Archives - Page 2

  • Vol. 22 No. 1 (2022)

    This issue brings together the five research articles IAPSS Politikon published in 2022, covering African security, East Asian welfare politics, academic freedom in Europe, constitutional change in Turkey and democratic theory.

    Tinashe Sithole examines the political economy of the insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. He traces how natural resource governance has fuelled the conflict and argues that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) must act to stop it spreading across the region. Yeo Qin-Liang compares Singapore and South Korea to ask how civil society shapes welfare expansion in East Asia, and why protest has produced very different outcomes in the two states.

    Vaia Papanikolaou, Yiannis Roussakis and Panagiotis Tzionas build a model of the “collapsing university”. Drawing on the case of the Central European University in Hungary, they show how state pressure on academic freedom and institutional autonomy erodes the university’s democratic role. Özge Korkmaz Şahbaz uses process tracing to explain the constitutional changes that moved Turkey to a presidential system, from the 1982 constitution to the 2017 referendum. Donovan van der Haak argues that Jason Brennan’s case for epistocracy cannot be reconciled with moral relativism.

    The articles were first published online between March and September 2022 and brought together in this issue in December 2022. 

  • Vol. 21 No. 4 (2021)

    This issue brings together four research articles on legitimacy, information and the health of democratic institutions. Yusuke Ishikawa draws on an interview with a former head of Transparency International UK. He shows that the organization acted as a think tank, shaping both the drafting and the early implementation of the UK Bribery Act 2010. Andrei Dălălău analyzes four political myths that Romanian presidential candidates used to build legitimacy in the early 1990s, after the fall of communism.

    Jinwook Lee develops a framework for how negative information on social media distorts political judgment. He tests it on tweets from the Internet Research Agency and finds that negative and anger-inducing content drew more interaction. Francesco Maria Scanni asks whether populists in government merely erode liberal institutions or threaten constitutional democracy itself.

    The issue was originally published as Volume 51 (December 2021). It was renumbered in October 2026 under the journal’s year-based numbering. Its DOIs are unchanged.

  • Vol. 21 No. 3 (2021)

    This issue opens with an editorial on the role of students and junior scholars in academic publishing. It draws on a panel that members of the editorial team joined at the 2021 IPSA World Congress of Political Science.

    Three research articles follow. Luca Doll uses securitization theory and regional security complex theory to explain why cooperation remains absent in the Eastern Mediterranean despite new resource discoveries and a growing maritime arms race. Marco Improta maps the identity and electoral performance of Italian southernist parties from 1945 to 2020, a group of parties largely overlooked in research on regionalism. Camila Saute Torresini compares two middle-power partnerships, IBSA and MIKTA, to explain why one has been more effective in promoting sustainable development.

    The issue was originally published as Volume 50 (September 2021). It was renumbered in October 2026 under the journal’s year-based numbering. Its DOIs are unchanged.

  • Vol. 21 No. 2 (2021)

    This issue marks twenty years since the first issue of IAPSS Politikon. The editorial looks back on the journal’s development into a journal for scholars at all career stages, reports on a year of editorial work, and announces the 2021 IAPSS Politikon Best Article Award.

    Three research articles follow. Carol-Ann Rouillard and Mireille Lalancette analyze how the media covered gender parity in Canada’s federal and provincial cabinets. Esther Ng K.H. argues that a fuller account of practice and reflexivity allows ontological security to explain change in International Relations. Oxana Pimenova shows how the subsidiarity principle can serve as a tool for dialogue between EU institutions and national parliaments.

    Two research notes complete the issue. Fernando Ursine Braga Silva traces the breakup of the Democratic Party of Japan and the realignment of the opposition. Paul Fricker examines how rivalry between the United States and China in Djibouti affects counterterrorism operations.

    The issue was originally published as Volume 49 (June 2021). It was renumbered in October 2026 under the journal’s year-based numbering. Its DOIs are unchanged.

  • Vol. 21 No. 1 (2021)

    From among the five contributions in this issue, three articles comprise a special section on 'Populisms, Hybrid Regimes and Political Change'. They represent memoirs from the first edition of the Leonardo Morlino Lecture Series that was organised in Mexico in November 2019. They are followed by a study of the prospects and pitfalls of a South African developmental state in regional comparative perspective, and by a book review on the perils of corruptio

    This issue opens with a special section, “Populisms, Hybrid Regimes and Political Change”, drawn from the first Leonardo Morlino Lecture Series, held in Mexico in November 2019. Juan Russo defines polarization, radicalization and populism and sets out hypotheses about how they relate. Jaime A. Preciado Coronado asks whether populism must lead to illiberal regimes or can be compatible with democratization. Rafael Plancarte Escobar uses game theory to explain how weaknesses in political participation and the rule of law have consolidated Mexico’s hybrid regime.

    Beyond the special section, Marcel Nagar examines how security threats and the COVID-19 pandemic shape democratic developmental states in Africa, with South Africa as a central case. Nkosingiphile Mkhize reviews How to Steal a Country (2018) by by Robin Renwick, a study of state capture in South Africa.

    The issue was originally published as Volume 48 (March 2021). It was renumbered in October 2026 under the journal’s year-based numbering. Its DOIs are unchanged.

  • Vol. 20 No. 4 (2020)

    While the COVID-19 pandemic may be the first reference point for a "contemporary challenge," climate change has anything but disappeared in 2020. While the immediate effects of the pandemic might not persist in the long term, climate change remains an undisputedly central point of focus for social science research and thinking. Thus, Vol. 20 No. 3 of IAPSS Politikon contains a special section on "Paths to Climate Justice", consisting of two articles and a research note.

    Melina Kotsinas studies disaster management and stakeholders working in this field in a Small Island Developing Nation, Antigua and Barbuda, following Hurricane Irma and how they understand and respond to crisis. Lisa Carroll discusses the fact that the current international legal system cannot ‘effectively manage and sufficiently protect’ people moving due to climate and that the issue surrounding the definition of people undertaking this type of movement is doctrinal as well as definitional. Lisa Nowag reviews past research on the links between environmental changes and violence as well arguments for and against the controversial climate-conflict nexus. 

    In addition to the special section, Chloé Bernadaux provides insights into the operation of consociational systems in Northern Ireland and Lebanon from the perspective of their capacity to prevent conflicts along ethnonational lines.

  • Vol. 20 No. 3 (2020)

    Following an Editorial Note that summarizes an IAPSS Politikon webinar on 'Research and Education in Times of Pandemic', this issue contains three original articles and a book review. The first half of the issue consists of two articles employing interpretive methods (Ceren Çetinkaya) and critical theory (Ander Arredondo Chopitea). Çetinkaya studies one domain of the Turkish government’s efforts to reconstruct ‘a neo-Ottoman identity’, that of Ottoman-themed soap operas, juxtaposing this reconstruction to Turkey’s European identity that seeks affinity between Turkey and the European Union. Arredondo Chopitea contributes with an article asking whether development policies, in fact, can meet their intended aims to contribute to equality and global justice. 

    Subsequently, Hakan Sönmez analyses how various democracy indices capture democratic backsliding. He argues for approaching democracy indices with caution since they are based on complex measurements entailing a range of conceptual and methodological choices. The issue closes with Chetan Rana’s book review of an edited volume analysing the status quo and prospects for the ‘Indo-Pacific axis’.

  • Vol. 20 No. 2 (2020)

    IAPSS Politikon is committed to demonstrating that Political Science has a lot to contribute to the analysis of the phenomena and issues in a world in turmoil. Volume 45 presents research into aspects of some of the most pertinent developments of our age, using the full range of publication formats (articles, review essays, research notes, book reviews). 

    Beyza Sarıkoç Yıldırım analyses municipal action plans that address climate change in Turkey. Ilia Viatkin invites us to reflect on the variables that explain the unexpected increase in voting for the German Green party during the 2019 European Parliament elections in the German East and the West. Peter Wedekind presents a review essay which emphasises the usefulness of the principles of liberalism in order to safeguard liberal democracies. Clara Ribeiro Assumpção's research note explores the tense relationship between intelligence services and democracy, which appears more conflictive in contexts in which there has been a shift from authoritarian regimes to consolidating democracies. In another research note, Serena Alonso García reflects on the 2014 Hepatitis C crisis that occurred in Spain, as a case in which the collective interest gave way to private interests. Sukhayl Niyazov reviews Harry Frankfurt’s book On Inequality.

  • Vol. 20 No. 1 (2020)

    This issue can be symbolically divided into two sections. The first one features contributions from Jessica Nuske and Justinas Lingevicius. Nuske revisits the concept of representation in contemporary times when the ‘electoral connection’ between citizens and representatives alone is woefully inadequate to capture the complex relationship between these two subjects. Lingevicius, similarly to Nuske, departs from constructivist premises in his effort to make sense of the changes in Lithuanian foreign and security policy after the Crimean annexation. He reads the growing emphasis on Lithuanian independence in this discourse as an indicator that state identity in foreign policy can change due to relevant external events. 

    The second section focuses on African politics. Pieter Labuschagne studies new political parties in the South African party system, concluding that, in this respect at least, South African elections does not identify significant differences compared to ‘consolidated democracies’. Thomas Ibrahim Okinda, Benson Oduor Ojwang, and Charles Ongadi Nyambuga use survey data from female voters in one of the counties for the Kenyan general elections to investigate how socio-democratic and attitudinal variables correlate with their electoral participation. Their findings argue in favour of female electoral participation facilitating gender equality in general. The study of the relationship between election management systems and peaceful alternation of power in Ghana and Nigeria by Harrison Adewale Idowu and N. Oluwafemi ‘Femi’ Mimiko is a qualitative explorative analysis arguing that the credibility of the election management system has been conducive to the peaceful alternation of power in Ghana while other factors facilitated the same outcome in Nigeria. Finally, Idris Buta reviews the book 'Violence in African Elections', praising it for its scope as well as the capacity to recognise the uneven distribution of electoral violence across the cases studied, but highlighting the need for more recommendations focused towards domestic rather than international actors in eliminating electoral violence. 

  • Vol. 19 No. 4 (2019)

    Closing what the editorial calls an anniversary year for political science, this issue explores why political actors change course, and how they win and keep support. Verónica Gutman analyzes two decades of statements at UN climate conferences to explain why Latin American countries moved from resisting emission cuts in the 1990s to signing the Paris Agreement. She points to carbon markets, climate finance and new information as incentives that changed their behaviour. Luigi Cino draws on gradual institutional change theory to show that Tunisia’s transformation after the 2011 revolution took the form of displacement, in which old rules were removed and new ones introduced.

    Two further articles turn to persuasion and consent. Samantha Trudeau reads Plato’s Lesser Hippias as a lesson for Socrates’ students, in which he shows philosophy’s superiority over sophistry through his mastery of truth and lies about justice. Yankı Doruk Doğanay uses Lacanian psychoanalysis and discourse analysis to explain how Turkey’s governing party sustains its support. Joshua Makalintal closes the issue with a review of Francis Fukuyama’s Identity.

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