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China's defense white papers have long been dismissed as lacking substance and offering little useful information on China's real strategic intentions and military capabilities. Nevertheless, since 1998 Beijing has continued to issue defense white papers on a regular two-year frequency. Indeed, in recent years it has accorded greater importance to these documents. This paper argues that China's defense white papers warrant more attention than they have received so far. An examination of the making of the white papers, the functions designated for these documents and their evolving content and structure reveals not only the different nature and purpose of the Chinese white papers compared with their counterparts in Western countries, but also important changes and continuities in China's strategic outlook and its evolving perceptions of the role of the use of force in the context of the country's re-emergence as a major player in international affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical research is challenging when studying informal spaces like urban slums, where extant scholarship is limited, government data are sparse or absent, and populations change rapidly due to eviction, environmental shocks, and the everyday churn of migration. Moreover, written materials and political ephemera generated within slums are rarely preserved in accessible state archives, limiting the usefulness of conventional archival research. In such contexts, the discovery of informal archives—unmapped, non-systematized collections of materials kept by individuals and groups in the spaces under study—can contribute to the reconstruction of local histories. This article draws on 20 months of fieldwork in India’s urban slums to offer insights on the collection and use of informal archival materials. These materials afford an intimate look at how the urban poor organize and make claims on the state. Their analysis, however, involves inferential challenges. Researchers must consider how processes of production, preservation, and provision shape the content of gathered historical materials and thus the inferences that can be drawn from them. Beyond urban slums, informal archives are likely to be useful sources of historical data for a range of studies in comparative politics, especially those that focus on informal institutions and local quotidian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 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.)

In the second I electoral continuity path i , transitions are initiated by stable ruling parties confident of their ability to thrive under democracy. Were these stable ruling parties created by a violent shock and an unsuccessful push toward democracy? For instance, protests, civil society forces, and sanctions can expedite the process of democratization but are more likely to do so after a violent shock or in the presence of a stable ruling party.[2] A structural factor such as economic development reduces the chances of shocks but enhances the probability of democratization if a shock occurs. [Extracted from the article]

Leading to Australia's 2019 Federal election, then-Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, drew attention for posting images of him making family dinners on Facebook. These 'curry night' posts became the subject of media banter as he publicly cultivated his 'daggy-dad' persona. Assuming this behaviour was strategic, questions arise as to why. This paper considers theories of irrational appeals in political communication to interpret this behaviour. In doing so, it clarifies and operationalises 'politics of the gut', a nexus between populist politics and mediated authenticity. This paper tracks authenticity and populist appeals from Australian politicians on Facebook and gauges their efficacy by contrasting randomised and high-engagement samples. Results show these appeals were widespread but differed in configuration between candidates. Furthermore, during the sampled period, authenticity demonstrated increased engagement from users while populist appeals received decreased engagement, offering new perspectives on the efficacy of these communication styles on Facebook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, interest in the topic of the decolonisation of higher education curricula has intensified. A key aspect of attempts to decolonise higher education is the decolonisation of university curricula. This paper explores the question of curricular decolonisation in relation to comparative politics. The paper begins with an overview of debates on curricular decolonisation, proceeding to a discussion of the specific challenges that arise when trying to decolonise comparative politics. I then discuss some changes introduced to a first-year comparative politics course I teach to South African students, detailing my attempts to change the course in the light of debates on decolonising the curriculum. The paper concludes with reflections on some of the shortcomings of the intervention discussed, especially in terms of the persistence of Eurocentric orientations among some of my students and the difficulty in fostering sustained interactive learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid growing academic discourse on teenagers' political rights, this paper argues that the inclusion of teenagers in the decision-making process at the municipal level has positive effects. Based on qualitative and quantitative research on three municipalities in Greece and Sweden, this paper concludes that a level of awareness of the critical issue of climate change leads to a greater propensity for action from municipal councils aimed at restoring the environment. The findings demonstrate that including teenagers in the decision-making process at the local and regional level could lead to a greater focus on forward-thinking policies, particularly in areas concerning young people, such as environmental preservation efforts and democratic rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dos Algarves: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal is the property of Dos Algarves: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal 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.)

Prominent conceptualizations of policy coherence for sustainable development focus primarily on the roles of intra‐governmental policy processes and institutional interactions in shaping coherence between various agendas and policies. These technocratic understandings of coherence overlook the more political drivers of coherence, such as the vested interests or ideologies that may encourage or hinder efforts to achieve coherence. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the comparative politics literature to facilitate a political understanding of policy coherence. It introduces an analytical framework hypothesizing how ideas, institutions, and interests (the three I's) may influence policy coherence at different policy stages. As such, it includes measures of how policy coherence is applied by different actors and institutions, and whose ideas and interests may be served by pursuing or not pursuing coherence. This article provides an example of how the framework can be applied to study policy coherence between two prominent international agendas: Agenda 2030 (incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals) and the Paris Agreement. Overall, the paper argues that the three I's influence policy options and shape the ambition and importance given to different agendas, goals and actors in pursuing or resisting policy coherence. This framework is suited for assessing the political divers of policy coherence through being applied to empirical data at global or national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers on international comparative policy and its economic issues is presented.

New arrangements of power are emerging in response to the turbulence generated by the quest to improve life and render it productive. This paper specifies such arrangements by developing the concept of metabolic politics: an apparatus that shifts from discipline to power regulating material, bodily, and environmental transformations. The dominant function of metabolic politics is to render the transformative capacities of living bodies and the circulatory dynamics of materials into object‐targets of governance. Through a comparative analysis of regulating pollution from industrial poultry units in Britain and India, the paper identifies logics of a metabolic politics and distinguishes these from the biopolitics of populations. Metabolic politics entails interventions targeting a milieu rather than deviant populations; its actions are directed at transformative capacities of bodies in addition to improving their productivity; its modes of governance operates via regulation and not just discipline; and its techniques of operation proceed through modulation instead of enclosure. Metabolic politics is a transversal form of power. It is situated and historically contingent, rather than uniform and universal. As a response to crises generated by the industrialisation and cheapening of life, metabolic politics furnishes vital insights into the administration and governance of the contemporary living and material world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment was prepared for a Special Issue of the Journal of European Public Policy on the construction of the EU's Political Identity in Policy edited by Sabine Saurugger and Mark Thatcher. The ECB described by Jones, on the other hand, is an organization that has at least three policy domains, one of which organizes banks, another that contains member state governments' central banks, and a third that sits to make policy, all of which exist at a supranational level. There is always a mention of EU organizations, sometimes a mention of member state governments, but there is little mention of other stakeholders like traders, lobbying groups, or civil society associations. It is not just the contradiction between the supranational EU and the intergovernmental EU which restricts a more united Europe from happening. [Extracted from the article]

Scholars have demonstrated that deliberation between political actors in states as well as in International Organizations (IOs) matters because it can impact the quality and legitimacy of outcomes. Yet, we do not know much about how deliberation between political actors can be triggered in practice. Drawing on insights from the deliberative turn that has taken place in Comparative Politics as well as insights from International Relations, this paper inquires how different IO institutional features effect the extent of diplomatic deliberation. Unique and novel survey data shows that there is variation between and within IOs. In some IOs, such as the UNFCCC or CoE, diplomats engage in extensive deliberations, while they do so considerably less in others, such as the UNWTO or IWC. Our paper provides novel insights into the inner working of IOs. In general, diplomatic debates are most pronounced in large IOs with high level delegates that often opt for negotiating behind closed doors. In addition, specific institutional design elements matter in the different stages of an IO policy-cycle, such as procedural rules fostering interaction between diplomats in the negotiation stage or a limited policy scope in the voting stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the development of the political science discipline through the articles published in the Philippine Political Science Journal (PPSJ), the official publication of the Philippine Political Science Association (PPSA), from 2000 to 2019. Following the study of Munck and Snyder on the study of comparative politics and Teehankee on the study of Southeast Asia, this paper surveyed 115 original research articles published by the PPSJ using the metrics of scope, objectives, and methodology. The paper argues that since its first publication in 1974, the PPSJ has become more diverse in terms of topics and areas studied and methodologies employed, particularly within the 20 years covered by this study. It is also argued that the diversified and broader coverage of research and methodology is reflective of the developments in political science in the contemporary Philippines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"African Activists in a Decolonizing World: The Making of an Anticolonial Culture, 1952-1966" by Ismay Milford explores the consolidation of anticolonial thought and action in the post-war period, focusing on activists from four British colonies. The book analyzes various paper objects, such as pamphlets and party newspapers, produced by anti-colonial liberation movements. It also examines the transnational nature of activism, spanning Africa, Asia, and Europe, with a particular focus on East and Central Africa. While the book primarily focuses on paperwork, it provides insights into the broader decolonization movement and the international dimensions of anti-colonialism. [Extracted from the article]

The use of popular culture as a teaching tool is often overlooked in teaching introductory-level political science courses. In recent years, advocacy for the inclusion of popular culture in the classroom has increased due to studies that highlight the benefits of such application in combination with other teaching methods. This paper argues that the incorporation of popular music and cartoons as a combined auxiliary teaching tool is an efficient way to increase students' understanding of theoretical concepts at multiple levels and to encourage them to think unconventionally. Relating political science paradigms and theories to popular culture makes them accessible to a broad spectrum of students and ensures that students become more engaged in the classroom. Students may also be more likely to apply theoretical concepts to real-life events. In this paper, we share our observations of using popular songs and cartoons as supplementary teaching materials and methods to explain theories of international relations and comparative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. 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.)

This paper proves that automatic translation of multilingual newspaper documents deters neither human nor computer classification of political concepts. We show how theory-driven coding of newspaper text can be automated in several languages by monolingual researchers. Supervised machine learning is successfully applied to text in English from British, Spanish, and German sources. The paper has three main findings. First, results from human coding directly in a foreign language do not differ from coding computer-translated text. Second, humans can code translated text as well as they can code untranslated prose in their mother tongue. Third, machine learning based on translated Spanish and German training sets can reproduce human coding as accurately as a system learning from English training sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ganghof's Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarianism advances three main claims: an innovative typology of comparative government, introducing the category of semi-parliamentarianism; an explication of two conceptions of majority rule, simple majoritarianism and complex majoritarianism; and a demonstration that there are viable systems of government embodying the political equality associated with each majoritarian conception. This paper explains these claims and identifies issues discussed in this symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Analecta Política is the property of Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana 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.)

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 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.)

Laboratory experiments are a promising tool for studying how competing institutional arrangements perform and what determines preferences between them. Reliance on enforcement by peers versus formal authorities is a key example. That people incur costs to punish free riders is a well‐documented departure from non‐behavioural game‐theoretic predictions, but how robust is peer punishment to informational problems? We report experimental evidence that reluctance to personally impose punishment when choices are reported unreliably may tip the scales towards rule‐based and algorithmic formal enforcement even when observation by the centre is equally prone to error. We provide new and consonant evidence from treatments in which information quality differs for authority versus peers, and confirmatory patterns in both binary decision and quasi‐continuous decision variants. Since the role of formal authority is assumed by a computer in our experiment, our findings are also relevant to the question of willingness to entrust machines to make morally fraught decisions, a choice increasingly confronting humans in the age of artificial intelligence. This paper is part of the Economica 100 Series. Economica, the LSE "house journal" is now 100 years old. To commemorate this achievement, we are publishing 100 papers by former students, as well as current and former faculty. Thomas Markussen is a Professor of Economics at the University of Copenhagen. He received his MSc in Comparative Politics from the LSE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minimalist, atomistic classical liberal definition of markets is dominant in the global political economy literature, if often implicitly so. But major shifts are occurring in the 21st century, including China's rise, which highlight the deficiencies of this definition and challenge us to develop fresh tools to conceptualize global markets. There are three ways in which China's emergence challenges established market conceptualizations: the continued resilience of China's authoritarian state-led capitalist economic model, China's positioning around notions of power and fairness in the global economy, and China's mixed preferences regarding global markets. The study of China's rise, far from only impressing upon us how different China is, shines a light on dynamics that are prevalent everywhere, yet suffer from a lack of attention. This paper argues that the political economy literature is limiting the development of richer conceptualizations of the market because it operates within three conceptual 'straitjackets': the notion of the pure market as ideal- type, the state-market dichotomy and the notion of a sequential progression towards a market economy. The fact that markets are an underdefined concept deprives us of useful tools for elucidating important questions about markets in the global economy and limits our capacity to evaluate China's impact on global markets. Drawing from diverse literatures, from comparative politics, to classical political economy and economic sociology, this paper develops an institutionally grounded set of tools, including a list of characteristics and a typology, to define, evaluate and compare markets, and inspire others to contribute to the endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the link between the urban network and institutional context has been well established, there has been less work on the effect of shifting political economy on the mechanism of its intercity flows. In this paper, the investment dataset of Chinese publicly listed firms is used to construct corporate‐based urban networks with different ownership structures. Two straightforward but effective comparative analyses are conducted. The first distinguishes between networks formed by state‐controlled and nonstate‐controlled firms, and the second distinguishes between subnetworks formed by central‐ and local‐state power. By surveying the distinctions from the perspectives of state–market relations and central‐local government relations, we argue that the urban network in China is shaped by the varied forms in which the central government, local governments, and the private sector interact. To gain a more proper knowledge of the geographical patterns, this research recommends further field research into enterprise‐based linkages of multiple ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does space matter in our analyses? How can we evaluate diffusion of phenomena or interdependence among units? How biased can our analysis be if we do not consider spatial relationships? All the above questions are critical theoretical and empirical issues for political scientists belonging to several subfields from Electoral Studies to Comparative Politics, and also for International Relations. In this special issue on methods, our paper introduces political scientists to conceptualizing interdependence between units and how to empirically model these interdependencies using spatial regression. First, the paper presents the building blocks of any feature of spatial data (points, polygons, and raster) and the task of georeferencing. Second, the paper discusses what a spatial matrix (W) is, its varieties and the assumptions we make when choosing one. Third, the paper introduces how to investigate spatial clustering through visualizations (e.g. maps) as well as statistical tests (e.g. Moran's index). Fourth and finally, the paper explains how to model spatial relationships that are of substantive interest to some of our research questions. We conclude by inviting researchers to carefully consider space in their analysis and to reflect on the need, or the lack thereof, to use spatial models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Constitution constitutes the 'invisible architecture' of government in Australia. Its provisions govern the structure, functions, and powers of the three arms of government (the legislature, executive and judiciary), as well as the interaction between the States and Territories and the Commonwealth. However, to reform our Constitution required a very convoluted procedure. Only eight of the forty-four referendum proposals that have been put to the Australian public since 1901 have been successful. In this paper we briefly canvass some examples of prominent constitutional debates including Indigenous rights, currently underway in Australian society and compares the methods of change in similar nations such as India, Canada, and the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is perennial debate in comparative politics about electoral institutions, but what characterizes this debate is the lack of consideration for citizens' perspective. In this paper, we report the results of an original survey conducted on representative samples in 15 West European countries (N = 15,414). We implemented an original instrument to elicit respondents' views by asking them to rate "real but blind" electoral outcomes. With this survey instrument, we aimed to elicit principled rather than partisan preferences regarding the kind of electoral outcomes that citizens think is good for democracy. We find that West Europeans do not clearly endorse a majoritarian or proportional vision of democracy. They tend to focus on aspects of the government rather than parliament when they pass a judgment. They want a majority government that has few parties and enjoys wide popular support. Finally, we find only small differences between citizens of different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of smart public governance (SPG) is gaining attention among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners around the world, especially in response to the modernisation of public administration through emerging technologies in both local (smart city) and national (smart government) levels. Spurred by the noticeable lack of understanding of the SPG concept, the paper aims to comprehensively examine the SPG research by considering the characteristic differences between the smart city and smart government concepts. Bibliometric analysis is based on the Scopus database, containing 775 documents published in the last two decades and facilitated by several established and innovative bibliometric approaches. The results reveal the growth of SPG research over time. Despite the smart city concept being the dominant focus in the SPG research, the smart government concept has been becoming more relevant in recent years, as indicated by some prominent documents published in reputable journals like Government Information Quarterly. Moreover, Anglo-Saxon countries are chiefly engaged in SPG research. However, New Zealand and South Korea are identified as countries with a stronger focus on the smart government concept. The results show the smart city concept is connected with several smart-related initiatives (e.g., smart transportation, smart living, smart energy, etc.), while the smart government concept is primarily associated with smart (de)regulation and smart grid. The findings may add to the understanding of the future development of SPG research, on both local and national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the methodological and empirical contributions of the various authors in this special symposium, this concluding reflection acknowledges the important role that informality plays in urban and national politics in the global South, even as it proposes a range of alternative ways, this critical topic could and should be inserted into contemporary scholarship in comparative politics. It begins with a discussion of two decades of research on urbanization and economic globalization, thus introducing a wider set of disciplinary concerns than merely urban servicing into the study of informality, ranging from the transformation of property rights regimes in the context of ascendant neo-liberalization to the recent emergence of more decentralized political structures for claim-making and governance. The essay then suggests that greater historical and contextual specificity in the study of informality, along with the methodological innovations highlighted in the papers, will further help reveal the range of responses to informality seen across the different case studies. Specifically, it proposes that closer attention to divergent urban and national pathways of democratization, attention to institutional variations within and across democratic regimes, political party dynamics at the local and national level, and the existence of urban violence, among other factors, will help explain how and why bureaucrats and elected officials may choose to deal differently with the existence of informality. The essay concludes by arguing that informality should be considered as both a form of governance and a means of enacting citizenship. It thus asks scholars to question the longstanding conceptual dichotomies that permeate much of the literature on informality, including the stark conceptual divide between the formal and informal, and instead to recognize that complex, interactive, and iterative relationships between citizens and the state in the arena of informality are what drive urban servicing and sociopolitical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance, Fichte and Nietzsche might strike us as intellectual contraries. This impression is reinforced by Nietzsche's disparaging remarks about Fichte. The dearth of critical literature comparing the two thinkers also could easily lead us to believe that they are, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to one another. In this paper, however, I argue that their theories of subjectivity are in many respects remarkably similar and worthy of comparison. But I further explain how, despite this convergence, their normative philosophies end up so conspicuously at odds with one another. After examining the resemblance between their denials of the substantial self, I respectively analyse Fichte's and Nietzsche's positive accounts of subjectivity, self-cultivation, and the political preconditions of self-cultivation. I locate the conceptual juncture at which their practical outlooks begin to part ways in their divergent drive psychologies and in their distinct conceptions of conscience. These apparently minor theoretical differences generate a large-scale disagreement regarding the political systems they believe best enable self-cultivation, with Fichte favouring a democratic regime, while Nietzsche opts for a markedly more aristocratic one. I close by sketching a possible way out of this dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since first airing on HBO in 2011, Game of Thrones (GOT) has proven to be a fruitful text for teaching and studying politics. In 2022 the prequal to GOT—House of The Dragon (HOTD) debuted on HBO. This paper conducts discourse analysis on the entire first season with two goals in mind. First, we demonstrate how pop culture is impacted by real world politics by examining the change in gender and racial representation in HOTD compared to GOT and argue that this change was a product of cultural backlash that GOT received and a result of changing political attitudes over the time of both shows airing. Second, we use the show's content as text to teach American and Comparative politics concepts. In the appendix we provide three examples of low, mid, and high-stake assignments that use show content in teaching political science courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empire/imperialism are terms that re‐emerge with patterned frequency. Claims that the Australia United Kingdom and United States agreement is imperial, that an Australian empire exists, or that coloniality continues after the end of formal colonialism are all made without connecting colonialism, settler‐colonialism, coloniality, or sub‐imperialism to the larger whole of which it is a part — empire. At the same time, political science has begun to make claims about empire as a particular type of politics and comparative historical literature has also emerged. This paper argues that empire should a site of inquiry for any decolonial project and elaborates what would be involved methodologically. It engages the question of methodology by comparing different approaches to the study of empire. My argument is that the interpretivist approach is the more methodologically robust principally because it raises a series of unresolvable methodological problems. I argue that study of empire, as a particular form of politics, is not just a social scientific question, it is an ethical normative question. I argue that it is politically necessary for the decolonisation of knowledge to broach the question of empire and its methodological problems. Only when we know the truth about empire, can we confidently contribute to a politics that would be post‐imperial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a descriptive and comparative analysis of the statutes of Brazilian and Portuguese political parties regarding women's political participation. The main objective was to evaluate if and in what way women are included in the statutory guidelines. By means of the document analysis technique, we analyzed the statutes of political parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies in the case of Brazil and the Assembly of the Republic in the case of Portugal. Our research hypothesis is that although the explanatory potential of party ideology has declined as political parties from different positions on the spectrum have started to adopt discourses in favor of women's political participation, left-wing parties remain more inclusive in their texts. We could observe that in both countries, leftist parties remain the main encouragers of women's political participation, at least in their statutory rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of Mcebisi Ndletyana's book The Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990–2019 which was published in 2020 by the Human Sciences Research Council. The review ranges from a discussion of the methodology and concept to a discussion of the major themes. With respect to the concept and methodology, it is argued that a study pithed on an aspect of the polity at a subnational level contributes significantly to the advancement of knowledge in the discipline of politics about the nature of particularly the party system in South Africa. The first of the major themes the review focuses on is the impact of the legacy of the various liberation traditions on the ANC and the implications this had on the emerging political culture of the party in the democratic period. The paper argues that Ndletyana's account demonstrates that some of the bad character traits of the ANC labelled by its leaders as 'new tendencies' were in fact evident right at the formative stage of the party. The second theme adopted here is party-state relations and decay in which the reviewer concurs with the author's central argument that factions had a negative bearing on governance and negatively affected the electoral prospects of the ANC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often claimed that we are living in an age of increasing polarization. Political views, opinions, and worldviews become increasingly irreconcilable (idea-based polarization), while at the same time society appears to be getting fractured in antagonistic, opposing camps (identity-based polarization). However, a closer look at international datasets reveals that these forms of polarization do not affect all democracies to the same extent. Levels of identity-based and idea-based polarization strongly vary across countries. The question then becomes what can explain these diverging levels of polarization. In this paper, we hypothesize that the institutional design of a country impacts polarization, and that consensus democracies would display lower levels of polarization. Based on a quantitative analysis of the Comparative Political Dataset and Varieties of Democracy data in 36 countries over time (2000–2019), our results show that institutions did matter to a great extent, and in the hypothesized direction. Countries with consensus institutions, and more in particular PR electoral systems, multiparty coalitions, and federalism did exhibit lower levels of both issue-based and identity-based polarization, thereby confirming our expectations. Moreover, we found that consensus democracies tend to be better at coping with identity-based polarization, while the effect on idea-based polarization is smaller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Omran for Social Sciences is the property of Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies 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.)

In 2015, Comparative Political Studies embarked on a landmark pilot study in research transparency in the social sciences. The editors issued an open call for submissions of manuscripts that contained no mention of their actual results, incentivizing reviewers to evaluate manuscripts based on their theoretical contributions, research designs, and analysis plans. The three papers in this special issue are the result of this process that began with 19 submissions. In this article, we describe the rationale for this pilot, expressly articulating the practices of preregistration and results-free review. We document the process of carrying out the special issue with a discussion of the three accepted papers, and critically evaluate the role of both preregistration and results-free review. Our main conclusions are that results-free review encourages much greater attention to theory and research design, but that it raises thorny problems about how to anticipate and interpret null findings. We also observe that as currently practiced, results-free review has a particular affinity with experimental and cross-case methodologies. Our lack of submissions from scholars using qualitative or interpretivist research suggests limitations to the widespread use of results-free review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political stability is one of the core concepts in political science, its precise meaning remains ambiguous. This paper draws a distinction between regime stability, signifying the endurance of regime types, and political stability, which refers to the life span of governments. Both of these concepts are positively associated with democratic rule, but this connection can be questioned as democracy can survive in the face of profound political instability. The paper develops these arguments on the basis of a case study of Vanuatu, a Melanesian small island state that is one of the most unlikely democracies in the world. In the face of tremendous socio-cultural fragmentation and political instability, Vanuatu's democracy has remained intact, meaning that this country represents a perplexing combination of extreme political instability coupled with high regime stability. Based on fieldwork mainly consisting of interviews with ni-Vanuatu political elites, the analysis shows that political fragmentation and instability have likely contributed to regime stability in Vanuatu, as they have prevented the concentration of power in the hands of a single group. By highlighting the discrepancy between political and regime stability, this paper provides crucial insights for debates about democracy and stability in countries across the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recently published collection of interviews with “the most prominent scholars in comparative politics since World War II,” Adam Przeworski revealed that his writings from the 1980s on Social Democracy served a political end, that is, to defend it from critics such as Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, and Luxemburg. His co-authored book, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (1986), still a classic in the sub-field, claims that none other than Frederick Engels sanctioned Social Democracy's quintessential stance, the peaceful or parliamentary road to socialism. A close reading of Paper Stones reveals, however, that it misrepresents—sometimes in quite blatant fashion—the views of not only Engels but Marx as well. This involves the omission of contradictory evidence from many places in the Marx-Engels corpus, the same text, the same page or even the next sentence. Przeworski's reinvention of Marx and Engels duplicates what Edward Bernstein did more than a century ago in his quest to revise their views. Paper Stones excludes evidence that challenges its central finding that the reformist outcome for European Social Democracy was inevitable—a claim, therefore, that can only remain hypothetical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Model is constructed to evaluate the performance of hybrid portfolios of GSecs and Corporate Bonds. Historical data is utilized to compute the performance of three hybrid investment portfolios. These are six G-Secs (short, medium and long term) in combination with one Mutual Fund Corporate Bond Scheme, allocated with different weights into each of the three hybrid portfolios. The paper presents risk and return performance of the three portfolios in absolute terms and also against a single government security which may be regarded as a tentative benchmark. Such hybrid debt portfolios may be of interest to various categories of investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of decision-making in public policy may be conceived as three distinct ages of theory building and testing. The first was the classic period of studies of decision-making and rationality; the second was the age of synthesis when theories of decision-making were blended into accounts of agenda setting. The third—which is starting to take shape—is the age of the political economy of public policy, drawing on models and methods that have been applied to the study of international relations and comparative politics, which are increasingly addressing issues in public policy. The paper’s argument offers a challenge to public policy scholars to use theory and approaches from political economy and to integrate them with classic and synthetic approaches. Insights from public policy approaches from the first two ages could also inform the political economy of public policy. The paper contains a review of the development of public policy theory in the 1990s; it provides an account of the recent period as one of relative stability; it then presents work in comparative political economy as examples of research on public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a 'regime effect' that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature's dominant focus on so-called 'Western liberal democracies', however, has left the 'regime effect' largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across political systems strikingly undertheorized. This paper challenges the theoretical usefulness of essentialist, dichotomous categories such as Western/non-Western or democratic/autocratic and calls for a more nuanced theorizing of immigration policy-making. It proposes a two-dimensional classification of immigration policy theories, distinguishing between 'issue-specific' theories that capture immigration policy processes regardless of the political system in place and 'regime-specific' theories whose insights are tied to the characteristics of a political system. The paper also advances the 'illiberal paradox' hypothesis to explain why illiberal, autocratic states may enact liberal immigration policies. This theoretical expansion beyond the 'Western' and 'liberal' bubble is illustrated by an analysis of immigration policy-making in 21st century Morocco and Tunisia. Showing how domestic and international institutions, interests, and ideas shape immigration policy-making in Morocco's monarchy and Tunisia's democratic transition, the paper investigates the broader role of political systems in immigration politics and herewith seeks to contribute to a more general and global theorization of immigration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent is political fragmentation associated with changes in democracy? The article uses the European integration process of ten Central and East European democracies to argue that political fragmentation is distinctly related to changes in democracy, depending on whether it is the government or opposition that is fragmented. Moreover, this association is mitigated by EU conditionality in the integration process. The paper tests the argument through the use of time-series cross-sectional data. The findings illustrate the importance of opposition fragmentation as an essential factor in explaining changes in democracy. In conclusion, the article draws attention to the understudied literature on opposition fragmentation by highlighting the theoretical implications of the findings for comparative politics and European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming the primacy of established patterns of bargaining over the formal ones, in transitional, unstable settings—well-known to the power-sharing systems—informal institutions can emerge as the preponderant rules of interaction. Yet, there is significant negligence in the power-sharing literature that should have been devoted to the informalities embedded in the political systems of divided societies. Filling in this gap, the paper analyses the creation, role and meaning of informal institutions in the consociational model. Using the case study of the Brčko District in Bosnia and Herzegovina and framework offered by Helmke and Levitsky ('Informal institutions and comparative politics: A research agenda', Perspectives on Politics, 4, 724–740, 2004), it claims that the presence of informal-corporate institutions is crucial for the functioning of its consociational system and necessary to accommodate the existing formal-liberal ones. The detailed case study analysis brings conclusions that could extend the current understanding of the power-sharing model and tackle the debate about liberal consociationalism being the preferred version of power sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical background: Participatory budgets (PBs) have become a widely known innovation used to engage citizens in policymaking. Since 2011, citizens in Polish municipalities can decide on how a portion of local budget can be spent. In Germany, PBs originally served the purpose of getting feedback from citizens in the context of fiscal strains. However, since about 2015, German PBs are increasingly taking after the model established in Poland, establishing fixed pools of funds. Does it present a case of between-country convergence in the functionalities of PBs and their quality? So far, such comparative questions remained mostly unanswered in the field of PB-related studies. Purpose of the article: The aim of the paper was to investigate this possibility of convergence in PB-quality by comparing the state of and changes in the quality of PBs with fixed funds between Poland and Germany. To evaluate the quality and scope of functionality of PBs, the amount of planned PB-funds per capita and participation rates (voter turnout levels) were inspected. Two research hypotheses were formulated. The first one stipulates a higher performance level of Polish PBs by the two criteria, across a variety of municipality types. The second hypothesis posits that the differences in the quality of PBs tend to diminish over time, as the latest to innovate launch their first experiments. Research methods: Works on the diffusion of PBs in both countries were reviewed to provide background for the study. Two datasets were constructed containing data on the two measures of PB-quality, the population size, and the status of innovator. The data were first compared graphically. In a later step, statistical methods were applied, including variance analysis for the two dependent variables related to PB-quality at once (MANOVA) and for each of them separately (ANOVA). Results of the study were presented and discussed in the context of interactions between innovators and potential adopters in social networks, as well as political agendas in the two countries of interest. Main findings: Research findings allowed to confirm the research hypotheses. PBs in both countries have been mostly simple innovations of limited quality, but those in Poland tended to perform better, judged by the two chosen criteria. The gap, especially for PB-funds, is closing, but that does not mean that in the course of innovators’ and regulators’ actions a unified innovation model has emerged. PBs in both countries utilize their functionalities in diverse ways, based on specific experiences and traditions in policymaking. Thus, PBs in Poland and Germany have different trajectories of development with fixed pools of funds as the simplistic innovation core that makes them highly adaptable in different policy contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financialization and neoliberal globalization have increased the dependency of peripheral countries on core economies. This paper tracks the neoliberalization processes of Greece and Turkey, two neighbouring countries on the periphery of Europe. By using a comparative political economy method and borrowing from the variegated capitalism literature, it critically investigates how these two Mediterranean countries were affected by the 2008 global financial crisis, their variant responses, and the impacts of those responses within their historical specificities. The development trajectories of these two countries were similar until the 1980s, but diverged thereafter. Before the 2008 financial crisis erupted, both Greece and Turkey had neoliberal trajectories; the process they experienced through the crisis (how they were impacted by the crisis, as well as how they responded) varied; yet, capitalist restructuring deepened in both countries after the crisis. This was achieved through rising authoritarian populism in Turkey and the pressure of international institutions (both the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the European Union [EU]) in Greece. Given that Greece is a member of the EU and Turkey is a longstanding candidate, the variances between Greece and Turkey's neoliberalization processes and the differing impacts the 2008 global financial crisis had on them make studying the contrasts between these countries important and timely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to challenge the interpretations found in Western political philosophy on Oriental or Asian tyranny. The main research questions are: Is tyranny the inevitable fate of non-Western societies? To what extent do these societies tolerate political oppression? To provide initial answers, the paper analyzes certain aspects of tyrannical phenomenon found in some non-Western countries, in Arab, Asian, African, and Latin American contexts. It offers two new interpretive terms: "possible tyranny" and "impossible tyranny." It suggests that each country inevitably has its own share of tyranny in both quantity and quality, for a period of time. However, if this type of tyranny oversteps certain boundaries in a country, that country will likely experience another kind of tyranny: impossible tyranny. The study offers preliminary definitions, an initial justification of these two terms, and suggests many questions for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Disgusted by political institutions, many activists around the world are rejecting normal politics in favor of hands-on, tangible local action. This looks similar all over the world, including in the two countries on which the paper focuses, Russia and the United States. Is it? Scholars and activists alike compare one society's activism to another; this paper suggests ways of asking useful questions in cross-national ethnographic research. Controlling the variables of cultural, political/legal, social, and spatial conditions is impossible. With so many "out of control variables", can comparison make any sense? Activists have varied "styles" (Lichterman & Eliasoph The American Journal of Sociology, 120(4): 798–863, 2014) of coordinating local activism in any country. Each style encounters different frictions, depending on a nation's specific cultural, political, social, and spatial conditions. Local, interest-based, grassroot activism is a typical American "style" and is also venerated in American cultural narratives that celebrate local democracy. American activists encounter friction when trying to enact this style, when, for example, they realize that money brings power. For Russian activists, the very same style is a "surprising discovery". Russians encounter different frictions when trying to enact this style. Examining continual, recursive pragmatic tests shows how activists move towards more, towards less, or towards different kinds of politicization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]