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.