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.