Search

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

This article examines the Indianista movement in Bolivia, which emerged in the 1960s to challenge colonialism and promote the decolonization of Indigenous peoples. It explores the movement's ideologies and symbols, as well as its impact on the country's political landscape. The article also analyzes the alignment between the government of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, and the Indianista movement's goals. It discusses the concept of plurinationality in Bolivia and argues that it has not been fully realized in practice, with Indigenous voices and historical projects being silenced. The article calls for the reconstitution of Indigenous agendas to combat anti-Indigenous policies in Bolivia. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the concept of nonviolent resistance in authoritarian regimes. It explores how dictators use legal repression to deter dissent and protect their power, and how nonviolent resistance movements navigate this repression. The article also examines the changing nature of dictatorial rule and the tactics used by both dictators and resistance movements. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the factors that determine the success or failure of nonviolent resistance movements in holding dictatorial regimes accountable. The article concludes by highlighting the various perspectives and motivations of those involved in nonviolent resistance movements. [Extracted from the article]

Political investorism involves the use of financial investments to promote political aims, but has, with some recent exceptions, received scarce attention from political scientists although there are valid theoretical reasons to consider this a new form of political participation. Here, we add new knowledge to this research agenda by examining empirically whether political investorism constitutes a distinct mode of political participation. Furthermore, we explore the characteristics of political investors and why they use political investorism. We examine these issues using an original survey from Finland (n = 1065). Our results demonstrate that political investorism constitutes a distinct mode of participation that in particular appeals to young and well-educated women living in an urban setting. Finally, cultural ideological divisions (measured with GAL-TAN: Green-Alternative-Libertarian and Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) mediate socio-demographic characteristics when explaining participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politica y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid 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 Politica y Sociedad is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid 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.)

Declining levels of trust in the media in Western democracies have drawn the attention of political scientists, but much less attention has been paid to East Asia. This paper sets out to examine the logic behind media trust in three different types of regimes in East and Southeast Asia: countries with, partial, and no press freedom, respectively. Our findings show that while respondents' trust in government and support for socioideological control of the government have consistent and significant associations with their media trust across all 12 countries, Internet usage, online political participation, support for media censorship, and patriotic belief have different associations with the variable being studied as the degree of press freedom varies. The findings indicate that citizens are well aware of the role mass media plays in the political system and thus their trust in the media reflects the expectation‐perception gap of the government‐media relationship accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss the views of contemporary Polish political scientists concerning the subject of political agency. I stress the diversity of research perspectives adopted in the Polish literature on the subject and no less diverse conceptions of agency. I also emphasise differences in the understanding of the qualities of agency, especially the capacity for political action and participation in political processes. The analysis demonstrates the pluralism of the accepted concepts of political ontology. I also argue that it is important for Polish political scientists to preserve the autonomy and specificity of the political science research on agency, in particular the independence of this discipline from philosophical perspectives. At the same time, I refer to several philosophical paradigms in the understanding of agency, indicating how they inspire Polish political scientists’ inquiries into this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than a vestige of colonial rule, the "reinvented petition" as Carpenter describes it was forced into centrality by petitioners intent on fashioning a democracy that "embed[ded] the voices of its people directly and regularly - not just at the time of election" (22). In I Democracy by Petition i , political scientist Daniel Carpenter builds a monumental case for the centrality of the petition to the shape and reach of the North American democratic experiment. [Extracted from the article]

The text examines the possibilities of articulating the political resistance in Croatia, which the author calls the “anti-Brussels revolution”. The first part of the text clarifies the relationship between cultural and anti-bureaucratic revolution in the context of the relationship between political elites and the body politic. The second part presents and explains the use of the phrase anti-bureaucratic revolution in the analyses of Mirjana Kasapović, a political scientist, which provide historically instructive insights into the relationship between institutional and extra-institutional political activity necessary for the analysis of the emergence of the anti-Brussels revolution in Croatia. The third part of the text provides a brief presentation and typologization of six paradigmatic episodes related to protest, referendum and counter-referendum politics. These episodes can be subsumed under the conceptual field of revolution studies and represent a precursor to the anti-Brussels revolution as a political event in the realm of the sense of the possible. It is concluded that the anti-Brussels revolution is a form of emerging anti-bureaucratic revolution [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New risks are emerging from global changes – climatic, technological and societal – which imply taking into account multiple spatial and temporal scales and a diversity of actors. To cope with them, it is necessary to develop citizen participation, to strengthen the territorial dimension and to take into account the vulnerability of individuals. This text aims to understand the impacts of climate change on the concepts and intervention methods in activity-centered ergonomics. Connections should be made with two disciplines : environmental and political sciences. Two cases will illustrate the evolution of the activity analysis model : that of women mountain guides and that of actors in the risk management of permafrost degradation. Climate change calls for ergonomics to take greater account of the social dimensions and networks of actors in its models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2022, I had the opportunity to organize a roundtable at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), connected to my 2021 APSA Distinguished Award for Civic and Community Engagement. First conferred in 2020, the award honors "significant civic or community engagement activity by a political scientist which merges knowledge and practice and has an impact outside of the profession or the academy." I am happy to see that this attitude is changing, as both APSA and the APSA Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section have inaugurated public engagement awards in recent years. [Extracted from the article]

The concept of internationalisation, when referring to the work of social scientists within academic institutions, takes on different meanings and involves different activities. This contribution aims to shed light on the international activities of political scientists across Europe and to investigate the various meanings and practices of internationalisation. The analysis relies on the PROSEPS survey, involving some 1,800 political scientists across 37 European countries. We identify three distinct profiles of international scholars: the networked researcher, the editorial manager, and the traveller. These profiles differ according to 1) the building of international research networks, 2) the involvement in the activities of the international publishing industry, 3) the research and teaching exchanges with foreign academic institutions. Determinants, such as gender, family status, career stage, availability of institutional and financial support, and geographical location, are considered as potential drivers or inhibitors of internationalisation. Our analysis shows that the internationalisation of academic practices follows contrasting paths according to the type of international profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the usefulness of recent scholarship on democratic decay (especially in the disciplines of political science and constitutional law) for explaining the breakdown of Rome's res publica during the 50s BCE, with a particular focus on Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's "How Democracies Die" (2018). Using "democracy" in the neo-republican sense of government free from domination, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how the actions and reactions of political actors can damage a political system without any intention to overthrow it. This article combines their insights with concepts from Christian Meier's "Res Publica Amissa" (2nd edition 1980) to analyse Caesar's first consulship in 59 BCE. After explaining how the theory can responsibly be applied, it closely examines the major events of the year, especially the contest over the agrarian law. Caesar's actions throughout the year demonstrate Levitsky and Ziblatt's warning signs for a potential authoritarian, as do those of the opposition. This analysis helps us more clearly understand just how the events of "the consulship of Julius and Caesar" (Suet. Iul. 20.2) contributed to Rome's democratic decay in succeeding years. The article connects to much recent work on late-republican political institutions. It also helps make this dramatic period of Roman history comprehensible to political scientists by analysing it in their own theoretical terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sleep research presents an important frontier of discovery for political science. While sleep has largely been neglected by political scientists, human psychology is inextricably linked with sleep and so political cognition must be as well. Existing work shows that sleep is linked to political participation and ideology, and that contentious politics can disrupt sleep. I propose three directions for future research—on participatory democracy, on ideology, and on how context shapes sleep-politics links. I also note that sleep research intersects with the study of political institutions, of war and conflict, of elite decision-making, and of normative theory. In short, political scientists across subfields can and should consider whether and how sleep influences political life in their area of expertise and how to influence relevant policies. This new research agenda will enrich our theories of politics and enable us to identify pressing areas for policy interventions to revitalize our democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental research by political scientists on elites has grown dramatically in recent years. Experimenting on and with elites raises important questions, both practical and ethical. Elites are busy people, doing important work under public scrutiny. Therefore, any experiments that use up political elites' time, risk impairing their ability to do their jobs as well as possible, or put at risk the larger research community's access to elites should be avoided. Nevertheless, despite these risks and challenges, we argue experimenting with elites has enough benefits both to the research community and to elites themselves, that it should still be done. The relevant question then becomes how should we think about doing experiments with political elites? We propose a framework of value-added and transparent experiments. Our framework is guided by the following two simple rules: Elite subjects should individually benefit from the process of doing the experiment. It should add value to their role as representatives. Second, the identity of the researchers and purposes of the experiment should be transparent. As we argue, these two combined features can still accommodate a large range of experiments, can creatively spark researchers to think up new designs and can protect access to elites for future research. We review two such examples at the end of this essay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contact with the carceral state—ranging from police stops to prison time—is a frequent experience in the United States, particularly in communities marginalized on the basis of race and class. In recent years, political scientists have sought to measure the impacts of these encounters on individuals' and communities' political engagement. This review describes the main sources of evidence in this literature and what we learn from them. I present a series of stylized facts about the carceral state and political behavior, highlighting places where we know a great deal (such as the relative underrepresentation of people with criminal convictions among voters) and places where more work is needed (such as nonvoting participation and community spillovers). Then, I discuss policy proposals that seek to mitigate the political impacts of the carceral state, and what is and is not yet known about what they might accomplish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the other hand, it is requiring serious analysis now to determine whether Legarde's and Georgian's back-to-back tenures have generated new attention among IMF economists to what feminist analysts long have shown to be the disproportionate economic hardships falling on women in IMF loan-receiving countries as a consequence of the IMF's standard austerity package of loan conditions. GEST was launched by feminist faculty at the University of Iceland and is designed for mid-level civil servants and NGO staff people from countries in the Global South. The politics of sexual harassment in each country have international dynamics (via the Olympics, transnational corporations, international treaties, transnational legal strategies, and transnational women's organizing) and, though each of these national politics is distinctive, some of the political gender dynamics are surprisingly similar. AC: B Your pioneering book, I Bananas, Beaches and Bases i , confronted International Relations (IR) scholars with one simple question - "Where are the women?". [Extracted from the article]

Despite the fact that Hungary was less affected by the 2015 migration crisis in objective terms—i.e. the negligible number of immigrants entering and settling in the country in the last years-, the Hungarian government has been pushing an extreme anti-immigration political communication since 2015, which resulted in an intensive and highly politicised public discourse about immigration. This analysis aims at exploring the involvement of political scientists in the online public discourse about the migration and refugee crisis in Hungary between 2015 and 2019. In contrast with other countries, where high salient political crises have stimulated political scientists' public engagement, this analysis finds that such participation does not apply to the Hungarian case. The low visibility of political scientists is accompanied by the adoption among participants in news portals of either a partisan, pro-government stance or a neutral approach to the issue, while critical positions with the government are almost inexistent. These patterns suggest the influence of both the illiberal institutional turn of the Hungarian media environment and the decrease in academic freedom in the country, as factors deterring public engagement among political scientists in the immigration issue, particularly of those who could adopt a critical position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At its core, Indigenous politics reflects the adaptability and resilience of Native governments, people, and nations, and the failure of powerful states to assimilate Indigenous people into broader society. This contributes to existing research, where political scientists have produced innovative scholarship on Indigenous politics, the politics within Indigenous governmental systems and the role of Indigenous governments in intergovernmental relations, both domestically and in different state contexts. While survivance and encounters are important theoretical frameworks for contextualizing Indigenous politics and power relations among tribal governments, individual Natives, Indigenous organizations and settler-colonial governments, they also require that we engage with ideas about where Indigenous groups are situated in society and political science. Conclusion While the articles in this special issue illustrate the tremendous breadth of Indigenous politics, they also demonstrate the potential for Indigenous research to add to our understanding of politics and political science more generally. [Extracted from the article]

According to Hirschman, the assertion that any society, regardless of its political structure, is always divided between the elite and the non-elite was 'tailor-made [by classical elitists] to prove the futility of any move toward true "political citizenship" via the franchise' (Hirschman [2], p. 51). Every elite has two opposing tendencies: (a) an aristocratic tendency, by which the elite seeks to preserve the ruling position of its members and to prevent others from entering its ranks; (b) a democratic tendency by which ( I i i ) new elements force their way into the elite from below or ( I ii i ) the ruling class opens ranks and absorbs new elements from below. In the words of Pareto, political science needs to be based on 'the study of the elite, its composition, its structure and the mode of its relation to the non-elite' ( I apud i Burnham [1], p. 165). However, this distinction between the "rhetoric of legitimation" and "true motives" needs to be related to a more significant and fundamental social division: the one between the ruling class and the ruled (in Mosca's terminology) or between the elite and the non-elite (in Pareto's terminology). [Extracted from the article]

From time to time, both political scientists and education researchers articulate that the civic competences of the Hungarian youth should be developed. The phenomena, which should be tackled in this way are varied: lack of basic civic knowledge, low political interest, low level of political participation, relatively high rejection of democracy, and openness to radicalism are among the most frequently mentioned. Based on this, civic education may seem a universal therapy. Since a good deal of empirical research from mature democracies has shown the positive effects of civic education, it should be indeed kept on the list of potential solutions. However, those scholars, policymakers, and practitioners who would like to achieve change, should go beyond this superficial tip and ask the key questions of civic education. Who is a responsible citizen and how can civic education prepare students for this role? The paper does not seek to provide exclusive answers to these questions. It aims to provide a comprehensive picture of possible answers, based on the current literature of various disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pamukkale Journal of Eurasian Socioeconomic Studies (PJESS) is the property of Pamukkale Journal of Eurasian Socioeconomic Studies (PJESS) 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.)

They show that the main motivations presented by the government eventually prove to be rather invalid, notably: correlation between the size and the dynamism of a region, administrative efficiency in the distribution of capacity among the different authorities, budgetary rationalization linked to merging operation. More than five years after a I nouvelle vague i of territorial reform in France, this special issue is the opportunity to reflect and to open prospects not only about this specific episode, but also about territorial reforms and changes in other European countries: Italy, Poland, United Kingdom. Almost a decade after the rapport Mauroy, the geographer Jean-Marie Miossec ([15]) delivered a geo-history of regionalization in France and promoted the vision of "large regions" in the European context. It confirmed their place as fully recognized territorial authorities in the opinion, whereas they had been the least socially anchored territorial authorities due to their relatively recent creation in the 1980s. [Extracted from the article]

This special issue assembles a set of articles that address different aspects of "working-class politics" in Western Europe and the US at the beginning of the 21st century. Mosimann and Pontusson's article proceeds from the observation that unions have not only become weaker but also less representative of the working class and demonstrates that this "narrowing" affects support for redistribution among middle-class as well as working-class citizens. At the same time, class conflict and trade unions emerged as a major focus of attention in a nascent subfield of political science that would subsequently come to be known as "comparative political economy". [Extracted from the article]

Graph: Jonas Staal and Jan Fermon, Collectivize Facebook: A Pre-Trial, 2021. Other projects of Staal's, such as I Collectivize Facebook i (2020-ongoing, with the lawyer Jan Fermon) and I Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes i (2021-22, with the writer and lawyer Radha D'Souza) relate more explicitly to the tradition of people's tribunals that is perhaps best encapsulated by the 1966-67 Russell Tribunals on war crimes in Vietnam, its 1974-76 successor on Latin America, or the 1976 International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women. The announcement of Staal's I New World Summit i (2012-ongoing) gatherings is worth parsing: The I New World Summit i is an artistic and political organization that develops parliaments with and for stateless states, autonomist groups, and blacklisted political organizations. [Extracted from the article]

Political scientists attribute gaps in participation between whites and people of color to unequal access to political resources, political efficacy, and weak affiliations to political parties. I argue that the content of civic education courses also matters. I theorize that if courses were to incorporate critical pedagogy—an educational approach that centers the agency and grassroots political action of marginalized groups—that young people of color would be more likely to participate in politics. I test this theory using an experiment distributed to nearly 700 14–18-year high schoolers in the Chicago area. I find that content informed by this pedagogical approach bolsters the willingness of Latinx and black youth to pursue multiple forms of political participation. Such an educational intervention, coupled with other teaching tools, may provide a way to prepare an increasingly diverse generation of young people for active participation within American democracy. It also reveals how civic education in schools can play a crucial role in processes of political socialization and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AC: B The range of your scholarship, and the diversity of your interlocutors and your texts, is striking: Arendt, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Derrida, Rosenzweig, Winnicott, Melville, and Sophocles, to name a few, as well as I The Wizard of Oz i , I Shane i , and I Strictly Ballroom i , the films of Lars von Trier, and the Biblical story of Ruth. This is especially evident in I Democracy and the Foreigner i [4] and I Emergency Politics i .[5] Might you talk a bit about how you come to these new questions, and whether you think this sort of questioning is a distinctive role political theory brings to political science and to politics more generally? The virus was an occasion to witness the good that government can do, but unfortunately Trump, Kushner, and others saw instead opportunities for retribution against states and cities with Democratic governors and mayors. Forthcoming this spring are two books: I A Feminist Theory of Refusal i , (Harvard 2021) and a collection of her public writing, I Shellshocked: Feminist Criticism After Trump i (Fordham 2021). B Alyson Cole b is Professor of Political Science, Womens & Gender Studies, and American Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. [Extracted from the article]

Political scientists have identified how resources, attitudes, and mobilization impact political participation across racial groups. However, the role of civic education has largely been overlooked in shaping these trends. I develop a theory that suggests exposure to civics curricula yields heterogeneous effects on the political participation of youth across racial groups. I test my hypotheses with data from the Black Youth Project's 2005 Youth Culture Survey, supplemented by two original data collections from 2017–2018. I find that civic education courses are associated with higher rates of external efficacy among white youth, but not for black and Latinx youth. Contrastingly, civic education courses appear to increase acts of public voice among black and Latinx respondents, but not for their white peers. Rather than viewing civic education courses as a panacea for low rates of youth political participation, scholars and policymakers should pay closer attention to the ways in which the content of civic education courses contributes to heterogeneous effects across racial and ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture now faces grand challenges, with crucial implications for the global future. These include the need to increase production of nutrient‐dense food, to improve agriculture's effects on soil, water, wildlife, and climate, and to enhance equity and justice in food and agricultural systems. We argue that certain politics of constructive collective action—and integral involvement of agricultural scientists in these politics—are essential for meeting grand challenges and other complex problems facing agriculture in the 21st century. To spur reflection and deliberation about the role of politics in the work of agricultural scientists, we outline these politics of constructive collective action. These serve to organize forceful responses to grand challenges through coordinated and cooperative action taken by multiple sectors of society. In essence, these politics entail (1) building bonds of affinity within a heterogenous network, (2) developing a shared roadmap for collective action, and (3) taking sustained action together. These emerging politics differ markedly from more commonly discussed forms of political activity by scientists, e.g., policy advisory, policy advocacy, and protest. We present key premises for our thesis, and then describe and discuss a politics of constructive collective action, the necessary roles of agricultural scientists, and an agenda for exploring and expanding their engagement in these politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pour Fariba Adelkhah et Roland Marchal. Indeed, these issues are put on the table most forcefully by the courage and suffering of French-Iranian anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah and French sociologist Roland Marchal who were arrested in Iran by the Guardians of the Iranian Revolution in June 2019. The book's Preface especially emphasises that neither Fariba nor Roland can be called political prisoners, despite the Guardians' original pretence to arrest them for spying activities. [Extracted from the article]

Although political scientists have increasingly focused on the role of gender in the policy process and the characteristics of individual lobbyists, little is known about the gender politics of the government relations profession. We extend the study of professional women to the unique political context of Washington, DC, lobbying, an important form of political participation that is understudied in terms of gender. Using data from more than 25,000 individuals registered to lobby the federal government from 2008 to 2015, we show that women account for 37% of the lobbyist population in Washington, that female lobbyists are more likely to work as in-house employees than for contract lobbying firms, and that the largest Washington lobbying firms are strongly biased towards employing men. We add to these findings qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 23 lobbyists to reveal how the professional experiences of women often depend on the idiosyncrasies of lobbying employment and the political nature of their work. We conclude that the underrepresentation of women in the professional lobbying community is an underappreciated problem with broader implications for gender equality in elite political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political consumerism features prominently as an increasing form of non-institutionalized and individualized political participation. The main challenge of empirical participation research is to integrate emerging alternative forms such as political consumerism into standard measurement instruments of participation. So far, serious deficits of existing survey instruments prevent political scientists to adequately assess the role of political consumerism within the repertoire of political participation. Originally apolitical activities such as conscious purchasing behaviour are all too easily interpreted as political participation, which undermines the political science concept of political participation. The aim of this article therefore is the presentation of an empirical research strategy to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. I use a purposively designed online survey with more than 3500 randomly selected participants to analyse and reconcile current deficits of the empirical measurement of political consumerism as emerging form of political participation. Based on the empirical insights gained by our survey, I propose an innovative measurement instrument for political consumerism to be used in international comparative survey research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, we are facing a challenge in quality citizen participation from populism, which is bringing not renewal of democracy, but corrosion—and potentially its dismantling—from the inside. Many people are being misled by nationalist entrepreneurs who are not committed to democracy or solving the problems which the average person faces, but to their own power and personal egos. Whether the challenges come from the political left or right, democracy needs consistent and quality participation by all of its citizens. As a significant part of the citizenry fails to fight for democracy, factual evidence, and the rights of all of the people, I argue that political scientists must re-examine what we are doing inside and outside of the classroom to foster students' and communities' growth in political knowledge, democratic skills, and democratic values and habits. This essay explores three points—content, quality of information, and context—to demonstrate how we can improve teaching and learning in civic education. Collegiate-level educators can ensure that we are positively contributing to the preservation and advancement of our democracies and battling the forces that seek to undermine our democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow 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.)

Is it appropriate for scientists to engage in political advocacy? Some political critics of scientists argue that scientists have become partisan political actors with self-serving financial agendas. However, most scientists strongly reject this view. While social scientists have explored the effects of science politicization on public trust in science, little empirical work directly examines the drivers of scientists' interest in and willingness to engage in political advocacy. Using a natural experiment involving the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF), we causally estimate for the first time whether scientists who have received federal science funding are more likely to engage in both science-related and non-science-related political behaviors. Comparing otherwise similar individuals who received or did not receive NSF support, we find that scientists' preferences for political advocacy are not shaped by receiving government benefits. Government funding did not impact scientists' support of the 2017 March for Science nor did it shape the likelihood that scientists donated to either Republican or Democratic political groups. Our results offer empirical evidence that scientists' political behaviors are not motivated by self-serving financial agendas. They also highlight the limited capacity of even generous government support programs to increase civic participation by their beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists are wary of engaging with 'the public' on mainstream and social media because they fear those mediums fail to get across the deep and nuanced argument they develop in their own research. This article suggests a way of justifying public engagement that begins not with debates about the ethical and political concerns of doing this in practice (of which there are many), but how we as political scientists justify public media engagement to ourselves on the basis of the ethical and political process of 'doing' political science. As such, this article identifies the disciplinary basis upon which we may justify media-driven public engagement as an integral part of political science as an academic enterprise. Drawing on current epistemological debates in political science, the article characterises moments of political research as impressionistic exercises, which require public engagement. This means making the public aware of the deep and valuable insights of political science, in a way that sketches out how the discipline can shed light on important social and political phenomena, thereby informing our own scholarly thinking, and that of those we engage with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this Special Issue is to interrogate the role of the European Union (EU) as a state-builder in its Near Abroad.[1] It aims to make a three-fold contribution to the existing literature. It maps the range of EU state-building instruments, the factors that constrain/facilitate the role of the EU as state-builder as well as issues that affect the temporality and spatiality of EU action. The United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United States (US) and Russia (to mention a few) have all been significant stakeholders in the cases under examination and whose own state-building agendas were only partially compatible to that of the EU - and, in some cases, were diametrically opposed to it. The co-ordination problem is also linked to internal EU politics and policies involving both EU institutions and member states whose disagreements often constrain EU actorness (see below) and result in a fragmented posture and/or inertia (Schumacher, Bouris, and Olszewska [95]). Her main argument is that the discourse of "successful peaceful European integration" (employed to construct the EU's past self) and the discourse on the EU's "normative aspirations about peace and state-building" (employed to construct the EU's future self) constitutes an "ideal" present identity of the EU "as representing peace" (Cebeci [31]). [Extracted from the article]

Objective: Research on political socialization has shown that political and civic experiences during high school can impact later political engagement. However, political scientists are increasingly realizing that nonpolitical experiences, dispositions, and attributes in childhood and adolescence can play a role in shaping political participation. Building on recent studies in developmental psychology, we examine whether and how student characteristics and behaviors in adolescence are related to political engagement in adulthood. Methods: Using data from the Project Talent study, a national longitudinal study of a representative sample of high school students in the United States, we find that several behaviors and attributes related to one's high school experience have long‐term effects on voter turnout. Results: Responsible students and those with high levels of interest in school are more likely than their counterparts to vote when they reach adulthood. Conclusion: The effects of the school‐related measures we examine (1) persist for more than a decade after high school ends, (2) are similar in magnitude to the effects of classic predictors of political engagement such as parental political activism, and (3) hold even in the presence of controls for general personality traits, cognitive ability, resources such as parental socioeconomic status, socialization experiences, and demographic variables. Our results have implications for how to increase political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-governing regions are a significant place for free decision-making of inhabitants on public affairs and a place where we can decide on the quality of our everyday life. Only strong municipalities, towns and regions create the concept of a strong country. The study is mainly focused on the current topic of municipal elections held on November 2018 in the Slovak Republic. In the light of the nation-wide climate full of tensions the feedback from voters to the political parties and message that the elections would bring were impatiently expected. The content concept of the study primarily focuses on the importance of the participation aspect and points out the obstacles of political participation at the municipal level. The second part of the study focuses on the evaluation and analysis of election results, and points out the conclusions of electoral behaviour denouncing the trend of electoral behaviour in the context of the growing phenomenon of independent candidates and, on the contrary, the decline of trust in the political parties. Based on the analysed election results and electoral behaviour, the ambition is to evaluate the characteristic features of the municipal elections from the view of the second-order elections theory presented by the German political scientists K. Reif and H. Schmitt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]