This thematic issue aims to provide a theoretical and empirical assessment of the impact of the “polycrisis” (Zeitlin et al., 2019) on the EU, focusing particularly on the most recent crises that the Union has been confronted with. In so doing, the thematic issue engages and contributes to a rich literature that has both theorized and assessed how the EU coped with the string of crises that have hit it, starting with the economic and financial crisis of the early 2010s.

By keeping its empirical focus on events that occurred from 2020 onwards, and on institutional changes—broadly defined: rules of behaviour, organizations, beliefs, and norms—the thematic issue provides new empirical data to understand the ongoing institutional adaptation/transformation of the EU and the contestation around it. At the same time, building both on theories of institutional change and theories of EU integration, it makes an up-to-date and rigorous assessment of the capacity (or lack thereof) of the EU to manage new challenges.

After the introduction of the editors, the thematic collection will include several substantive articles focusing on the impact of the pandemic, the implications of the war in Ukraine, and the responses to climate change. Together, the articles included in this collection will address questions like: To what extent, and in what ways have crises triggered the Europeanisation of public policy in the member states? How have they changed the powers of the EU institutions and inter-institutional relations? Has the legitimacy of the EU been strengthened or weakened because of such changes? Have institutional changes been (de)politicised by political parties and parliaments?

The thematic issue will deal with topical issues of high relevance both to scholars of comparative and EU politics and policies, and will also be of strong interest to civil servants and policy-makers.

The scope of gender equality reforms implemented across various political institutions—parliaments, political parties, government machinery—around the world has diversified. While women’s representation and particularly quotas have captured significant attention (Baker, 2019; Dahlerup, 2006; Franceschet et al., 2012; Krook, 2009; Lang et al., 2022; Rubio-Marín & Lépinard, 2018), political institutions are increasingly encouraged to reconsider their internal processes and norms. This includes changes regarding: working hours and cultures to improve work/life balance; work health and safety regimes to reduce gender-based harassment, intimidation, and assault; and work processes and outputs (e.g., legislation and policy) to normalise gender equality accountability mechanisms in the workplace (Childs, 2020; IPU, 2011, 2012, 2016; Palmieri, 2018, 2021; Palmieri & Baker, 2022).

The process by which these reforms are implemented, as well as their effectiveness and impact, is increasingly of interest to academic scholars. Yet, particularly evident in the gender sensitive parliaments literature, the academic focus to date has been on reforms initiated in the Global North (Euro-American-Australasian) than the Global South (Childs, 2016, 2020; Erikson & Verge, 2022), although there are important notable exceptions (Rai & Spary, 2019). This focus on developed, rather than developing, parliamentary institutions risks a more comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and drivers for change, as well as nuanced understandings of very different political contexts.

In this thematic issue, we aim to showcase research from colleagues in both the Global South and the Global North, and specifically encourage papers from “unusual suspects” across the disciplines of political science, anthropology, sociology, and development studies. We are interested in collaboratively answering the following questions:

1. Who are the critical actors that drive gender equality reforms in parliamentary institutions and to what extent do they rely on/mobilise supportive coalitions or networks for those reforms?

2. How do local contexts—political, economic, and cultural—enable and/or resist gender equality reforms within parliamentary institutions?

3. To what extent can lessons about institutional gender equality reforms be universally shared and/or applied, or are they by nature, always localised?

4. Which analytical and theoretical frameworks can contribute to better understand changes across different contexts?

References

Baker, K. (2019). Pacific women in politics: Gender quota campaigns in the Pacific islands. University of Hawai`i Press.

Childs, S. (2016). The good parliament. University of Bristol.

Childs, S. (2020). Gender sensitizing parliaments guidelines: Standards and a checklist for parliamentary change. Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

Dahlerup, D. (Ed.). (2006). Women, quotas and politics. New York & London.

Erikson, J., & Verge, T. (Eds.). (2022). Parliaments as workplaces: Gendered approaches to the study of legislatures [Special Issue]. Parliamentary Affairs, 75(1). https://academic.oup.com/pa/issue/75/1

Franceschet, S., Krook, M. L.,& Piscopo, J. M. (Eds.). (2012). The impact of gender quotas. Oxford University Press. 

IPU. (2011). Gender-sensitive parliaments: A global review of good practice.

IPU. (2012). A plan of action for gender-sensitive parliaments.

IPU. (2016). Evaluating the gender sensitivity of parliaments. A self-assessment toolkit.

Krook, M. L. (2009). Quotas for women in politics: Gender and candidate selection reform worldwide. Oxford University Press.

Lang, S., Meier, P., & Sauer, B. (Eds.). (2022). Implementing gender quotas in political representation: Resisting institutions. Palgrave Macmillan.

Palmieri, S. (2018). Gender-sensitive parliaments. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.215

Palmieri, S. (2021). Realizing gender equality in parliament: A guide for parliaments in the OSCE region. OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

Palmieri, S., & Baker, K. (2022). Localising global norms: The case of family-friendly parliaments. Parliamentary Affairs, 75(1), 58–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaa050

Rubio-Marín, R., & Lépinard, E. (Eds.). (2018). Transforming gender citizenship: The irresistible rise of gender quotas in Europe. Cambridge University Press.

Rai, S., & Spary, C. (2019). Performing representation: Women members in the Indian parliament. Oxford University Press.

Since its emergence at the end of the Cold War, Arctic regional governance has witnessed multiple changes involving various actors—nation-states, indigenous peoples, local and subnational authorities, non-governmental organizations, a plurality of regional and international organizations (IOs), and multilateral development banks. The studies on regional governance brought to our attention the importance of this variety of actors and their implications for development of the field of area-studies (e.g., Haas, 2016; Selin, 2012). The most known examples of these actors are the European Union (e.g., Andonova, 2003; Selin & VanDeveer, 2015), the United Nations (e.g., Conca et al., 2017; Dalmer, 2021), the Arctic Council, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, global forums and the World Bank (Buntaine & Parks, 2013; Kuyper & Bäckstrand, 2016; Lavelle, 2021; Obydenkova et al., 2022; Tosun & Mišić, 2021).

However, there are also younger and less known actors, yet significant ones, such as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Eurasian Bank of Development, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, as well as other multilateral and national banks (see, e.g., Ambrosio et al., 2022; Djalilov & Hartwell, 2022; Gutner, 2002; Hall et al., 2022; Hartwell, 2021). The role of different types of regional IOs, that is, democracy-composed versus autocracy-led ones (Libman & Obydenkova, 2018a, 2018b; Obydenkova & Libman, 2019), became the focal point in some of the most recent studies on regional governance and comparative regionalism. Only recently scholars started paying more attention to the different implications of these under-studied actors for sustainable development and climate governance, for socio-political and economic transformations, as well as for security governance (Ambrosio et al., 2021; Hall et al., 2022; Obydenkova, 2022a, 2022b). Yet, the variety of these actors and their implications has not yet been applied to studies on Arctic regional governance. This thematic issue aims to fill in this gap.

To this day, the Arctic remains a fragile diplomatic zone where some EU member states and the US border Russia, whose commitment to sustainable development is a highly contested issue, in addition to the confrontation triggered by the war in Ukraine in February 2022 (Hartwell, 2022; Kochtcheeva, 2021; Obydenkova, 2022c). Moreover, China is becoming an important actor in the Arctic governance and Eurasia through its involvement in various regional IOs (see Agostinis & Urdinez, 2021; Fravel et al., 2021; Hall et al., 2021; Lavelle, 2021). The combination of democratic and autocratic actors within Arctic regional governance may have multiple implications for both collaboration and confrontation. The latter is in line with another set of literature on the importance of political regimes and historical legacies in regional governance (see, e.g., Andonova, 2003; Bättig & Bernauer, 2009; Nazarov & Obydenkova, 2021). Thus, the Arctic region is a unique case study: It encompasses all types of regional governance, environmental as well as climate-related, socio-economic, political, and even security governance, as well as a variety of actors.

This thematic issue aims to advance our understanding of Arctic regional governance by including into our analysis different types of actors, such as regional and non-regional international organizations, Indigenous peoples, social and environmental movements and organizations, nation-states and their political regimes. The goal is to shed more light on ongoing transformations, challenges, and perils in the Arctic region, and advance our knowledge of this highly fragile part of the world. The findings presented in this collection of articles aspire to be highly useful not only for scholars but also for policy-makers as well.

References

Agostinis, G., & Urdinez, F. (2021). The Nexus between authoritarian and environmental regionalism: An analysis of China’s driving role in the Shanghai cooperation organization. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5). https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1974887

Ambrosio, T., Hall, A., & Obydenkova, A. (2022). Sustainable development agendas of regional international organizations: The EBRD and the EDB. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5), 304–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1979412

Andonova, L. B. (2003). Transnational politics of the environment: The European Union and environmental policy in Central and Eastern Europe. MIT Press.

Bättig, M., & Bernauer, T. (2009). National institutions and global public goods: Are democracies more cooperative in climate change policy? International Organization, 63(2), 281–308. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818309090092

Buntaine, M. T., & Parks, C. B. (2013). When do environmentally focused assistance projects achieve their objectives? Evidence from the World Bank post-project evaluations. Global Environmental Politics, 13(2), 65–88. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00167

Conca, K., Thwaites, J., & Lee, G. (2017). Climate change and the UN Security Council: Bully pulpit or bull in a China shop? Global Environmental Politics, 17(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00398

Dalmer, N. (2021). Building environmental peace: The UN Environment programme and knowledge creation for environmental peacebuilding. Global Environmental Politics, 21(3), 147–168. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00617

Djalilov, H., & Hartwell, C. (2022). Do social and environmental capabilities improve bank stability? Evidence from transition countries. Post-Communist Economies, 34(5), 624–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2021.1965359

Fravel, M. T., Lavelle, K. C., & Odgaard, L. (2021). China engages the Arctic:  A great power in a regime complex. Asian Security. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14799855.2021.1986008

Gutner, T. (2002). Banking on the environment: Multilateral development banks and their environmental performance in Central and Eastern Europe. MIT Press.

Haas, P. (2016). Regional environmental governance. In T. Börzel & T. Risse (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative regionalism (pp. 430–456). Oxford University Press.

Hall, S. G. F., Lenz, T., & Obydenkova, A. (2022). Environmental commitments and rhetoric over the pandemic crisis: Social media and legitimation of the AIIB, the EAEU, and the EU. Post-Communist Economies, 34(5), 577–602. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2021.1954824

Hartwell, C. A. (2021). Part of the problem? The Eurasian Economic Union and environmental challenges in the former Soviet Union. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5). https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1960173

Hartwell, C. A. (2022). The world has changed: Moving to an officially post-post-transition region. Eastern European Economics, 60(3), 189–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/00128775.2022.2066939

Kochtcheeva, L. V. (2021). Foreign policy, national interests, and environmental positioning: Russia’s post Paris climate change actions, discourse, and engagement. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5). https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1968912

Kuyper, J. W., & Bäckstrand, K. (2016). Accountability and representation: Nonstate actors in UN climate diplomacy. Global Environmental Politics, 16(2), 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00350

Lavelle, K. C. (2021). Regime, climate, and region in transition: Russian participation in the Arctic Council. Problems of Post-Communism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1994422

Libman, A., & Obydenkova, A. (2018a). Understanding authoritarian regionalism, Journal of Democracy, 29(4), 151–165. https://journalofdemocracy.org/articles/understanding-authoritarian-regionalism

Libman, A., & Obydenkova, A. (2018b). Regional international organizations as a strategy of autocracy: The Eurasian Economic Union and Russian foreign policy. International Affairs, 94(5), 1037–1058. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy147

Nazarov, Z., & Obydenkova, A. (2022). Environmental challenges and political regime transition: The role of historical legacies and the European Union in Eurasia. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5), 396–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1995437

Obydenkova, A. (2022a). Environmental regionalism and international organizations: Implications for post-Communism. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5),  293–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2044353

Obydenkova, A. (2022b). Global environmental politics and international organizations: The Eurasian and European experience. Post-Communist Economies, 34(5), 565–576. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2022.2028477

Obydenkova, A. (2022c). Sustainable development and actors of regional environmental governance: Eurasia at the crossroads. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5), 436–443. https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2109116

Obydenkova, A., & Libman, A. (2019). Authoritarian regionalism in the world of international organizations: Global perspective and Eurasian enigma. Oxford University Press.

Obydenkova, A., Rodrigues Vieira, V. G., & Tosun, J. (2022). The impact of new actors in global environmental politics: The European Bank for reconstruction and development meets China. Post-Communist Economies, 34(5), 603–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2021.1954825

Selin, H. (2012). Global environmental governance and regional centers. Global Environmental Politics, 12(3), 18–37. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00121

Selin, H., & VanDeveer, S. D. (2015). Broader, deeper and greener: European Union environmental politics, policies, and outcomes. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 40(1), 309–335.

Tosun, J., & Mišić, M. (2021). Post-Communist countries’ participation in global forums on climate action. Problems of Post-Communism, 69(4/5). https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1994423

Active labour market policies (ALMPs) play a pivotal role in facilitating school-to-work transition (Cefalo et al., 2020). Comparative research on the design and implementation of youth-oriented ALMPs has assessed the performance of different types of school-to-work regimes (e.g., Pastore, 2015) as well as the performance of different countries and the pertinent policies and institutions in place in them (e.g., Brzinsky-Fay, 2014). A gap in the literature concerns how peripheral regions in Europe have attempted to facilitate school-to-work transition and stimulate youth employment (Simões et al., 2022). Such regions (rural, coastal, mountainous, inland, or outermost regions) are faced with specific challenges that resonate with several concepts in political science, such as urban–rural cleavages or responsive policymaking.

This thematic issue offers a forum dedicated to discussing the design, implementation, and impact of youth-oriented ALMPs in European peripheries. The need to address territorialised, youth-oriented ALMPs is pressing for several reasons. For one, the whole socioeconomic paradigm is undergoing fundamental changes due to the dual transition (digital and green) that is expected to have an impact on the rural/urban divide. In certain regions, the level of youth unemployment tends to be higher than suggested by existing studies, which have mostly focused on the national level. This implies that closer inspection of the subnational level in general and the peripheral regions in particular will reveal more marked cross-national differences (Cefalo et al., 2020). Furthermore, the youth population in rural areas across several European countries (Denmark, France, Italy, and Germany) has been increasing quickly over the past ten years. These trends must be systematically explored so that researchers can draw well-grounded and meaningful implications for the territorialisation of youth-oriented ALMPs to the attention of stakeholders at regional, national, and European levels (Simões et al., 2022).

This thematic issue will inform readers about the challenges facing the development of youth-oriented ALMPs in European peripheries. These include the limited capacity of governmental actors to reach out to vulnerable young people, such as those not in education, employment, or training; existing mismatches between local economic opportunities, young people’s needs, and services and programs delivered at the regional level; and insufficient collaboration between the education/training sector and employment services. We also expect our readership to learn about on-the-ground best practices and to become better informed about the possibilities available to young people thanks to the digitalisation of public employment services.

This thematic issue is prepared in the context of an ongoing project supported by the EEA and Norway Grants—the Track-IN project (https://www.track-in.eu/web). The editors will organise a Summer School in June 2023 and corresponding authors of abstracts accepted for this thematic issue are invited to participate. Their papers will be discussed and authors will receive feedback from all the different teams involved. Expenses with participation (travel, accommodation, and daily allowance) in the Summer School will be covered by the project. The open-access licenses for the accepted papers will also be covered by the Track-IN project.

References

Cefalo, R., Scandurra, R., & Kazepov, Y. (2020). Youth labour market integration in European regions. Sustainability, 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093813

Brzinsky-Fay, C. (2014). The measurement of school to work transitions as processes. European Societies, 16(3), 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2013.821620

Pastore, F. (2015). The youth experience gap. Explaining national differences in the school-to-work transition. Springer.

Simões, F., Erdogan, E, Muratovic, M., & Sik, D. (2022). Scrutinising the exceptionalism of young rural NEETs: A bibliometric review. Youth & Society, 54(2S), 9–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X211040534

Inter-generational matters are relevant in many societal issues, many of which require consideration from an equity or justice perspective. For instance, climate change requires current generations to invest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, lessening the financial burden on future generations, and minimizing adverse impacts of climate change that are likely to affect the latter. The financial debt of countries today to cover governmental expenditures also affects the financial conditions of future generations. Nevertheless, democratic governance as seen in many countries today suffers from political “short-termism” as a structural problem of electoral democracy, because voters tend to vote for those who contribute to maximizing the well-being of the “generation of today,” ignoring that also the “decisions of today” will greatly impact the future.

Efforts are being made in some countries and regions to reflect certain considerations for future generations in current decision-making and academic literature on this topic is growing. There are, however, relatively few assessments that determine which current attempts to secure inter-generational equity and justice are successful, or that even attempt to explain their actual success. Ethical issues at the individual level, the capacity to anticipate and prevent, the question of representatives for future generations, deliberation processes, the roles of experts, cultural differences, modes of governance—all these aspects play certain and important roles, but how and to what extent they do so is yet unclear.

It is also unclear if an institution focused on dealing with climate change would also be able to address governmental debt crises at the same time. Therefore, this issue proposes to monitor progress and explore the efforts done in the world today to incorporate considerations for future generations in current decision-making, as well as to examine how academic circles in political science and economics are adapting their theories toward this end. Articles on matters of sustainability and climate change are especially appreciated, but submissions dealing with equally important issues for the inter-generational cause are also welcome.

Political forces critical of economic globalization have been on the rise globally over the past decade. As the world’s three major economic powers—the USA, China and European Union—have shifted towards more inward-looking economic strategies, the American-led liberal international order has entered a new crisis phase. The still ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and, more recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are arguably further reinforcing these trends. Against this backdrop, many observers have indicated that, after a period of “hyperglobalization,” we may be entering a new era, in which international trade and investment relations are again increasingly shaped by geostrategic and security considerations.

This thematic issue seeks to examine these trends and their implications in a critical and empirical light. It seeks contributions speaking to topics such as:

1. Continuities and change: To what extent have international trade and investment relations been transformed over the past decade? What are the major changes in the global political economic regime? And are there important continuities? What are the similarities and differences of the current period of globalization compared to earlier historical periods (e.g., Cold War, imperialism, etc.)?

2. Drivers of the geoeconomic turn: what factors have been driving the increased attention to geoeconomic competition in international economic policy-making? To what extent is it driven by the great power competition between China and the USA, as opposed to potential other structural trends?

3. Implications: How has the geoeconomic turn been manifested in various aspects of the global political economy (e.g., trade, investment, industrial policy, technology, finance, or knowledge regimes)? How has it contributed to rearranging economic linkages between the USA, China and Europe in the core of the global system? But also, just as importantly, what has the geoeconomic turn so far meant for countries in the periphery/Global South?

2024 will mark the 20th anniversary of the European Union’s “Big Bang” enlargement. EU’s conditionality not only amplified the ongoing “triple transition” in EU member states but was also instrumental in facilitating countries’ embeddedness into the West. However, assumptions of the EU’s transformative power on new members after accession are rather ambiguous, ensuing both from EU’s inability to enforce the rules once a candidate country becomes a member and from the fact that countries were preparing to join an entirely different Union—one that was, at the time, unmarked by economic and migration crisis, security threats, or centrifugal forces resulting in disintegration. As a response to external and internal shocks, Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have also participated in redesigning dysfunctional EU policies: This thematic issue challenges us to consider how.

We invite up-to-date research that revolves around the following questions:

• How have CEE new member states, as passive actors, changed the EU? What were their degree of institutional quality and policy capacity to adapt to the EU? In turn, what was the level of absorptive capacity of EU institutions and their most prominent challenges (e.g., the creation of efficient decision-making mechanisms, democratic backsliding) in incorporating these new member states?
• How have CEE new member states, as active players, changed the EU? How have they used EU institutions to advance their own interests?
• Should global crises and EU dysfunctionalities be understood as intervening variables in the positive adaptation of new member states? How is global change a challenge to the EU?
• To what extent, if any, are new member states responsible for institutional inertia/institutional vibrancy in EU’s approach to endogenous and exogenous shocks (e.g., (de)democratization, resurgence of identity politics, ontological security, security threats, spread of extremism, etc.).

We encourage scholars and researchers to address why and under what circumstances are countries willing to proceed with the integration of “core state powers” and what are the repercussions of these dynamics for EU’s institutional set-up, as characterized by differentiation.

People and populists criticize existing democracy. Populists cite popular grievances as justification for their actions and people significantly respond to populist change agents or other forms of political radicalism. Despite extensive research, we do not know enough about the alternatives to representative party democracy that people and populists envision, apart from greater citizen involvement. For example, people shaped by authoritarian and nativist views centered on hierarchy may reject pluralism in contemporary democracy but have no qualms about a power structure dominated by native elites. Different non-mainstream ideas, i.e., emanating from the populist core or the host ideology, affect preferences for different democratic principles, especially representative, direct, deliberative, or stealth. Nonetheless, our understanding of how the ideas of populists and disenchanted citizens align is empirically and conceptually limited. Too little attention has been paid to the resilience of democracy, tradeoffs need to be better understood, and space is needed to explore untheorized democratic alternatives.

The picture is equally blurred when it comes to the views of the populist actors themselves. Research suggests that their calls for referendums decrease over time while alternative deliberative bodies are often rejected. To better understand the congruence between people and populists, one must also address the limitations of methodology in favor of innovative survey items, scenario-based interviews, and survey experiments.

This calls for a reassessment of our understanding of the extent to which the ideas of populists and citizens and the alternatives they propose coincide and for a wider dissemination of relevant research addressing these shortcomings. The articles featured in this thematic issue explore these points by presenting conceptually and/or methodologically innovative contributions that will introduce these new frontiers of democracy research to a wider audience.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 (or later), economic and political liberalism has been in retreat globally. The rise of populist alternatives to mainstream parties, promising radical change and pointing fingers at corrupt elites, has infected not only emerging markets but also developed economies. The seeming lack of response to economic decline, with “solutions” rooted in old-fashioned Keynesian policies and the promise of cheap money, has widened economic inequality and generated socio-political unrest.

On top of all of this came the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging from an authoritarian nation (who has been reticent to let investigators access to data regarding the first days of the pandemic); most importantly, massive prohibitions on economic activity (colloquially called “lockdowns”) and on freedom of movement and speech were embraced by governments in order to fight the disease. This thematic issue examines the decline in political and economic freedom since the global financial crisis and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring how authoritarian governance and economics have apparently come back into vogue. Authors are encouraged to submit papers dealing, inter alia, with the following themes:

• The failure of political elites to deal with crisis
• Populism and its left-wing policy prescriptions
• Political and economic resilience/institutions as complex systems
• Specific COVID-19 responses and how they have enabled authoritarianism
• Comparative studies of earlier waves of authoritarianism
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine as a consequence of perceived or real “Western weakness”
• The role of China in the pandemic and its response
• Economic policies in the post-global financial crisis world
• The revival of industrial policies and their danger for global growth
• Trade protectionism and killing the goose that laid the golden egg
• Electoral reforms in democracies and their effects on freedom
• Specific political actors and their agendas
• Institutional changes and deterioration in developed economies
• Rollback of property rights globally
• Financialization as a consequence of government policy
• Authoritarian regionalism and associations
• Mis- and disinformation and the weaponization of censorship/media freedom in general
• Preferred government narratives and their opposition to reality
• Business and government partnerships against society
• Privacy, surveillance, and mandates

Migration, representation, and participation are three major processes that characterize contemporary politics. This thematic issue aims at connecting these processes and analyzing their dynamics. Around the world, an increasing number of migrants engages in the political life of their home and/or host country, and previous research shows the diversity of forms and consequences of this involvement, illustrating how migrants are politically represented or what are the obstacles for representation. The political representation and participation of migrants remains highly salient in the context of new waves of migration, of de-democratizing trends in several countries, and of processes of strong anti-minority rhetoric promoted by right-wing populists in many democratic countries.

This thematic issue addresses these topics from two different perspectives: the supply side of political parties and politicians who claim to represent and include migrants, and the demand side of migrants who participate and strive to be represented. It brings together articles addressing the following research questions: Why do migrants participate? How do they perceive the idea of political participation? Who represents migrants? What are the main outcomes of participation and/or representation? What are the contemporary challenges for migrants’ participation? How do political parties pursue the representation of migrants?

The thematic issue has a broad geographic coverage, including many countries in Europe and beyond, and advances the research agenda in migration studies and party politics in three ways. First, it proposes important analytical frameworks that can be used in further research. Second, some of the articles propose new measures that are used to gauge the extent of participation and representation, which can be replicated by future studies. Third, the contributions bring relevant empirical evidence indicating how migration is linked to politics in contemporary societies.

Within less than a year, two dramatic international events have thrown the liberal international order into a severe crisis. After three decades of using military force for complex peace-, state-, and nation-building missions, the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 is a tipping point of liberal interventionism. Less than a year later, the Russian invasion in Ukraine marks the return of inter-state war and nuclear threats to Europe. These events challenge two core features of the liberal international order: (a) the prohibition on the use of armed force against the territorial integrity of a sovereign state and (b) the collective governance of international security and conflict resolution via the Security Council of the United Nations. Contributions to this thematic issue will examine this dual challenge and its consequences on the two interrelated levels of the international normative order and the level of the states that have thus far maintained the liberal international order.

With a view to the international system, contributions to this thematic issue treat the root causes of the West’s failure in Afghanistan and elsewhere to bring peace, democracy, and human rights. Furthermore, contributions will discuss the consequences of the West’s retreat for peacekeeping and conflict management as viewed from the Global North and from the Global South.

With a view to the liberal democracies that have maintained the liberal international order, our authors examine how the dramatic events in Afghanistan and Ukraine impact national security and defense policy and force posture. While finding a general trend to withdraw from liberal interventions and to re-invest in homeland security, the contributions also point to country-specific path-dependencies and the influence of political culture and institutions. The articles draw on a wide range of methods, including single and comparative case studies, survey experiments, and quantitative analyses.

Until recently, we knew very little about the role of populist governments in EU decision-making. The “crucial case” of refugee distribution in the EU has demonstrated that their behaviour is ruled by “unpolitics”: they reject formal and informal rules of decision-making if these are not conducive to their preferred outcome; they reject traditional means of ensuring compromises such as package-deals and side-payments; and they reject the final solution and exploit the ensuing deadlock to prove that the EU is weak and dysfunctional.

However, to what extent is “unpolitics” a phenomenon unique to migration—an area prone to (nativist) populist capture? This thematic issue aims to compare the behaviour of populist governments in different policy areas to better understand under which conditions “unpolitics” are more likely to be used in EU decision-making and when they are more likely to be successful.

We expect “unpolitics” to be present and successful in areas of “low risk” and “high gain” like climate politics—namely, in areas where the harm provided by a non-decision is neither immediate nor blatant (low risk) and areas that are more easily politicised than purely technical legislative proposals (high gain).

Democracy is not a hallmark of Muslim countries. Yet Indonesia is a democracy, but who is paying attention? This thematic issue will revolve around the central theme of agents of change and integration that have shaped Indonesia’s identity, culture, government, governance, law, security, and democracy in terms of geopolitics and internal stability.

A unique feature of this thematic issue will be the novelty of the approach to the proposed topics: Some articles will focus on individuals who have passed away or disappeared but who continue to influence Indonesian society—such as Indonesia’s fourth president, Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), jihadi activist and Muhammadiyah member Dr Fauzi AR, and even Indonesia’s dissident people’s poet Wiji Thukul, who remains an icon for social justice although his contribution to the 1998 Reformation Movement is still highly under-researched.

The thematic issue will also look at Indonesia’s Indo-Pacific agenda and regional security issues with an insider’s analysis of Indonesia as a global maritime fulcrum managing the vested interests of Southeast Asia, China, and the US. Some articles will concern Indonesian law, focusing on the downgrading of the powers of the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission, laws protecting traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, and Indonesia’s state ideology—the Pancasila—reviewing its application in society: Together, these contributions aim to capture the sentiment for or against the current Jokowi government on important national issues.

Finally, research on women terrorists and deradicalization of Indonesian terrorists will complement the discussion of “heroes, traitors, and villains” to provide a well-rounded analysis of these last categories and what it means—officially and unofficially—to be a “hero” in times of turmoil.

Our aim is to fill in the gap in scholarly understanding of Indonesia from the perspective of local, national, and international themes. Thus this thematic issue will provide robust investigation, assessment, and debate about central agents and events relevant to all aspects of modern Indonesian society, politics, the state, and democracy, from experts in a range of complementary disciplines.

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?

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?

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 explore the nuanced and multi-faceted relationship between cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, generative AI, and metaverse(s), built on and enhanced by these technologies, and their impact on contemporary governance models. Rooted in a multidisciplinary approach, this thematic issue will bridge interdisciplinary insights to offer a robust scholarly inquiry into the transformative potentials and complexities these technologies bring to governance paradigms.

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

The thematic issue is structured around three main themes:

• Geopolitical dynamics in Web 3.0 platforms: Where the focus is on examining the role of technologies in redefining borders and sovereignty and in establishing a global technology governance system/framework;

• Ethical challenges and governance of Web 3.0 technologies: Which focus on exploring data security and intellectual property concerns in Generative AI, the balancing act between centralized and decentralized governance models, and its influence on power structure and democratic discourse;

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

The European Central Bank (ECB)—like other central banks—experienced a widening of its mandate in the course of the financial crisis and the following public debt crisis, as well as under the pressure of the Covid-19 and climate change crises. Some of its activities, such as its decisions on crisis measures, had a high degree of public salience and were controversial, as evidenced by public and political protests. Other policies, such as those lined up on climate change could be possibly beneficial but venture into policy areas that are traditionally the domain of democratic institutions. Even though the credibility of the claim that monetary policy follows a narrow and transparent goal has been shaken in the EU context, the scope for democratic control over the interpretation of the extent and limits of the ECB’s mandate remains extremely narrow. Therefore, within an unchanged Treaty framework, the ECB became the institution in charge of defining the limits of its own mandate.

Status is a core concept of the traditional International Relations (IR) canon and our understanding of status-seeking has improved especially regarding what types of status hierarchies exist and how both established and rising powers “seek” status competitively. Yet, important gaps remain. First, status needs to be understood as a daily foreign policy practice, which conventional analyses tend to overlook in favour of more conventional security or political economy perspectives. Second, many analyses have nevertheless remained conspicuously West-centric, both geographically, but also conceptually, i.e., in terms of what matters politically. They also remain, for the most part, state-centric. These omissions are at odds with attempts to make the IR more global, inclusive, and analytically diverse. The articles selected for this thematic issue shall attempt to address this challenge.

Contributions shall include research on status ambitions and anxieties by non-traditional actors, especially state actors in the Global South beyond the traditional so-called “rising powers,” but also a range of non-state actors, including global cities, resistance movements, or rebel groups. This broadening of seekers of status allows for a discussion, not just of a variety of actors, but also of novel conceptual and theoretical developments in the status literature at the intersection between domestic politics and global status-seeking.

Furthermore, the thematic issue will cover the potential variability of status politics across different issue areas, from environmental to nuclear politics, from the study of security policies to the global political economy of status-seeking. Lastly, one of the core, overarching ambitions of the thematic issue is to show that thinking about status is far from being an intellectual effort alone, but that a better understanding of the motive, strategies, and consequences of status politics has clear relevance for global cooperation. For instance, when it comes to the adjustment of mutual expectations as a basis for trust, effective governance, and reliability in bilateral and multilateral relations.

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.

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, the thematic issue asks: How are or can wars be legitimised by different political actors and societies being 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 defence 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?

The proposed thematic issue will address the unequal participation of youth, immigrants, and ethnic minorities from an interdisciplinary perspective. Due to their small share in the population and the fact that many are barred from voting, they do not constitute a pertinent political constituency and are often not considered relevant subjects for academic research on political behavior, having received little attention in this area. We know that these groups usually have lower turnout rates than the general population, but determinants and correlates are still largely unknown. This is problematic because the political participation of youth and immigrants is becoming increasingly important in the context of transnational migration and demographic change. The topic is of considerable importance considering the implications for political and social life in increasingly diverse societies. This is evident, for example, in recurring discussions about lowering the voting age and extending the right to vote to foreigners. As the proportion of people with a migration background among young people increases, the study of the intersection of both groups gains relevance, as they constitute important parts of future societies and, specifically, electorates.

Contributions to this thematic issue will focus on the political attitudes or behavior of youth, ethnic minorities, immigrants (or people with a migration background), or the intersection of these groups. Contributions can analyze political attitudes (e.g., sentiment towards parties, institutional trust, or populist attitudes), (formal and informal) participation patterns, or focus on interventions to bridge the participation gap. Research that includes additional categories such as gender or social class would be of particular interest. We welcome both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Contributions may also focus on methodological issues, such as how to reach these populations for social science research.

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.