This paper presents a logic programming-based framework for policy-aware autonomous agents that can reason about potential penalties for noncompliance and act accordingly. While prior work has primarily focused on ensuring compliance, our approach considers scenarios where deviating from policies may be necessary to achieve high-stakes goals. Additionally, modeling noncompliant behavior can assist policymakers by simulating realistic human decision-making. Our framework extends Gelfond and Lobo’s Authorization and Obligation Policy Language ($\mathscr{AOPL}$) to incorporate penalties and integrates Answer Set Programming (ASP) for reasoning. Compared to previous approaches, our method ensures well-formed policies, accounts for policy priorities, and enhances explainability by explicitly identifying rule violations and their consequences. Building on the work of Harders and Inclezan, we introduce penalty-based reasoning to distinguish between noncompliant plans, prioritizing those with minimal repercussions. To support this, we develop an automated translation from the extended $\mathscr{AOPL}$ into ASP and refine ASP-based planning algorithms to account for incurred penalties. Experiments in two domains demonstrate that our framework generates higher-quality plans that avoid harmful actions while, in some cases, also improving computational efficiency. These findings underscore its potential for enhancing autonomous decision-making and informing policy refinement.

We consider the countably many families $\mathcal {L}_d$, $d\in \mathbb {N}_{\geq 2}$, of K3 surfaces admitting an elliptic fibration with positive Mordell–Weil rank. We prove that the elliptic fibrations on the very general member of these families have the potential Mordell–Weil rank jump property for $d\neq 2,3$ and moreover the Mordell–Weil rank jump property for $d\equiv 3\ \mod 4$, $d\neq 3$. We provide explicit examples and discuss some extensions to subfamilies. The result is based on the geometric interaction between the (potential) Mordell–Weil rank jump property and the presence of special multisections of the fibration.

What can policy makers do in day-to-day decision making to strengthen citizens' belief that the political system is legitimate? Much literature has highlighted that the realization of citizens' personal preferences in policy making is an important driver of legitimacy beliefs. We argue that citizens, in addition, also care about whether a policy represents the preferences of the majority of citizens, even if their personal preference diverges from the majority's. Using the case of the European Union (EU) as a system that has recurringly experienced crises of public legitimacy, we conduct a vignette survey experiment in which respondents assess the legitimacy of fictitious EU decisions that vary in how they were taken and whose preferences they represent. Results from original surveys conducted in the five largest EU countries show that the congruence of EU decisions not only with personal opinion but also with different forms of majority opinion significantly strengthens legitimacy beliefs. We also show that the most likely mechanism behind this finding is the application of a ‘consensus heuristic’, by which respondents use majority opinion as a cue to identify legitimate decisions. In contrast, procedural features such as the consultation of interest groups or the inclusiveness of decision making in the institutions have little effect on legitimacy beliefs. These findings suggest that policy makers can address legitimacy deficits by strengthening majority representation, which will have both egotropic and sociotropic effects.

Voting and coalitions in the Council of Ministers in the enlarged European Union are analysed for the period during which the EU had 25 Member States, based on Council's roll call records. In terms of frequency of voting in the Council, the new EU Member States did not differ from their older counterparts in any significant way. However, enlargement has had an impact on the Council interaction. A spatial roll call model shows that the Council's political space is comprised of two main dimensions. The first reflects the north‐south cleavage found in the Council even before the 2004 enlargement, while the second is related to enlargement and indicates a cleavage between the new and old Member States. Thus in the enlarged Union, the north‐south dimension is replaced by a north‐south‐east pattern.

With the expiry of the term of office of Ugo Mifsud Bonnici as President of the Republic, the House of Representatives elected by simple majority the Cabinet’s nominee, Guido Demarco. The Government had originally invited the Opposition to agree on the retention of the incumbent, while the Opposition put forward its own candidate. Whereas it is normal for the President to be the Government’s nominee, the political climate was never less suggestive of bi-party consensus, on this as on most other matters.

Do border closures affect political attitudes? While a large body of research has discussed the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on nationalism and outgroup hostility, much less is known about how one of the main policy responses to stop the virus, closing the national borders, has impacted political attitudes. We argue that the sudden and unprecedented closures of national borders in the COVID‐19 crisis decreased EU support and increased hostility towards immigrants. These closures signalled that people from across the border are a threat to public health and showed little trust in European governance. We have collected fine‐grained regional data on COVID‐19‐related border closures in Germany that we matched with survey data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel. We rely on a difference‐in‐differences design to estimate the causal effect of closed borders on European identity and outgroup hostility. While we find that border closures decrease EU support and increase hostility towards immigrants, these effects fade away relatively quickly. Hence, our study suggests that border closures have only limited impact on political attitudes. Our findings have important implications for the growing literature on border politics in the EU and elsewhere.

The Great Recession that started in 2007/2008 has been the worst economic downturn since the crisis of the 1930s in Europe. It led to a major sovereign debt crisis, which is arguably the biggest challenge for the European Union (EU) and its common currency. Not since the 1950s have advanced democracies experienced such a dramatic external imposition of austerity and structural reform policies through inter‐ or supranational organisations such as the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or as implicitly requested by international financial markets. Did this massive interference with the room for maneuver of parliaments and governments in many countries erode support for national democracy in the crisis since 2007? Did citizens realise that their national democratic institutions were no longer able to effectively decide on major economic and social policies, on economic and welfare state institutions? And did they react by concluding that this constrained democracy no longer merited further support? These are the questions guiding this article, which compares 26 EU countries in 2007–2011 and re‐analyses 78 national surveys. Aggregate data from these surveys is analysed in a time‐series cross‐section design to examine changes in democratic support at the country level. The hypotheses also are tested at the individual level by estimating a series of cross‐classified multilevel logistic regression models. Support for national democracy – operationalised as satisfaction with the way democracy works and as trust in parliament – declined dramatically during the crisis. This was caused both by international organisations and markets interfering with national democratic procedures and by the deteriorating situation of the national economy as perceived by individual citizens.

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts.

This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is concluded that the two perform well in terms of convergent validity. The differences between large and small democracies are examined, as well as old and new democracies, and it is found that levels of party membership are related to both the size and age of the democratic polity in question. Finally, the implications of the patterns observed in the membership data are discussed, and it is suggested that membership has now reached such a low ebb that it may no longer constitute a relevant indicator of party organisational capacity.

The 1999 parliamentary election campaign never reached the same intensity as the 1995 campaign. In part, this was a result of the cabinet’s composition. Paavo Lipponen’s five party cabinet had governed the country since the 1995 election, leaving the Centre Party as the only major party in opposition. The government is called the Rainbow coalition as it covers many different political colours ranging from the former Communists (Left-Wing Alliance) on the left to the conservative National Coalition on the right. This unique form of consensus left little room for active opposition politics. The Centre Party had profiled an opposition policy during these four years that was critical of centralisation at the national and European level. After the deep recession in the early 1990s, the Finnish economy had rapidly recovered in the southern urban centres, leaving the rural regions in the east and north in stagnation. Therefore when the party leaders from the three biggest parties, the Social Democrats, the Centre Party, and the National Coalition, announced that they would be nominated in the constituency of Helsinki, it was speculated that this would open a political battle.

The government, in power for three years, faced a difficult year because it became more and more difficult to implement the reforms announced in 1997. Some of them (equality between men and women in the political as well as in the economic domain; laws to give juridical status to unmarried or homosexual couples (the Civil Pact of solidarity – PACS ); reduction of the work week from 39 to 35 hours with the same weekly pay) have been implemented in 1997–1999 with success and with the support of the citizenry. As far as the economic environment was concerned, the decrease in unemployment rates could appear as a consequence of world-wide economic growth, but the government might also be credited for having backed the trend with specific laws passed in order to offer jobs to the youngest unemployed and to help middle-sized and small enterprises to develop their activities and to offer jobs (see the 1999 Data Yearbook). However, Jospin’s hopes to change and to modernise French society and political life appeared to have been thwarted in other domains due to either the strong opposition of the right wing camp or to blockages coming its own ranks.

What effect do pro‐market economic policies have on labour rights? Despite significant debate in policy and academic circles about the consequences of economic liberalisation, little is known about the labour rights effects of pro‐market policies. Extant literature has focused only on the possible outcomes of market‐liberalising policies, such as trade and investment flows, rather than directly assessing market‐friendly policies and institutions. Moreover, this line of research has found mixed results on how these outcomes influence labour conditions. To provide a comprehensive assessment of this linkage, this article combines data on five distinct policy areas associated with economic liberalisation with data on labour rights for the period 1981–2012. The results indicate that pro‐market policies – except the ones involving rule of law and secure property rights – undermine labour rights. Thus while there are some positive economic and political outcomes associated with market‐supporting policies, economic liberalisation comes at the cost of respect for labour rights.

In a rising number of countries, populist parties participate in coalition governments. While there exists a consensus that populism is incompatible with core tenets of liberal democracy on a conceptual level, we know much less about whether or not the participation of populist parties in government constitutes a threat to liberal democracy in practice. We study the impact of populist parties in coalition governments using a novel dataset of more than 2000 laws that were under review at the Austrian Constitutional Court between 1980 and 2021. We provide evidence that the court did not find laws passed by governments that included a populist party unconstitutional more often than those passed by non‐populist governments. Our findings indicate that the Austrian Freedom Party did moderate its policy while in office. The results imply that it is necessary to distinguish policy positions in party manifestos and party rhetoric from policies actually implemented by governments.

Stigmatisation has been recognised as a major factor influencing the fortunes of populist radical right (PRR) parties. While scholars have examined it by taking parties as units of analysis, this study focuses on the individual level by asking Which PRR party members are more likely to feel stigmatised? After offering a novel theoretical explanation for feelings of stigmatisation based on the personal networks in which PRR grassroots members are embedded, it then investigates stigma using an original membership survey of about 7,000 members of the Sweden Democrats (SD) and interviews with 30 of them. The survey results show that the higher the educational qualification PRR grassroots members have achieved, the more likely they will feel stigmatised. In addition, those who have never had any relatives and/or friends in the SD, and those who are employed in the public sector, are more likely to consider membership discrediting. The interview data shed light on the survey results, by illustrating how public employees and university students find it hard to be open about their membership as they are surrounded by people with left‐wing views. By contrast, having relatives and/or friends who are members of the party reduces the stigma of joining PRR parties, becoming active in them, and talking about politics in public. Along with countering some of the prevailing wisdom about stigmatisation in PRR parties, the findings contribute to our understanding of PRR grassroots membership, which has long been an overlooked topic in the literature.

The European Union relies on decentralised agencies to implement important transnational regulations, such as certifying the safety of medicines. However, the authority of these agencies does not have ‘hard’ legal status and crucially depends on disseminating ideas and information effectively: what can be termed ‘political entrepreneurship’. This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the political entrepreneurship of EU agencies by constructing a conceptual typology of entrepreneurial strategies. Drawing conceptually on transnational public administration, a new database is constructed of the ‘entrepreneurship’ of 33 EU agencies in 2014 based on their media communication activities, face‐to‐face networking in workshops and collaborations, and knowledge dissemination and ‘learning’ exercises. This is mapped against the political salience of agencies in the European Parliament and media. The mapping exercise shows four types of entrepreneurial strategies covering the population of EU agencies: technical functional, insulating, network‐seeking and politicised. The typology is validated through semi‐structured interviews in 11 EU agencies, showing the core characteristics of each type of strategy. The article concludes by arguing that this typology provides an important addition to existing categories of EU agencies based on autonomy and accountability, and advocates a future research strategy examining the interaction between agencies’ entrepreneurial strategies and the expectations and reactions of stakeholder audiences.