relationship with the people and exercising meaningful powers, is both necessary and sufficient for a political system to be characterized as a federation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes the 2021 military coup in Myanmar and its violent aftermath as a starting point for analysing the dominant lens through which western observers commonly narrate the country's politics as a struggle for democracy. It shows how focusing on questions of the political system is insufficient for explaining political processes and conflict dynamics, and how it risks sanitizing the country's past and presence of nationalism, ethnic conflict and genocide. A postcolonial reading suggests that finding solutions to conflict and authoritarianism in Myanmar demands questioning the role of the modern nation-state itself. This analysis contributes to recent research which has found that Conflict and Peace Studies develops theories from some conflicts over others, reflecting how western interests shape academic choices in a field that aims to inform policy and practice worldwide. This article contributes to this debate on knowledge production by arguing that this selectivity bias is not simply a function of general western interest (or lack thereof). It is also linked to the frames that govern our interest in and understanding of countries and regions worldwide. Studying 'forgotten conflicts' in the global South not only necessitates a turn to specialist literature, but also demands moving beyond Eurocentric frames of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a very lucid account, Efrén Pérez and Margit Tavits's Voicing Politics: How Language Shapes Public Opinion reports empirical studies demonstrating that language is an important foundation in nation-building. Their research makes excellent use the considerable percentage of Estonians who are proficient in Estonian and Russian, prominent languages spoken in Estonia; the two languages differ in how they characterize gender, how they characterize the future, and how they characterize ethnicity. Pérez and Tavits make use of experiments and survey modes of investigation. And across both modes and across many opinions, they find repeated, hence reliable, and modest "nudges" due to the language bilingual speakers are randomly assigned to use. I expand the focus to consider how language is but one of the important means by which the human species is able to generate very different social forms. Some societies—or better, polities—are more rigid, reliant on past practices to survive; some are more fluid and open to new possibilities. Each has proven vulnerable. I argue that the diversity of sociability enhances the likelihood of the survival of the species by having some better able to address the challenges of the moment—a better strategy than a fixed single solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Archbishop Wulfstan's Institutes of Polity and the different versions of the text that exist. The author challenges Karl Jost's theory that there are two distinct versions of the text, arguing instead that the main issue is not when but why each version was written. The author suggests that Wulfstan and his editors were more interested in adapting texts to their immediate needs rather than creating a final version. The article also explores the modular structure of Wulfstan's works, where text fragments could be repurposed and repositioned as needed. The author concludes by proposing to refer to the different versions of Polity based on the manuscripts in which they are contained, highlighting the highly modular nature of the work. [Extracted from the article]

While studies have investigated why states contribute personnel to peacekeeping operations, little consideration has been given to how domestic political factors influence state contributions. We argue that changes in executive power that involve a shift in the domestic source of leadership support cause fluctuations in troop deployments, leading to inconsistent contribution behavior. However, we argue that this effect is attenuated in more democratic states since greater overlaps in the preferences of domestic groups are present and political institutions exist to constrain major policy shifts. Analysis of state troop commitments to UN peacekeeping from 1991 to 2018 supports this argument. This research highlights the often overlooked role of domestic policy processes in peacekeeping contributions while moving beyond considering why some states contribute relatively more personnel to address variation within countries. The findings indicate that while democracies typically contribute fewer peacekeepers, they tend to be more consistent contributors in the face of leadership turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Big Lie' in American politics has sparked intense concern about the erosion of public confidence in the integrity of US elections—raising questions about the legitimacy of the authorities, institutions, and principles of democratic governance. Cynicism generated from misinformation about trustworthy elections has attracted a growing body of individual-level social-psychological research in America and Europe. Another common problem found around the world, however, which has received far less attention, concerns credulous citizens who express considerable faith and confidence in flawed contests. This study theorises that at macro-level, the accuracy of any public judgments about trustworthy elections is likely to be mediated by the information environment in open and closed societies, as well as by the type of regime. To understand these issues, Part I summarises the conceptual and theoretical argument about trust and trustworthiness. Part II describes the sources of evidence. To apply the theory, data on public opinion is drawn from around 85 societies around the globe included in Waves 6 and 7 of the World Values Survey (2010–2022), with measures of electoral trust and subjective perceptions of electoral integrity among ordinary citizens. Institutional electoral performance indices are drawn from the Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem 12.0). Part III analyses how far these independent estimates match public judgments of the trustworthiness of elections in each country – and how far such relationships are conditioned by the type of information society as well as by the type of regime. Part IV highlights the key findings and considers their broader implications for understanding the macro-level conditions for trust and trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Jean-Paul Sartre's literary works, arguing that his dramatic pieces, particularly those written between 1944 and 1946, provide a nuanced and insightful critique of Western patriarchy. It contends that Sartre's plays, such as "Huis clos" and "Les Jeux sont faits," subtly explore how social norms of femininity and masculinity contribute to violence, coercion, and epistemic injustice within a racialized social hierarchy.

Analyses of the 2014 protest in Burkina Faso have predominantly focused on some of the movement's major activists, to the neglect of ordinary citizens. Yet, while citizens' participation in Burkina Faso in 2014 echoed to some extent the agendas of activists, it built on citizens' own political subjectivities. Drawing on original interviews and Afrobarometer survey data, we show that Burkinabè citizens were motivated to protest by unmet expectations of the 'good state', as experienced in their daily existence in the sense of hardship and unequal treatment by the political system. These expectations and aspirations reflected citizens' deeper political beliefs or political subjectivities, as already expressed in years prior to the 2014 political crisis. Overall, the article shows how looking at protest from the bottom-up can shift our understanding of political mobilization and its motives: citizen protest constitutes its own political phenomenon, in Burkina Faso and beyond, and should not be subsumed by analyses largely derived from speaking to major activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-China protests have posed challenges to China's ambition to further expand its political and economic influence globally. How does Beijing respond to anti-China protests? And how do anti-China protests affect Beijing's use of public diplomatic resources? We address these questions by examining the effect of anti-China protests on China's public diplomatic engagement across low- and middle-income countries in Asia. We argue that anti-China protests lead to an increased level of non-financial public diplomatic engagement (e.g. elite visits) as well as financial engagement through foreign aid. We further argue that the effect of anti-China protests on increasing public diplomatic engagement is contingent on regime type. This is because China takes the anti-China message from autocracies more seriously given the higher political costs of participating in public protests in autocracies. Compared to democracies, autocracies are also in a better position to use anti-China protests as a means to signal their political constraints, compelling China to invest more public diplomatic resources for the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On November 30, 1980, the people of Uruguay were called on to vote on a new constitution whose objective was to legalize the military dictatorship that had ruled Uruguay since 1973. The proposed constitution would reestablish elections, political parties and an independent judiciary, but all subject to overrule by the National Security Council (COSENA), the junta of military leaders that acted as the nation's de facto ruling body. Despite the highly repressive political environment in which the plebiscite was held, the citizenry rejected the draft in resounding fashion by a vote of 57% to 43%. Although the Plebiscite of 1980 was certainly a "failure" from the regime's point of view, it is considered a founding moment in Uruguayan history during which the dictatorship was delegitimized and the process of redemocratization triggered, culminating in a democratic transition in 1985. This case illustrates that constitutional failures can be successes in the long term when they launch deeper processes of democratization or constitutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the liberal international order (LIO) has been swift, with challenges from state actors like China and Russia. Gerlinde Groitl's book examines this assault on the LIO, focusing on the choices made by the leaders of these countries. Groitl argues that China's approach is characterized as "constructive" while Russia's is "destructive." China has actively sought to counter and replace international institutions based on Western values, while Russia attacked the post-Cold War settlement with its invasion of Ukraine. Groitl's neo-classical realist model suggests that the survival of political systems, rather than states themselves, drives international strategies. The book concludes that as long as the attractiveness of Western democracies persists, counter-movements will continue to emerge, necessitating a strategy of "neo-containment." [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the issue of state capture in South Africa, which has been a topic of public debate for nearly a decade. The article argues that state capture involves a predatory network that infiltrated public institutions to enrich a criminal group, and it goes beyond blaming former president Jacob Zuma for the actions of the Gupta family. The article also explores government corruption at local and provincial levels, highlighting how factions within the African National Congress (ANC) captured municipalities and provinces for personal gain. It further examines the national manifestation of state capture and its socio-economic impact, as well as the influence of multinational arms corporations on South African procurement policies. The article concludes by acknowledging the complexity of the issue and the need for further comparative analysis. [Extracted from the article]

This article proposes a micro-founded model of countries' diversification trajectories in the product space. We argue that the type of technological regime under which countries operate conditions their export performance and diversification trajectories. In particular, repeated simulations show that countries with firms operating under an entrepreneurial regime expand their export basket faster when most other countries are characterized by a routinized regime. Simulations also show that catching-up trajectories in the product space are less likely when all countries operate under the same technological regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do diasporas influence the foreign policy of liberal democratic states? Few studies have sought to conceptualize how diasporas affect strategic bilateral relations between states. We argue that these non-state actors are an increasingly important factor in western liberal democratic societies, which challenge traditional theories of foreign policy. To explore when and how the transnational societal ties and interests of diaspora groups affect foreign and security relations between states, we develop a triadic analytical model of state–diaspora interactions and specify key contextual factors. To illustrate the dynamics at play, we analyse the influence of the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden on Turkish–Swedish bilateral relations in the wake of Sweden's decision to apply for full NATO membership. Our case-study builds on semi-structured interviews as well as news media sources, speeches and official documents. The study shows that the Kurdish diaspora demonstrates an independent role and an ability to shape the policy process due to the permeability of the political system. As a result, the policy-process is becoming more domesticated, thereby constraining the role of the executive. The article contributes important insights to policy-makers and diplomats on what impact transnational state–society relations can have on foreign policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is developmentalism as an economic school aimed at the industrialisation of peripheral nations? Based on a reading of key authors from both the 'American System of political economy' of the 19th century and the Latin American structuralist and dependency schools of the 20th century, this article suggests that the answer lies, not in an economic, but in a political dimension: to ensure the material basis for national freedom. To sustain this hypothesis, the article argues that there is a common implicit conception of freedom shared by Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey and Friedrich List, on the side of the American school, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Raúl Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Osvaldo Sunkel, from the Latin American school. This conception is heir to the idea of Machiavelli's Free State, its core is the notion of liberty as non-dependency and collective autonomy and identifies in industrialisation the way for a periphery to be able to live without depending on the arbitrary will of foreign powers. This definition differs from both the liberal and capability conceptions of freedom and allows for the identification of forms of domination that occur between nations and through the global market that requires the peripheries to erect autonomous collective productive capabilities for their overcoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eutrophic lakes often exhibit two alternative types: macrophytes-dominated (MD) and phytoplankton-dominated (PD). However, the nature of bacterial community types that whether the transition from the MD to the PD types occurs in a gradual or abrupt manner remains hotly debated. Further, the theoretical recognition that stability regulates the transition of bacterial community types remains qualitative. To address these issues, we divided the transition of bacterial communities along a trophic gradient into 12 successional stages, ranging from the MD to the PD types. Results showed that 12 states were clustered into three distinct regimes: MD type, intermediate transitional type and PD type. Bacterial communities were not different between consecutive stages, suggesting that the transition of alternative types occurs in a continuous gradient. At the same time, the stability of bacterial communities was significantly lower in the intermediate type than in the MD or PD types, highlighting that the collapse and re-establishment of community stability regulate the transition. Further, our results showed that the high complexity of taxon interactions and strong stochastic processes disrupt the stability. Ultimately, this study enables deeper insights into understanding the alternative types of microbial communities in the view of community stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does foreign aid improve the image of donors in recipient countries? Studies have found weak overall effects, but also positive correlations that are highly conditional on donor and recipient factors, like program characteristics and regime type. Our statistical and case study analysis of US foreign aid leads to a more skeptical perspective. We assess the impact of foreign aid on public opinion of the United States in twenty recipient countries during the Obama and Trump presidencies, using Pew Research Center survey data. A multi-level longitudinal analysis of individual and country-level variables finds that correlations between aid disbursements and foreign public opinion disappear when controlling for attitudes about the US president. These results are corroborated in crucial case studies of Kenya and Turkey. The findings are important for governments that use aid to influence foreign opinion and for scholarship that considers aid to be a source of soft power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the contours of a "dialogical model" of adjudication arising from the practice of the European Court of Human Rights that is profoundly transforming inherited notions of rights, legal reasoning, legal authority, and the rule of law more generally. The dialogical model is characterized by a form of reasoning that is not self-reliant or autonomous, but internally constituted by the interaction of multiple voices, normative perspectives, and institutional standpoints. What is defined as dialogical, however, is not the inclusion of this or that discrete voice, but the entire process of adjudication, including: how issues are framed; the need to consider cases as a whole; their embeddedness in large swathes of normative magma; the self-reflexive assessment of the Court's position and trajectory; the relational understanding of the Court's authority; and the fact that each and every decision constitutes a notion of democracy that is plural, many-voiced, and inherently in tension. Beyond a mere polyphony of voices, therefore, this is an entirely new paradigm to conceive the Court's task, which differs markedly from the two main paradigms of understanding human rights adjudication, namely the rights-based model and proportionality analysis. After describing the shortcomings of the latter two paradigms fully to account for the Court's practice, the article presents the features of the dialogical model. Ultimately, this is a judgment about the collective self-definition of democratic societies, which necessitates a reassessment of the countermajoritarian difficulty to account for the democracy-constituting role of the Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the relationship between democracy, technology, and globalization. Topics include the democratizing potential of digital technologies, the relationship between democracy and globalization, and the theoretical construct of "political voice." This construct highlights the democratic functions of vertical communications between individuals and public decision-makers, as well as the importance of robust horizontal, transnational exchanges between communities.

Today's world is less stable than the Cold War international system. Why the high expectations for a peaceful world that existed thirty years ago didn't materialize? This article singles out two interrelated trends that stem from mistakes made when it seemed that the humanity, having learned from history, was stepping into a period of the "end of history". However, this end of history mindset forms the very basis on which today's negative tendencies are flourishing. The triumphant West tried not only to unify the whole world under a single leadership but to make it also uniform. Yet, the world is simply too big, complex and diverse to have its rich tapestry flattened into a carpet where only one pattern, be it a Judeo-Christian, Anglo-Saxon, Confucian, Muslim or secular liberal-democratic, dominates. Therefore, after a short unipolar moment, those States that couldn't or didn't want to follow Washington, began to claim their own place under the Sun and the right to go their own way. As long as it is not recognized that there is an intrinsic value not only in bio-diversity or in the acceptance of diverse ways of life within a society, but also in the existence of diverse political systems, economic models and societal arrangements, there will not be even a relative peace in the world. Equally, recognition and acceptance of balance of power in international relations is even more important than the adherence to the principle of separation of powers within States. The second trend is expressed in conflicts between elites and masses, whose grievances are exploited by populists. Moreover, the idea that globalisation would lead, if not to the disappearance of the State, then at least to a considerable shrinking of its role, turned out to be wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theory note argues that international norms, as currently understood by scholars of international relations, can be seen as emergent properties of a complex adaptive system (the international political system). Arising from the microlevel interactions of agents within and across various levels of analysis, they have the potential to become system properties that (a) influence the constitution, relationships, and behavior of agents within that system and (b) are not analytically reducible to the sum of the interactions between those agents. They also exhibit evolutionary dynamics common to complex, rather than merely complicated, systems. Thinking of norms in this manner helps point norms scholars toward particular spaces and methodologies of research. After a brief resume of complexity theory in IR, the note proceeds with an introduction to complex systems theory. It then explores the conceptual nexus between norms theory and complexity. It finishes by suggesting the ways in which understanding norms as complex emergent phenomena might influence norms research more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue, we seek explanations for international- and local-level variations in policy approaches to 'irregularized humanitarian migrants', who left their country of citizenship in hopes of finding protection abroad but do not, or no longer, hold a permanent legal status. We shed light on different policy responses and experiences across Europe, Africa, and the wider Middle East by drawing on a wide array of political systems and migration patterns and different groups of humanitarian migrants. We explore to what extent the outcomes of various policies and practices can be regarded as better and more durable solutions, defined as increasingly taking into account the interests of migrants and the communities they live in. Ultimately, we stress the importance of gaining deeper and more comprehensive understandings of the historically informed context-specific circumstances that irregularized humanitarian migrants find themselves in, as well as the patterns that we see emerging in the comparison of these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic backsliding, or the debilitation of democracy by those elected to protect it, looms large in the current debate about the global crisis of democracy, including Sara Wallace Goodman's Citizenship in Hard Times: How Ordinary People Respond to Democratic Threat. In keeping with the prevailing view of backsliding as a political phenomenon rooted in extreme partisanship and polarization, Goodman is concerned with strengthening the citizenry's commitment to democratic norms and practices—in other words, boosting democratic citizenship. Placing the roots of backsliding in the political system itself, this essay argues for pushing the debate about backsliding beyond citizen solutions and toward institutional remedies, especially accountability against those who harm democracy and modernizing the democratic infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia represents a contrasting type of mobilization regime, in which individual candidates organize their own I ad hoc campaign teams i , through which they distribute micro-level benefits during electoral campaign periods using mainly private (not public) resources. As the authors illustrate with broker-survey data and anecdotes, distinguishing I local machine i regimes from I ad hoc team i regimes particularly enriches the comparative research by departing from the dichotomy of relational and single-shot clientelism. [Extracted from the article]

Using a large panel of more than 140,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), this study examines SOEs' investment behavior surrounding 82 national elections in 25 European countries between 2001 and 2015. We find that SOEs increase their corporate investment by about 29% of the sample average during national election years. This effect is more pronounced in fixed timing and closely contested elections. The effect is also stronger in countries with low institutional quality, more centralized political systems, and state-controlled banking systems. In contrast, we find the matched non-SOEs significantly decrease their corporate investment during national election years. (JEL G18, G30, G32, E22) Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today it is rare to find a political scientist who rejects that "ideas matter"—at least in the abstract. But if ideationally inclined theorists have gained seats at the disciplinary table, their approaches still occupy disadvantaged positions. Ideational theories typically must confront nonideational alternatives to achieve salient publication, but nonideational theorists routinely design and publish research without considering ideational alternatives. This is even true on topics where all scholars seem to agree a priori on the importance of ideas. Erratic attention to ideas appears to be justified by widespread views that even if ideas plausibly "matter," they are too intractable to address in concrete research: too difficult to measure empirically, to relate in explanatory ways to action, or to connect to goals of theoretical generalization. This article first highlights major problems with these views in the abstract, and then illustrates them in the example of early Latin American constitutional design. On this terrain, there are good reasons to think that an ideational account connects in more concrete ways to available evidence than leading nonideational hypotheses about constitutional choice. Political science should move toward better balanced debates between plausible explanations, upgrading the rigor of the discipline overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on policy coordination between government agencies reveals little about how coordination is managed in centralized political systems. This paper, therefore, presents a dynamic and quantitative analysis of policy coordination in China based on the science and technology (S&T) policy documents issued by China's central government agencies in the period 1978–2019. From a series of snapshots depicting inter-agency policy development in five historical stages over this timeframe, we find that (1) policy coordination has developed steadily and has mainly occurred to interpret macro strategies and put in place more detailed implementation measures. (2) Ministries under the purview of the State Council have played a leading role in policy coordination, while other types of agencies have cooperated in more supporting roles. (3) Coordination efforts have mainly focused on inclusive and national demand-oriented themes, such as high-tech industrialization, rural S&T, and social development. This research offers a panoramic view of policy coordination trajectories and mechanisms in centralized political systems. As such, it adds to the analysis methods available for quantitatively studying policy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with two intrinsically linked issues: the endogeneity of the demand regime and the personal distribution impact on aggregate demand. By assuming that saving is a function of personal rather than functional income distribution, an increase of the labour share is effective in boosting consumption and aggregate demand, not per se, but only as long as it reduces personal inequality. As the labour share increases, both the demand regime type—the sign of the slope of the demand schedule—and its strength—the size of the slope of the demand schedule - can endogenously change. Concerning the former, there can be a threshold value for the wage share beyond which there is a shift from wage-led to profit-led demand. The analysis shows that, unlike most Kaleckian models, profit inequality is just as important as wage inequality in determining the demand regime type and its strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article delves into recent scholarship on the concept of meritocracy, particularly focusing on the surge of anti-meritocratic discussions among Western philosophers over the last five years. This surge is attributed to events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, leading to suspicions about the fairness of institutions in the UK and USA.

The purpose of the study is to determine the main forms of behavior of the participants of the political process in the information space of Ukraine and progressive informative countries of the world in order to achieve political goals and decisions that have a constructive or destructive function in the political system, considering social, cultural, legal, and ideological factors that affect interaction of participants during the confrontation of political processes in cyberspace. The subject of the study is the concept of modern political confrontation in cyberspace. Through the lens of a combination of international and national approaches to the development of effective ways of improvement for the further segmental possibility of use in the field of cybersecurity and cyber protection, the theoretical and practical underpinnings of political conflict in Ukraine were established. The protection of an individual's and a citizen's rights and freedoms was used in an approach that calls for the implementation of political conflict within the context of political interaction. The correlation of global cybersecurity in the context of the dichotomy "democratic political regime—non-democratic political regime" is revealed. It is proposed to borrow the experience of individual states regarding coordination of the increase of scientific potential and human resources in the field of the IT industry in order to achieve the highest level in the protection of the state's critical infrastructure; improvement of the political system organization in the direction of the formation of an institutional subsystem at the modern informational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all ceasefires experience violations, yet we know little about how such violations relate to the military and political aspirations of conflict parties. This article builds on ceasefire and bargaining literature to understand why ceasefire violations occur and how they relate to strategic decision-making processes. Building on these theoretical insights, it proposes a typology of four main types of ceasefire violations: strategic violations serve to strengthen the military advantage of a conflict party, retaliatory violations seek to ensure ceasefire compliance, spoiling violations aim to undermine the efforts of leaders, and localized violations are delinked from strategic decision-making processes. A case study of a major ceasefire violation in the Bangsamoro peace process illustrates how we may use informal Bayesian reasoning to empirically distinguish between these different types of violations. Treating ceasefire violations as part of wider military and political processes enables us to better understand the causal conditions under which ceasefire violations occur and identify strategic interests of different actors to carry out these violations. This helps explain the varied responses to ceasefire violations and sharpens our understanding of how to address them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on what are termed "practical interpretations"—that is, constitutional interpretations given by the executive or legislative branch. It does so principally in relation to constitutional conventions in Westminster-type systems, which are normally not subject to judicial review. The argument is that these practical interpretations are of great significance, and more attention needs to be paid to them and to understanding how they are made, as they are at least equally important as judicial interpretations, in spite of expanding judicial review of conventions. In order to establish how nonjudicial interpretation operates, the discussion goes beyond the United Kingdom to consider how certain conventions, when transplanted elsewhere, receive very different interpretations. In the course of making this argument, the article explores the constitutional importance of practical interpretation, examining in the process the extent of judicial review of conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the symposium on pluralizing constitutional interpretation was to reflect upon the multiple sites at which interpretative activities take place, their real-world significance, and the methodological implications of expanding our scholarly lens beyond court rulings and beyond legal materials for a more complete understanding of how constitutions are engaged with. In this introductory article, we propose at least three directions for diversification. The first is the pluralization of actors beyond the courts, attention being drawn to the diverse range of institutions, entities, and individuals involved in giving meaning to the constitution. The second is methodological and disciplinary in nature; it addresses the manner in which this plurality of interpreters relates to nonlegal methods and sources, as compared to classic legal methods and sources. The third is about orientation and entails a shift from the study of doctrines, precedents, and conceptional analysis to a more dynamic approach to interpretation, as defined by intersecting viewpoints, coinciding sites of interpretation, and a shifting of institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Taken together, these directions hold out the promise of arriving at a more complete understanding of how constitutional law is engaged with as a lived reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to better understand the evolution and institutional roots of Hong Kong's growing economic inequality and political cleavages. By combining multiple sources of data (household surveys, fiscal data, wealth rankings, national accounts) and methodological innovations, two main findings are obtained. First, he evidence suggests a very large rise in income and wealth inequality in Hong Kong over the last four decades. Second, based on the latest opinion poll data, business elites, who carry disproportionate weight in Hong Kong's Legislative Council, are found to be more likely to vote for the pro-establishment camp (presumably to ensure that policies are passed that protect their political and economic interests). This paper argues that the unique alliance of government and business elites in a partially democratic political system is the plausible institutional root of Hong Kong's rising inequality and political cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on an early Chinese conception of genealogical argumentation in the late Warring States text Han Feizi and a possible response it has to the problem of genealogical self-defeat as identified by Amia Srinivasan (2015) —i.e. the genealogist cannot seem to support their argument with premises their interlocutor or they themselves can accept, given their own argument. The paper offers a reading of Han Fei's genealogical method that traces back to the meditative practice of an earlier Daoist text the Zhuangzi and its communicative strategy, providing a conception of genealogy aimed at undoing fixations on political systems in order to bring about a more adaptive state—specifically, genealogy that does not require epistemological commitment to its premises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unidimensional measures of democracy fail to account for the complex and varied nature of political systems. This article disaggregates the concept of democracy and proposes a multidimensional conceptualization to account for this variation in institutional configurations. Three theoretically informed dimensions are featured: participation, electoral contestation, and constraints on the executive. The three dimensions constitute a cube covering all regime types, in which we place countries using V-Dem data from 1789 to 2019. This cube of democracy patterns reveals several interesting observations. We trace historical patterns of democratization and discuss how countries across the world have taken different paths at different times. Our conceptualization shows that political systems with a similar score along a unidimensional scale are often quite distinct. In addition, across the globe for 200 years, certain configurations of political institutions rarely occur. Furthermore, our approach reveals interesting patterns of regime convergence and divergence over time. Finally, we show that the typical pathways to democracy have changed since 1789. This multidimensional conceptualization ultimately opens up new avenues for research in which institutional variation and change can be studied in greater detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long debated whether international organizations (IO) matter in international politics. Skeptics argue that power politics determine outcomes while champions see IOs as important, independently shaping outcomes and reshaping the structure of politics. Between these extremes, scholars have made numerous theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding under what conditions IOs make a difference. Yet, the fundamental question remains: when IOs identify a significant problem, can they solve it? We identify an underutilized analytical approach to understanding this broad debate. Specifically, we suggest scholars analyze this question by focusing on an IOs response to given crises to provide internal validity to claims throughout this debate. Furthermore, we encourage scholars to move beyond the oft-cited global or European cases to better incorporate insights from IOs in various parts of the world. Here, we explore the Southern African Development Community's attempt to coordinate member states' maritime strategy to solve the emergent piracy problem caused by the Somali civil war. In identifying these new directions for research, we demonstrate that IOs, even under difficult circumstances, are effective actors in international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some near crises tip over into full-blown crisis and others do not? This paper considers existing scholarship and identifies four key barriers to using quantitative analysis for tipping-point analyses: strategic indeterminacy; the incentives for conflict parties to avoid inefficiencies; the paucity of cases; and the availability of quality data. Due to these challenges, many do not perform well as immediate causes for crisis escalation. We also argue and demonstrate through two quantitative models of crisis escalation that some variables, particularly related to domestic politics, can do well in explaining why some disputes tip into crisis and others do not. As we illustrate with reference to the 1995–1996 Third Taiwan Straits Crisis, qualitative approaches that analyze the processes by which leaders and foreign policy institutions make decisions add needed explanatory power to purely quantitative models of the potential for near crises to tip into crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on the planet-dominated regime of Type II migration showed that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, massive planets can migrate outwards. Using 'fixed-planet' simulations, these studies found a correlation between the sign of the torques acting on the planet and the parameter K ′ (which describes the depth of the gap carved by the planet in the disc). We perform 'live-planet' simulations exploring a range of K ′ and disc mass values to test and extend these results. The excitation of planet eccentricity in live-planet simulations breaks the direct dependence of migration rate (rate of change of semimajor axis) on the torques imposed, an effect that 'fixed-planet' simulations cannot treat. By disentangling the contribution to the torque due to the semimajor axis evolution from that due to the eccentricity evolution, we recover the relation between the magnitude and sign of migration and K ′ and argue that this relation may be better expressed in terms of the related gap depth parameter K. We present a toy model in which the sign of planetary migration changes at a limiting value of K , through which we explore planets' migration in viscously evolving discs. The existence of the torque reversal shapes the planetary system's architecture by accumulating planets either at the stalling radius or in a band around it (defined by the interplay between the planet migration and the disc evolution). In either case, planets pile up in the area 1–10 au, disfavouring hot Jupiter formation through Type II migration in the planet-dominated regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that jurists have a vocational duty to progressively develop the law finds its way in international law chiefly via the mission statement of the United Nations' International Law Commission (ILC). Mandated by states to codify and progressively develop international law, the ILC's modern practice has merged these two distinct exercises. The Commission utilizes a common working procedure for the elaboration of both and appears to perceive progressive development as an appurtenance of codification. What is more, progressive development has often been equated by the ILC with lex ferenda propositions and policy considerations. It is little wonder then that the ILC has never attempted to meaningfully analyse this aspect of its mandate. This article examines progressive development from a methodological standpoint and maintains that it is an exercise with self-standing importance. It argues that there are two ways to understand the ILC's mandate to progressively develop the law: either as 'progressive development stricto sensu ' or as 'legislation'. The difference between the two is methodological; 'progressive development stricto sensu ' is elaborated via an inductive methodology and principally justified by legal considerations. On the other side, in the case of 'legislation', provisions are principally justified by policy considerations and, hence, imbued with uncertainty regarding their methodological foundations. The article suggests that 'progressive development stricto sensu ' falls squarely within the ILC's legal mandate, while this will be the case with respect to 'legislation' only when the ILC is conscious of the question it sets out to answer and the requisite methodology that it employs to do so. To this end, the article lays down some basic methodological principles that the ILC should adhere to when engaging with topics of work where political considerations play a significant role in the development of the law. Finally, it calls for a revival of the forgotten discussion regarding the ILC's capacity to develop international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]