The Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted in the context of the UN in 2015, place emphasis, among others, on fighting poverty, reducing inequalities, and promoting peace, justice and strong institutions. This issue will bring together manuscripts that assess how legal, political, and economic mechanisms and processes in countries of the Global South contribute to or hinder the implementation of pro-poor policies, as well as how “pro-poor” policies are understood and enacted in practice.

We start with a recognition that the meaning of pro-poor policies has a contentious history even among major international organisations that have deployed the term, with a notable tension between the World Bank—which promotes poverty targeting and poverty reduction—versus the UN—that has typically emphasized inequality reduction and more universal approaches to social provisioning. In this respect, the key policy areas that have come to dominate the imagination of pro-poor policies generally focus on social protection policies and labour policies for employment generation, which will also serve as the primary focus of this thematic issue.

The literature in the fields of political science, governance, and political economy has pointed out the need to study formal and informal mechanisms of rule for a proper understanding of the pro-poor effects of such policies and programmes. Major sub-themes include:

• The clout of different types of legal mechanisms in generating pro-poor outcomes;
• The power, interests, and ideologies of rivalling political actors with influence over the shape and outcomes of pro-poor policies (including national governments, international donor agencies, civil society, and private sector actors);
• The constraints and potential solutions that various institutional configurations offer to improve the articulations and outcomes of pro-poor policies;
• The evolution and diffusion of the pro-poor agenda and its contribution to the understanding of pro-poor policymaking and the rethinking of the poverty-reduction challenge.

Low-carbon transitions involve resilience challenges associated with the implementation of new energy systems, green electrification and related critical infrastructure. This is especially true in the current context of growing international competition and conflict, in which physical and cyberattacks against energy systems have become a reality. Political leaders and policy-makers are called upon to make urgent decisions on how to implement the transition; identifying apt policies, adapting institutions and ensuring their resilience are central conundrums. At the same time, it is important to ensure that energy transitions are just and not overly securitised.

The key questions addressed in this thematic issue include the following:

• How do we conceptualise the resilience of critical energy infrastructure?

• What are the main security risks to energy infrastructure in the context of green transition and geopolitical conflict and what are existing policy frameworks to tackle them?

• What are the political and governance challenges related to new energy infrastructure development?

• How are resilience and justice conceptualized and operationalised in the policies of major global actors and energy transition leaders (i.e., the US, China, EU, Japan, Germany, Finland, and Norway)?

We invite submissions that offer empirical and conceptual insights on topics including resilience and/or justice in energy transitions; adapting institutions and infrastructure to low carbon transitions; cyber and other security threats to new infrastructure related to the energy transition; case studies of new energy transition projects highlighting resilience and justice issues; resilience challenges of low-carbon energy systems, from renewables to nuclear power (i.e., small modular reactors); the governance of the energy transition with specific reference to new critical infrastructure.

Today’s representative democracies appear increasingly squeezed between a growing indifference towards politics, and a mode of politics that has become more personalised, volatile, polarized, and confrontational: an arena in which citizens take part more as spectators than as agents. The notion that political representatives’ work consists, at least in part, of mediation and compromise-seeking has become suspect and increasingly gives way to accusations of elitism, a lack of responsiveness, and incompetence. Populist appeals redefine political representation by invoking the immediacy of a putative will of the people or a leader’s charisma. Meanwhile, technocrat arguments contribute to broader trends of depoliticization that erode support for (time-consuming) forms of collective deliberation and judgment formation.

This thematic issue is organized and conducted under the aegis of the Horizon Europe project REDIRECT. It promotes a holistic understanding of the malaise of contemporary European democracies, defined as a “representative disconnect.” It treats this disconnect as an expression of broader and long-standing cultural and social transformations (e.g., individualism, globalization, neoliberalism, social media, and the rise of the far right) that have profoundly altered the “zone of engagement” in which citizens and politics meet. We treat representative disconnect as a multidimensional phenomenon (with institutional, behavioural, and affective components). To discern its nature, magnitude, and implications, the thematic issue presents a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods along with conceptual and comparative analyses that research both the representative and citizen end of the disconnect. Besides a focus on political parties as key actors and platforms for representation, with particular emphasis on unpacking the experiences and perspectives of youth (MP and citizens) in today’s climate of fear, anxiety, and polarisation. Contributions present findings from elite and mass surveys, youth focus groups, representative claim analysis, and conceptual work on disconnect, political parties, and deliberative mini-publics.

This thematic issue explores the rise and impact of women populist leaders across the ideological spectrum, from the far-left to the far-right, in a global context. Women populist leaders, whether in France, Germany, or Italy, lead the polls and win landslide regional and national elections—an empirical reality unimaginable to feminists and the progressive left a few decades ago.

This raises questions: How do women populist leaders perform in office, and with what impact on gender equality, LGBTIQ, and minority rights? What motivates women to elect, support, and run for parties and movements that reject contemporary feminism? While much of the existing literature has focused on male populist leaders, this collection addresses the gendered dimensions of populist leadership, analyzing how women navigate and reshape political landscapes traditionally dominated by men.

Combining single-case studies and comparative analyses, the issue examines the political strategies, rhetoric, and policies of women leaders in Europe and beyond. Contributions investigate the conditions that enable their rise to power, the ways they reconcile or challenge traditional gender norms, and their influence on both party dynamics and broader political institutions.

By focusing on the diverse ideological orientations of these leaders, the issue aims to uncover the commonalities and differences in their leadership styles, the role of gender in their political trajectories, and their impact on the representation of women’s interests and the empowerment of women in politics. This collective effort sheds light on the paradoxes of populist leadership and its implications for contemporary democracy.

The twin (green and digital) transition aims to maximize synergies between digitalization and environmental sustainability to combat climate change, build more efficient economies, and foster resilient societies (European Commission, 2022, 2023). While digital and sustainable convergence can effectively enable economic growth, foster circular economies, and address critical climate challenges (Blüm, 2022; Daehlen, 2023), its impact on deepening income inequalities, exacerbating regional disparities, and widening the digital divide must not be overlooked (Kolotouchkina et al., 2024; McDowall et al., 2023; Timmermans et al., 2023). Job losses in phasing out fossil fuel-intensive industries, cost burden to access innovation, energy, and transport poverty among the most vulnerable are some of the negative outcomes of the twin transition process (Al Kez et al., 2024; Mejía Dorantes & Murauskaite-Bull, 2023).

The Special Issue aims to explore the complexities and challenges of the governance of twin transition through the lens of inclusion and social justice. We invite scholars and practitioners to discuss the origins, determinants, and dynamics of inequalities linked to the twin transition process. We also welcome reflections on the critical challenges, best practices, and emerging opportunities to ensure its fair and inclusive governance.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• The impact of the twin transition on structural inequalities in energy, transport, agriculture, and built environment sectors.
• Barriers hindering a just twin transition process in energy, transport, agriculture, and built environment sectors.
• Challenges, best practices and emerging opportunities in achieving a fair and inclusive governance of the twin transition.
• The role of participatory inclusive governance and stakeholder engagement in fostering a just twin transition.
• Assessment of the impact of fair and inclusive governance on just twin transition.

References:

Al Kez, D., Foley, A., Lowans, C., & Furszyfer, D. (2024). Energy poverty assessment: Indicators and implications for developing and developed countries. Energy Conversion and Management, 307, 118324–118324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2024.118324

Blüm, S. (2022, October 26). What is the “twin transition” - and how can it speed sustainable growth. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/10/twin-transition-playbook-3-phases-to-accelerate-sustainable-digitization

Daehlen, M. (2023). The twin transition century: The role of digital research for a successful green transition of society? (The Guild Insight Paper No. 5). The Guild of European  Research-Intensive Universities and Bern Open Publishing. https://doi.org/10.48350/184458

European Commission. (2022, March 2). European growth model - European Commission. Economy-Finance.ec.europa.eu. https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-and-fiscal-governance/european-growth-model_en

European Commission. (2023). Making the twin transition a reality | Knowledge for policy. Europa.eu. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/foresight/making-twin-transition-reality_en#trendchinaseconomicpoweronspeed

Kolotouchkina, O., Ripoll González, L., & Belabas, W. (2024). Smart cities, digital inequalities, and the challenge of inclusion. Smart Cities, 7(6), 3355–3370. https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities7060130

McDowall, W., Reinauer, T., Fragkos, P., Miedziński, M., & Cronin, J. (2023). Mapping regional

vulnerability in Europe’s energy transition: development and application of an indicator to assess declining employment in four carbon-intensive industries. Climatic Change, 176(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03478-w

Mejía Dorantes, L., & Murauskaite-Bull, I. (2023). Revisiting transport poverty in Europe through a systematic review. Transportation Research Procedia, 72, 3861–3868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.497

Timmermans, B., Diodato, D., Huergo, E., Rentocchini, F., & Moncada-Paternò-Castello, P. (2023). Introduction to the special issue on “the twin (digital and green) transition: handling the economic and social challenges.” Industry and Innovation, 30(7), 755–765. https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2023.2254272

The reasons for war are always miscellaneous, but ending wars becomes a huge challenge as, in current war events, the belligerent parties could arise new legitimations to continue or extend their warfare. This becomes evident since former opponents of war sometimes find it difficult to maintain their critical stance as soon as one of the warring parties has been identified as being exclusively responsible for the armed conflict. Moreover, aggressors, who start a war, often suggest themselves as victim countries that only use military force in response to former warlike aggression—apart from the fact that the country that first uses armed force is not necessarily an aggressor and, therefore, that the judgement of a warlike conflict can differ from the perspective of international law to a rather moral point of view.

Hence, the rough distinction between an offensive right to war and the mere legitimisation of defensive wars launched by contemporary just war theories is not convincing anymore, especially since the claim to “defend” democracy, freedom, and human rights is also (ab-)used to justify military interventions. Today, political and social research has to reflect that any clear distinction between bellicose and pacifist attitudes has become difficult and that war itself is an existential ethical or identity conflict which is often suggested as a fight between the good and the evil.

Against this background, this issue asks:

• How are wars legitimised by different political actors and societies that are directly or indirectly involved? 
• What sets off the advocacy of wars and arms supply on an individual level? 
• How do (media) discourses shape the negotiation of war and defense strategies as well as de-escalation and peace strategies? 
• What moral-ethical and legal problems arise in conflict management? 
• What influence do war dynamics have on decision-making processes? 
• How did the legitimisation of wars and the negotiation of peace processes take shape from the past to the present?

Modern democracies are imbued with many formal and informal conceptualizations about the sorts of ethical rules and norms that govern individual leaders and groups of leaders. Ethical leadership is thought to be important for—and correlated with—public trust. Trust is a foundational element of modern governance. However, ethical norms are often violated in practice or conflict with other “rules” of governance. Securing public trust, in practice, is quite elusive. Scholars disagree as to how and why public trust may be solidified (or eroded), and also debate the causative role of leadership in creating such trust. Governments often pursue trust-building policies without much reassurance or firm empirical evidence these efforts will succeed. For example, the Open Government initiative, which spans OECD countries, aims to increase governmental transparency for the benefit of citizens. Yet, open government has the potential to both increase and decrease public trust in a democracy. In short, there is much need for deeper research from both the empirical and theoretical perspectives into the connections between and among the interplay of ethics, democracy, and political leadership.
This thematic issue gathers together the latest research on ethics, trust, and democracy from a group of academic specialists, government partners, and the holders of five prestigious research chairs.

The issue will pose some broad questions to help focus the individual author's contributions. Examples of key questions include: What are the necessary and essential ethical parameters that ought to inform how democratic leadership is exercised? Does populism enhance or erode ethics and public trust in democracies? Does a leader’s rhetoric about ethical government help to increase trust in a democratic government? How is democratization informed by the practice of ethical leadership?

In sum, this thematic issue will gather together new research on ethics, democracy, and leadership at an opportune time. The content will feature a mixture of theoretical and empirical approaches. Its content and arguments will appeal to academic researchers as well as policy specialists, think tanks, and government partners.

In today’s digitalized world, data have evolved into not only an economic resource but a pivotal cornerstone for safeguarding personal privacy, human rights, national sovereignty, and security interests. Given its importance, there has been a growing consensus on the need for establishing global regimes for governing data. Nevertheless, due to varying economic, political, and ideological perspectives on the internet, major digital powers are adopting divergent approaches to data collection, storage, and transfer, each competing for leadership roles in this field. Consequently, data governance has emerged as a new arena for geostrategic competition and political rivalry, which has been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is illustrated by examples such as the EU imposing fines on the US’s tech giants, China's implementation of new data privacy and security laws with stringent cross-border clearance requirements for “sensitive” data, the US imposing restrictions on Chinese digital firms on national security grounds, India excluding Chinese apps, and Russia instituting a national internet.

Against this backdrop, this thematic issue seeks to examine data and transnational data governance from a geopolitical perspective. It seeks contributions speaking to topics such as:

What are the geopolitical implications of data?

What factors have been driving the geopolitical turn in data and transnational data governance?

Which prominent digital powers are actively pursuing leadership roles in the field of data governance, and to what extent do their actions reflect geopolitical considerations?

What roles do non-government actors, including private actors, civil society, and international organizations, play in the landscape of global cyber governance?

Environmental problems such as the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion and degradation, increased pollution and waste, and the associated environmental justice concerns have spurred a vast amount of research on environmental governance covering dynamics at different levels. Within this area, research on environmental networks has shed light on the relational patterns between different entities that help explain policy and management outcomes, including successes, and failures. Research on environmental governance, spanning from mono- to polycentric, adaptive, collaborative, and transformative approaches, has increasingly adopted network perspectives to investigate structural properties in governance systems.

However, there is a lot to be learned about how politics in different environmental networks relates to the broader governance contexts and systems shaping policy and, ultimately, socio-environmental outcomes. Examining politics within environmental networks encompasses a broad array of research, including power dynamics, patterns of collaboration and conflict, framing and mobilization processes, crisis management, transboundary governance systems, and coalitional behavior. Such efforts extend to the analysis of the relational, discursive, and positional power of actors, within various forms of institutionalization, contention, and polarization.

We invite submissions that offer novel empirical evidence and theoretical insights into the political dimension of networks across diverse environmental domains. This thematic issue call extends to a wide range of political contexts, from formalized and institutional settings to grassroots and subcultural ones. We welcome submissions applying quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methodological perspectives. These include but are not limited to social and discourse network analytical perspectives. We also encourage submissions employing multi-modal and multi-level approaches for the purposes mentioned above.

Within academia and in political practice, democracy remains a contested concept. This thematic issue focuses on the related debates, controversies, and contestations in theory, practice, and historical perspective. Special emphasis is put on the concept of liberal democracy—i.e., the form that democracy mostly takes on nowadays—that has always been contested as a concept, even today.

The term is contested in several aspects: On one hand, democratic theorists, politicians, and citizens put forward different ideas about what democratic rule implies and requires and how to interpret (liberal) democracy.

On the other hand, (liberal) democracy is currently contested and challenged both as a concept and in political practice: There are debates inside and outside parliaments and institutions about what (liberal) democracy is or is not, what are its benefits and pitfalls, and whether it is to be judged positively or not. There are political actors and movements on all sides of the political spectrum that criticize (liberal) democracy. Moreover, (liberal) democracy is challenged by autocratic politicians and states. Also, democratic deconsolidation and democratic backsliding by right-wing populist and autocratic politicians and governments destroy liberal democratic norms and institutions in areas of ideational and political influence. Finally, the war against Ukraine has repeatedly been framed as a war between an autocracy and a liberal Western European democracy. All of these points demonstrate that this concept is still widely contested today.

The parliamentary aspect of (liberal) democracy is particularly contested by the autocratic and populist actors and thinkers. This aspect, focusing on dissensus and debate and the playing with time, is, however, a major strength of (liberal) democracy, and it deserves to be presented as such by both scholars and politicians.

Against this backdrop, this thematic issue aims to bring together articles that analyse how (liberal) democracy is currently debated, contested, and conceptualized, inside and outside Europe, taking into consideration contemporary challenges (such as populism, polarization, and autocratization) and democratization beyond nation-states and the European Union. In this sense, articles are invited to discuss questions such as:

• How is (liberal) democracy defined and contested in academia, public discourses, and among political elites? How is it conceptualized and debated in various fora and by different actors?  In what way is (liberal) democracy contested, in which occasions and contexts, and how is democratic backsliding argumentatively defended?

• How are the debates and contestations contextualized, in which occasions do they occur, and are they linked to other issues or other significant concepts like representation, participation, autonomy, freedom, or power?

• What can political science and democratic theory contribute to public discourses about (liberal) democracy, its challenges, and potential reforms?

• How is democracy conceptualized in the framework of the European Union and its multilevel system—both by citizens and elites?

As we progress into the 21st century, the role of emerging Web 3.0 technologies in governance has never been more pivotal. This thematic issue aims to analyse, first, the nuanced and multi-faceted relationship among cutting-edge technologies, like blockchain, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, generative AI, and metaverse(s), built on and enhanced by these technologies, and, secondly, their impact on contemporary models of governance. This issue will bridge inter-disciplinary approaches to offer a robust scholarly, research-based inquiry into the transformative potentials and complexities these technologies bring to paradigms of governance.

This issue focuses on how these innovative technologies can revolutionize governance by way of decentralized, secure, and data-driven systems, reshaping areas such as electoral processes and policy-making. Meanwhile, it addresses the serious challenges these technologies pose, including ethical dilemmas pertaining to data privacy, security, and the broader implications for social justice and inequality. The editors encourage submissions that not only highlight the technological advancements but also address their socio-political impacts and ethical dimensions.

The issue is structured around three main themes:

• The geopolitical dynamics in Web 3.0 Platforms: Which examines the role of technologies in redefining borders and sovereignty, and in establishing a system or framework of global governance of technology;

• Ethical issues in relation to governance of Web 3.0 Technologies: Which means examining data security and intellectual property concerns in Generative AI. This leads to the need to balance centralized and decentralized governance models, and their influence on power structures and democratic discourse;

• The social impact of Web 3.0 Technologies: The focus shall be on their effects on the digital formation of identity, social interactions, and cultural policies within the digital realm, and the role of such technologies in fostering sustainable development in healthcare, in enabling the debunking of disinformation and in education. We invite innovative and comparative insights, along with empirical research that addresses the interplay between technology and governance in our evolving world.

The last decades brought the rise of illiberalism: the tacit or explicit negation of the values that underpinned post-war democratic structures. The illiberal camp now includes a relatively wide circle of citizens, parties, social movements, and governments. It is no longer possible to treat this phenomenon as marginal, confined to maverick opposition actors.

This thematic issue constitutes a complex take on European illiberalism. It investigates the behavior of illiberal actors in government, the dissemination of illiberal ideas, and the crystallization of attitudes and belief systems that help the advances of illiberal politics. As far as the scrutinized policies are concerned, the thematic issue intends to focus on fields that are less mapped in this context, such as social policy, education and culture, foreign policy, environment, etc.

The thematic issue has the ambition to innovate both in concept-building and empirical methods. As far as the conceptual work is concerned, the authors are asked to relate phenomena such as populism, illiberalism, authoritarianism, radical right, and social dominance orientation to each other, making steps towards the development of an up-to-date vocabulary and theoretical framework.

This issue is planned to consist of four sections: civil society, discourse through quantitative text analysis, policy, and public opinion. As far as methods are concerned, we have a special interest in employing the latest methods in quantitative textual analysis. Qualitative text analyses are also welcome, primarily employed to identify the intentions behind policy documents. To investigate the mobilization of citizens both against and in defense of liberal democracy participant observation and survey experiments are recommended. The issue of pan-European cooperation with illiberal forces will be studied with the help of social network analysis and content analysis. Finally, the intersection of collective memories and illiberal attitudes, and the receptiveness of public opinion to illiberal politics are revealed with the help of survey data.

The last two decades have been characterized by ambivalent attitudes and positions towards the European Union among the public and political parties in member states and candidate countries. On the one hand, there were periods of euro-optimism around the accession period for many new member states or during external shocks, such as the 2008–2012 financial crisis or the 2020–2022 Covid-19 pandemic. On the other hand, the Eurosceptic voices have become stronger in more countries, either permanently like Hungary, Poland, or the UK or temporarily associated with domestic developments like in France, Italy, or Romania. Previous research examined closely the formation of such attitudes, their display, and consequences for the political systems and EU integration. However, we know little about the extent to which the opinions of the public about the EU converge with those of political parties, how the public, politicians, or parties differ in their attitudes about the EU, why a consensus or dissensus emerges at the level of the public or of political parties, and how this evolves.

This thematic issue aims to gather contributions that can address some of these gaps in the literature. It welcomes theoretical articles that discuss the origins of consensus, methodological articles that refer to the measurement of consensus, and empirical articles that analyze the dynamic and manifestation of consensus. The thematic issue encourages both single-case studies and comparative analyses and it is open to a plurality of methodological approaches (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods).

In the past 15 years, democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting, citizen juries, and citizens' assemblies have emerged as impactful practices that can contribute to improving the quality, effectiveness, legitimacy, and authority of public decisions through enhanced citizen participation and deliberation. Despite initial enthusiasm, these models often need help finding adequate forms of institutionalization, which could strengthen and multiply their impacts and legitimacy. Globally, there are numerous instances of democratic innovations being formalized through different types of regulatory frameworks involving a wide range of hard and soft laws. Yet, a significant gap remains in scholarly analysis about the lessons these attempts at institutionalization can offer.

Several key questions persist, such as:

• What factors facilitate or hinder the institutionalization and embedding of participatory practices?

• Why does resistance to formalization persist among institutional actors, legal scholars, and social movements?

•  Which degrees and types of institutionalization models appear more desirable and effective?

• How does the broader institutional context influence the processes of formalization?

• What challenges arise in the context of democratic decline?

This thematic issue aims to address these questions and invites diverse perspectives to explore the tensions between political creativity and institutionalization. While institutionalization provides the necessary structure and regularity for democratic innovations, it can also stifle the creativity that drives them. The studies presented suggest that successful institutionalization requires balancing these aspects to support robust democratic frameworks, systemic approaches, and continuity and incremental evolution in the quality of participatory and deliberative practices. This balance is crucial for fostering a participatory culture that adapts to evolving political and social landscapes, enhancing the quality and sustainability of democracy.