Pater's (2019) target article builds a persuasive case for establishing stronger ties between theoretical linguistics and connectionism (deep learning). This commentary extends his arguments to semantics, focusing in particular on issues of learning, compositionality, and lexical meaning.

This essay provides a critical assessment of an important contribution to the debate on institutional efficiency and inefficiency in European policy–making: the thesis on the ‘joint–decision trap’. This trap was identified by Fritz W. Scharpf, first in German federalism and later in policy–making in the European Union. The essay argues that joint–decision traps may be a much more prevalent phenomenon than envisaged by Scharpf. However, the essay demonstrates that joint–decision traps are not inherent to joint–decision systems. The basic argument of the essay is that the effects of joint–decision systems on public policy is contingent upon the central government's ability to threaten intergovernmental actors with exit. If this is possible, joint–decision systems turn into an asset. This argument is made on the basis of an analysis of intergovernmental relations in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and a comparison of the Scandinavian systems with those of France and Germany.

The objective of this article is to contribute to an understanding of the evolution of a population of social economy enterprises faced with the economic crisis, namely by referring to the case of Montreal. We apply a two-step approach. For one, we use an innovative discrete-time survival model that takes spatial heterogeneity into account. In a second step, this model is used to predict the survival of different forms of the social economy, according to various proposed typologies for identifying hybrid organizational forms. It is understood that certain organizational forms (professional social economy) have fared better than others (emerging social economy). Organizations combining several sources of financing and several forms of paid or volunteer work likewise have greater chances of survival.

All coups seek to topple the political leadership, but they differ in terms of their leaders. While soldiers spearhead a majority of coups, a small number is led by civilians. And whereas high-ranking officers are the largest group among coup leaders, mid- and low-ranking soldiers account for a substantial share of putsches. Several datasets have recently offered data on the identity and political aims of coup leaders, to study the origin and outcome of different types of coups. However, these datasets have important limitations in their scope and how they address differing organizational structures of militaries across countries and time. This article therefore introduces a novel dataset on the identity of the leaders of 474 coups from 1950 to 2020 that distinguishes between coups led by civilians and military officers, as well as between coups by junior, mid-ranking, and senior officers. We discuss how the dataset complements previous data, present patterns across time and space, and show that successful and failed coups by senior, mid-ranking, and junior officers entail different prospects for post-coup democratization. The article underlines the importance for refined empirical measures and theoretical arguments in coup research.

A new phonological system is becoming conventional across a group of DeafBlind signers in the United States who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels—a practice known as ‘Protactile’. The recent conventionalization of protactile phonology is analyzed in this article. Research on emergent visual signed languages has demonstrated that conventionalization is not a single monolithic process, but a complex of principles involving patterns of distribution—discreteness, stability, and productivity of form—as form becomes linked with meaning in increasingly stable ways. Conventionalization of protactile phonology involves assigning specific grammatical roles to the four hands (and arms) of signer 1 ('conveyer') and signer 2 ('receiver') in ‘proprioceptive constructions’ (PCs)—comparable to ‘classifier constructions’ in visual signed languages. Analyzing PCs offers new insights into how the conventionalization of a phonological system can play out in the tactile modality.

The entire West German federal executive elite, politicians and top level bureaucrats, who held office between 1949 and 1984, is analyzed with respect to social background, professional training and career patterns. The time dimension is dealt with in a dual way by distinguishing legislative periods and political generations. The composition of the elite, it is argued, is the product of the kind of supply offered by a specific generation and the demands generated during political periods. It is demonstrated that the important government changes of 1969 and 1982 accelerated or retarded developments inherent in the recruitment basis. The time series reveal, apart from short-term oscillations, some long-term changes. While politicians tend to be more from the middle class, working class background among civil servants has slightly increased. Furthermore, among bureaucrats the monopoly of jurists is waning and uninterrupted civil service careers are being replaced by unorthodox careers. Politicians, on the other hand, have increasingly studied law and have acquired administration experience. Taken together with a considerable recruitment from civil service families, it might be justified to conclude that the state affinity of the German political executive is mediated to some extend through bureaucratic culture.

In ‘Tone: Is it different?’ (Hyman 2011a), I suggested that ‘tone is like segmental phonology in every way—only more so’, emphasizing that there are some things that only tone can do. In this presidential address my focus extends beyond phonology, specifically addressing what tone tells us about the integration (vs. compartmentalization) of grammar. I discuss some rather striking examples that demonstrate problems for the strict separation of phonology, morphology, and syntax, each time posing the question, ‘What else is like this outside of tone?’. A particularly interesting property that is strictly limited to tone is what I term syntagmatic relativity. I suggest that the uniqueness of tonal phenomena is due to the versatility of pitch, which can be manipulated with a wide range of linguistic functions. Given this versatility, I end by considering the question, ‘Why isn't tone universal?’.

This article attempts to examine the supposed causal connection between capitalism and democracy as assumed by Schumpeter, among others. An intellectual link might be traceable to the Utilitarians; but no causal connection between corporate capitalism and democracy emerges. In general they are separate concepts. Any indirect association arises from their ‘liberal’ roots.

Women's philanthropy has deep roots in India. A historical survey shows that despite their generally low socio-economic status, Indian women made significant contributions to social progress even while outside the formal power and profit structure. This article also analyses the role of religion, custom, caste and class, political and social movements, and the legal and political structure in motivating and facilitating as well as in restraining women's philanthropy. It is lack of economic independence and an enabling socio-legal structure that has inhibited social entrepreneurship among women, while sociopolitical movements have encouraged it.

Applying the concepts of organizational field, capital, and habitus by Pierre Bourdieu, this study critically examines the (re)configuring of relations between grassroots and mainstream organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined refugee-led organizations (RLOs), via fieldwork and interviews, in one US city from the summer of 2020 during the peak of the pandemic through 2022. We argue for conceptualizing the pandemic as an “external shock” that allowed the (re)valuing of forms of capital and means for disrupting the stability and durability—habitus—of the power-laden organizational field. In a post-pandemic new normal, however, positioning within their organizational field remains a contested, ongoing struggle for grassroots organizations.

It is commonly believed that individuals would donate more to charity if they were assured that the funds would not be “wasted.” This is a common answer to survey type investigations into charitable giving. In this paper we adopt a law and finance approach to investigate the validity of this contention in the Australian context. We develop an Accountability Rights variable and relate that variable to charitable donations. The relationship between the two is statistically weak and not robust.

The article criticizes stratification measures of social class and class voting, demonstrating that they may produce biased images of the relationship between social class and party choice. Firstly, it is argued that the conventional ‘Alford index of class voting’ is typically not comparable, neither over time nor across countries. Applying a materialist concept of social class, the author then concludes that class voting in Denmark has in fact increased, although Denmark is generally listed as the ‘prototypical’ evidence of the opposite. This difference in perception is due to significant changes in class behaviour which are concealed by stratification measures of social class.

The theory of the Silent Revolution relates value change to the process of population replacement. Materialist and post-materialist values are seen as reflections of the conditions that prevailed during one's pre-adult years. This assumption is tested here by analysing a Dutch panel, questioned in 1974 and in 1970. The change actually found at the individual level is not in line with the predictions of the theory and leads to a dilemma. The first option implies a rejection of the socialization hypothesis - one of the cornerstones of the theory. The second option places considerable doubts on the reliability of the instrument. Moreover, the validity of the instrument seems to be questionable too. The remarkably similar marginal distribution of the materialist and post-materialist value types in both years, accompanied by massive shifts between the types, points into the direction of political attitudes and non-attitudes instead of basic orientations or basic outlooks.

In this article, we present a new dataset containing political science publications on Norwegian, European and international levels by authors affiliated with Norwegian institutions. 564 articles from 1999 to 2014 are coded according to a variety of variables. Using this dataset, we explore questions regarding who publishes and what is published in Norwegian political science. We confirm suspicions that publications in international journals often contain quantitative methods, while publications in national journals use qualitative methods; that it is predominately professors who publish in high ranking international journals and that women are still strongly underrepresented in publications on all levels, despite rise in tenured female academic staff in Norway. However, we see a trend of more mixed-sex research teams on the international level, which can be explained by two interconnected hypotheses: (I) publication on the international level is more prestigious, and will often require collaboration between several researches; (II) there has been a rise in female PhDs while professors are still mostly male. By contrasting findings from Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, we also present the status of Norwegian political science in an international context. We encourage researchers to investigate further the evolution of Norwegian political science using these data.

Can deliberative mini‐publics contribute to deepening the democratic dimensions of electoral democracies? The question is framed in this article using a problem‐based approach to democratic theory–to count as democratic, political systems must accomplish three basic functions related to inclusion, communication and deliberation, and decision making. This approach is elaborated with an analysis of a real‐world case: a deliberative mini‐public with a citizens’ assembly design, focused on urban planning convened in Vancouver, Canada. This example was chosen because the context was one in which the city's legacy institutions of representative democracy had significant democratic deficits in all three areas, and the mini‐public was a direct response to these deficits. It was found that Vancouver's deliberative mini‐public helped policy makers, activists and affected residents move a stalemated planning process forward, and did do so in ways that improved the democratic performance of the political system. Depending on when and how they are sequenced into democratic processes, deliberative mini‐publics can supplement existing legacy institutions and practices to deepen their democratic performance.

The literature increasingly disaggregates political systems for examining the differences in international policies and domestic decision-making according to diverse regime typologies. The following research adds to this literature by studying the impact of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) on the likelihood of ratifying international environmental agreements in different types of autocratic regimes. Building on a theory that focuses on the provision of environmental public goods, the author distinguishes between single-party regimes, military juntas, monarchies, and personalist dictatorships. The core argument claims that the provision of public goods varies among those regime typologies, ultimately leading to the expectation that the lobbying efforts of ENGOs should be most weakly pronounced in those autocracies that are likely to provide more environmental public goods anyway, i.e., single-party regimes. The empirical analysis using data on the ratification of international environmental agreements and autocratic regime types between 1973 and 2006 supports the theory.