The decision-making role of collegial bodies in politics, business, and civic associations is widely noted. However, extant work is fragmented by discipline and organizational type. In this study, we set forth a unified research agenda. We begin by defining the subject as a body that (a) is small, (b) meets regularly over an extended period, and (c) is tasked with a nontrivial governance role. Next, we offer a preliminary canvass of collegial bodies across the world and through history. We argue that most enduring organizations in the modern era, regardless of their location, size, function, or sector, delegate important decision-making tasks to collegial bodies. Then, we tackle the problem of explanation. We propose a functionalist account in which collegial bodies provide an optimal choice in settings where decision-making tasks are especially complex. We then discuss the special role of collegial bodies in complex decision-making settings such as those associated with governance. After providing methodological guidance for how the subject might be studied, we conclude with reflections on the relevance of collegial bodies to democratic theory.

China has increasingly integrated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) into its global development strategies. Chinese NGOs’ project location choices have far-reaching implications not only for the effectiveness and sustainability of service delivery and resource allocation but also for the broader dynamics of international development and diplomacy. However, existing studies on location choices have focused on Western NGOs, with limited attention to how NGOs from authoritarian states like China, characterized by heightened governmental influence and constrained NGO autonomy, choose locations for international development projects. This paper represents the first attempt to empirically investigate the underlying factors and mechanisms. Based on a unique panel dataset, we show that NGOs tend to align their project locations with government initiatives, placing more projects in countries with more Chinese government-financed aid and development projects and a greater cross-country political affinity stemming from shared socialist legacies. In addition, such government-guided NGO alignment has temporal dynamics, with the effects of government projects on NGO initiatives peaking within the initial five years and diminishing thereafter. These findings provide insights into shifting development paradigms, the evolving role of civil society in international relations, how authoritarian regimes leverage NGOs to advance their foreign policy objectives, and the long-term implications for civic infrastructure development worldwide.

For the past 13 years, Egypt has been ruled by the personalist-cum-military dictatorship of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. In 2013, El-Sisi seized power after overthrowing the first freely elected civilian president in Egypt’s history, Mohamed Morsi, and has since undertaken a sweeping reconfiguration of Egypt’s political economy. He narrowed the ruling coalition to privilege military, intelligence, and police officers while demoting and surveilling civilian state elites such as judges and parliamentarians. The praetorian ruling clique is kept intact by unbroken streams of foreign financing. Recipient of an annual $1.3 billion of military aid from the United States since 1979, the military is now also the beneficiary of some of the largest arms transfers in its history; Egypt was the world’s eighth-largest arms importer between 2020 and 2024. Another income stream is the military’s extensive enterprises in the civilian economy; they pay no taxes, control public land, and enjoy the free labor of conscripts. Intelligence agencies own media companies that produce agitprop valorizing El-Sisi as a handsome visionary, as satirized in the thriller Eagles of the Republic (dir. Tarik Saleh) that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025.

Has international human rights law become a tool reserved for the global elite? While some argue that human rights frameworks empower advocacy groups to pressure governments, others claim these institutions are accessible only to well-funded, transnational nongovernmental organizations and risk depoliticizing activists’ demands. Based on a study of the blacklisted workers’ movement in the United Kingdom, this study shows a new way in which human rights laws and institutions can catalyze social movements. Recognizing the limitations of human rights, activists take an instrumental approach that creates a duality in their movement. On-stage before public audiences, they leverage human rights to amplify grievances and push for reform. However, off-stage, human rights norms do not shape their ideological commitments or solidarity, which remain rooted in class-based identities. These findings demonstrate how human rights law can spur grassroots mobilization while decoupling the material and cultural drivers of social movements.

In response to growing policy challenges, such as postconflict transitions and climate change, exceeding the scope of existing institutions, governments often enact extraordinary reforms—that is, nonincremental institutional innovations regulating state action through fast-tracking procedures, expanded mandates, and normative recalibration in previously unregulated domains. How do governments resolve policy conflicts when extraordinary reform collides with entrenched rules and interests embedded in previous institutional frameworks? We develop a theory of discretionary implementation, showing how governments use layering and conversion to diminish extraordinary reform. We examine Colombia’s ethnic land restitution program (2012–18), which clashed with extractivism, by employing process tracing of novel datasets on administrative cases and judicial rulings, and 14 in-depth interviews. We find that the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos delayed case processing via layering and restricted judicial discretion through conversion, effectively undermining restitution. Our findings extend theories of institutional change by revealing how governments mediate, and sometimes undermine, extraordinary reforms.

Elected governments across the globe increasingly limit fundamental rights, arguably to manage societal divisions or counter serious harms, such as extremism and political violence. Yet which speech restrictions and group bans qualify as illiberal restrictions adopted by intrusive states, and which constitute safeguards in liberal societies endangered by extremism, remain open questions. This uncertainty hinders normative and empirical assessments of whether the changes in democratic legal architectures that we have observed in the United States, Europe, and Latin America signal democratic erosion or resilience. Integrating research from comparative politics, political theory, and law, we distinguish between a defensive and an illiberal logic of rights restructuring and, relatedly, propose conceptual tools to specify whether actual legal provisions limiting rights meet or violate liberal democratic minimum standards. To examine theoretically expected trends in rights restructuring, we employ these tools to analyze changes in the regulation of association, assembly, and expression in 12 European countries over a 23-year period. Worryingly, provisions falling outside the boundaries of self-defense—indicating an illiberal logic of rights restructuring—have grown. This substantiates concerns about democratic erosion, reinforced by a growing number of elected governments pushing, if not overstepping, legal limits to implement their political agendas.