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Erich Fromm has long been a forgotten intellectual despite his status as a major critical theorist and sociologist in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s but his work is being returned to with new enthusiasm because of events in the world, developments within sociology and new interest in psychosocial analysis dealing with emotions. This paper theorizes Fromm's return to scholarly influence now, offering analysis of both his reputational fate in light of the rise of global Trumpism and right wing‐populism and the value of the tools his unique merger of Freud, Marx and sociology offers in the contemporary moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, a number of methods have been proposed to forecast the unknown inner-cell values of a set of related RxC contingency tables when only their margins are known. This is a classical problem that emerges in many areas, from economics to quantitative history, being particularly ubiquitous when dealing with electoral data in sociology and political science. However, the two current major algorithms to solve this problem, based on Bayesian statistics and iterative linear programming depend on adjustable (hyper-)parameters and do not yield a unique solution: their estimates tend to fluctuate (when convergence is reached) around a stationary distribution. Within the linear programming framework, this paper proposes a new algorithm (lclphom) that always converges to a unique solution, having no adjustable parameters. This characteristic makes it easy to use and robust to claims of hacking. Furthermore, after assessing lclphom with real and simulated data, lclphom is found to yield estimates of (almost) similar accuracy to the current major solutions, being more preferable to the other lphom-family algorithms the more heterogeneous the row-fraction distributions of the tables are. Interested practitioners can easily use this new algorithm as it has been programmed in the R-package lphom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the dialogue and circulation of scientific knowledge in the South-South context between Brazil and the African Portuguese Speaking Countries (PALOP), focusing on the Political Science and Political Sociology fields. The main questions are: What strategies have been implemented to foster educational cooperation between Brazil and African countries? How much and for whom do these policies provide educational opportunities? Methodologically, the analysis covers historical, political, and diplomatic aspects that have driven collaboration between Brazil and PALOP in education. We based our analysis on a qualitative literature review, triangulated with quantitative data from Brazilian educational policies. The main conclusion is that Brazil has played a relevant role in training PALOP professionals in recent decades through its foreign policy in the educational field, enabling an epistemic dialogue between Africa and Latin America. Therefore, educational cooperation establishes bridges connecting the Brazilian way of thinking and building Social Sciences and the scientific approaches developed in the PALOP, which can serve as an example for other countries that want to strengthen South-South knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent populist wave has raised questions about the implications of populism for democracy. Some scholars express optimism that populism may be a source of democratic revitalization, bringing about sweeping changes in accordance with the majority will. More often, populism is viewed as a threat to liberal democracy, combining calls for radical change with disdain for core democratic institutions and norms. We consider the possibility that these outcomes may not be mutually exclusive and develop a conceptual typology for understanding the consequences of populist rule. We then use cross-national panel fixed-effects models to analyze the effects of populist leadership between 1990 and 2017. We first examine whether populists have economic and social effects in line with their core aspirations. Left-wing populists are quite effective at implementing their agenda: they reduce income inequality, regulate markets, and incorporate marginalized groups. Right-wing populists are also fairly impactful: for instance, they raise tariffs, cut taxes, and restrict the rights of women and gay people. However, populists of all stripes are associated with the rapid and severe erosion of liberal democratic institutions. Populists, we conclude, often destroy democracy in the name of the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market represents an intriguing departure from the anticipated path of liberalisation in public policy. While it includes provisions seemingly aligned with the liberalisation of the Digital Single Market by relaxing digital copyright enforcement, it also introduces mechanisms that bolster digital copyright protection, signalling a shift towards market regulation. This paper explores why and how Jean-Claude Juncker's European Commission proposed a directive featuring robust regulatory elements despite initial promises of copyright deregulation within the Digital Single Market. Combining insights from political economy and political sociology, I examine the concept of 'political work' as the practice of promoting, defending, and implementing a choice of public action. Within this framework, I identify a managerial dimension of political work involving political practices that influence the institutional structure and management of public action. Utilising a qualitative methodology involving twelve in-depth interviews with Commission officials conducted between 2018 and 2021, alongside document analysis, I demonstrate how Jean-Claude Juncker and his cabinet's managerial political work, encompassing organisational reforms within the Commission, played a pivotal role in steering the proposed policy towards regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key aim of studying development is to understand the factors that shape socioeconomic progress and explain inequalities. In empirical work, the predominant focus has been on posing these questions in the language of causal inference: how one or more variables effect an outcome of interest, with the estimation of Average Treatment Effects (ATE) becoming prioritised as the key objective. The 'credibility revolution' and the emphasis on randomised controlled trials in research on development has cemented this dominance, because randomisation is well‐suited to estimating the ATE. This paper argues that this dual dominance—ATE as main question of interest, and experiment as preferred method—is narrow and restrictive. We propose causal mediation frameworks as an alternative, which are routinely used in disciplines including epidemiology, psychology, sociology and political science where causal mechanisms are an equally important focus. We introduce key concepts and definitions of path‐specific effects, and discuss identification and estimation approaches. We illustrate applications for development and demonstrate how causal mediation brings the focus back to contextual knowledge, combining this with empirical rigour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological inference methods are devised to estimate unknown inner-cells of 2-way contingency tables by inferring conditional distribution probabilities. This outlines one of the more long-standing social science problems, chiefly frequent in political science and sociology. To solve the problem, ecological inference algorithms consider an asymmetric relationship, with a main characteristic (e.g. race or social class) mapped to rows impacting on a dependent variable, usually the vote, mapped to columns. The problem arises because different solutions are reached depending on how variables are assigned to rows and columns. The models are asymmetric. In this paper, we propose 2 new sets of ecological inference algorithms and explore if accuracy could be improved by handling the problem in a symmetric way. We assess the accuracy of the proposed methods using real data from more than 550 concurrent elections where the true district-level cross-classifications of votes (straight- and split-tickets) are known. Our empirical assessment clearly identifies the symmetric solutions as more accurate. They outperform asymmetric methods 90% of the time and reduce error, on average, by 11%. Our results are based on data from simultaneous elections, so further research is required to see whether our conclusions can be maintained in other ecological inference contexts. Interested readers can easily use the proposed methods as they are implemented in the R package lphom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial studies of the COVID-19 pandemic's emotional toll indicated different outcomes based on partisanship and media consumption. This study builds on prior research by utilizing a broad set of measures to test how (1) political party affiliation, (2) trust in President Trump, (3) news media sources, and (4) distrust in the media's portrayal of the pandemic impacted self-ascribed increases in negative emotions during the later stages of the pandemic. Using original data from a national survey conducted in the early months of 2021, we confirm that news media and partisanship played a key role in Americans' perceived increases in psychological distress. Specifically, we find that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to report increased worry and loneliness due to the pandemic. Viewers of CNN were also more likely to disclose increased worry, loneliness, and sadness than Fox News viewers. But both of these findings were related to and mitigated by issues of trust and distrust. In particular, trust that the Trump administration effectively responded to the pandemic was strongly associated with emotional stability above and beyond partisan differences. In addition, distrust of "mainstream media" coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic was linked with lower odds of increased negative emotions due to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the quality of coverage received by social movement organizations when they appear extensively in the news? Research on the news coverage of social movement organizations is dominated by case studies supporting the "protest paradigm," which argues that journalists portray movement activists trivially and negatively when covering protest. However, movement organizations often make long‐running news for many different reasons, mainly not protest. We argue that some of this extensive news will lead to worse coverage—in terms of substance and sentiment—notably when the main action covered involves violence. Extensive coverage centered on other actions, however, notably politically assertive action, will tend to produce "good news" in these dimensions. We analyze the news of the twentieth century's 100 most‐covered U.S. movement organizations in their biggest news year in four national newspapers. Topic models indicate that these organizations were mainly covered for actions other than nonviolent protest, including politically assertive action, strikes, civic action, investigations, trials, and violence. Natural language processing analyses and hand‐coding show that their news also varied widely in sentiment and substance. Employing qualitative comparative analyses, we find that the main action behind news strongly influences its quality, and there may be several news paradigms for movement organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the potential strengths and weaknesses in the current reconstruction of foresight at the EU level? In questioning foresight's institutionalisation processes from both a historical and a political sociology perspective, the article claims that charting the future is an issue of political power and that, hence, foresight's institutionalisation can never be taken for granted. More precisely, we identify two factors that determine how such process plays out. First, it depends on the definition and importance of the future according to specific contexts (war, economic or health crisis, periods of growth, etc.). Second, this changing definition intertwines with socio‐institutional structures and agents that are crucial for this institutionalisation to be sustainable. The analysis is twofold. First, we provide an overview of past international experiences of projections into the future (both foresight and forecast). Second, we illustrate how these issues may resurface and rebound within the EU's unique power context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining how and why housing policies change is an ongoing theoretical challenge for housing scholars. A key approach is the 'housing regimes' framework (Kemeny 2006), drawing from Esping-Andersen's work on the role of labour/capital struggles in shaping welfare states. However, this framework has been criticised (Stephens 2020; Clapham 2020) for inadequately explaining housing system changes, including neoliberal shifts and financialization. In response, scholars have turned to political science and sociology theories on policy change, such as historical institutionalism (Ruonavaara 2020) and discursive theories focusing on interactions between policy actors (Clapham 2018). This article builds on Clapham's discursive turn in housing studies by incorporating concepts from 'discursive institutionalism' (DI) (Schmidt 2008). DI explains policy change by examining the interplay of ideas, interactions, and power dynamics in a given policy field. DI provides a methodological framework for understanding how policy actors develop and use ideas to shape policies, while considering the influence of the institutional context and power relations. The aim of the article is to highlight the utility of DI as a framework for examining housing policy change. As a vehicle for doing so, an analysis of social housing policy change in New Zealand employing DI is provided for empirical reference. The article builds on Clapham's (2018) focus on discourse in housing studies, adding DI to the repertoire of conceptual frameworks available to researchers interested in the causal role of ideas and discourse in policy change processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this tribute, we take a different approach and explore the influence of Southern Africa on Burawoy's sociology. The influence of Southern Africa on Burawoy began early in his career when he himself was just learning what it meant to be a sociologist and continued to influence him in different ways throughout his life. In an interview with Eddie Webster in Johannesburg, 21 October 2023, Burawoy observed: 'My experiences in Southern Africa decisively shaped my sociology at a theoretical level, at a methodological level and at a substantive level. Throughout my career Southern Africa was one reference point for understanding other societies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the 1793 outbreak of yellow fever in the early American republic and Atlantic world and how it impacted the origins of the democratic movement. The author discusses how Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Republicans worked to form the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania and how it was impacted by the pandemic outbreak.

The central government has the primary responsibility for the protection of human rights. However, several factors such as decentralisation raise questions about the role of local authorities in this area. Our paper examines this issue through an interdisciplinary approach, combining international law and political sociology. Our focus lies on the case of France, the 'homeland' of human rights: do French local elected authorities always take human rights seriously? Our research design combines qualitative and quantitative methods. After providing a background of the international legal context, this paper will present the findings on human rights local perceptions and practices of elected representatives. Human rights' perceptions of these subnational political actors strongly depend on their educational qualifications and personal commitments. The same applies to the hierarchy that they draw between fundamental freedoms, social rights, and environmental rights. By contrast, local practices in favour of human rights vary most importantly according to the local authorities' status and demographic weight, rather than their political hue. When human and financial resources are scarce, the goodwill showcased by local elected representatives is not sufficient to foster the proper implementation of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an apparent departure from responses to the so-called 2015 "migration" crisis, Ukrainians displaced by the war have been welcomed relatively unbureaucratically by European states. Yet, despite this, they are positioned as a problem to be solved, a disruption to the normal order and state system. This article asks what this problematization of "migrants" reveals about the dominant system of thought that assigns people to place and how it might it be possible to think beyond its limits. It starts by demonstrating that the "security-space" imaginary both excludes and relies upon highly problematic, concealed assumptions about time and race. It shows how questions of time and race continually haunt and disrupt the seemingly coherent and indomitable "security-space" way of thinking. Following a strategy of deconstruction, the article arrives at the counter-intuitive conclusion that this dominant problematization of migration is temporal and structured by a relation to the future. Building on existing critical literature produced by scholars of Geopolitics, International Relations, and International Political Sociology, it offers an alternative imaginary, "time-race," which opens up new ground for reimagining borders and migration to overcome reproducing the never-ending cycle of "migration crises," to which there is apparently no alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the adoption of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the order founded on the treaty has evolved into an increasingly fragmented regime complex. Fragmentation has resulted from forum-shifting initiated both at the top and at the bottom of the nuclear hierarchy: both the United States, with varying partners, and coalitions of small-and medium-sized non-nuclear states have repeatedly moved rule-making on nuclear issues to fora outside the NPT, adding partly conflicting institutions to the complex. To understand this dynamic, I propose a sociological perspective that highlights states' positional struggles in a multidimensionally stratified international society. Drawing on Bourdieusian global fields theory, I argue that both dominant and weak states use forum-shifting to manipulate exchange rates between different (material, institutional and social) forms of capital they possess. Thus, they seek to protect their positions in global hierarchies within and beyond the nuclear field when they perceive these hierarchies as being challenged by material or institutional power shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]