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In times of climate change, water resources are shrinking at an alarming speed worldwide, making water a focal point of social and political contestation. Essential for environmental and human wellbeing, and economic prosperity, competing demands on water's finite resources amidst the global water crisis raise critical justice questions regarding allocation, accessibility, legitimate recipients, or prioritized uses. Access to water is deeply intertwined with political decisions, as it heavily depends on infrastructure and governance. Depoliticization, however, renders water issues to technical or economic terms, aligning with neoliberal practices that commodify and privatize water resources. This approach often neglects the inherent political and social dimensions of water, privileging corporate interests while restricting access for the poor and powerless. This article examines how (de)politicization shapes such water realities by applying theoretical perspectives on (de)politicization and environmental justice. Through a systematic literature review and interpretative content analysis, we explore how (de)politicization is conceptualized in scholarly discussions, identifying common themes in the water context, the scales and regions addressed, and the roles of various actors and actions involved. Our research reveals a persistent tension between depoliticization and repoliticization. While depoliticization, though conceptually rather imprecise, obscures accountability and perpetuates neoliberal practices leading to exclusion, repoliticization, driven by activism, addresses policy deficiencies and amplifies marginalized voices. By illuminating these dynamics, this study enhances the understanding of (de)politicization in the water realm and its implications for justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ending civil conflict is difficult, particularly through negotiated settlements. The research finds that the durability of peace guaranteed through a negotiated settlement can be affected when the opposing elites politicize the concessions made with rebels. Through politicization, the space in societal acceptance of rebels in post-war negotiations can be used by the opposing elites to gain a political support base, thereby challenging the delicate power-sharing agreement. Further, the politicization of the deal remains a hindrance to the sequencing of Transitional Justice (TJ) goals making the society more polarized and pushing it to violence, as the transition from the civil war to peace needs compromise and calculated sequencing of goals of TJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the linguistic and semiotic construction and transformation of Fujialu, a rural village in eastern China, as an "authentic" site of "red tourism" related originally to historical sites and places that record China's revolution led by the Communist Party of China. Based on photographs and semi-structured interviews, this paper applies the concept of chronotope as an analytical and interpretive approach to examine processes of linguistic and semiotic authentication and acts of spatiotemporal configuration. Findings of this study unfold excessive constraints of sociopolitical ideologies in the sign activity as well as the village's agency in this process, suggesting that the semiotization of space for tourism is not inevitably driven by economic but sociopolitical purposes. This paper thus adds a new insight to tourism literature that has not yet paid much attention to the influence of sociopolitical forces on place-making but is prevailingly taking commodification as a dominant factor structuring tourism discourse in today's era of mobility and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comparatively investigates variations in journalistic role performances in politicized media systems. Poland and Hungary are included in the quantitative content analysis as illustrative cases of Central and Eastern European countries featuring democratic erosion, political polarization, and media systems with a high level of political parallelism. Our study identifies whether the fall of liberal and deliberative democracy and increasing political pressure on the media have been accompanied by modifications in the manifestation of journalistic roles and, if so, what those changes have been. We employ Mellado's (2015) concept of journalistic roles by focusing on democracy-related domains, namely journalistic voice and power relations, and four roles: interventionist, watchdog, loyal facilitator, and civic. We compare data from national newspapers from two periods, namely 2012 and 2020. Despite experiencing similar changes in political context, journalists in Poland and Hungary have differed in their performance of the watchdog and civic roles. However, they have been alike in relation to the steady rise of journalistic interventionism. Surprisingly, we found no evidence of the elevation of the loyal facilitator model in newspapers. This study indicates that systemic politicization and political pressure on the media go alongside with diminishing objectivity and detachment in professional role performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-politics consists of a comprehensive literature that includes new political formations and positions such as the new-right, the new-left, the third way, and at the same time tries to demonstrate that the possibilities of politicization suppressed by these new ones have not completely disappeared. In other words, the concept of post-politics, in this respect, includes discussions on depoliticization and counter-politicization, and with such a comprehensive content, it points to the search for politicization. Populism is read by this post-politics literature as depoliticization on the one hand and a new possibility of politicization on the other. The main purpose of this study is to reveal the discussion on populism as an element of depoliticization in the light of the intersections with the post-politics literature, and in line with this purpose, the relevant literature readings are handled in a way to reveal the place of populism in the post-politics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the euro crisis, politicization patterns led the institutions of the European Union to gradually redirect the bloc's socioeconomic governance away from austerity. It is less clear whether the erosion of austerity was mirrored in national economic discourses. To fill this gap, this article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of parliamentary budget debates in four country cases: France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal, from 2014 to 2020. The results show contrasting patterns of "fiscal discipline" frame resilience in national economic discourse in ways consistent with intergovernmental bargaining around the pandemic recovery agenda. Moreover, shared preoccupations relating to investment in the economy, social inequality, and climate change emerge as major threads shaping budget making. These findings suggest an increasingly integrated multi‐level system of economic governance and call for further investigation into the links between ideas shaping EU economic governance and economic discourses in member states. Related Articles: Pi Ferrer, Laia, and Pertti Alasuutari. 2019. "The Spread and Domestication of the Term 'Austerity:' Evidence from the Portuguese and Spanish Parliaments." Politics & Policy 47(6): 1039–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12331. Zamponi, Lorenzo, and Lorenzo Bosi. 2016. "Which Crisis? European Crisis and National Contexts in Public Discourse." Politics & Policy 44(3): 400–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12156. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do leaders address the world in service of international cooperation, and do their messages enhance or detract from the global agenda? Leaders increasingly appear at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), a deliberative forum meant for diplomacy, not politics. At the same time, the UNGA has long undergone revitalization efforts, and leaders' contributions could potentially ensure more meaningful cooperation. Building on theories of leader communication, we argue that, in contrast to other country representatives, heads of state have more leeway to deviate from the assembly's priorities; as politicians, they have incentives to discuss their own, more particularistic, topics. Drawing from novel data on leaders' speeches in the UNGA, we use text analytics to show that leaders tend to depart from the policy agenda of the session. Furthermore, national political leaders speak more plainly, centering speech on themselves and departing from the general conventions of diplomatic debate. This suggests that, while leaders' attendance potentially generates more publicity and visibility for the UNGA, their contributions may also undermine the general debate. Our findings shed light on the ways in which leaders can politicize mulitlateral cooperation, and we give evidence for the role of individuals in the vitality of international organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government used to herald shale gas as a bridge fuel to a zero-carbon economy, trying (and ultimately, failing) to incorporate this hydrocarbon into a punctuated energy transition that is still under way in the country. On the one hand, planning translated central political decisions into local priorities, but on the other hand, it politicized public opposition to fracking. Although, there have been considerable criticisms of the planning process for fracking in Great Britain, we still lack a grounded understanding of how planning influenced the wider dynamics of public engagement with shale gas development. Drawing on ethnographic and participatory research across three locations in northern England, I explore how the planning process was experienced by the public and how its local participants were impacted by it. The ways in which planning dealt with evidence, public perception and democratic legitimacy suggested that planning was reinforcing the governmental pro-fracking policies while simultaneously undermining its own legitimacy, as questions about validity, impartiality and democracy were being raised. Rather than merely a technocratic arena for adjudicating between private and public interests, planning had a transformative effect on local participants and served as an important moment for mobilizing more politicized forms of public opposition against fracking, which undermined the energy-transition narratives touted by the government. I use anthropological theorizations of ritual to explain the concrete local dynamics that led to this unintended effect. This case study suggests that centrally orchestrated energy transitions may fail when they are enacted through local processes that foster experiences of injustice and lack of local control among the opposing publics. [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]

The Covid-19 pandemic and the intensified digitalization of life-worlds has especially affected younger generations, also in Austria. In this paper, we approach digital practices of 43 young adults between 16 and 18 years in a frame-analytical perspective to understand forms of politicization during the Covid-19 pandemic. We analyze memes in order to make sense of youth's life-worlds during the pandemic. The memes were created by youth as a result of a workshop series with the researchers. Our research shows that memes have provided a means for engaging and dealing digitally and emotionally with Covid-19-related problems. We show that the respective youth address educational, social and democratic issues by problematizing 'homeschooling as overburdening', a 'lack of planning' and 'social divisions'. Moreover, meme-creation offers a perspective on how youth express and create a 'sense of community' through digital practices. During the pandemic youth have increasingly come to understand and represent themselves as a group with shared experiences in digital space, going along with a positioning as 'younger generation' vis-à-vis older generations. We argue that the fact that the pandemic has affected youth heavily and the fact that they do not see their issues and needs represented by political representatives or media shows the potential and limits of digital spaces for younger generations to connect (politically). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global health regime is caught in a paradox, whereby connecting "human" to "(inter)national" security to prevent the spread of infectious diseases unwittingly introduces into this complex and expertise-reliant domain of "low politics" the notion of "sovereign decisionism"—states' prerogative to identify a threat and counter it with exceptional measures that may in turn constrain their ability to unilaterally securitize disease. This article introduces an analytical framework presenting three pathways through which state leaders with different conceptions of sovereignty and varying constraints on their legitimacy among their domestic audiences may nevertheless securitize policy domains traditionally considered as falling within the scope of sub-state "low politics." Two of the pathways begin with scientific objectivation rather than politicization, and one trades power concentration for collaboration with sub-state and global authorities. I then compare the Canadian and American responses during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic to uncover how these contextual factors disposed Donald Trump to politicize COVID-19, while Justin Trudeau emulated the World Health Organization's securitization of the virus without centralizing state powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research, using the cultural-identity-protective cognition theory and focusing on China as a case study, aims to identify influencers, track information dissemination processes, and recognize the patterns of information and emotional flows within Twitter conversations related to the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic. 5.3 million Twitter posts were collected related to the coronavirus using keyword searches such as #Wuhan and #Chinesevirus. Out of these, 17,964 tweets were selected as a sample from the most commented tweets by top users. A qualitative textual analysis revealed that Twitter users' attitudes toward the coronavirus disease and governments' policies were highly politicized and polarized. Both influencers and general users had the capacity to steer Twitter conversations into the political realm, thus contributing to the politicization and polarization of discussions during the information flow. Notably, opinion leaders, especially among influencers, could politicize and polarize a conversation by initially indicating their political standing in the tweet. In general, Twitter users had the ability to make neutral and objective news information go viral if a large number of Twitter users continue the politicization and polarization processes. Group membership—specifically, political standing—and cultural identities played significant roles in perpetuating a vicious cycle of anger. This cycle amplified identity threats for Twitter users and prompted more prejudicial and polarized comments, especially when China, Chinese people, and the Chinese government were the subjects of blame in the Twitter community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift towards human rights is a cornerstone of contemporary labour law scholarship. However, the debate primarily follows a naturalistic approach, heavily reliant on an orthodox account of human rights as universal moral claims for all individuals. This article challenges this approach, arguing that it frames the debate in an antagonistic and compartmentalized manner, where the two legal domains are seen as distinct and homogeneous. By adopting a political approach, the article proposes framing the interactions between these legal realms through the notion of legal-conflict constellations, wherein labour-capital conflicts manifest as specific social problems that may be addressed, wholly or partially, through rights discourse. These legal-conflict constellations are built around three interconnected processes: politicization, recentring class and the formation of productive resistance alliances. The article makes the following contributions. First, it situates the debate within the broader context of the reshaping of labour law under neoliberalism. Second, it sheds light on the prevailing naturalistic approach and its shortcomings. Third, it proposes a political approach to the debate, advancing a framework to explore the intricate links between these legal fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plagiarism accusations have become increasingly politicized over the last few years. In this article, we raise some of our concerns with how vacuous plagiarism accusations are now part of the arsenal of anti-woke politics. Revisiting the recent case of Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard University, we identify the implications such accusations pose to our profession, including the undermining of academic freedom and the concomitant silencing of scholarly voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the politicisation of nursing personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina, focusing on the trajectories of nurses trained in the public universities of the so-called ‘conurbano bonaerense’, especially in the young universities of the ‘Bicentenario’, rooted in a territory with strong traditions of popular political participation. The pandemic context accelerated the struggles for professional recognition among nurses. Analysing this process constitutes a significant contribution to the social studies of health and illness in Latin America, particularly regarding the role of gender. The pandemic has highlighted the necessity of making the history and demands of the nursing profession visible. Against this background, this article emphasises the challenging working conditions and lack of recognition faced by the nursing profession in Argentina, both materially and symbolically. Based on the analysis of narratives provided by nurses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the article analyses three politicisation trajectories of nursing graduates of Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche, on the conurbano bonaerense, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. We demonstrate the importance of the institutional context of the universities in this territory and underline its significance for the politicisation process we have observed.

Context: The role of political identities in determining attitudes to vaccines has attracted a lot of attention in the last decade. Explanations have tended to focus on the influence of party representatives on their sympathizers (partisan cues). Methods: Four representative samples of the French adult population completed online questionnaires between July 2021 and May 2022 (N = 9,177). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed to test whether partisan differences in attitudes to vaccines are best explained by partisan cues or by parties' differences in propensity to attract people who distrust the actors involved in vaccination policies. Findings: People who feel close to parties on the far left, parties on the far right, and green parties are more vaccine hesitant. The authors found a small effect of partisan cues and a much stronger effect of trust. More importantly, they show that the more politically sophisticated are less vaccine hesitant and that the nonpartisan are the biggest and most vaccine hesitant group. Conclusions: The literature on vaccine attitudes has focused on the case of the United States, but turning attention toward countries where disenchantment with politics is more marked helps researchers better understand the different ways trust, partisanship, and political sophistication can affect attitudes to vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the role of politics in shaping public views about immigration is surprisingly limited. We aim to advance this literature by (1) paying more attention to moderating effects of political variables and (2) analyzing separately how politics shapes empirical perceptions, normatively laden beliefs, and entirely normative attitudes about immigration. We combine socio-economic and political data with public opinion data from 34 European countries and multiple time periods (the European Social Survey of 2002 and 2014 and the European Values Survey of 2008 and 2017) to investigate the role anti-immigrant party success and ideological orientation play in public perceptions about the size of the immigrant population, public beliefs about immigrants' reliance on welfare and their impact on crime, and public attitudes about socialization with immigrants (having a close relative marry an immigrant). Our main findings are threefold. First, anti-immigrant party success tends to lead to more negative public opinion about immigration. Second, ideological orientation crucially shapes public opinion: not only is it a powerful bivariate predictor of public beliefs and attitudes, but it also interacts in meaningful ways with other influences on public opinion. Third, political variables have a larger effect on value-laden attitudes and beliefs than on perceptions of empirical reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a Durkheimian perspective and employs a socio-pragmatic method of inquiry, with a specific focus on analyzing "scandals" as critical junctures and the interpretations provided by social actors. The aim is to explore the development of corruption as a social issue in Romania over the past four decades. In contrast to two prevailing explanatory approaches in Romania, labeled here as fatalistic and voluntarist, we propose a more reflective approach. This perspective illustrates how the increasing division of labor and the subsequent rise in individualization within social relations have progressively influenced the tendencies and sensitivities of various social groups in Romanian society, particularly regarding what this study refers to as "illegal personal enrichment" (IPE). By focusing on discourse analysis of debates on corruption, this study analyses the evolution of the politicization of corruption--a subject still largely unexplored but highly prevalent in the public sphere--in conjunction with the structural changes in Romanian society. Consequently, three stages can be identified: IPE as a discursive tool for denouncing political adversaries, IEP as a generator of political conflicts, and IEP as a public issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic legitimacy is essential for democratic stability, as democracies rely on citizen support to survive. However, perceived legitimacy gaps can also be an important catalyst for change and potential democratic renewal, begging the question when challenges to legitimacy become problematic for democratic survival. Easton distinguished between citizen support for political authorities and the political system, and argued that if support for political authorities declined, such declining support could either be resolved by the current political authorities changing course, or by citizens electing new political authorities at the next elections. However, if dissatisfaction with political authorities would not be resolved, lacking support had the potential to eventually "spill-over" and undermine support for the political system as a whole. In most empirical research on legitimacy, the assumption is that such "spill-over" is visible only if declining levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy start to undermine support for democracy as a political system. In this paper, we argue that "spillover" can also manifest in a different way: through the politicization of political support. When politics is no longer (only) about substantive policy decisions, but rather (increasingly) about the system itself, agreement on the rules of the game, or even on democracy as "the only game in town", is no longer self-evident. In this paper we further develop our theoretical argument about the connection between legitimacy and politicisation, and argue that European democracies appear to experience growing politicization of political support, in terms of the association of political support with citizens' substantive issue positions and voting behaviour. The paper demonstrates empirical evidence of such politicization of political support in 17 European democracies with European Social Survey data from 2002-2022. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of the politicization of political support for democratic stability and renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although various studies have investigated the link between corruption and politicization, there is still a lack of comprehensive reflection in the literature on both this topic and the idea of politicization itself. Analyzing the politicization of an issue necessarily implies considering the public sphere and then the role of the media. Considering its penetration and its role as a news source for citizens, social media today is a particularly intriguing object of research. Our study shows that while social media may assist in raising awareness about and curbing corruption, it can also become dysfunctional in some circumstances. The multiplicity of the actors who intervene in corruption and the diversity of interests that characterizes their actions make online discussion complex and adaptable to different objectives. Discussions on corruption in Italy are highly polarized, favoring the political instrumentalization of the issue for different goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A politicization of diplomacy weakens the professionalism of the foreign service and arguably endangers the external relations of states. Yet, this phenomenon has largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. Public administration research on politicization usually overlooks the foreign service, whereas diplomacy scholars have focused almost exclusively on the United States. Our exploratory study of ambassador appointments compares the levels and modes of politicization (through politically connected professionals, or political appointees) of 669 ambassadors in 2019, across seven countries and three administrative traditions. The analysis is guided by three expectations: 1) countries that are more politicized overall appoint more non-career ambassadors; 2) patronage recruitment of political appointees focuses on low-hardship postings; and 3) politically connected professionals are used to control politically important foreign missions. We find that states politicize their foreign services to a varied degree and in different ways. Appointing politically connected professionals instead of political appointees is the most common way of politicization among our cases. In this regard, the US is an outlier, which also points to the need of studying politicization of diplomacy comparatively. This article thus makes an important contribution by setting the agenda for future research on this hitherto underexplored topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the USA and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada have elicited considerable domestic contestation in Europe, several other agreements have been negotiated into public and media indifference. What explains this difference? In this article, I put forward a number of arguments on the structural causes of the politicization of European Union (EU) trade policy over the past 30 years and test them against a newly collected dataset covering 19 preferential trade agreements. The qualitative comparative analysis suggests that the politicization of EU trade negotiations is determined by the co-occurrence of several, well-defined conditions. More specifically, it tells us that: (1) the Lisbon Treaty's reform of EU trade policymaking is the main driver of politicization, (2) the level of public support for the EU is of particular relevance when it comes to 'deep and comprehensive' agreements that touch on sensitive domestic issues, and that (3) high adjustment costs expected from trade liberalization can lead to the politicization of trade negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How we have come to think about climate futures has predominantly been shaped by science- and expert-driven assessments. As research turns to the role of future visions as a driver of social change and overcoming political gridlock, political struggles are understood as conflicts over making (alternative) desirable futures socially performative. The recent advent of the new climate movements (NCMs) has given rise to the assumption that they could contribute to a re-politicization of climate politics by introducing alternative future visions. Their names and slogans articulate future expectations, such as futures "worth studying for" (Fridays for Future) or averting extinction (Extinction Rebellion). Yet, research on the politicizing qualities of the NCMs is inconclusive. I use a new framework for examining (de-)politicization dynamics to study public communication of German factions of both movements from 2019 to 2022. The results underscore climate movements' strong affiliation to science from their inception, yet over time, increasing attempts to adhere to principles of climate justice. However, climate movements still struggle to re-politicize climate futures beyond dominant positive visions of modernization and negative visions of collapse. I argue that this bounded politicization is indicative of the broader discursive dynamics that have weakened the ability to formulate alternative visions and discuss to what extent the centrality of scientific imaginative logics and understandings of the science-policy interface act to inhibit the articulation of alternative visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines processes of (de-) politicization among Egyptian student activists in the post-2011 context. Based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus groups, I argue that the rapid and successive political changes – with the revolution in 2011 then the coup d’état in 2013 – made the boundaries separating institutional, contentious and prefigurative politics fluid. As student activists debated if their claims and activities were ‘student-related’ or ‘political’, several conceptions of politics and political action coexisted among them and their understanding of politics fluctuated. These evolving conceptions created gaps and contradictions allowing for the negotiation of the meaning of their various activities. The negotiation of politics is a collective pattern but was also reflected in, and reflective of evolving individual subjectivities. As young students lived through the revolution, entered university and joined or left a group, their perceptions of their roles and of the political meaning of their present and past activities changed. The rising repression in 2013/14 shaped the activists’ tactics, as well as their perceived priorities and the meaning of activities, thus amplifying the negotiation of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research contributes to the study of populist radical right parties' (PRRPs) role in gendered democratic backsliding by analyzing their articulation and symbolic representation of gender issues. We compare the politicization of gender issues across three European PRRPs, examining how context-specific gendered opportunity structures – the level of contestation of gender issues in their country, the resonance of antigenderism among their electorate, and their issue repertoire and historical trajectory – shape the extent and ways in which the German AfD, the Italian Lega and the Sweden Democrats politicize gender issues. We conduct a quantitative content analysis of PRRPs' framing of gender issues and construct topic networks based on the parties' Facebook and Twitter posts during the European Parliament election campaign 2019. We analyze the salience of gender issues, the broader topical context in which they are embedded, the specific gender issues addressed, and the parties' positions on these issues. Our results show how context-specific gendered opportunities shape PRRPs' national gender discourses: A low level of contestation, evidenced by a high public recognition and legal protection of gender and sexual equality, seems to foster a femonationalist framing, while antigenderist discourse is less pronounced in such a context. Instead, a higher level of contestation, expressed in a lower public recognition and legal protection of gender and sexual equality, seems to foster antigenderist discourse. A transnational femonationalist framing, shared by all analyzed parties, relates to a common nativist ideological core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish Constitutional Court has occupied a central position in the Spanish political system since the Transition. Its decisions have completed, and still complete, the articles of the 1978 Constitution. Nevertheless, despite its intense activity in civil and administrative issues, this institution has progressively lost support among public opinion. To a large extent, the Court is now considered a politicized organization serving the interests of Conservative political forces. The growing intrusion of the judiciary in Spanish politics has increased this feeling. How to explain this biased viewpoint? In this paper, we argue that there are two reasons for this declining trust. On the one hand, the Court is the collateral victim of party politics which forced it to take sides. The Court is subject to a process of polarization affecting the whole Spanish political system. On the other hand, the Court has interfered regularly in the political debate by imposing its view, up to blocking parliamentary debates in late 2022. This double process is analysed from a new institutional perspective. We identified four critical junctures involving the Court and political parties, namely the delaying of decisions, the veto on governmental policy, the recusing of justices, and the blockade of appointments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the systemic politicization of the EU is associated with support for different political parties. We argue that, while politicization involves actions by both Eurosceptic and Europhile parties, it does not affect parties at both extremes of the continuum in the same way. To investigate these differentiated effects, we leverage data from the European Elections Study and the Chapel Hill expert survey covering two decades (1999 to 2019). The evidence supports the hypothesis that, when it comes to voters' preferences, politicization strongly favours Eurosceptic parties. We conclude that the systemic politicization of European issues is thus a one-way street leading to the reinforcement of the constraining dissensus on the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that schooling's driving purpose should be to educate. Given heightening global crises and the potential of education to respond, we agree with the spirit and focus of UNESCO's (2021) A new social contract for education intervention. Education/schooling should be motivated by progressive, critical visions to contribute to more sustainable and just human and planetary futures. Embodied-affective-cognitive technologically-mediated processes of becoming educated, however, are not a force that can smash injustice or ecologically destructive capitalism. Educationally speaking, there is no shortcut to cultivating students as "change agents" for sustainable futures. Hannah Arendt's essay "The crisis in education" (2006) is instructive in clarifying the function of schooling and in categorically distinguishing adults from children, education from politics, and education from learning. While human learning proliferates in multiple ways independent of existential/ethical mooring, education ultimately requires committed adults spending time with, and socioemotionally and intellectually supporting, children to deepen their understanding of the world and others, giving meaning and significance to their/our lives as part of larger collectives called upon to sustain and renew a common world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

#MeToo sought to combat sexual violence but evolved into a polarizing movement in the United States. Using a random sample of 5,153 tweets with #MeToo posted between 2017 and 2019 to explore the language and themes individuals use to polarize conversations around sexual violence, we find that MeToo supporters used rights-and-justice-focused language to advocate for survivors. In contrast, MeToo detractors employed legal and violent language to victimize the alleged perpetrators and villainize victims of sexual violence and their supporters. This demonstrates how "linguistic hijacking" unfolded online, with movement opponents co-opting key terms (like "victim") to undermine movement supporters' goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In times of climate change, water resources are shrinking at an alarming speed worldwide, making water a focal point of social and political contestation. Essential for environmental and human wellbeing, and economic prosperity, competing demands on water’s finite resources amidst the global water crisis raise critical justice questions regarding allocation, accessibility, legitimate recipients, or prioritized uses. Access to water is deeply intertwined with political decisions, as it heavily depends on infrastructure and governance. Depoliticization, however, renders water issues to technical or economic terms, aligning with neoliberal practices that commodify and privatize water resources. This approach often neglects the inherent political and social dimensions of water, privileging corporate interests while restricting access for the poor and powerless. This article examines how (de)politicization shapes such water realities by applying theoretical perspectives on (de)politicization and environmental justice. Through a systematic literature review and interpretative content analysis, we explore how (de)politicization is conceptualized in scholarly discussions, identifying common themes in the water context, the scales and regions addressed, and the roles of various actors and actions involved. Our research reveals a persistent tension between depoliticization and repoliticization. While depoliticization, though conceptually rather imprecise, obscures accountability and perpetuates neoliberal practices leading to exclusion, repoliticization, driven by activism, addresses policy deficiencies and amplifies marginalized voices. By illuminating these dynamics, this study enhances the understanding of (de)politicization in the water realm and its implications for justice.

In this paper we propose a reading of the philosophical thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, from the Zubirian influence and the diagnosis made by this author of the dehumanizing condition that affected the popular majorities in El Salvador. Firstly, under the scope of some fundamental characterizations about its notion of historical reality, based on the Zubirian anthropological conception. Secondly, we will argue in favor of the realization of the sense of this reality in the process of humanization. And lastly, we will propose the minimum conditions for the politicization of this historical reality based on the process of humanization in the thought of Ignacio Ellacuría. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sri Lanka's postindependence history suggests that continuous efforts by the Sinhala‐Buddhist politicians to reject decentralization created anxiety and distrust among minorities. The state used both Sinhala language and Buddhism to accommodate Sinhala‐Buddhist interests and provide cultural security to Sinhala‐Buddhists who feared that the Sinhala race, Buddhism, and heritage would be threatened with destruction by the Tamil and Muslim separatists and extremists. The state forced the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which demanded a separate state for North and Eastern Tamils, to silence its guns in May 2009. The military defeat of the LTTE did not produce any democratization of the island. Sinhala‐Buddhist extremist forces turned their eyes on Sri Lankan Muslims, whose elites attached to major political parties supported the war against the LTTE. This study examines the politicization of the Sinhala language and Buddhism in Sri Lanka before and after the civil war between the LTTE and the state dominated by the Sinhala‐Buddhists. It argues that Sinhala political elites willingly took measures to centralize power. The major result of centralization is the birth of the state‐seeking, but authoritarian LTTE. It will also provide some useful analysis to examine post‐war tensions between the Muslims and the Sinhala‐Buddhist extremists. Finally, I discuss some solutions to fight the rising authoritarianism to help Sri Lanka enjoy the fruits of modernization and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both proponents and critics of the regulatory state thesis view the creation of non-majoritarian institutions, such as independent regulatory agencies, as a process of 'depoliticisation'. This article problematises this assumption by proposing an analytical framework for better understanding the link between politicisation, depoliticisation, and the delegation of powers to non-majoritarian institutions, based on a study of drug rationing policies in England and France. A greater delegation of decision-making powers to a regulator enables policy decisions that are likely to prove politically costly, but such decisions are also likely to attract greater counter-mobilisation, undermining policy stability over time. By contrast, in a less delegated setting, elected politicians can prevent unpopular policy choices from being taken, which contributes to policy continuity. The article further argues that, where decision-making powers are highly delegated, the regulator's autonomy and the visibility of losses imposed by policy decisions condition the politicisation process. These findings suggest that, far from depoliticising policy problems, delegated policymaking insulated from politics can undermine itself by becoming a source of subsequent politicisation; they thus question the prevailing notion that delegation to non-majoritarian institutions contributes to policy stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Faced with the challenge of thinking about communication towards the year 2030, the text reflects on how we inhabit our Latin American territories communicatively. With this question as a guide, it proposes a journey that dwells on the historical and narrative evolution of communicative practices, on the extension and hybridity of the current public space and on the political potential of communicational experiences. We propose the complementarity between what is diverse and what unites us for a greater exercise of communicative citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that the entourage of ministerial advisers available to prime ministers and other ministers is an institutional power resource that can serve as a useful indicator to measure the changing nature of the political executive. Two novel contributions are made utilising four new datasets on ministerial advisers coupled with a comparative analysis of 21 governments in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, in varying dates between 1997 and 2020. First, by using ministerial advisers as a proxy indicator, we chart how the offices of executive politicians can either expand, remain stable or contract. As a corrective to the general long-term narrative that ministers' offices continually expand, our evidence shows this expansion has in some cases been interrupted and more generally manifests in different patterns from one government to the next. Second, we interrogate these patterns against the background of four typical assumptions from the party family, government tenure, parliamentary control and leadership stability literature. The new datasets, typology and analysis provide fresh comparative insights to advance our understanding about the evolving nature of the political executive in the four classic Westminster family countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]