This paper presents an abductive argument for realism and truthmaker realism as follows. A metaphysical theory is better if it ontologically accounts for truths better than its rivals (the Abductive Principle). Truthmaker realism gives us a better ontological account for truths than its antirealist truthmaker rivals (Abductive Step). So, truthmaker realism is better than antirealist rivals. It presents the truthmaker project as an abductive project which asks us what accounts best ontologically for our truths. Antirealisms, especially idealisms, fail against their realist rivals on various abductive criteria.

Truthmaker realism is plagued by three main objections. Presenting an abductive argument for realism does two important things. First, it dissolves the standard objections. Second, it shows how truthmaker realism is overall better motivated than antirealist, pluralist, and neutralist rivals. Simple truthmaker principles added to a plausible abductive package of principles give us a straightforward argument for realism and against antirealism or any neutralist middle ground.

Björn Heile's 3 × 10 Musical Actions for Three Socially Distanced Performers features frequent changes in musical material, playing style and instrumental combinations. Throughout a series of short sections, the performers play, sing, speak, conduct and move around, following instructions that appear on tablets. This article reflects on audiences’ experiences of the work and on musical actions more generally. We consider musical actions as short, coherent motion chunks and distinguish between several types of action that appear in the piece: gestures (communicative actions, with or without sound), reactions (where a player responds to another) and interactions (where players mutually coordinate). The musicians’ individual and collective actions create a sense of play: on the one hand, they seem free and depart from standard concert conventions; on the other hand, they seem to be following a set of rules, even if these rules are not explained to the audience. As such, we approach the piece via theories of play and relate it to earlier modernist musical games. Ultimately, 3 × 10 Musical Actions emphasises several aspects of musical actions, as social, functional, expressive, playful and embodied.

The central question guiding this research is whether municipal councils governed by mayors with party membership differ significantly in their transparency from those governed by non-partisan mayors. Although this is an exploratory study that does not seek to test hypotheses, there are ongoing lively theoretical debates about the implications stemming from the decline of traditional parties and partisanship, and the rise of independent local lists (ILLs) (as well as the rise of new challenger parties). Dealing with unbalanced panel data from 308 Portuguese municipal councils from 2013 to 2017, we use a Bayesian hierarchical model based on a Beta regression. Our findings suggest that there are no differences in local transparency levels—as measured by the Municipal Transparency Index—in municipal councils governed by mayors with party membership and those by non-partisan mayors. Given that transparency is a common concern for both party- and non-party–aligned local governments as well as voters, this preliminary analysis asks important substantive questions about the promises that many ILLs make about their ability to clean up party politics and return power to “the people.”

The figure of Anthony Comstock may seem like an odd historical relic: a repressed, puritanical, anti-sex reformer from a bygone past. And yet, because his namesake act has been revived as a potential strategy for limiting access to reproductive healthcare, Comstock is no joke. Today, some Americans see the Comstock Act, passed by Congress in 1873, as a pathway to banning abortion and other reproductive care, effectively jettisoning any need for new Supreme Court abortion rulings or congressional legislation. As scholars of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, we are uniquely situated to intervene in this dialogue and ensure that contemporary conversations are grounded in historical context. We present this forum not as an exhaustive account of the Comstock Act and its architect, but as aopportunity to highlight the context in which this law, which holds so much potential relevance for our present, was created, enacted, enforced, and challenged. We hope this forum will stimulate further scholarly and public conversations around the nation’s long history of regulating reproductive rights and how that history became entangled with other social anxieties.

On December 7, 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment on a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU from a request of the Verwaltungsgericht Wiesbaden (Administrative Court, Wiesbaden, Germany). The CJEU examined the interpretation and application of Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding automated individual decision-making, including profiling, in the context of the probability values (or scorings) that are made to evaluate and predict the future payment capacity of individuals when they request credits to financial institutions.

Existing literature on climate politics predominantly concentrates on democracies. However, there is a pressing need to examine how authoritarian regimes respond to climate change, given their growing impact on global carbon emissions and their populations’ acute climate vulnerability. Extant research often assumes that authoritarian regimes have inherent advantages in addressing climate change, leading to overly optimistic perspectives on their capabilities. This study highlights the necessity of qualifying those assumptions and evaluates the comparative advantages and disadvantages of autocracies relative to democracies throughout the policy process: policy formulation (or outputs), implementation, and outcomes. I argue that whereas climate-conscious autocracies may efficiently produce policy outputs based on scientific evidence, they often face more challenges related to information about local enforcement during implementation. This may result in greater hurdles than democracies, even with adequate state capacity and monitoring infrastructure. Furthermore, this analysis contends that a country’s developmental stage, rather than its regime type, is related more directly to the effectiveness of translating implementation efforts into tangible policy outcomes. Therefore, this article posits that the political science discourse, which often juxtaposes democracies with autocracies, should expand its scope to better understand how a country’s developmental level influences the success of its climate strategies.

Horror tropes are very popular for entertainment. From novels to films, to video games, we can't seem to get enough of vampires, witches and zombies. But these folkloric creatures were believed to be real by previous generations (and even some contemporary ones). It is worth engaging with our ancestors' history, their thought processes, their religious beliefs and general human psychology to see if this constant investment of energy that people give to malign supernatural agents can illuminate our thought processes and survival mechanisms.