The newest Trump administration provides numerous opportunities to expand the scope of public policy process scholarship. While it is difficult to predict exactly what the 47th president will do, Trump's record as the 45th president as well as his extensive campaign rhetoric provide clues to his administrative style and policy agenda. This Perspective investigates the ways in which the Trump administration might expand scholarly inquiry into executive policymaking, policy feedback, federalism, identity‐based policymaking, and policy entrepreneurs. I offer guiding questions in each of these research domains as well implications for governance in the United States. In general, policy process theories are well‐positioned to study the Trump administration as any other new administration; though what we study as a scholarly community should shift with Trump's policy and institutional priorities. In particular, I argue that Trump‐47's quid‐pro‐quo style in an extremely polarized political environment should lead policy scholars to better understand politics in the policy process.
Panagiota Xanthopoulou, Alexandros Sahinidis, Evangelos E. Vassiliou
et al.
The purpose of the study is to investigate the gap between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial action among business administration students with the aim of understanding why many who develop entrepreneurial intentions do not ultimately take action. A quantitative methodology was adopted from a sample of students who took entrepreneurship courses at different stages of their studies, allowing for the mapping of changes in entrepreneurial intention over time. Findings show that although entrepreneurship education initially strengthens intention, it declines after course completion, mainly due to external constraints, perceived risk, lack of support, and differences in students’ personal backgrounds. This research confirms the existence of a significant “intention-action gap” and highlights determining factors such as self-confidence, family support, and entrepreneurial culture. The value of this study lies in its combined and quasi-longitudinal approach, which offers new insights into the conversion of intention into action and contributes to the development of educational and policy strategies to enhance student entrepreneurship.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Débora Pinto, Paula C. N. Figueiredo, Nuno J. P. Rodrigues
This study examines the relationship between e-leadership competencies—assessed through a E-Leadership Competencies (SEC) model—and organizational preference for telework in Portugal. In the context of increasing digitalization and following the widespread experience of remote work driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes essential to understand the role of e-competence in leading geographically dispersed teams. A quantitative investigation was conducted through the application of an online questionnaire to e-leaders of companies based in Portugal whose teams benefit from telework arrangements. The results indicate that only three of the six e-competencies identified in the SEC model show statistical significance in e-leadership effectiveness, with no relationship observed between perceived effectiveness and organizational investment in telework. Nevertheless, more than 80% of respondents reported that telework has been increasing within their organizations. This study contributes to the adaptation of the SEC model to the Portuguese context and reinforces its importance as a tool for diagnosing and developing e-leadership competencies. Theoretical and practical implications highlight the need to explore new dimensions—including hard skills—and applying the model across different sectors and types of organizations, thus supporting the preparation of e-leaders for an increasingly digital world of work. Overall, by evidencing the SEC model’s successful adaptation in Portugal, the findings underscore the model’s broader applicability and potential for generalization across diverse organizational settings.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Georgeta Vintilă, Vasilica Izabela Fometescu, Alexandra Ioana Vintilă
<p>Public administration, as the implementing body of public policies, plays a fundamental role in maintaining financial stability and fostering sustainable private sector development. Our study investigates the extent to which the quality of public governance – a direct reflection of administrative capacity – influences corporate taxation outcomes in the energy sector, deeply affected by financial crises and armed conflicts all over the world. Administrative capacity plays an important role in supporting competition, simplifying bureaucracy, and ensuring transparency in public spending. Strengthening the role of administrative capacity, particularly in the energy sector, is a key factor in public sector reform.</p><p>The empirical study analyzes the non-financial companies from the EU-27 countries, over the period 2004-2023, and integrates as main independent variables the public governance indicators. Our findings indicate that stronger governance, particularly where public administration is effective and transparent, contributes to the increase in corporate income tax and, implicitly, to increasing revenue collection. From a public policy perspective, the quantitative study results underscore the importance of strengthening administrative institutions and public governance mechanisms to improve taxpayers’ voluntary compliance.</p>
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Lennart Luettgau, Hannah Rose Kirk, Kobi Hackenburg
et al.
Conversational AI systems are increasingly being used in place of traditional search engines to help users complete information-seeking tasks. This has raised concerns in the political domain, where biased or hallucinated outputs could misinform voters or distort public opinion. However, in spite of these concerns, the extent to which conversational AI is used for political information-seeking, as well the potential impact of this use on users' political knowledge, remains uncertain. Here, we address these questions: First, in a representative national survey of the UK public (N = 2,499), we find that in the week before the 2024 election as many as 32% of chatbot users - and 13% of eligible UK voters - have used conversational AI to seek political information relevant to their electoral choice. Second, in a series of randomised controlled trials (N = 2,858 total) we find that across issues, models, and prompting strategies, conversations with AI increase political knowledge (increase belief in true information and decrease belief in misinformation) to the same extent as self-directed internet search. Taken together, our results suggest that although people in the UK are increasingly turning to conversational AI for information about politics, this shift may not lead to increased public belief in political misinformation.
Trade agreements are often understood as shielding commerce from fluctuations in political relations. This paper provides evidence that World Trade Organization membership reduces the penalty of political distance on trade at the extensive margin. Using a structural gravity framework covering 1948 to 2023 and two measures of political distance, based on high-frequency events data and UN General Assembly votes, GATT/WTO status is consistently associated with a wider range of products traded between politically distant partners. The association is strongest in the early WTO years (1995 to 2008). Events-based estimates also suggest attenuation at the intensive margin, while UN vote-based estimates do not. Across all specifications, GATT/WTO membership increases aggregate trade volumes. The results indicate that a function of the multilateral trading system has been to foster new trade links across political divides, while raising trade volumes among both close and distant partners.
The general problem of possible conceptual indistinctness in the research space of social sciences (and social discourse) has been highlighted, in which the substantive essence of a certain analytical category may be perceived somewhat ambiguity, which complicates correct scientific research. It has been proven that one of such categories possibly be considered the concept of political management, since political science and other research, for the most part, is mainly aimed at the applied study of individual components, tools, problems, etc. of its implementation. It is emphasized that additional complexity for specifying the conceptual and categorical component is added by the development of related areas of research in the field of management activities, such as public administration and public relations. The phenomenon of political management in the political system of society is thoroughly studied, the development of its forms in the general space of the power relations implementation of various types is identified and comprehensively analysed. It is defined that political management is an integrated strategy of political influence that combines planning, management, and coordination of political activity and resources to achieve specific goals in the political sphere based on the implementation of power influence over elements (institutions, groups, subjects) and processes of the political system of society (electoral, political socialization, political mobilization, etc.), and the space of political relations in general. It is specified that political management is carried out on the basis of a certain ideological orientation towards political action – a political program, a political course, a political ideology. It is clarified that the tools of political management in various ways are formalized and systematized, affect the individual's position (rights, property, opportunities), but always encourage a certain type of political activity.
E. A. Mitrofanova, M. Polyakov, Victor I. Mokrushin
The study discusses the issues related to the institutional mechanisms of integration of the Kherson region into the political, administrative and socio-economic space of the Russian Federation. The authors analyze the complex process of embedding a new subject of the Russian Federation into the system of public administration, the legal, financial and managerial environment of the country. The authors compare the integration processes of the Kherson region with the experience of integrating the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol in 2014-2016, revealing both common features and significant differences due to the military-political situation, personnel shortages and infrastructure problems. The research uses both general and specialized academic methods, such as synthesis, deduction, comparative analysis, sociological survey, as well as analysis of the legal framework and scientific literature. Based on the analysis of regulatory acts and a sociological survey conducted by 131 experts in the field of public administration (civil servants, teachers, heads of authorities of the Kherson region) the main barriers to integration have been identified, including staff shortages, problems with information systems and legal regulation. The experts emphasize the need for a systematic personnel policy, professional development, transition to Russian standards for the provision of public services, and enhanced cooperation with the federal government. Special importance is attached to measures and tools that contribute to the legitimization of the new government - the restoration of infrastructure, transparency of governance and public involvement in integration processes. The study emphasizes that successful integration requires not only the technical adaptation of the newly annexed region to federal standards, but also a comprehensive systemic transformation aimed at such results as managerial efficiency, social legitimacy and strategic planning. The conclusions and recommendations obtained are of interest to specialists in the field of economics, political science, state and municipal administration and may be in demand when developing state policy in the field of management of new territories.
Digital disruption has fundamentally transformed the electoral landscape in Indonesia, shifting political campaigns and discourse into cyberspace. This transformation presents a paradox for constitutional democracy: on the one hand, technology offers potential efficiency through innovations such as e-voting; on the other hand, it has become a primary vector for the spread of disinformation, hoaxes, and hate speech that undermine election integrity, erode public trust, and deepen social polarization. The existing legal framework for elections, particularly law no. 7 of 2017, has proven inadequate to effectively regulate the dynamics of digital campaigns and address cyber threats, leaving election organizers (the general elections commission (KPU) and the elections supervisory agency (bawaslu) often in a reactive position. This study aims to analyze the impact of digital disruption, particularly disinformation, on the integrity of election administration and constitutional democracy in Indonesia, evaluate the adequacy of the legal framework for elections in addressing digital challenges, and examine the legal, technical, and social feasibility of implementing technological innovations such as e-voting. This study uses a normative legal method with a legislative approach. The analysis is conducted on the 1945 constitution, law no. The study examined law no. 7 of 2017 concerning elections, the electronic information and transactions law (UU ITE), and regulations from the general elections commission (KPU) and the elections supervisory agency (bawaslu) to assess the gap between legal norms and the reality of digital challenges. It found that current election regulations have significant legal gaps regarding the oversight and enforcement of campaign violations on social media, such as trolling and non-transparent political advertising. Oversight efforts by bawaslu and the KPU tend to be reactive (e.g., content takedowns) and rely heavily on collaboration with other institutions such as the ministry of communication and information. The implementation of e-voting is hampered by three main obstacles: the lack of a comprehensive legal basis, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and low public trust in digital systems. Digital disruption poses a fundamental threat to Indonesia's electoral democracy that has not been mitigated by the existing legal and institutional framework. Comprehensive reform of the elections law is needed to specifically regulate digital campaigns, ensure transparency of funds, and implement strict sanctions. Furthermore, strengthening the technical and digital forensic capacity of bawaslu and the KPU is a necessity, which must be balanced with a national digital literacy program to build community resilience against disinformation.
Esther Kalu Okechukwu, A. Aderinto, Sultan Babatunde Lawal
The menace of corruption in Nigeria has lingered on for years, the conscious awareness towards this malady has gained prominence over the years, to the extent that the main opposition party, All Progressive Congress (APC), ascended to power in the 2015 General Elections, emerging victorious at the polls with anti-corruption campaign, echoed by the change mantra. This study dissected the much-anticipated fight against corruption in the eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s APC led administration; it unravels that the principle The menace of corruption in Nigeria has lingered on for years, the conscious awareness towards this malady has gained prominence over the years, to the extent that the main opposition party, All Progressive Congress (APC), ascended to power in the 2015 General Elections, emerging victorious at the polls with anti-corruption campaign, echoed by the change mantra. This study dissected the much-anticipated fight against corruption in the eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s APC led administration; it unravels that the principle of rotation of power with its patron-client network and identity politics are enablers of corruption in Nigeria. Similarly, it is posited that plea bargain constitutes a huge hindrance to the successful eradication of corruption in Nigeria, just as the poor reward system for career public office holders constitutes a challenge to the fight against corruption in Nigeria. The study concluded that the Buhari administration’s fight against corruption, although had Nigerians filled with hopes from inception, could not achieve much in the end with the anti-corruption Caesar (Ibrahim Magu) removed in what appears as a power play. We recommend the establishment of institutional mechanisms to prevent corruption, review of reward system for public officers, creation of credit system to facilitate citizens’ immediate access to meeting their needs, prosecution of civil/public servants who are complicit in corrupt practices, and compensation of whistleblowers, among other measures.
Behdad Sadeghi, Rahmatollah Gholipour, Mojtaba Amiri
et al.
Objective
This study was conducted with the goal of designing a policy-making model for sports in Iran, with a focus on the development of 'sport for all'. In terms of purpose, this study is classified as applied research, as it encompasses practical aspects for various organizations related to sports and health, in addition to providing awareness and scientific insights. Furthermore, this research is exploratory in nature, as it aims to design a model on a novel and innovative topic.
Methods
A mixed qualitative-quantitative method was employed in this study. The qualitative component was conducted using a situation analysis approach, which is one of the methods of grounded theory. The qualitative research involved interviewing experts; thus, 12 experts in the fields of policy making and sport management were interviewed. These experts were either professors or managers of organizations related to sports, possessing over a decade of executive and decision-making experience. Sampling was carried out using targeted and snowball methods. The quantitative section utilized interpretative structural modeling, an approach based on expert opinions, effective for exploring qualitative variables with mutual effects at various levels of importance.
Results
After an in-depth examination of the interviews and the data obtained, each interview was analyzed individually to extract initial codes. Subsequently, concepts and categories were developed. Messy situational maps, ordered situational maps, and social worlds/arenas maps were identified. The primary categories of the sport policy-making model in Iran for the development of 'sport for all' include contextual factors, mediating factors, role players and influential institutions, executive requirements, environmental complexities, risks, legal problems, external organizational factors, costs and expenses, and interorganizational challenges. With the aid of interpretive structural modeling, conceptual modeling was conducted. Role players and influential institutions emerged as the most significant factors in Iran's sport policy-making process, possessing the highest influence and the least dependence compared to other factors.
Conclusion
Given that 'sport for all' should be elevated to the level of the country's macro policies, and its development and progress should be approached as a complex issue, the policy for the development of 'sport for all' becomes especially important. Policymakers should give it significant attention. Role players and influential institutions in Iran's sports policy-making process require substantial coordination due to their numerous connections and conflicts. In Iran, 'sport for all' and organized recreation have received limited attention, and currently, there is no mechanism for monitoring sports policies and their continuous implementation. Therefore, it is recommended to implement a national physical activity monitoring plan based on a comprehensive and electronic system. Since the involvement of managers and executives, as well as their cooperation with policymakers in the policy formation process, is crucial, policymakers should be as involved as possible in the implementation process. Additionally, conditions should be facilitated to enable the private sector to effectively engage in this field.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
In recent years, large language models (LLMs) have been widely adopted in political science tasks such as election prediction, sentiment analysis, policy impact assessment, and misinformation detection. Meanwhile, the need to systematically understand how LLMs can further revolutionize the field also becomes urgent. In this work, we--a multidisciplinary team of researchers spanning computer science and political science--present the first principled framework termed Political-LLM to advance the comprehensive understanding of integrating LLMs into computational political science. Specifically, we first introduce a fundamental taxonomy classifying the existing explorations into two perspectives: political science and computational methodologies. In particular, from the political science perspective, we highlight the role of LLMs in automating predictive and generative tasks, simulating behavior dynamics, and improving causal inference through tools like counterfactual generation; from a computational perspective, we introduce advancements in data preparation, fine-tuning, and evaluation methods for LLMs that are tailored to political contexts. We identify key challenges and future directions, emphasizing the development of domain-specific datasets, addressing issues of bias and fairness, incorporating human expertise, and redefining evaluation criteria to align with the unique requirements of computational political science. Political-LLM seeks to serve as a guidebook for researchers to foster an informed, ethical, and impactful use of Artificial Intelligence in political science. Our online resource is available at: http://political-llm.org/.
Andrew Deas, Hashan Fernando, Heidi A. Hanson
et al.
The opioid crisis remains one of the most daunting and complex public health problems in the United States. This study investigates the national epidemic by analyzing vulnerability profiles of three key factors: opioid-related mortality rates, opioid prescription dispensing rates, and disability rank ordered rates. This study utilizes county level data, spanning the years 2014 through 2020, on the rates of opioid-related mortality, opioid prescription dispensing, and disability. To successfully estimate and predict trends in these opioid-related factors, we augment the Kalman Filter with a novel spatial component. To define opioid vulnerability profiles, we create heat maps of our filter's predicted rates across the nation's counties and identify the hotspots. In this context, hotspots are defined on a year-by-year basis as counties with rates in the top 5 percent nationally. Our spatial Kalman filter demonstrates strong predictive performance. From 2014 to 2018, these predictions highlight consistent spatiotemporal patterns across all three factors, with Appalachia distinguished as the nation's most vulnerable region. Starting in 2019 however, the dispensing rate profiles undergo a dramatic and chaotic shift. The initial primary drivers of opioid abuse in the Appalachian region were likely prescription opioids; however, it now appears that abuse is sustained by illegal drugs. Additionally, we find that the disabled subpopulation may be more at risk of opioid-related mortality than the general population. Public health initiatives must extend beyond controlling prescription practices to address the transition to and impact of illicit drug use.
The digital landscape provides a dynamic platform for political discourse crucial for understanding shifts in public opinion and engagement especially under authoritarian governments This study examines YouTube user behavior during the Russian-Ukrainian war analyzing 2168 videos with over 36000 comments from January 2022 to February 2024 We observe distinct patterns of participation and gender dynamics that correlate with major political and military events Notably females were more active in antigovernment channels especially during peak conflict periods Contrary to assumptions about online engagement in authoritarian contexts our findings suggest a complex interplay where women emerge as pivotal digital communicators This highlights online platforms role in facilitating political expression under authoritarian regimes demonstrating its potential as a barometer for public sentiment.
Vicente Amado Olivo, Wolfgang Kerzendorf, Brian Cherinka
et al.
Large scientific institutions, such as the Space Telescope Science Institute, track the usage of their facilities to understand the needs of the research community. Astrophysicists incorporate facility usage data into their scientific publications, embedding this information in plain-text. Traditional automatic search queries prove unreliable for accurate tracking due to the misidentification of facility names in plain-text. As automatic search queries fail, researchers are required to manually classify publications for facility usage, which consumes valuable research time. In this work, we introduce a machine learning classification framework for the automatic identification of facility usage of observation sections in astrophysics publications. Our framework identifies sentences containing telescope mission keywords (e.g., Kepler and TESS) in each publication. Subsequently, the identified sentences are transformed using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and classified with a Support Vector Machine. The classification framework leverages the context surrounding the identified telescope mission keywords to provide relevant information to the classifier. The framework successfully classifies usage of MAST hosted missions with a 92.9% accuracy. Furthermore, our framework demonstrates robustness when compared to other approaches, considering common metrics and computational complexity. The framework's interpretability makes it adaptable for use across observatories and other scientific facilities worldwide.
I report here a comprehensive analysis about the political preferences embedded in Large Language Models (LLMs). Namely, I administer 11 political orientation tests, designed to identify the political preferences of the test taker, to 24 state-of-the-art conversational LLMs, both closed and open source. When probed with questions/statements with political connotations, most conversational LLMs tend to generate responses that are diagnosed by most political test instruments as manifesting preferences for left-of-center viewpoints. This does not appear to be the case for five additional base (i.e. foundation) models upon which LLMs optimized for conversation with humans are built. However, the weak performance of the base models at coherently answering the tests' questions makes this subset of results inconclusive. Finally, I demonstrate that LLMs can be steered towards specific locations in the political spectrum through Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) with only modest amounts of politically aligned data, suggesting SFT's potential to embed political orientation in LLMs. With LLMs beginning to partially displace traditional information sources like search engines and Wikipedia, the societal implications of political biases embedded in LLMs are substantial.
The purpose of the article is to consider the key political and historical aspects of the transformation of the monarchical systems of modern European states. The parliamentary monarchy is one of the main forms of government represented in the European historical region, and at the same time acts as a priority for adaptation to the modern political context. Europe has extensive experience of monarchism, which makes studding monarchies a priority in the analysis of a number of European states, including countries such as the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Principalities of Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco, the Kingdoms of Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Norway and Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The author studies the influence of historical events on political changes in countries and the further evolution of the form of government. Today the problem of historical experience influence on the development of hereditary power systems and the current state of political institutions seems to be insufficiently studied. Using historical, institutional and systemic methods, the author explores the patterns of evolution of European parliamentary monarchies. The author notes the natural and progressive development of hereditary statehood within the adaptation to a changing historical context. Historical epochs present new challenges to the hereditary power systems, which require their change and adaptation in order to preserve statehood and prevent the abolition of the monarchy. The influence of the political and historical process over the modern political systems of European states with hereditary power is noted. The onset of the era of well–established European democracy, which during the XX - XXI centuries is one of the key factors encouraging European monarchies to make political changes in favor of reducing the personal power of the sovereign in favor of representative institutions of power. As a result, the author emphasizes that modern institutions of the monarchical component were able to ensure the current level of political stability as a consequence of the accumulation of the effect of historical events, including remote episodes of centuries and millennia ago. The author shows that the political culture of countries and the general historical experience directly affect the current state of monarchical institutions. The study results can be applied in the modern political systems analysis of European parliamentary monarchies, as well as in the historical research context. Thus, the author proves that, when conducting political and historical studies of states with a hereditary form of government, it is necessary not only to refer to the current state, but also to take into account the historical specifics of the development of statehood. Historical experience helps to better understand the current state of government institutions, and also use them in making managerial decisions regarding further reform of a monarchical regime.
This article highlights four key reform challenges regarding the quality of public administration and governance (PAG), aimed at increasing ‘SDG-readiness’ at all levels of administration, in a nexus characterized by complexity, volatility, pluriformity and uncertainty. Based on others’ research into how EU Member States institutionalize the implementation of the SDGs, a critical review of SDG-governance approaches, as well as a review paper on the management of the SDGs, it is concluded that that four priority areas could guide research and policy development to accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Firstly, to recognize that creating an effective public administration and governance is an important strategic policy area. Secondly, to begin with mission-oriented public administration and governance reform for SDG implementation, replacing the efficiency-driven public sector reform of the past decades. Thirdly, to apply culturally sensitive metagovernance to design, define and manage trade-offs and achieving synergies between SDGs and their targets. Fourthly, to start concerted efforts to improve policy coherence with a mindset beyond political, institutional, and mental ‘silos’.
Ricardo Domínguez-García, Sandra Méndez-Muros, Concha Pérez-Curiel
et al.
The pictures of the US Capitol attack, on January 6, 2021, represent a before and after in a country marked by the culture of political polarization. Following a presidential campaign based on misinformation and accusations of electoral fraud by Republican candidate Donald Trump, the level of maximum polarization causes a climate of social rupture. Faced with this, the Democratic candidate and winner of the elections, Joe Biden, projects a discourse of institutional stability and legality as a strategy before public opinion. Two years later, the abrupt division of the US electorate is evident, with a significant percentage of Republican voters questioning the legitimacy of the electoral process. The objective of this research is to find out the strategies of political polarization deployed by Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Twitter in the 2020-2021 presidential transition period, as well as the public’s response. Based on a general sample of 1,060 tweets, a comparative content analysis methodology with a triple approach (quantitative-qualitative-discursive) is applied, based on the study of themes, emotions, and the ability to go viral of the messages of both political leaders. The results confirm a Trump’s speech defined by polarization, misinformation and the attack on the democratic system, relegating information from his presidential administration in the last months of his term to the background. On the contrary, Biden avoids confrontation and reinforces his legitimacy as president-elect, by announcing management measures of the future government. The engagement value of the social audience on Twitter is also added, with a position of support for the winner of the elections.