We investigate the causes of civil war, using a new data set of wars during 1960-99. We test a `greed’ theory focusing on the ability to finance rebellion, against a`grievance’ theory focusing on ethnic and religious divisions, political repression and inequality. We find that greed considerably outperforms grievance. Consistent with the greed theory, both dependence upon primary commodity exports and a large diaspora substantially increase the risk of conflict. Inconsistent with the grievance theory, greater ethnic and religious diversity reduce the risk of conflict. The results are robust to correction for outliers, alternative variable definition, and variations in estimation method.
This study examines Lora's and Gus's perceptions of the involvement of kiai and pesantren in practical politics. Drawing on social construction theory and perception theory, the research explores how the political involvement of kiai is interpreted within everyday social interactions and within religious authority relations in local society. The study employs a qualitative approach through observation and in-depth interviews to understand differing viewpoints shaped by socio-cultural context, personal experience, and political dynamics. Findings reveal that perceptions are divided into positive and negative orientations. Positive perceptions consist of passive acceptance and active support for kiai participation in politics, while negative perceptions appear in confrontational and accommodative forms. Theological considerations, sociological relations, emotional bonds, economic interests, and inter-kiai competition influence these perceptions. The study concludes that political engagement of kiai produces both social integration and disintegration, while simultaneously opening political participation and generating new negotiations of religious authority in contemporary local politics.
We complete the foundational architecture of Algebraic Phase Theory by developing a categorical and $2$-categorical framework for algebraic phases. Building on the structural notions introduced in Papers~I-III, we define phase morphisms, equivalence relations, and intrinsic invariants compatible with the canonical filtration and defect stratification. For finite, strongly admissible phases we establish strong rigidity theorems: phase morphisms are uniquely determined by their action on rigid cores, and under bounded defect, weak, strong, and Morita-type equivalence all coincide. In particular, finite strongly admissible phases admit no distinct models with the same filtered representation theory. We further show that structural boundaries are invariant under Morita-type equivalence and therefore constitute genuine categorical invariants. Algebraic phases, phase morphisms, and filtration-compatible natural transformations form a strict $2$-category in the strongly admissible regime. We also prove that completion defines a reflective localization of this category, with complete phases characterized as universal forced rigidifications. Together, these results elevate Algebraic Phase Theory from a collection of algebraic constructions to a categorical framework in which rigidity, equivalence collapse, boundary invariance, and completion arise as intrinsic consequences of phase interaction, finiteness, and admissibility.
Introduction. The appeal to Marxism as a system of ideas explaining and predicting the ways of development of mankind and the fate of the state is still relevant. Marxism is popular not only in postsocialist countries, but also in the consistently developed bourgeois world. It is not overlooked as an object of research by representatives of leftist intellectuals at leading foreign and Russian universities. The purpose of this paper is to identify or clarify the reasons for the discrepancy between the social class ideas of Marxism and the practice of the modern state, the prospects for the theoretical and practical development of this, perhaps, the most influential doctrine after the world religions. Methodology and materials. Within the framework of a short article, which does not specifically touch upon the problems of foundations (sources), political economy, the concept of man, the interpretation of Marxism in the countries that today call themselves socialist, and many others, the author uses the methodological technique of interpreting Marx’s key theses concerning the driving forces of the historical development of society and the fate of the state through the comparison of the thinker’s ideas (insights) with contemporary reality. Research results and their discussion. The author reveals inconsistencies between the social class theory of Marxism and its practical implementation in the Soviet socialist state of the twentieth century; discovers the shortcomings of this theory in explaining the European society and state of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; reveals its potential in modern state-organized society. Conclusions. The study argues the point of view according to which the transformation of the social class theory of Marxism into a discourse devoid of practical possibilities of overthrowing the state (as an institution) has led to the paradox of defense and improvement of the system of institutions of the modern state by the supporters of the once revolutionary doctrine.
Introduction The environmental impact of mega-events like the Olympic Games and the FIFA Men's World Cup has been widely criticized due to their significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, largely driven by infrastructure construction and resource use, and travel. Despite sustainability initiatives introduced by the IOC since the 1990s, including the 2017 "Sustainability Strategy," research indicates that these efforts rarely lead to tangible results, with environmental scores of the Games declining over time (Müller et al., 2021). Policies such as Agenda 2020 are mostly seen as recommendations, not obligations, contributing to accusations of greenwashing and unmet environmental commitments. The lack of a standardized framework for assessing and mitigating environmental impacts highlights the gap between promises and outcomes, suggesting that current approaches are insufficient to align mega-events with sustainability goals (Collins et al., 2009; Gaffney, 2013). This research thesis examines this gap to understand the ineffectiveness of these policies and their evolution over time using the policy mobility methodology, which allows us to understand how policies are created, transferred and reapplied in a new context, thanks to tools and people who transport knowledge from one place to another. The research highlights the evolution of environmental policy in the Olympic Games, tracing its origins from global environmental movements to its integration within the framework of the International Olympic Committee.
Methods The methods used in this research focus on understanding the challenges of policy mobility and sustainability in the context of the Olympic Games. Policy mobility is a concept that analyzes how policies, conceived locally, circulate, adapt and apply in new contexts, particularly in a globalized. Unlike traditional nation-state-centric approaches, policy mobility emphasizes the role of non-state actors, international networks of experts, and global organizations in policy diffusion and transformation (Cochrane & Ward, 2012). In the context of mega-events such as the Olympic Games, it explains how sustainability-related practices and ideas travel between editions of the Games, influencing local policies while being reconfigured according to specific contexts. The study employs text-based methods, such as content and discourse analysis of policy documents and official IOC publications, as well as oral methods through interviews with key actors involved in the organization of the Games. This dual approach allows for an in-depth analysis of how policy ideas travel, the role of individuals in this process, the materials used for policy travel, and the politics of policy mobility (Temenos & Ward, 2018). The text-based analysis is built on a database [DG1] of the Olympic Games' carbon footprint using M. Müller's methodology, which emphasizes longitudinal and systematic data collection to identify sustainability patterns in mega-events (Gogishvili et al., 2024; Müller et al., 2022). This allowed for the analysis of all documents related to Paris 2024's sustainability policy, including its sustainability commitments, sustainability and legacy plan, two pre-games sustainability reports, and the final sustainability report.
Results Despite initiatives such as Agenda 21, Olympic Agenda 2020 and Agenda 2020+5, which aim to embed sustainability into the Games, their impact remains uneven. While the IOC encourages the introduction of sustainable practices since from the planning phases of the Games since 2003 and has introduced carbon management plans and sustainability reporting requirements, its reliance on recommendations rather than enforceable commitments limits their effectiveness. The analysis revealed that policy mobility plays a crucial role in shaping sustainability policies for the Olympic Games, as host cities adapt approaches from previous editions. This exchange, facilitated by the IOC's Olympic Games Knowledge Management program and informal expert networks, allows cities to implement proven strategies, such as carbon management plans and infrastructure reuse. However, the effectiveness of these policies is often hampered by the performative nature of environmental commitments, with actual results falling short of stated ambitions, as evidenced by the Paris 2024 case study. While the organizers aimed to halve the Games' carbon footprint and achieve a "positive climate impact", key measures, such as the AMO (Avoid, Mitigate, Offset) approach, lack clear methodologies and actionable details. For instance, despite promises to systematically assess environmental impacts at all venues, no methodology was provided for some key sites like Tahiti, highlighting gaps between goals and execution. These findings highlight the tension between the sustainability goals of the Olympic Games and the practical challenges of implementation despite the popularity of some of these policies among host cities.
Discussion/Conclusion While the IOC has made strides in integrating sustainability into its strategic goals, such as through the adoption of the Olympic Agenda 2020 and its Sustainability Strategy, the practical impact of these initiatives remains limited. The absence of standardized metrics for assessing and comparing environmental performance across editions of the Games makes it difficult to evaluate progress or enforce accountability. Weak accountability frameworks, such as voluntary reporting requirements and non-mandatory guidelines, leave much of the responsibility to Organizing Committees. Additionally, policy mobility does not always produce policies tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities of each host city. While the theory aims to create quantifiable and comparable outcomes, differences in economic, political, and cultural contexts often hinder adaptability. These variations in starting points make it difficult to implement standardized policies effectively across diverse host cities.
References
Cochrane, A., & Ward, K. (2012). Researching the geographies of policy mobility: Confronting the methodological challenges. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 44(1), 5–12. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44176
Collins, A., Jones, C., & Munday, M. (2009). Assessing the environmental impacts of mega sporting events: Two options? Tourism Management, 30(6), 828–837. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.12.006
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Müller, M., Wolfe, S. D., Gaffney, C., Gogishvili, D., Hug, M., & Leick, A. (2021). An evaluation of the sustainability of the Olympic Games. Nature Sustainability, 4(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00696-5
Müller, M., Wolfe, S. D., Gogishvili, D., Gaffney, C., Hug, M., & Leick, A. (2022). The mega-events database: Systematising the evidence on mega-event outcomes. Leisure Studies, 41(3), 437–445. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2021.1998835
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Kirill Solovev, Chiara Drolsbach, Emma Demirel
et al.
Short-form video platforms like TikTok reshape how politicians communicate and have become important tools for electoral campaigning. Yet it remains unclear what kinds of political messages gain traction in these fast-paced, algorithmically curated environments, which are particularly popular among younger audiences. In this study, we use computational content analysis to analyze a comprehensive dataset of N=25,292 TikTok videos posted by German politicians in the run-up to the 2025 German federal election. Our empirical analysis shows that videos expressing negative emotions (e.g., anger, disgust) and outgroup animosity were significantly more likely to generate engagement than those emphasizing positive emotion, relatability, or identity. Furthermore, ideologically extreme parties (on both sides of the political spectrum) were both more likely to post this type of content and more successful in generating engagement than centrist parties. Taken together, these findings suggest that TikTok's platform dynamics systematically reward divisive over unifying political communication, thereby potentially benefiting extreme actors more inclined to capitalize on this logic.
In 2024, France was shaken by the far-right National Rally's victory in the European elections. In response to this unprecedented result, French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the National Assembly, triggering legislative elections just two weeks later. A whirlwind campaign followed, partly on social media, as is now the norm, and concluded with the victory of a left-wing coalition. This article examines the YouTube activity of two key actors during this period, news media and politicians, and the commenting behavior they generated. We built a dataset of 35 news media channels, 28 politicians and parties channels, 43.5k videos posted from three months before the European elections to one week after the second round of the legislative elections, and 7.4M associated comments. We examined upload activity and engagement across political orientations and used network analysis methods to uncover the structure of their commenting communities. We also identified politicians' appearances on news media channels and assessed their impact on commenting user bases. Our findings show that, among politicians and parties channels, far-right and left-wing ones were significantly more active and received substantially higher engagement (views, likes, and comments) than other groups, with denser and more clustered commenting communities. About 7% of commenters commented across political orientations and were much more active than in-group commenters. News media channels tended to favor politically aligned guests, while centrist politicians were over-represented. Finally, politicians' presence in the videos of a specific news media channel increased the share of commenters who were active on this channel and political channels, regardless of their orientation.
Nusrat Jahan Lia, Shubhashis Roy Dipta, Abdullah Khan Zehady
et al.
Detecting media bias is crucial, specifically in the South Asian region. Despite this, annotated datasets and computational studies for Bangla political bias research remain scarce. Crucially because, political stance detection in Bangla news requires understanding of linguistic cues, cultural context, subtle biases, rhetorical strategies, code-switching, implicit sentiment, and socio-political background. To address this, we introduce the first benchmark dataset of 200 politically significant and highly debated Bangla news articles, labeled for government-leaning, government-critique, and neutral stances, alongside diagnostic analyses for evaluating large language models (LLMs). Our comprehensive evaluation of 28 proprietary and open-source LLMs shows strong performance in detecting government-critique content (F1 up to 0.83) but substantial difficulty with neutral articles (F1 as low as 0.00). Models also tend to over-predict government-leaning stances, often misinterpreting ambiguous narratives. This dataset and its associated diagnostics provide a foundation for advancing stance detection in Bangla media research and offer insights for improving LLM performance in low-resource languages.
The article analyzes politically motivated property damage and destruction, or property disobedience, an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary worldwide protest politics. It then explores the possibility that political theory as democratic underlaboring potentially offers a useful of framework for analysis. One possible advantage to democratic underlaboring is that it calls on us to heed how political participants in protest movements, as well as their critics, interpret their acts. Doing so offers a crucial first step toward respectfully but critically analyzing contemporary modes of political protest within more-or-less democratic contexts. One possible disadvantage is methodological: democratic underlaboring presupposes more-or-less democratic political conditions in a global context characterized by the ascent of authoritarian populism. The essay begins starts by describing key features of property disobedience and highlighting its growing significance, before exploring democratic underlaboring as a possible methodological approach. Then, with attention to some resulting research-related puzzles, I discuss possible weaknesses. Specifically, democratic backsliding threatens to undermine crucial building blocks on which democratic underlaboring necessarily relies, in part by blurring the divide between more-or-less democratic
A perennial question of political thought is how to stabilize a just regime in the face of disagreement. The importance of this question has been heightened with the Weberian state that monopolizes the power of coercion and anchors society under a single governance structure. This political form has given us both liberal democracy and totalitarianism. The stakes could not be higher in ensuring stability without dismantling pluralism. This paper provides a novel solution to the stability problem by focusing on dynamic stability reached through polycentric democracy. Plural and overlapping centers of governance characterize such democracy. This renders a polycentric system more resilient to changing views than a monocentric one and superior on political risk-management grounds by diffusing decision-making risks. A polycentric system also fosters antifragility in society by avoiding seeking a single and fixed point equilibrium, thereby eluding the pitfalls currently afflicting liberal democracy.
Ihor Vakulenko, Yuliia Matvieieva , Yuliia Opanasiuk
et al.
This study aims to analyze existing scientific approaches to developing roadmaps in energy and innovation, identify key challenges hindering the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, and develop practical recommendations for Ukraine. Particular emphasis is placed on identifying and integrating legislative, economic, technological, and social aspects into energy innovation transfer to ensure an effective and sustainable transition. A literature review was conducted using key terms such as "roadmap," "energy," and "innovation," which allowed for the identification of the most relevant trends and approaches in this field.
The article outlines the main challenges Ukraine faces in transitioning to a carbon-neutral economic model based on the transfer of energy innovations. These challenges include legislative barriers, insufficient economic incentives, technological difficulties, and social factors that slow down the implementation of innovations.
Based on the identified problems and existing trends, a roadmap for Ukraine's transition to a carbon-neutral economy was developed, covering four key areas: legislative, economic, technological, and social. The sequence of steps and actions necessary to implement the transition scenario is detailed and presented visually.
The article offers specific practical recommendations for Ukraine regarding the implementation of the roadmap, including necessary legislative changes, economic incentives, investments in technology, and measures to increase social awareness and support. Thus, this article makes an essential contribution to the scientific and practical discourse on the transition to a carbon-neutral economy, particularly in the context of Ukraine, and can serve as a foundation for further research and policy development in this area.
Education (General), Theory and practice of education
Yuan Zhang, Laia Castro Herrero, Frank Esser
et al.
Selective exposure, individuals' inclination to seek out information that supports their beliefs while avoiding information that contradicts them, plays an important role in the emergence of polarization and echo chambers. In the political domain, selective exposure is usually measured on a left-right ideology scale, ignoring finer details. To bridge the gap, this work introduces a multilevel analysis framework based on a multi-scale community detection approach. To test this approach, we combine survey and Twitter/X data collected during the 2022 Brazilian Presidential Election and investigate selective exposure patterns among survey respondents in their choices of whom to follow. We construct a bipartite network connecting survey respondents with political influencers and project it onto the influencer nodes. Applying multi-scale community detection to this projection uncovers a hierarchical clustering of political influencers. Different indices of selective exposure suggest that the characteristics of the influencer communities engaged by survey respondents vary with the level of community resolution. This finding indicates that online political selective exposure exhibits a more complex structure than a mere left-right dichotomy. Moreover, depending on the resolution level we consider, we find different associations between network indices of exposure patterns and 189 individual attributes of the survey respondents. For example, at finer levels, survey respondents' Community Overlap is associated with several factors, such as ideological position, demographics, news consumption frequency, and incivility perception. In comparison, only their ideological position is a significant factor at coarser levels. Our work demonstrates that measuring selective exposure at a single level, such as left and right, misses important information necessary to capture this phenomenon correctly.
Ernesto Colacrai, Federico Cinus, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales
et al.
The prevalent perspective in quantitative research on opinion dynamics flattens the landscape of the online political discourse into a traditional left--right dichotomy. While this approach helps simplify the analysis and modeling effort, it also neglects the intrinsic multidimensional richness of ideologies. In this study, we analyze social interactions on Reddit, under the lens of a multi-dimensional ideological framework: the political compass. We examine over 8 million comments posted on the subreddits /r/PoliticalCompass and /r/PoliticalCompassMemes during 2020--2022. By leveraging their self-declarations, we disentangle the ideological dimensions of users into economic (left--right) and social (libertarian--authoritarian) axes. In addition, we characterize users by their demographic attributes (age, gender, and affluence). We find significant homophily for interactions along the social axis of the political compass and demographic attributes. Compared to a null model, interactions among individuals of similar ideology surpass expectations by 6%. In contrast, we uncover a significant heterophily along the economic axis: left/right interactions exceed expectations by 10%. Furthermore, heterophilic interactions are characterized by a higher language toxicity than homophilic interactions, which hints at a conflictual discourse between every opposite ideology. Our results help reconcile apparent contradictions in recent literature, which found a superposition of homophilic and heterophilic interactions in online political discussions. By disentangling such interactions into the economic and social axes we pave the way for a deeper understanding of opinion dynamics on social media.
By comparison with the perplexing and undeveloped state of this subject, domestic political theory is very well understood, with multiple highly developed theories offering alternative solutions to well-defined problems. By contrast, concepts and theories of global justice are in the early stages of formation, and it is not clear what the main questions are, let alone the main possible answers. I believe that the need for workable ideas about the global or international case presents political theory with its most important current task, and even perhaps with the opportunity to make a practical contribution in the long run, though perhaps only the very long run. The theoretical and normative questions I want to discuss are closely related to pressing practical questions that we now face about the legitimate path forward in the governance of the world. These are, inevitably, questions about institutions, many of which do not yet exist. However imperfectly, the nation-state is the primary locus of political legitimacy and the pursuit of justice, and it is one of the advantages of domestic political theory that nation-states actually exist. But when we are
While we typically focus on data visualization as a tool for facilitating cognitive tasks (e.g., learning facts, making decisions), we know relatively little about their second-order impacts on our opinions, attitudes, and values. For example, could design or framing choices interact with viewers' social cognitive biases in ways that promote political polarization? When reporting on U.S. attitudes toward public policies, it is popular to highlight the gap between Democrats and Republicans (e.g., with blue vs red connected dot plots). But these charts may encourage social-normative conformity, influencing viewers' attitudes to match the divided opinions shown in the visualization. We conducted three experiments examining visualization framing in the context of social conformity and polarization. Crowdworkers viewed charts showing simulated polling results for public policy proposals. We varied framing (aggregating data as non-partisan "All US Adults," or partisan "Democrat" and "Republican") and the visualized groups' support levels. Participants then reported their own support for each policy. We found that participants' attitudes biased significantly toward the group attitudes shown in the stimuli and this can increase inter-party attitude divergence. These results demonstrate that data visualizations can induce social conformity and accelerate political polarization. Choosing to visualize partisan divisions can divide us further.
Three hundred years after the publication of the Lettres persanes in 1721, Montesquieu’s ecdotics, which includes also the translation, is indisputably a scientific work and therefore determines the value of reception, contradicting at the same time what Montesquieu himself thought of his first book: that it was not serious. Whether it was or not, and to what extent should also be reading —the reader could be perfectly satisfied with the taste of pleasant productions of the spirit, in accordance with what had hitherto been the traditional role of the belles lettres— is one of the first difficulties to know it and acknowledge its philosophic dimension.
Global Health Governance (GHG) uses a set of financial, normative, and epistemic arguments to retain and amplify its influence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the GHG regime used its own successes and failures to prescribe more of itself while demanding further resources. However, the consistent failures of this form governance and its appeasement to a dominant neoliberal ideology lead to the following question: Is the global health governance regime failing at its goal of improving health or succeeding at other political and ideological goals that necessitate such failures? Using concepts and ideas from social theory and post-colonial studies; I examine the definitions, epistemic basis, and drivers of GHG and propose certain conditions for the legitimacy of a global health governance system. Examining historical and current cases, I find that the GHG regime currently fails to fulfil such conditions of legitimacy and instead creates spaces that limit rather than help many populations it purports to serve. Those spaces of sickness confine people and reduce them into a state of health subalternity. In being health subalterns, people’s voices are neither sought nor heard in formulating the policies that determine their health. Finally, I argue that research and policymaking on global health should not be confined to the current accepted frameworks that assumes legitimacy and benevolence of GHG, and propose steps to establish an alternative, emancipatory model of understanding and governing global health.