Archives

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  Vol. 26 No. 2 (2026)

  This issue brings together three research contributions and two book reviews spanning institutional design, media representation, and diaspora politics. Christopher Ebikebena traces twenty-five years of Nigerian electoral technology, arguing that biometric innovations have displaced rather than resolved fraud, generating a "trust paradox" that culminated in the 2023 IReV crisis. Hasta Aisyah Trida Pramita and Dwi Ardhanariswari Sundrijo apply a postcolonial lens to a German documentary on child jockeys in Sumbawa, showing how visual framing and production context marginalise Indonesian perspectives. Vasili Ioannidis extends hold-up problem theory to EU enlargement, using the North Macedonia–Bulgaria dispute to show how unanimity and multiple decision points incentivise Member States to extract bilateral concessions from candidate states. The issue closes with reviews of a North Korean diplomat's insider testimony and a journalistic account of elite Russian emigration since 2022, both probing how authoritarian systems shape those who serve, flee, or defect from them.

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  Migration and Mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Lexicon

  Vol. 26 No. 1 (2026)

  English

  This special issue of Politikon, guest edited by Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, Cécile Blouin, and Lucie Laplace, brings together a group of scholars working at the intersection of migration studies, critical theory, and Latin American politics to offer a lexicon of key concepts shaping how we understand human mobility across the region. Rather than offering a definitive glossary, the entries in this issue invite us to think critically about the language we use to govern, categorise, and contest migration. The issue presents a collection of original contributions, each structured around a single concept examined from multiple disciplinary angles and presented bilingually in English and Spanish. 

  The cover illustration, In the Middle, Maybe, is designed by Fernando Garlin Politis. The image presents the Americas in fragments and layers — solid mass and loose, crayon-drawn outlines overlapping and drifting — capturing something of what this lexicon itself sets out to do: to hold the map steady while questioning the lines drawn across it.

  Spanish

  Este número especial de Politikon, coordinado por Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, Cécile Blouin y Lucie Laplace, reúne a un colectivo de académicxs que trabajan en la intersección entre los estudios migratorios, la teoría crítica y la política latinoamericana para ofrecer un léxico de conceptos clave que moldean nuestra comprensión de la movilidad humana en la región. Más que ofrecer un glosario definitivo, este léxico constituye una invitación a reflexionar críticamente sobre el lenguaje que empleamos para gobernar, categorizar y cuestionar lo que entendemos por migración. El número presenta una colección de contribuciones originales, cada una estructurada en torno a un concepto específico, examinado desde múltiples perspectivas disciplinarias y presentado de forma bilingüe (en inglés y español).

  La ilustración de portada, titulada In the Middle, Maybe (En el medio, tal vez), es obra de Fernando Garlin Politis. La imagen presenta las Américas fragmentadas y superpuestas en capas —donde masas sólidas y contornos difusos trazados con crayón se traslapan y se desplazan—, capturando así la esencia de lo que este léxico se propone: mantener el mapa firme mientras se cuestionan las líneas trazadas sobre él.

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  Vol. 25 No. 4 (2025)

  This issue looks at how power is gained, shared and remembered, and at how new technologies are changing the terms. Laura Minguzzi and Giuseppe Borriello show how Elly Schlein’s interactive, grassroots social media campaign helped her win the 2023 Partito Democratico primaries against a better-resourced rival. Francesco Lionetto asks whether the energy crisis gave the European Union new fiscal powers through the solidarity contribution. Muhammad Anugrah Utama examines Dutch apologies for violence during Indonesia’s war of independence, and what they leave unsaid.

  Technology takes centre stage in the Conversations section, “Democracy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, introduced by Marianna Prysiazhnyuk. Its essays consider how AI affects democratic agency, access to information and the spread of disinformation. They also ask whether algorithms reproduce colonial hierarchies in Africa and how surveillance reshapes the relationship between citizens and the state. Two book reviews complete the issue. Pedro Mendes Rufino Barbosa, Tales Mançano and Murilo Lopes Rosa review Unequal Democracies, edited by Noam Lupu and Jonas Pontusson, and Hesham Shafik reviews Farah Ramzy’s Egyptian Students and Politics beyond Protest.

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  Vol. 25 No. 3 (2025)

  As the United Nations turns 80, this issue asks how far governance has drifted from the ideals that once guided it. Abigail Georgison revisits a critique of the UN security framework first published in IAPSS Politikon in 2007. Drawing on the intervention in Libya, she finds that the Responsibility to Protect has become more a commitment than an enforceable mechanism. The gap between principle and practice reappears in Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui’s comparison of the United States and India, where the power to name “terrorism” and “resistance” decides who is heard and who is criminalized.

  The same tension shapes the issue’s studies of reform. Lloyd George Banda, Kelvin Ryna Chilala, Innocent Kazembe Chirwa and Emmanuel George Yusufu find that access to information laws have done little to curb corruption in Malawi without strong institutions behind them. Greta Comedini shows how the Eurozone crisis brought technocratic governments to power and asks what democracy loses when expertise takes over. Gavin Faulkner’s review of Sean Coyle’s Natural Law and Modern Society closes the issue.

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  The Rise of Anti-Gender and Anti-Feminist Discourses in International Politics (Part II)

  Vol. 25 No. 2 (2025)

  The second part of this special issue examines how anti-gender movements operate across borders and adapt their strategies to political institutions, advocacy networks and digital technologies. Violeta Colmán compares Guatemala and Paraguay to show how anti-gender actors both reject and seek to influence international institutions such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Sara Concetta Santoriello examines how arguments about consent and free speech shape the politics of generative AI. Margarita Zervoulakou, Rebekka Kesberg and Liza Mügge compare the threat narratives that CitizenGo and Europe for Family use online. The editorial draws out what the contributions share: these movements adapt easily, coordinate across borders and borrow progressive language.

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  The Rise of Anti-gender and Anti-feminist Discourses in International Politics (Part I)

  Vol. 25 No. 1 (2025)

  This special issue of Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science examines the complex interplay between rising anti-gender movements and feminist resistance strategies across diverse global contexts. Through six contributions, it explores how opposition to gender equality has emerged as a powerful unifying force for conservative actors while simultaneously creating new divisions within established feminist spaces.

  The research reveals several critical developments in contemporary gender politics. Anti-gender movements have evolved significantly, shifting their focus from opposing same-sex marriage to targeting transgender rights, often deploying sophisticated digital strategies and "child protection" narratives. These movements demonstrate remarkable adaptability in building coalitions across religious, political, and ideological lines. Their influence runs deeper than their immediate targets, reaching into feminist spaces themselves. Even established feminist organizations have begun adopting gender-critical positions, creating internal rifts that threaten collective solidarity. This fragmentation is particularly visible in how feminist movements respond to opposition—while some maintain strong unified fronts, others struggle with competition for resources and institutional pressures, leading some to retreat from public advocacy altogether.

  Through a rich mix of methods—from ethnographic studies of NGOs and feminist media to digital discourse analysis of social media platforms—these contributions examine how anti-gender movements and feminist responses operate across different cultural and political contexts. The research particularly highlights the crucial role of online spaces in shaping contemporary gender politics, serving both as tools for anti-gender mobilization and sites of feminist resistance.

  How can movements foster solidarity while making space for internal differences? What does meaningful visibility look like in increasingly hostile environments? And as anti-gender campaigns grow more sophisticated, what strategies might prove most effective in building sustained resistance? These are not just tactical questions but fundamental ones that touch on the very nature of feminist organizing in a changing world.

  The cover illustration for our special issue is designed by Utsa SARMIN, a journalist, researcher, and artist based in Kolkata, India: "The illustration depicts our tired angry embattled selves having to look back, and go back to the basics—bread and roses, equality and dignity—in an increasingly polarised world where anti-women and anti-feminist narratives dangerously start resembling a world without our rights."

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  Vol. 24 No. 2 (2024)

  This issue examines sovereignty, colonial legacies and identity across global, national and local politics. Lala Jafarova analyzes how the proposed WHO pandemic treaty balances national sovereignty against global public health. Judy El Baba traces how the colonial legacies of the French Mandate continue to shape Lebanon’s sectarian institutions. In a research note, Catalina Catana and Simen Ekeberg offer a decolonial critique of international law through the lens of Israel’s war on Gaza. In another, Sung Jun Han argues that democracy is better served by fostering multiple, distinct social identities than by making identities more flexible.

  In the Conversations section, Stephanie Mae Pedron makes the case for extending voting rights to non-citizens in the United States, and Abel Polese offers practical advice to scholars from the Global South on the barriers they face in academic publishing. Two book reviews close the issue. Georgy Slavin-Rudakov reviews Julie A. Cassiday’s Russian Style, and Maria Tarasenko reviews Leta Hong Fincher’s Betraying Big Brother.

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  Vol. 24 No. 1 (2024)

  This issue covers international relations, comparative politics and political theory, and makes a case for interdisciplinary work in political science. Cecilia Lwiindi Nedziwe examines how non-state actors in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region have organized around gender security. Drawing on interviews and policy documents, she argues for a socio-historical approach to regional organization that recognizes the role of civil society alongside states. Cara McLaughlin analyzes how Scottish political parties frame the issues they own on Twitter and Facebook before elections. She shows that parties use threat and victim frames strategically, in ways shaped by their parliamentary strength and whether they are in government.

  In the Conversations section, Vladimir Rosas-Salazar reads Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009) as an allegory of apartheid-era segregation, showing how science fiction can engage with historical injustice. The issue closes with two book reviews. Samuel De Brouwer reviews Marcel Gauchet and the Crisis of Democratic Politics, which introduces Gauchet’s theory of democracy to English-language readers. Vojtěch Pohanka reviews Sarah Engler’s Centrist Anti-Establishment Parties and Their Struggle for Survival.

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  Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023)

  This issue covers international finance, criminal governance, electoral politics and energy transitions. Minglou Li draws on power transition theory and neofunctionalism to assess the internationalization of China’s renminbi and the limits of China’s regional monetary leadership. Jean Vilbert uses a qualitative meta-analysis to explain why residents of Brazilian favelas mobilize against state interventions while accepting the rule of organized criminal groups. In a research note, Mohammad Amaan Siddiqui argues that “whitelash” cannot adequately explain Donald Trump’s appeal and offers an account grounded in right-wing populism.

  In the Conversations section, Serena Saligari draws on ethnographic research in an informal settlement in Kenya to show why the shift to liquefied petroleum gas for cooking depends on social and cultural context as much as technology. The essay is accompanied by a visual poster.

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  Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

  This issue examines populism, crisis and the manipulation of democratic processes. Furkan Çay and Assem Kalkamanova use quantitative content analysis of campaign speeches to trace how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s populist discourse has changed over time. Andrea Capati treats the COVID-19 pandemic as a critical juncture that transformed the European Union’s financial assistance regime through the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Sarah Joan Clifford analyzes how Alberta’s draft K-6 social studies curriculum presents gender and history. In a research note, Kristin Eichhorn shows how electoral autocracies adjust voter registration and suffrage rights to secure their survival.

  The issue also launches the Conversations section, a non-peer-reviewed space for essays, interviews, and reflections. Oleksii Zahreba reflects on student engagement and the representation of the Global South at the 2023 IPSA World Congress in Buenos Aires. Velomahanina Tahinjanahary Razakamaharavo draws on a South–North collaboration with students in Madagascar to propose ways of making academic publishing more equitable.