Search

Skyrocketing commodity prices and conflict‐induced mass hunger in recent years have resuscitated discussions about why famines frequently reoccur in specific spaces of vulnerability. Intervention efforts still too often isolate food (in)security from its interwovenness in the political economy of water and energy and from the role of ideas in forging these interconnections across long time periods. Using (South) Sudanese history to rethink the causes of recurrent food insecurity, we underscore the need to analyse how political elites imagine the role of the water–energy–food nexus and associated environmental narratives in consolidating power. South Sudan's 2011 secession (from Sudan) marked the culmination of a struggle against a state that insurgents regarded as having starved its citizens. However, since independence, its leaders have replicated the nostrum they once combatted: Sudanese resources must ‘feed the world’. A fixation with inserting water, energy, and food resources into global markets infuses their strategy, even if such an approach will not engender food abundance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The prevalence of armed conflicts in Africa seems commonplace, with little possibility to their end. This study aims to challenge a narrative that seem to consider ethnicity, or ethnic differences as the main causes of armed civil conflicts in Africa. This study argues that while ethnicity might play a role in conflict formation, ethnicity is simply a Trojan horse that is impishly presented as the main cause of armed conflicts in Africa.Design/Methodology: Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. To evaluate the ethnicity vs. conflict nexus more conscientiously, this study provided two case examples: Ethiopia and Kenya, each providing distinct political trajectories.Findings: The study finds that ethnicity is not the main cause of armed conflicts in Africa; rather, the main causal factors are embedded in bad governance practices by political elites and their cronies. Notable is the practice of politics of power grab and marginalisation of certain groups to achieve Machiavellian ends. The additional causal factor is tied to external imperial exploitative motives of looting Africa’s natural resources, often using African puppets, bagmen and traitors of their own homeland. Thus, a combination of bad local governance practices and external economic interests is mainly what has led to a surge in armed civil conflicts in Africa.Originality/Value: The novelty of this study is that it challenges conventional political standpoints on the causes of ethnic-related conflicts and the solutions needed to end/reduce them. The study has achieved this by pushing the cloak of appreciating the scope and scale of Africa’s armed conflicts by advancing the argument that conflict management solutions lie inward rather than outward through the utilisation of local or homegrown conflict resolution mechanisms. Such local mechanisms must focus on addressing bad governance practices. The current penchant of relying on international or foreign mediatory systems as solutions is done merely at the behest of global politicking and, as such, only provides cosmetic solutions, hence themselves responsible for those protracted ethnic-related conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the violence trap framework, ruling elites use rents to control contending elites who pose a violent threat. Political development results in transitions from a fragile state, wherein rents are tentative and personalized, to a basic natural state, and then a mature natural state, through standardization of elite privileges, consolidated state control of the political-military apparatus, and the enactment of a credible contracts regime. Accordingly, the institutional logic of fragile states is rooted in the incentives that undergird elite bounded rationality, transacting under highly personalized, tentative patronage networks. The paper addresses the question of why fragile states fail to develop into basic natural states. In doing so, it applies the violence trap analytical framework to illustrate the logic of the fragile state through a most different systems (MDS) comparison of Afghanistan and South Sudan. The main finding is that the institutional logic of the fragile state in the two cases is rooted in a lack of three necessary conditions: institutional incentives for broadening elite consensus, credible patronage agreements among different elite groups, and a consolidated state with specialized political and military functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study dwells on Alago-Eggon relations within the discursive remit of the dialectics of intergroup relations in Nasarawa State, Central Nigeria. Historicizing the patterns, dynamics, shifts and trajectories of their relations over the years, the study found that the two groups have engaged in diverse forms of mutually beneficial and supportive relationships as close geographical and cultural neighbours. The study revealed that the relationship between the groups witnessed a dramatic setback in the 2010s, following primordial contestations for power by their political elites, which plunged the two groups into inter-communal animosity. The study noted that the relationship between the two groups has been largely tense and hostile since the onset of their communal crises, and that has had significant implications for their peaceful coexistence and social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does gender affect candidate selection and list placement under proportional representation (PR)? Existing research argues that PR systems have a positive effect on women's representation due to a more inclusive candidate selection process. However, analysing the actual process of candidate selection under PR before observing the final party list is challenging, and little is known about the preferences and strategies of party elites when selecting and ranking candidates. To address this lacuna, we conduct a novel two‐stage conjoint experiment with party elites in Austria, which allows us to differentiate between two distinct mechanisms in candidate nomination under PR: selection and ranking. Our findings indicate that women generally have an advantage with respect to selection but find themselves subject to same‐sex preferences when it comes to ranking on the list, for which they otherwise benefit from being low in supply. These findings have important implications for understanding patterns of female under‐representation in PR systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text provides a summary of two books that offer insights into ethnic politics in Myanmar. "Winning by process" by Jacques Bertrand, Alexandre Pelletier, and Ardeth Thawnghmung explores how Myanmar's military state marginalized ethnic elites while increasing ethnic identification among non-Bamar peoples. "Repossessing Shanland" by Jane Ferguson examines ethnogenesis for groups like the Shan, who exist across nation-states, challenging the idea that people are solely influenced by their country. Both books emphasize the importance of space and how forces of ethnic attachment or disaffiliation differ across different areas. The text also raises questions about Burmanization, its effects, and its role in the revolution. The text further explores the complexities of ethnic identity and nationalism in Shanland, a region in northeast Burma, challenging the assumption that Shanland is fundamentally Burmese and examining the tensions between the representation of a Shan nation-state and the lived reality of the people. The text also delves into the role of insurgencies and the postcolonial context in shaping Shan nationalism, as well as highlighting the experiences and challenges faced by Shan migrants in Thailand. Overall, the text emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of ethnicity and its intersections with other identities such as gender, class, and age. [Extracted from the article]

ABSTRACT How do states maintain economic development in the face of sanctions? Recent studies have examined economic resilience as a property of a system preceding a shock, leaving unanswered questions about how sanctioned states discipline employers and limit predatory behaviour. Using the case of Iran, this article aims to fill this gap by presenting a model of mobilized resilience, describing how bottom‐up and top‐down mobilizations can create demand for institutional capacity. Integrating unique qualitative and quantitative material, the author argues that Iran's political elites responded to sanctions by launching top‐down campaigns that appealed to workers, promoted capital–labour unity, and demanded state commitment to development. These campaigns facilitated widespread labour protests that further empowered the state to block capital flight and steer firms onto more profitable, growth‐oriented routes. Labour ‘resistance’ thus unexpectedly helped to realize the Supreme Leader's calls for a ‘resistance economy’. These findings suggest that political support for worker mobilization in the context of sanctions can result in economic benefits, with significant consequences for our understanding of economic statecraft, development and labour movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how legislators use social media, specifically investigating whether their posts reflect the concerns expressed by their legislative party peers in an anonymous survey. Utilizing data from Twitter (now X), we compare legislators' social media posts with their responses in a survey of legislators in Latin America. We propose a novel and scalable method for analyzing political communications, employing OpenAI for topic identification in statements and BERTopic analysis to identify clusters of political communication. This approach enables a thorough and detailed examination of these topics over time and across political parties. Applying our method to statements made by members of the Chilean Congress, we observe a general alignment between the preferences stated in surveys by elites and the prominence of these issues on Twitter. This result validates social media platforms (particularly Twitter) as a tool for predicting politicians' preferences. Our methodological approach offers a scalable tool for analyzing political rhetoric over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduction to the Special Issue 'The rules, institutions and politics of housing informality in Europe' argues for a more holistic interpretation to housing informality in Europe as a critical heuristic for re-thinking the dynamics of informality in the global North. In so doing, it offers three modest theses. First, housing informality is an endogenous phenomenon in the development of European cities, closely connected to the logics of capitalist modernity and currently located at the intersection of new patterns of forced migration and an ever-intensifying housing crisis. Second, housing informality is (also) a by-product of direct forms of public support, toleration and legitimation, as well as the consequence of deliberate (in)action by the State. This results in a clear public politics of informal space, in the framework of which informal housing is an instrument of governmentality in the hands of ruling elites. Third, housing informality is normatively ambiguous. In fact, informal dwelling practices create an archipelago of institutional micro-geographies at the city scale, that generate, in turn, heterogeneous spheres of urban citizenship rights. This selective spatial autonomy can be inhabited as much by processes of rights expansion, emancipation and solidarity as well as by practices of right-restriction, exploitation and precarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the relationship between the military and political elites in the United States, through the lens of theoretical concepts that have approached it in the post-Cold War environment. This era was marked by external pressures that pushed for greater subordination of military personnel to political authority, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had previously necessitated an expansion of military independence. However, soon after, counterproductive results emerged, manifesting in severe crises between the two elites as signs appeared of military personnel’s reluctance to comply with political directives and positions. The study concludes that the expansion of political interventions in American military policy was dictated by the new position the United States occupied in the new international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral cycles are highly charged, politically intense moments that influence public discourse. Political elites, citizens, and the traditional news media seek to generate opinions and interactions on social networks. This research is motivated by the following questions: What are the communicative and deliberative practices used in these spaces? Is it possible to identify the characteristics that --through deliberative conversations-- potentially foster or undermine democratic debate, particularly when using populist and polarizing discourse? Using a mixed methods approach, we apply a social network analysis tool to track conversations and identify the volume of political discourse (N=346,000). Using selective and staged filtering, we identified posts from nine Peruvian Twitter accounts during the September 2022 electoral campaign in Lima: three candidates, three media outlets, and three accounts with high levels of engagement. Our data comprised the comments from these nine accounts and was extracted using an Application Programming Interface (API). Subsequently, we carried out ethnographic content analysis on publications with more than 30 comments. In this phase, we analyzed Twitter comments using a codebook to identify deliberative practices and user responses. Our findings underscore the significant role of principal media outlets in shaping political conversation on Twitter. We also discovered that attempts to interact and deliberate were often overshadowed by heated comments attempting to impose opinions on others. Most importantly, our research reveals a widespread disillusionment with politics, political institutions, and even the political preferences of fellow citizens in Peru, highlighting a key challenge for democratic discourse on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas competing interests characterize the African public policy sphere today, the lens of mass‐elite differences has hardly been employed to study electoral violence. Accordingly, this article juxtaposes the lived experiences of ordinary Kenyan citizens, obtained through focus groups, with the content of the now‐defunct Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), a comprehensive set of public policy changes proposed by Kenya's political protagonists Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga in 2017. It poses the following broad question: did the BBI proposals truly intersect with the opinions and lived experiences of the masses? I find that various factors, including the lack of electoral and judicial integrity, and a winner‐takes‐all democratic system, are responsible for post‐election violence according to citizens. A comparative analysis of citizen perspectives and the BBI Report reveals considerable congruence in the understanding of the causes of post‐election violence. The study partly concludes that African leaders should continue to engage in policy entrepreneurship. Related Articles: Hodzi, Obert. 2020. "African Political Elites and the Making(s) of the China Model in Africa." Politics & Policy 48(5): 887–987. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12380. Kouladoum, Jean‐Claude. 2023. "The Role of Freedom of Communication in Modulating the Effect of Political Participation on Electoral Outcome in Africa." Politics & Policy 51(4): 588–613. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12539. Onyango, Gedion. 2024. "DHR‐PA—Democracy and Human Rights in Public Administration in Africa." Politics & Policy 52(2): 426–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12584. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of its discursive presence in the UK Parliament (Westminster), this article explores political elites' problematisations of LGBT homelessness. In particular, I consider whether the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that have been critically identified in relation to the mainstreaming of 'gay rights' in other sites are evident in the emerging discourse on LGBT homelessness in Westminster. I find that the cross-party emphasis on data collection as a predicate for action on LGBT homelessness enables the Conservatives to signal sexual progress without risking the Party's traditional supporters. Moreover, the almost exclusive focus on LGBT homeless youth in the parliamentary discourse, which is echoed to a lesser degree in existing research, stabilises divisions of 'deserving/undeserving' poor and entrenches the relationship between housing security, normative forms of intimacy and anti-migrant nationalist sentiments. To escape the terms of its current emergence, I argue, a coalitional and grass-roots-led definition of the problem of LGBT homelessness is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populist leaders are often described as "strongmen," receiving a somewhat two-dimensional Western press coverage that cannot explain their local popularity. Based on visual and textual analysis of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Facebook, we argue that he has a more complex social media persona. Orbán's Facebook shows him as (1) a fighter against a variety of enemies, (2) a symbolic condensation of the nation, (3) a relatable politician with (4) a gentleness toward children and animals, and (5) a strong competence in elite political contexts. Orbán uses his charismatic authority on Facebook to draw the boundaries of the Hungarian nation, presenting himself as the iconic representation of "Hungarian-ness." The building blocks of his image are constantly being adapted to the current political situation and to shifts in public opinion. The Orbán image is, thus, a fluid and pragmatic material with only a few core principles and its popularity remains steadfast despite the brand's contradictions. Understanding the appeal of Orbán's self-representation may help us better grasp populist regimes' variation and success worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two books that explore different aspects of the Russian revolutions of the 19th century. The first book, "Utopia's Discontents" by Faith Hillis, focuses on the anti-government group of émigrés and exiles who created "concrete utopias" in European cities. The second book, "1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution" by Paul W. Werth, examines the imperial supporters who believed in God, the tsar, and tradition. The article highlights the diverse nature of these colonies, the changing ideologies and personal relationships within them, and the complex relationship between the Bolsheviks and the outside world. The article acknowledges the significance of understanding nineteenth-century Russia in order to comprehend contemporary global challenges and the complexities of historical change. [Extracted from the article]

The idea that institutional design and institutional change are best explained by the preferences of institution makers who act rationally and strategically is established both theoretically and empirically. However, this literature draws heavily on the experience of Western European democracies. Presenting evidence from the constitutional selection process in post-2001 Afghanistan, this paper contends that institutional selection in emerging democracies follow a similar logic to that of advanced democracies when they were undergoing transitions. The adoption of the 2004 Afghan Constitution is best explained by bargaining among key domestic political elite. The choice of a highly centralized presidential system reflected the preferences of dominant political elite who wanted to ensure their survival and maintain access to power resources of the state. I use process tracing to examine the circumstances under which the 2004 Afghan Constitution was adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the significance of Turkey in current academic debates, particularly focusing on the country's political process and the authoritarian regime that has emerged in recent years. The special issue of the journal is divided into two parts, with the first part examining the early republican period and the second part exploring the transformations before and during the Erdoganist period. The articles cover a range of topics, including the economic congress of 1923, the role of ship-owners in nation-state building, the impact of secularism on various groups, the establishment of homeland security, the changing role of the peasantry, female employment, the transformation of traditional unions, the foreign policy of the AKP, the evolution of small businesses, the history of capitalism in Turkey, and the rise and decline of the AKP's authoritarian neoliberal order. The authors argue for a broader perspective and historical analysis to understand the current situation in Turkey. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues that concessions can serve as a useful tool for managing protest. In the face of nonrevolutionary protest, concessions may represent a useful option for getting protesters out of the streets. This article theorizes that, in high-capacity states, actors involved in the process of managing protest are more varied and more capable, making the use of concessions, especially relatively cheap ones, more likely. The article then tests the theory using original event-level data on Mexican protests and responses, and leverages subnational variation in state capacity. It finds that higher levels of capacity are associated with a higher likelihood of concessions in response to protest. This finding represents an important distinction between the management of everyday protests and revolutionary ones, in which concessions are associated with state weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the broader context of securitized responses to Covid-19 globally, Uganda experienced an oversized military role, ranging from law-and-order and lockdown enforcement, to managing food-relief supplies, medical operations, and partisan political repression. What explains this excessive militarization? To address this poser, the article draws on secondary sources and key-informant interviews to test the hypothesis that military involvement in pandemic responses depends on pre-pandemic militarism. The findings reveal direct links between pre-crisis militarism and Covid-19 responses, contrary to the view that exceptionality and novelty of Covid-19 informed overly militarized responses. Through pandemic framing and institutional morphing, pre-pandemic militarism foregrounded military roles because Covid-19 provided Uganda's ruling elites with a public health pretext to heighten militaristic rule, clutch the political arena in the context of elections, and deepen military presence in civilian public health realms. This excessive militarization of public health seriously impacts civil–military relations, specifically command and control, reporting and accountability, and resources management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During national crises, political elites often rally around the flag, promoting a central message to restore unity and calm the public. COVID-19 provided such a crisis. But did elites rally? The pandemic occurred at a point of extreme polarization in the United States, which threatens the potential for a rally. In this article, we argue that messaging about masking during COVID-19 offers an opportunity to test the comparative effects of a rally versus polarization. To do so, we use a unique measure: visual public communication by members of Congress (MOCs). We extract 340,000 images from congressional Twitter and Facebook accounts and employ supervised machine-learning methods to identify when MOCs posted images of people wearing masks. We find evidence of both rally effects and polarization. Trump's actions are especially important: while Trump-loyal Republicans are less likely to post masks, all Republicans increased posting masks after Trump first appeared wearing a face mask. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista UNISCI is the property of Unidad de Investigaciones Sobre Seguridad y Cooperacion International (UNISCI) 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 article provides a policy proposal for an immigration reform package that could be successful in the modern-day Congress. It is the second article of a series that began with an analysis of why immigration reform has been unsuccessful over the past thirty years despite bipartisan support. That article argued that polarization combined with the framing of immigration by the media and political elites has caused the public to view immigration as a onedimensional policy largely defined by border concerns, when in reality, it is a robust policy area that encompasses a number of various issues (i.e. family immigration, skilled and unskilled workers, entrepreneurs, asylum, border control, etc.). This successive article offers a policy proposal that could eclipse those concerns and provides a path forward for Congress and policy elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the final months of the Ferenc József University of Kolozsvár/Cluj during the closing stages of World War II. In this period, due to Soviet occupation, a distinct administration was established, separate from the Hungarian state administration, preceding the re-installation of Romanian state administration in March 1945. The university’s leadership chose not to follow the evacuation order and kept the institution in the city. This decision raised several issues, including the role of the university in Hungarian cultural life in Transylvania. The article explores the university’s relationship with the Red Army officials, its interactions with the Romanian political and cultural elite of the era, and its complex engagement with the Hungarian minority elite in Romania regarding the development of future strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the dynamics of cross-border relations, ethnic diversity and the role of sub-state actors in border regions, focusing on the Austrian–Italian border. Using a transnational regionalism lens, it examines how minorities, majorities, sub-state political elites and the media perceive and utilise cross-border spaces. The findings reveal contested perspectives among sub-state political elites, influenced by historical conflicts, while the media emphasise the connective role of the state border. Furthermore, autonomist parties and representatives contribute to framing cross-border cooperation as a means of connection and shared territorial policymaking. The research highlights the potential of sub-state to foster inclusive cross-border relations in minority contexts and empower minority communities in border regions, offering insights into integration and connection beyond ethnic and territorial divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hydrogen economy faces significant challenges that cannot be addressed by market forces alone. High production costs, distribution logistics, and expensive utilization technologies hinder hydrogen's competitiveness. Additionally, economic and political interests that favor fossil fuels, the preservation of ruling elites, and colonial legacies, combined with media biases against hydrogen, further obstruct progress. This is evident in the backward-looking developments in Australia. Increased public awareness and support are crucial to drive government intervention, including subsidies and infrastructure investment, to overcome these barriers and facilitate hydrogen's integration into the global energy market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This study examines how intergroup dynamics shape political cynicism among Belgians of Turkish and Moroccan descent. Concretely, we examine whether perceptions of discrimination, feelings of ethnic outsiderness and social capital (in terms of associational membership) can explain minorities’ belief that political elites are selfish, incompetent, and immoral. Methods: We analyse data from the Belgian Ethnic Minorities Election Study 2014. Results: Arguing that political cynicism includes blame attribution towards the political establishment, we distinguish between perceived group discrimination by the government, on the labor market, and in everyday life. As expected, political cynicism is closely related to perceptions of government discrimination, with no observed correlation with discrimination in the other domains. Next, we show that perceived ethnic outsiderness is also strongly related to increased feelings of political cynicism, further reinforcing the argument that cynics are concerned with their ethnic group’s excluded status and position in society. Finally, associational membership is only related to lower political cynicism when it is generated exclusively within ethnic boundaries; there was no relationship with cross-ethnic social capital. Discussion: Our findings show that intergroup indicators are highly relevant for understanding minorities’ political cynicism, but that the intergroup dynamics operate in complex and nuanced ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angola is governed under a presidential system characterised by a weakly institutionalised parliament ruled by the MPLA liberation movement since independence. UNITA, the largest opposition party in parliament, is also a liberation movement and former belligerent in the protracted Angolan civil war. Despite facing an uneven playing field, UNITA has seen its share of parliamentary seats increase in successive post-war elections. This makes it a relevant case study to understand patterns of elite formation and political representation more broadly. This article examines the composition of UNITA parliamentary elites in Angola in post-civil war legislatures, and how UNITA members of parliament (MPs) perceive representation tasks and engage in constituency-focused activities. We do so through a longitudinal study of post-civil war legislatures (from 2008, 2012, 2017 and 2022), drawing on new biographical data and interviews with MPs. We argue that, following the transition from rebel movement to political party, parliament became an arena in which UNITA was able to achieve a nationwide reach by integrating MPs with diverse backgrounds and by engaging with constituents. Additionally, while institutional rules favour national over local representation, MPs seem to invest in and value links with constituents. The study highlights how nationwide recruitment and connections with constituents contribute to elite formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a theoretical framework for analysing corporate responsibility through the lens of critical state theory, focusing on the dynamic interplay between state and business. Traditionally, corporate responsibility is seen as voluntary corporate actions for public welfare. However, it is increasingly viewed as integral to business strategy and subject to regulatory oversight. Utilizing Jessop's strategic-relational approach, this study underscores the state's role in structuring corporate behaviour, revealing how shifts in political elite networks influence corporate responsibility practices. A historical analysis of early modern China highlights these dynamics within specific national contexts characterized by developmentalism and authoritarianism, demonstrating the profound impact of state-business symbiosis on corporate responsibility. This analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of corporate responsibility in diverse political and economic settings, demonstrating how state power, corporate influence, and social welfare are mutually reinforcing and shaped by broader socio-political dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2014, India has experienced a shift towards a new phase of democracy, often described as an “ethnic democracy.” Political theorists argue that this phase promotes a Hindu conception of the nation, contrasting with the secularism embedded in the Indian Constitution, and is marked by attacks on ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Muslims. Some media scholars suggest that controlling mass media has been a crucial strategy in generating public consent for hegemonic Hindu nationalism and contend that the media’s subservience to political elites extends beyond the current government to previous political elites, such as the Gandhi dynasty. They challenge Bourdieu’s idea of a field governed by its own rules, asserting that in India, political and economic forces often align to impose conformity, indicating weak rational-legal authority. However, this paper argues that such views overstate media subservience and homogeneity. Instead, this paper provides evidence of diverse representations within mainstream media, demonstrating that there is scope for ideological contestation and adherence to professional norms. This study employs content analysis to examine media portrayals of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, using frame analysis as the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the nineteenth century, powerful railway unions in the USA and the UK cultivated an expansive system of voluntary sickness, death, unemployment, and superannuation benefits. By the early twentieth century, the movements had diverged: while the British Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants relinquished its commitment to voluntarism in favor of state healthcare and pensions, the American Railway Brotherhoods persisted along voluntarist lines, resisting social insurance in favor of exclusive schemes for their white male membership. What accounts for these diverging orientations? I highlight the importance of organizational forms as a lens for understanding comparative trade union strategy, emphasizing the role of law in designating legitimate forms of workingclass association. I demonstrate that governing elites in both countries promoted voluntarism as a benign form of working-class organization throughout much of the nineteenth century. Consequently, I argue, early American and British trade unions adopted benefits in part because they enabled them to mimic the far more respected and legitimate friendly and fraternal mutual benefit societies. Toward the end of the century, the context had changed: while alternative organizational avenues were opened for trade unions in the UK, benefits presented an ongoing organizational lifeline for American unions. In defining and redefining the boundaries of legitimate forms of workers' associations, legal decisions in both countries shaped not only trade union organizing strategies in the short run but also their positioning in broader social struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of deradicalization looms large in the historiography of western European socialism. But in this contested field, the contributions of the New Left historian, Ralph Miliband, have been curiously neglected. Through his work on the British Labour Party, Miliband developed a distinctive account of deradicalization that foregrounds the fact that when parties enter government, party elites find themselves transplanted into new, alien institutions. Over time, he argued, they then come to internalize the worldviews of those institutions and reshape their parties accordingly. This essay presents the first quantitative and cross-national test of this "experience of governing hypothesis," using Comparative Manifesto Project data from western European socialist parties between 1945 and 2021 and a novel matching technique for panel data. Miliband's theory is strongly supported by this analysis, which also demonstrates the value of taking a multi-dimensional approach to deradicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the complex historical narrative surrounding the practice of finger severing (danji 斷指) in early Joseon Korea, focusing on its unique origins and widespread dissemination, and the multifaceted discourse it generated among the ruling elite. By tracing finger severing from its emergence during the reign of King Taejong to its proliferation in the 16th century, this research illuminates the interplay between institutional factors, societal customs, and cultural perceptions that shaped its evolution. This study deviates from the conventional approach of explaining Joseon’s cultural edification solely through the intentions and actions of the government and the royal court. Instead, it explores how folk customs were discovered and then intentionally spread by the government, thereby providing a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of Confucianization in Joseon Korea. The dissemination of finger severing highlights the success of the early Joseon ruling class’s proactive policies aimed at cultivating and standardizing ethical practices. However, this study also explores the contradictions within the ruling elite’s discourse surrounding finger severing, as well as the discrepancy between the ruling class’s intentions and the actual motivations driving the civilian populace’s engagement in the practice. The proliferation of finger severing in early Joseon Korea represents both the triumph of the state’s cultural cultivation policies and the unexpected outcomes of the complex interplay of institutional efforts, societal customs, and divergent perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courts around the globe have increasingly handled politically sensitive issues. Judicial decisions that are unfavourable to the political elites may invite political attacks. An emerging literature has explored how courts around the world develop strategies to respond to politically thorny issues. This article contributes to this literature by studying how courts in Hong Kong develop strategies for handling politically sensitive cases. Based on in-depth analysis of 58 politically sensitive cases that were heard by courts in Hong Kong between 1999 and 2023, this article finds that Hong Kong's courts adopt the following strategies: deference to the government, denying standing to the applicants, ruling that the applicants failed to follow the proper procedures, deciding that a dispute does not exist, delaying the political and legal effects of judgments that are unfavourable to the government, and emphasising that politics plays no role in judges' decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan dealignment in Western Europe has gone hand in hand with the decline of electoral participation and active membership in political parties. Yet political participation and activism are not necessarily a thing of the past, and scholars have for instance observed these characteristics in several contemporary populist radical right parties (PRRPs). Drawing on the analysis of 124 interviews with party representatives from four European PRRPs (the League, the Finns Party, Flemish Interest and the Swiss People's Party), we ask what motivates PRRP elites to foster the creation of tight communities of activists. Three reasons appear to stand out: campaigning prowess (to gain public support); legitimising the party; and organisational survival. The final section offers reflections on the wider implications of our study and suggests avenues for future research, questioning the assumption that parties are necessarily and uniformly shifting away from activism and societal rootedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians compete with each other for votes, political positions and popularity in an attempt to translate their ideological ideas into policy. Due to a lack of face-to-face interactions, voters base their vote mainly on what they see in the media. To measure the influence of media on political success during routine periods, this paper links popularity polls to media coverage of individual politicians. Using automated content analysis on longitudinal newspaper data (2003–2019), the visibility of individual politicians and the used tone was analyzed. We find that media visibility has an impact on popularity. This media effect is especially important for MPs seeing that the function of higher-ranking politicians already affects their popularity without media visibility. A significant effect is also found for tone on popularity scores. We find a negativity bias in which negative news affects the popularity of politicians, whereas positive news does not make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the recent elections in Pakistan, focusing on the military's dominance in the country's politics. It discusses the military's efforts to protect its interests and preferred candidates, as well as signs that its power may be challenged. The elections shed light on issues such as inflation, unemployment, and stagnant wages that were not adequately addressed by political parties. The article also explores the historical influence of the military in Pakistan, its control over the economy and political elites, and the rise and fall of Imran Khan's PTI party. Ultimately, a coalition government consisting of the PML and PPP parties, under the influence of the military, took power. The article concludes by emphasizing the limitations of the military's power and the importance of the left in Pakistan focusing on revival and building alliances with key constituencies. [Extracted from the article]

Egyptian revolution, which started with great optimism regarding country's future, after toppling 30 years long Mubarak regime and experiencing disappointments with first civil administration under Muslim brotherhood government, ended up with the restoration of authoritarianism as a result of a military coup. In this article when delving into the reasons of revolution's failures, orientalist and elitist theories argued that main issues of failure revolved around the immutable power of the army and political elites over resurrecting masses and lack of general faith in the country regarding the creation of a liberal democratic order. What was missing is, from a Gramscian background, important role that neoliberalism and its destructiveness over social and political life in the last four decades of Egypt, played. In here my basic idea is that after 2011 uprising, revolutionary groups could not settle accounts with neoliberal past and its institutions. Then, on that misconstrued basis, they tried to build a new order. While the Muslim brotherhood government criticized the establishment in terms of religion and cultural values, secular opposition missed the determining role of the army within the economic affairs of the country. Due to these reasons, El-Sisi, seems like an ordinary officer, was able to ensure the restoration of authoritarian rule in Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults' responses to them. Studies la and lb examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b (A= 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians' engaging tweets. Studies 3 (N = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 (A' = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians' tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What effect does judicializing international commitments have on incentives to comply with international law? We study this question using experiments embedded in a survey of the American public. We find that non-compliance signals from an international court work precisely as theories of non-compliance anticipate, raising perceptions of legal obligation and support for returning to compliance relative to non-compliance signals from foreign state parties (i.e. the "victims" in a given dispute). At the same time, we find that signals from courts are no more (and no less) effective in generating public support for returning to compliance than identical non-compliance signals sent by international organizations or domestic political elites. These results suggest that courts are not uniquely positioned to shape the politics of compliance and that the often-rancorous debates over institutional design may be just as much about conflicts over institutional control as they are about conflicts over institutional forms or labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil conflicts typically end with negotiated settlements, but many settlements fail, often during the implementation stage when average citizens have increasing influence. Citizens sometimes evaluate peace agreements by voting on referendums or the negotiating leaders, and, almost always, they decide whether to cooperate. Yet, despite their role, we do not know much about how citizens form attitudes toward peace agreements. In this article, we assess how citizens form attitudes toward settlements, specifically the policy provisions that emerge from them, which are central in shaping the post-conflict context. These are complex policy changes, involving deeply factionalized actors, and the citizens evaluating them are often focused on rebuilding their lives. We therefore theorize that citizens use stark cues from political elites with whom they have affinity to form their attitudes. We test our theory using survey experiments in Colombia. We find that citizens rely on political elites' cues to decide their stance on the settlement's provisions. These cues appear to supply easily-accessible information that respondents use over other information. In contrast to work positing that peace agreements are exceptional and weary citizens are stabilizing forces, our results suggest that even these decisions are politics as usual, where divisions among political elites drive the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Walpole and his regime are often considered the prime topical target of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. The significance of Macheath as a mirror for Walpole's political rival, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, has been obscured. In his parodic representation of the two political creeds dominating the public debate, Whig and Tory, Gay showed how both value systems deployed categories to justify discrimination against two categories of human being: women and the common people. Gay relied on the powers of the aesthetic to ensure that his audience's experience of pleasure defused the operations of this ideological categorization, but the prior identification of the two worldviews circulating those categories was vital to his satiric project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the thinking of the Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, about the current political regime. The analysis considers his personal policy agenda, which is informed by serving in technocratic positions and his ideological positioning within the Russian political elite, as well as the role of the prime minister in Russian politics. Special attention is dedicated to Mishustin's perception of the invasion of Ukraine and its impact on Russian politics. Our findings illuminate the role of rank-and-file political actors not only in the context of the Russian non-democratic regime but in personalised autocracies in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economy-security nexus is at the core of U.S.-China technology competition. Both powers view economy and security as interconnected; both consider technology as the determining factor in turning this nexus to their advantage. Both aim to win the tech competition by seeking different forms of "decoupling" from each other—the United States proactively, China reactively. Simultaneously, however, both are pursuing an integrative policy towards other states—the United States with "likeminded" nations, China primarily with Global South countries. Southeast Asia, which is at the center of these competing courtships, faces both opportunities and risks. This article focuses on the policy choices of selected ASEAN states' regarding 5G wireless technology as an instance of the responses of non-big powers to big-power tech competition. Its findings indicate that while the key ASEAN states have all responded by hedging, there are significant differences: Vietnam and to some extent Singapore have hedged more heavily (than Indonesia, Malaysia and other states) by excluding China from their 5G networks, but continued to engage China in other cooperation. Why do Southeast Asian states hedge differently vis-a-vis hi-tech competition? The article argues that the states' responses are attributable to the politically-defined economy-security tradeoffs, as driven primarily by their respective ruling elites' pathways of legitimation and other internal attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Athletes have again started to take a visible stance on various political and social issues, which has stirred fierce controversies. Existing research has a strong US bias, and, to extend the range of research, we conducted a German survey on the perceived legitimacy of athletes' political activism. The evidence suggests that the US debate cannot simply be transferred to other political and cultural contexts. The German respondents did not generally disapprove of athletes employing sporting venues as political stages. However, they are primarily willing to accept political activism in cases where the claims made are congruent with their political beliefs and with hegemonic political values. The perceived legitimacy of more controversial forms of athletes' political activism depends on political ideology, political activism and political tolerance. For international sport governing bodies, the results indicate a dilemma: western audiences approve of athletes' political activism, which is congruent with their own political values, but seem unwilling to accept activism making other claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical right populist parties have often been treated as "pariahs," being excluded from coalition politics in parliamentary democracies. We argue that negative rhetoric targeted at radical right populist parties in legislative debates is used by the established parties to distance themselves from such parties and that the incentives to do so depend on the political context. Using sentiment analysis of speeches in the Swedish Riksdag from 2010 to 2022, we find that rhetoric targeted toward the radical right Sweden Democrats is more negative than speech concerning other parties on average. We also find that this negative rhetoric declined over time, particularly from the center-right parties, as the formerly marginal Sweden Democrats gained more seats and became a potential partner for cooperation. Our analysis demonstrates how tracking parliamentary discourse provides insights into changing party dynamics. Our findings suggest that, as the prospects for populists' pariah status change, rhetoric from established parties reflects this shifting role in party politics, with enduring negativity accompanied by reduced hostility among the center-right parties with the greatest potential for cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does good governance require citizens to be knowledgeable of basic facts and best policy ideas? Some scholars suggest that it does, and propose disenfranchising the most 'ignorant' voters. In contrast, we argue, political systems are complex systems inevitably exhibiting incomplete, imperfect and asymmetric information that is dynamically generated in society from actors with diverse life experiences, antagonistic interests and often profoundly dissonant views and values, generating radical uncertainty among political elites over the consequences of their decisions. Radical uncertainty, radical dissonance and power asymmetry are inescapable properties of politics. Good performance significantly depends on how political elites navigate through radical uncertainty to handle radical dissonance. Democracy, by offering citizens equal rights to participate in politics and talk freely, both enables and compels political actors to track social feedback regarding the effects of their decisions on a diverse public, and consider it in ways that mitigate these three problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the micro-level foundations of how policy responsiveness may come about. Our study builds on the assumption that elected officials' information source use shapes their policy actions. We analyze the variation in information sources elected officials rely on for agenda-setting and policy formulation, distinguishing between public opinion sources, advocacy sources, and expert sources. Additionally, we examine how elected officials' public opinion sources vary across individuals, parties, and political systems. Based on a 2015 survey with 345 Members of Parliament in Belgium and Canada, the results indicate that the actions of elected representatives are more affected by public opinion sources like citizens and the mass media when they initially prioritize issues for policy action, while interest groups are prominent in both stages, and parties and expert sources are more used in the policy formulation phase. Furthermore, politicians in majoritarian systems, those belonging to the opposition and members of populist parties, tend to rely more on public opinion sources than their peers in proportional systems, those in the majority and non-populist parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]