Abstracts Submission

In recent years, central banks and their actions have been receiving increased public attention. The focus of central banking has long been on providing stability and managing inflation, with a clear separation and independence of political decision-making and policymaking. However, responding to various challenges over the past two decades, including the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, changes in the geopolitical landscape, and the imperative to “green” the economy, central banks have expanded the scope of their activities.

The result is that the political significance of central banks’ actions has increased, even as they remain, at least officially, independent. Recent developments in the US underscore how central bank independence has, yet again, become the subject of political contestation. Yet, as the contributions in this thematic issue highlight, the political challenges of politically active, but formally depoliticised, central banks have been felt in many jurisdictions and present a fruitful field of inquiry for comparative political economy.

This issue in particular seeks contributions addressing:

• How independent are central banks in conducting different parts of their policies?
• What explains this more interventionist/political role of central banks in economic policy-making?
• What are the political consequences and normative/institutional implications?
• What role do current developments play regarding increased politicisation and independence?

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Politics and Governance is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

Numerous developed economies are searching for ways to restructure their economies in the wake of economic nationalism and disruption emanating from the US. Industrial policy is one aspect of new initiatives. The rise of industrial policy in recent years indicates a more paradigmatic shift to economic policy-making and market governance: From government interventions destined to stimulate growth and competition towards crafting markets in a way that they serve specific public goals such as security, economic sovereignty, or decarbonization.

This thematic issue focuses attention on and invites contributions that shed light on how to design industrial policy within national borders and across them to maximum effect for the participating countries and companies involved. Developing an industrial strategy entails profound challenges for policy-making and governance. It requires recalibrating policy domains such as trade, investment, or infrastructure (digital and physical) policy, and defining economic sectors of strategic importance. It also requires enhancing governance capacities within the state (intergovernmental relations, public administration) and between the state and economic and societal stakeholders, as well as reaching agreement on (shared) control of technology, intellectual property, infrastructure and shared resources Against this backdrop, and within the realm of policy learning and tools, we wish to build on an emerging body of research that breaks down industrial policy into two phases: determining the best practices and methods that states use to decide where and how to support industrial transformation; and the practices and methods used to deploy those tools most effectively.

The thematic issue invites contributions that examine policies and performance within and between OECD and Newly Industrialized Countries as they restructure their internal political economies, contributions to this project will shed light on how much political interest in geoeconomic restructuring can be detected, whether mechanisms to make informed decisions with public/private interaction can be confirmed, what kind of variety is found in national mechanisms of industrial policy, what kind of domestic and international governance features have evolved to support reconfigured supply chains and development, and with what effect economies, take decisions to onshore or friendshore their supply chains, pursue higher value added products, services and capacities within their economies. Adopting a comparative approach that speaks to both, scholarship in international and comparative political economy, contributions to this special issue will shed light on how much political interest in geoeconomic restructuring can be detected, whether mechanisms to make informed decisions with public/private interaction can be confirmed, what kind of variety is found in national mechanisms of industrial policy, what kind of domestic an dinternational governance features have evolved to support reconfirgured supply chains and development, and with what effect.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Politics and Governance is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

The EU’s democracy promotion agenda is at a critical juncture. Amid intensified geopolitical competition and war on its borders, the EU faces the dual challenge of renewing its enlargement policy and defending democracy within and beyond its frontiers. The challenge is that much of its neighbours—both in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe remain governed by various contours of hybrid regimes—systems that combine democratic institutions with authoritarian practices. These regimes are neither fully autocratic nor genuinely democratic; rather, they represent a grey zone where both democratic aspirations and authoritarian entrenchment coexist. This thematic issue brings together empirical and conceptual contributions that critically examine how the EU and other external actors engage with hybrid regimes in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, focusing on trust, social cohesion, and democratic resilience. It argues that understanding the EU’s limited success in democracy promotion requires moving beyond institutionalist approaches to include the societal dimensions of resilience—trust in institutions (vertical) and trust among citizens (horizontal) and understanding the durability that gives hybrid regimes. This is not just a passing phase but seems much more entrenched and long-lasting. Together, the contributions demonstrate that the persistence of hybrid regimes in the EU’s neighbourhood reflects both the limitations of EU policies and the agency of domestic actors, including patron-client relations, civil society movements, protest dynamics, and local narratives of legitimacy and belonging. The thematic issue is structured around three interrelated themes:

1.      Theoretical and conceptual perspectives on hybridity, regime complexity, and the EU’s evolving democracy-promotion toolkit in a geopolitical era.

2.      Empirical analyses of trust, social cohesion, and civic agency in countries caught between democratic aspirations and authoritarian drift.

3.      Comparative lessons on how the EU can adapt its enlargement and neighbourhood policies to better support democratic resilience in hybrid settings.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Politics and Governance is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.