In environmental politics, social movements play a crucial role, promoting participatory rights and confronting injustice, inequality, and the interests of the powerful. This article examines an underexplored topic in the literature on social movements, especially in Latin America: the use of litigation to force decisionmakers to comply with participatory formats, specifically in the course of opposition

Firms should be considered as actors that potentially mediate between social movement pressures and policy outcomes. This article shows that at the mining project level, social mobilization can generate important changes in corporate practices toward nearby communities, and that these practices can undermine the cohesion of social movement coalitions advocating for regulatory intervention or reform

Electoral contests in Latin America are often characterized by attempts by political parties to sway the outcome of elections using vote buying—a practice that seems to persist during elections throughout the region. This article examines how clientelist parties’ use of vote buying is jointly shaped by two voter traits: poverty and partisanship. We hypothesize that clientelist parties pursue a mixed

Although there is a wide-ranging historiography dealing with psychoneurosis, various manifestations of psychic suffering widespread among traumatised soldiers during the Great War have received less attention. This essay, based on an analysis of soldiers' clinical files in Italian psychiatric hospitals, draws out these phenomena. The main forms assumed by this kind of trauma are three: soldiers who

Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer

The independent electronic music scene/circuit in São Paulo—techno, house, and their subgenres—migrated from clubs to street parties or locations in central areas of the city in the 2010s. This sce...

A social and historical reconstruction based on music observes the contemporary arrangement of Brazilian rap, its role in current social movements, and how its productions inform social and politic...

This essay aims to analyse the presence of neofascist organisations and far-right terrorism in Italy in the early 1970s from a new perspective. Firstly, it will focus on the activities to combat the subversive structures of the ‘black galaxy’ carried out by regional institutions through the creation of special ‘regional commissions of inquiry on the problems of neofascism’. Between 1974 and 1975, these

In what ways do amicus curiae or friend of the court briefs shape the decisions of constitutional courts outside of the United States? Using a unique data set of more than nine hundred briefs from ...

This article examines Polish underground publications (samizdat) interpreting Ukraine’s role in the Polish–Soviet war of 1920. The research analyzes a large number of underground journals, newspape...

The aim of this article is to analyse the archival collection of the memoirs of officers of the Polish security forces (Security Office and Citizens’ Militia) on their service in the Warsaw voivode...

The aim of this article is to study the translation of Polish literature into Slovene to shed light on Polish literary (and cultural) diplomacy in Slovenia. Being acquainted with the culture of ano...

The article uses archival sources to critique the currently dominant etymological approach to the history of the word ’ndrangheta as used to refer to the Calabrian mafia. Scholars such as Paolo Martino and John Trumper have latched onto the word's ancient Greek origins to argue that the mafia organisation that we today call ’Ndrangheta has origins dating back many centuries. Moreover, according to

Abstract The relationship between Chaim Weizmann and Ze’ev Jabotinsky is discussed widely. But research concerning the relationship between Jabotinsky’s successors, especially during Weizmann’s tenure as president of Israel, is scarce. Weizmann’s relationship with the Revisionists and the Herut Movement’s tension throughout the early days of Israel State is a fascinating topic. On the one hand, a superpatriotic

Abstract This article uses the story of the Albayrak Tea Company and its founder Mustafa Nezih Albayrak as a prism to examine the formation of a class of Muslim merchants in early Republican Turkey. Mustafa Nezih Bey, an Ottoman bureaucrat who ventured into business in the late 1910s, became one of the most prominent tea merchants in the early Republic, paving the way for its mass consumption. Looking

‘Soprattutto un attore di quella drammatica fase della vita italiana è stato tuttavia privilegiato in modo schiacciante come oggetto di studio: il “soggetto terrorista”, ovvero i terroristi e le organizzazioni terroristiche.’ (‘One kind of actor in that dramatic period of Italian life has been privileged above all others, in an overwhelming way by researchers and others: the terrorists themselves and

Abstract This article focuses on a controversial document that has not yet been studied in depth. It is a petition sent by an Alawi separatist leader from Latakia (Syria) to the newly elected French prime minister in 1936. Its aim was to persuade the French that their decision to grant Syria independence and to incorporate the Alawi district to Syria would be a mistake that could endanger the safety

The use of veto points to block policy change has received significant attention in Latin America, but the different institutional venues have not been analyzed in a unified framework. Uruguay is exceptional in that political actors use both referendums and judicial review as effective ways to oppose public policies. While the activation of direct democracy mechanisms in Uruguay has been widely studied

In contemporary Latin America, deep-seated social discontent with political elites and institutions has been, paradoxically, the counterpart of democratic stability and resilience. This paradox suggests that scholarly assessments of democracy are, at least partially, at odds with citizens’ own views of democracy. This article thus develops a framework to describe citizens’ everyday experience with

Published in Middle Eastern Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Abstract The Bible’s central position in the Zionist movement is well-known. Most previous studies on this topic have focused on Israeli society following the establishment of the State of Israel. By contrast, this article focuses on the role of the Hebrew Bible in Jewish nationalism and early Zionist thought from the 1880s to 1948. This article examines the connection between Zionism and the Bible

Abstract This article analyzes the re-making of the political geography of the Ottoman eastern provinces between 1895–1899, after the Memorandum of Great Powers in 1895, by examining the relationship between internal colonialization and security policies. This study reconsiders the interplay between European colonial techniques and Ottoman internal colonialism by discussing techniques of administration

Using court records of legal disputes over transfers of land, this article explores the way transfers of landed property have impacted social relationships and the governance of land rights in Ghana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As urbanization, commercial agriculture, and natural resource extraction pushed up the value of land, disputes over land ownership have multiplied. In

Abstract Monopolies constituted one of the main institutions to control the economy from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. Over time, monopolies’ roles changed from revenue sources for the sultans’ treasuries to assigning foreign debts to debtors, creating a Muslim-Turkish bourgeoisie, structuring property relations by commercializing the economy and finally generating revenues for modernization

Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress,

This article addresses the candidate selection process for realistic list positions with regard to multiple-office holding and personal characteristics in flexible-list proportional representation ...

Deputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting

In response to debates around land grabbing, the international community has increasingly developed and promoted global governance norms and guidelines for more responsible land investments. This concern on the part of the international community has particularly taken hold in Sierra Leone—in a post-war context, in which international donor agencies are already steering much of the country’s politics

Abstract Most of the first Jewish rural settlements established in Ottoman Palestine in the late nineteenth century have something in common that has not yet been systematically analyzed. This common factor is their physical location: on low or high ground. Most of the first Jewish settlements were established in plains and valleys for several reasons, while Arab rural settlements were located in the

Legislative allies are widely recognized as key to social movement success, but the emergence of their alliance with activists remains understudied. This article proposes a strategic approach to this phenomenon based on the cases of the environmental, labor, and LGBT+ movements in Chile and their allied legislators. According to this approach, an alliance emerges due to two necessary conditions. Movement

In Mexico City, son jarocho is a traditional music and dance form widely associated with nonviolent political activism. During the massive protests in response to the abduction of 43 students in 20...

Abstract The Ottoman Empire until the eve of the First World War gave the impression of an agrarian society with modest manufacturing activities, mainly based on craft-based production. A major difficulty was to supply food for the army for a long time in total war conditions. This was an important indicator for the new leaders of Ottoman bureaucracy to develop a nationalist economic view. With an

ABSTRACT Does social media exposure contribute to progressive or polarized views among youth? With a large and young population online, Kazakhstan offers a polarized authoritarian context in which to study the effects of social media. We use a mixed-method approach that contrasts wider statistical trends from an online survey and experiment with Kazakhstani youth aged 18–30 (N = 1027) and empirical

ABSTRACT This article examines the roots of freedom of expression and opinion, of the right to a fair trial, and of the freedom to enjoy cultural rights in Kazakh nomadic customary traditions that underlie and give meaning to human rights discourse in contemporary Kazakh society. Based on oral traditions and the perception of fairness of the nomadic Kazakhs, this rich heritage created resilient instruments

The ever-changing, always porous Mexican-U.S. border region has long been the site of intense and productive cultural and political exchange of every kind, particularly with respect to music. Today...

Abstract This article discusses the life, career, and associations of Süreyya Ağaoğlu, Turkey’s first female lawyer, in the years leading up to Turkey’s watershed 1950 election, in order to understand Turkey’s liberal opposition. Considering her writings and experiences reveals not only the contested nature of liberalism in this period but also ways in which postwar liberalism was intertwined with

Latin American countries experienced a significant reduction in income inequality at the turn of the twenty-first century. From the early 2000s to around 2012, the average Gini coefficient fell from 0.51 to 0.47. The period of falling inequality coincided with leftist presidential candidates achieving electoral victories across the region: by 2009, 11 of the 17 countries had a leftist president—the

Published in Middle Eastern Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 1, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 1, 2023)

Abstract Two features are attributed to modern state censuses: measurement and classification. Yet the real contribution of the modern census is tabulation, one of the most important and yet ignored part of statistics. The literature on censuses ignores tabulation, probably because it is not possible to separate it from statistics. Tabulation is not just a geometrical drawing, rather a tool for ordering

Abstract The Gaza Strip is a territory of 365 square kilometres located in the southern coastal plain of Palestine. Distinguished by a long, narrow spatial form and named after its main metropolis, the city of Gaza, it forms a political entity whose formal status has not been determined since its formation in the 1948 War. The aim of this article is to explore the circumstances in which the Gaza Strip

An analysis of news items on human trafficking in Mexico published in digital newspaper portals and electronic versions of newspapers with national circulation concludes that the issue is of little...

Examination of the experience of a group of Chilean exiles participating in El Sueño Existe, a contemporary Welsh festival inspired by the work of the Chilean artist Víctor Jara, suggests that by a...

Abstract This article aims to analyze the ambiguous diplomatic approach of Czechoslovakia towards the trial with Adolf Eichmann launched in Jerusalem in April 1961. Even though Eichmann was internationally seen as one of the unquestionable Holocaust perpetrators, the approach of Czechoslovak diplomacy towards his trial was not as supportive and cooperative as would normally be expected from a country

Are Latin American presidents at greater risk for removal in remittance-dependent countries? Departing from the debate about whether remittances produce democratic or autocratic outcomes, this article asks whether remittances contribute to presidential removals, which are an important characteristic of Latin American democracies since the Third Wave. It uses questions about supporting a military coup

Abstract This article introduces two Jewish accounts on the 1948 turmoil in Sanaa/Yemen to a non-Hebrew reading audience. Following the problematisation of both accounts – one by Salim Mansura (1916–2007), the other by Mordechai al-Zahiri (later Yitshari, 1930–) – as a historical source, it gives a chronological overview of the events they describe, and partly witnessed themselves. It covers their

Published in Middle Eastern Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Because conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) can address the deep roots of violence, many scholars and policymakers have assumed them to be an effective and innocuous tool to take on the issue. I argue that while CCTs may have positive economic effects, they can also trigger social discord, criminal predation, and political conflict and, in doing so, increase violence. To test this claim, I take

ABSTRACT In this article we will consider the language policy the Soviet authorities directed toward the Bukharan Jews in Uzbekistan. These reforms were carried out in several stages. Initially, traditional Hebrew education was banned in favour of the Judeo-Tajik language. Then, in the late 1930s, it was the turn of the ban in favour of the Russian, Tajik and Uzbek languages. At the same time, the

ABSTRACT The persistent accusations about the Internet’s role in spreading pro-gay attitudes, the prevalence of media censorship across Central Asia and activists’ frequent use of the Internet all raise important questions about online influence on public opinion regarding non-heterosexual people in Central Asia. So far, there is little research on the question of what impact the popularization of

For the first time, Mexico has a presidential administration that defines itself as “post-neoliberal,” but, although the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the most powerful the young Mex...

Abstract Hamas invests vast resources in propaganda for a number of diverse audiences, harnessing the communications channels it operates on different media platforms. Over the course of the many years of the Israel-Hamas confrontation, the organization has waged psychological warfare and an ongoing propaganda war against Israeli society, seeking to influence Israelis’ perceptions and feelings. However

This article describes the process of legal contention between civil society, political parties, and state institutions for the baldíos lands in the Colombian Altillanura region in the last two decades, a region considered the country’s “last agricultural frontier.” The article focuses on the dual and sometimes contradictory roles of the state institutions, both as facilitators of baldíos grabbing

Land reforms are an important mechanism for addressing inequalities in society. While addressing South Africa’s racialised land inequalities remains crucial, new forms of class inequality are produced through land reform, with the well-off becoming predominant as beneficiaries. This article focuses on elite capture in land redistribution and analyses land-reform outcomes in South Africa’s state land

A status quo has been structured in Mexico that prioritizes the commercial value of water over its socio-environmental value. Sonora is a typical case of the transfer of a common good to the privat...

ABSTRACT President Trump and Prime Minister Modi often invoked their two nation’s claims as “oldest and largest” democracies to trumpet the naturalness of the US-India alliance. Shared democratic values was the glue that supposedly bound the two countries together. This contribution argues that the cynical and opportunistic invocation of democratic values by both governments damaged the cause of democracy

ABSTRACT While India and the United States’ relations on the strategic and political fronts improved during 2017–2020, trade relations between the two countries noticeably worsened. Ever since their relations began to improve in the 1990s, deep divisions have existed between the two on trade issues such as market access in goods and services, intellectual property rights, and industrial policy. Given

Abstract Since the start of multilateral climate negotiations, India and the US have been on opposite sides of the aisle on the issue of responsibility for climate action. Following years of intense scrutiny, India found points of convergence with the US and worked closely with the Obama administration to help secure a global deal at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The Trump era, however, marked

ABSTRACT Out of more than thirty strategic partnerships signed by India, its ties with the US and Russia are crucial for achieving economic and strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific and the Eurasian region respectively. There was a growing convergence on bilateral, regional, and global issues with the US during Trump years, but there was divergence between the two countries on Russia. While Washington