Abstracts Submission

Access to energy is essential for almost all kinds of human activity, heating, cooling, cooking, light, transportation, industrial production, and if necessary, military operations. It follows that a secure and affordable energy supply is high on the domestic and international political agenda. On the other hand, political turbulence can have immediate consequences for energy markets and thus for energy security. 

The Covid-19 pandemic caused severe disturbances in global supply chains, a vital element in the global free-trade system. This system is under pressure from the introduction of competing tariffs between the major trading partners: the US, Europe, and China. In Europe, the European-Russian gas relation that emerged in the 1970s was a case of beneficial economic interdependence. The conflicts in Ukraine—beginning with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas in 2014 and then the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 revised the perception of Russian gas from an economic benefit to a geopolitical liability. Across the Atlantic, as the US became a net energy exporter in recent years, it has also rearticulated its stance on global energy trade towards a much more assertive position, visible both in Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” and Trump’s “energy dominance” doctrine. These events come on top of the political ambition to combat climate change, which will require an unprecedented and rapid transformation of the global energy system. 

This thematic issue aims to capture the interactive cause-and-effect relationship between (geo)political turbulence, energy markets, and energy transition. Dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach, we will apply the analytical perspectives on energy turbulence, trade, and transition from International Relations, International Political Economy, security studies, public policy, and (geo)economics. The issue should attract scholars from all these areas, and policymakers and energy stakeholders interested in empirical analysis of present geopolitical changes, energy markets, energy transitions, and climate change.

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.

There are many concerns confronting democratic elections and election administration in the US and abroad. In 2025, President Trump signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote in US elections; only half of the US adult citizen population has a valid visa, which would have significant effects (the courts have blocked implementation of the order for now). Misinformation about elections and political candidates is widespread, with no signs of abating given AI and deepfakes. The Pew Research Center reports that many Americans have difficulty identifying accurate information about US elections. The Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) notes that many Americans are not confident in US election processes and connect this with the astounding variation in election procedures throughout the country. There continue to be challenges to striking the best balance between voter access and voting integrity in the US and other worldwide democracies. In this issue for Politics and Governance, the goal is to collect and feature research articles from leading scholars in the US and cross-nationally, and to identify solutions to the problems currently besetting elections and election administration in democracies.

This thematic issue will feature research on current concerns confronting elections and election administration in the US and democracies abroad. Topics covered in this issue address misinformation and disinformation in elections, AI and election administration, funding quality election administration, evaluating local election administration, convenience voting including voting by mail, building trust in elections, making sense of the role of the judiciary in protecting or diminishing the right to vote, balancing voter access measures (like mail voting) with voting integrity measures (like voter ID laws), and deepening understanding and suggesting improvements to be made for election administration in democratic elections. In this thematic issue, we will promote a heightened understanding of elections and election administration in the US and abroad in the 2020s.

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 image of massively wealthy tech leaders assembling at Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2024 travelled around the globe. Yet, even before tech executives got substantially involved in the US administration, the rise of large tech companies had begun to transform not only the digital economy but also global politics.

As contemporary capitalism is increasingly organized around the control of knowledge, data, and intangibles, tech firms have divided much of the digital sphere among themselves—and the infrastructure that carries it. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together occupy about two-thirds of the global cloud market. Lately, Big Tech has also invested heavily in data centers, fiber-optic networks, and satellite systems.

New players in the Big Tech ecosystem consist of rapidly rising ventures like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Palantir that open new markets to the sector’s activities. Defense and warfare are currently transformed by artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making. Through ownership of social media platforms and integration of AI-driven services into public policy, tech firms also increasingly influence knowledge production itself.

A defining feature of this ecosystem is the personalization of corporate power. Close personal networks span between tech leaders, political offices, and venture capitalists, sparking debates around “intellectual monopolization” and the rise of a “tech oligarchy” or “technofeudalism.”

This thematic issue brings together scholars of various backgrounds—international relations, international political economy, geopolitics & geoeconomics, science and technology studies, platform studies, etc. It aims to promote an interdisciplinary agenda on the global politics of large technology firms that matches the scale of their real-world influence. Contributions may address:

·        The sources and forms of tech firm power;

·        The logic guiding the firms’ operations and their leadership;

·        The societal, economic, ecological, and political consequences of Big Tech;

·        The evolving corporate ecosystem;

·        Global competition and relations with other tech sectors, e.g., China and Europe;

·        Big Tech’s impact on different fields of public policy;

·        Its role in the knowledge economy and knowledge creation;

·        Possibilities for governing Big Tech.

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.