This article examines trolling in international diplomacy. It explores a developing trend in diplomatic communications: encounters which have historically been characterised by formality and politeness have increasingly been used by political leaders to troll their targets. While the second Trump administration embodies this ‘trolling turn’ in diplomacy, it extends beyond MAGA. Many leaders, particularly authoritarians and those with authoritarian tendencies, employ trolling within their communications strategies. Despite growing commentary on this phenomenon, its strategic logic remains underexplored in international relations scholarship.

This article outlines a new theoretical framework explaining the strategic logic of trolling in international diplomacy and details a research agenda to investigate it further. The framework argues that there are five functions of diplomatic trolling: coercion, agenda setting, identification, delegitimisation and (dis)ordering. Using examples from across the world, it highlights that trolling – characterised by aggression, humour, and deception – enables leaders to pursue maximalist objectives while avoiding political costs by denying the seriousness of their comments when challenged. It is an especially attractive strategy for actors who wish to disrupt the existing international order. However, it is a strategy laden with risk. By illuminating diplomatic trolling’s strategic logic, this article enhances understanding of a pressing issue in contemporary statecraft.

While much has been written about urban-educated women’s veiling in recent decades, the proliferation of veiling, or wearing a burqa, among ordinary rural women has received little attention. This paper is an attempt at such an inquiry in the context of Bangladesh. It juxtaposes historical, literary, and theological resources with recently collected ethnographic and interview data to show how the landscape of veiling has radically transformed in rural Bangladesh and suggests that ordinary rural women’s veiling cannot be interpreted as either their choice or an imposition on them. It illustrates how women choose to don a veil in compliance with the community’s expectations while simultaneously resisting its prescription of putting on a specific pattern of burqa. In other words, the paper shows how veiling has become a site for women’s complex negotiations with community norms, liberal women’s rights discourse, and legal regimes. This negotiation process, it argues, constructs women as distinct subjects who are neither liberal nor Islamic but are constantly in the process of self-constitution.

Within the Australian Federation to what extent is the Commonwealth Parliament prevented from ‘conscripting’ or ‘commandeering’ State officers for its own purposes? Drawing on the history of commandeering both in the United States and in Australia, this article explores the constraints on the formulation of any Australian-based doctrine in light of recent High Court jurisprudence. This article argues that while the practical scope of any Australian-derived doctrine has been curtailed by the High Court, there is a role for it to play as a ‘per se’ breach of the Melbourne Corporation principle. But to have that effect, its ambit must be confined to situations where there is (i) an administrative duty imposed on (ii) a state statutory office holder or statutory body, where (iii) this has not been acquiesced to by the relevant state legislature or contemplated by the Constitution.

For each closed subtorus T of $(\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})^n$, let D(T) denote the (infimal) $L^\infty$-distance from T to the point $(1/2,\ldots, 1/2)$. The nth Lonely Runner spectrum $\mathcal{S}(n)$ is defined to be the set of all values achieved by D(T) as T ranges over the 1-dimensional subtori of $(\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z})^n$ that are not contained in the coordinate hyperplanes. The Lonely Runner Conjecture predicts that $\mathcal{S}(n) \subseteq [0,1/2-1/(n+1)]$. Rather than attack this conjecture directly, we study the qualitative structure of the sets $\mathcal{S}(n)$ via their accumulation points. This project brings into the picture the analogues of $\mathcal{S}(n)$ where 1-dimensional subtori are replaced by k-dimensional subtori or k-dimensional subgroups.

Green transition policies set long-term targets to reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants, posing a threat to workers in polluting occupations and communities reliant on them. Can far-right parties attract voters who anticipate losing from the green transition? We explore this in Germany, which has ambitious green policies and a large workforce in polluting occupations. The far-right AfD started campaigning as the only party opposing green transition policies in 2016. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show AfD support increased more in counties with larger shares of employment in polluting occupations once the AfD adopted an anti-green platform in 2016. A panel survey demonstrates that individuals in these occupations also shifted toward the AfD. Probing mechanisms, we find that far-right support may stem from shifting perceptions of social stigma and lower status. Our results highlight the need for a new research agenda on backlash against the normative dimension of the green transition.

Social relationships provide opportunities to exchange and obtain health advice. Not only close confidants may be perceived as sources of health advice, but also acquaintances met in places outside a closed circle of family and friends, e.g., in voluntary organizations. This study is the first to analyze the structure of complete health advice networks in three voluntary organizations and compare them with more commonly studied close relationships. To this end, we collected data on multiple networks and health outcomes among 143 middle-aged and older adults (mean age = 53.9 years) in three carnival clubs in Germany. Our analyses demonstrate that perceived health advice and close relationships overlap only by 34%. Moreover, recent advances in exponential random graph models (ERGMs) allow us to illustrate that the network structure of perceived health advice differs starkly from that of close relationships. For instance, we found that advice networks exhibited lower transitivity and greater segregation by gender and age in comparison to networks of close relationships. We also found that actors with poor physical health perceive less individuals as health advisors than those with good physical health. Our findings suggest that community settings, such as voluntary associations, provide a unique platform for exchanging health advice and information among both close and distant network members.

The state’s role in the perpetration or tolerance of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is not inevitable, even in conflicts where the state may lack the capacity to prevent such violence or protect populations effectively. Prevention and protection by state institutions, including the military, requires reform that addresses not only CRSV behaviour and crimes but also gendered norms that condone this violence in existing legal and social frameworks of state institutions. This paper examines the development of the Joint Communiqués (JCs) as a rare example of an international-led security sector reform initiative between the UN and signatory states to implement reforms and practices to prevent CRSV. We examine the JCs signed to date with states that have militaries that have committed CRSV crimes. Our study of the JCs provides an opportunity to explore how reform to state-level institutional norms and practices proceeds in an environment with heavy dependence on the military state sector to cooperate in preventing CRSV. However, our findings call into question the conditions under which JCs should be promoted, especially when a signatory state refuses or resists including measures in JCs that address their institutional culpability for perpetrating CRSV and adopt survivor-centred gender-inclusive reforms.

Despite its efficacy, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential for electrocution to control common weeds in pastures. Electrocution could also potentially be utilized as a management tool to minimize the production of tall fescue seedheads to prevent fescue toxicosis in cattle. Separate experiments were conducted in Missouri in 2023 and 2024 to: 1) evaluate the effectiveness of electrocution on tall fescue seedhead management, and 2) evaluate forage injury and weed control following electrocution in comparison to common pre-packaged pasture herbicide combinations in mixed tall fescue and legume pastures. Sequential electrocution passes spaced 2 wk apart was the only electrocution treatment that resulted in reduced tall fescue seedhead density more than the nontreated control. However, metsulfuron-containing herbicide treatments reduced tall fescue seedhead density by 70 to 77%. In the weed control experiments, electrocution was compared to herbicide application in six mixed tall fescue and legume pastures and two johnsongrass-infested pastures in Missouri in 2023 and 2024. Most pre-packaged herbicide combinations tested eliminated white clover whereas electrocution and weed wiping had minimal effects on this species. The best electrocution treatments resulted in control of common ragweed, ironweed, common cocklebur, johnsongrass, and tall goldenrod and were comparable to that observed with the best herbicide treatments. Blackberry, sericea lespedeza and coralberry were most effectively controlled by weed wiping with glyphosate compared to all other treatments. Two passes of glyphosate with the weed wiper at 5 km/h spaced 2 wk apart providing the highest and most consistent control of johnsongrass. Results from these experiments indicate that electrocution can be used as a viable alternative to broadcast herbicide treatment for the control of several weeds that commonly occur in mixed tall fescue and legume pastures without significantly impacting forage yield or causing legume injury.

Will rising temperatures from climate change affect labour markets? This paper examines the impact of temperature on hours worked, using panel data from Peru covering the period from 2007 to 2015. We combine information on hours worked from household surveys with weather reanalysis data. Our findings show that high temperatures reduce hours worked, with the effect concentrated in informal jobs rather than in weather-exposed industries. These results suggest that labour market segmentation may shape how climate change affects labour outcomes in developing countries.

This article offers a forensic analysis of one key archive of sexual violence: The official record of a congressional investigation of the Ku Klux Klan and federal trials of Klan members in the years immediately after the American Civil War. The 13 volumes constitute the single most important source of victim testimony on white supremacist violence and are used widely by historians. It also presents daunting problems of interpretation particularly with respect to sexual violence. This analysis challenges historians’ traditional accounts of the Klan as overly reliant on the Republican party narrative that it constituted the terrorist arm of the Democratic party intent on suppressing black men’s new constitutional right to vote.

As I argue here, the Klan’s campaign of terror aimed at something far more, as the routine deployment of sexual violence against women reveals. Sexual regulation was the very core of white supremacy. The representation of the Klan in the official record—its signature acts, motives, and victims—was shaped not by the patterns of the violence itself but by the objectives of the investigation in the battle over public opinion and political strategy. In time and place, I argue, the narrow framing of Klan violence around electoral politics involved real costs to black women victims of the Klan with respect to the protection of their civil and political—or human—rights.