The traditional account of the criminal trial holds that its fundamental purpose is to search for the truth—that is, the truth of whether the accused factually committed the alleged crime. However, purely truth-seeking accounts, as well as more nuanced side-constraint and pluralist accounts, fail to adequately explain the relationship between the epistemic principles and those of political morality shaping the criminal trial. In response, this article proposes that we understand the criminal trial first and foremost in terms of its purpose as a public procedure concerned with the legitimate use of coercive state powers against a particular person. Specifically, the criminal trial is a procedure that calls upon the state to provide a public justification for exercising its criminal law powers to convict and punish the accused. This account preserves the importance of establishing factual guilt because doing so is an essential part of the state’s justificatory burden.

Free and open public debate is a cornerstone of democratic representation, yet many politicians refrain from participating in policy debates. This study examines how political violence contributes to such silencing and whether it disproportionately affects historically marginalized groups. Using a unique Swedish politician survey (five waves, N = 43,000), we analyze whether violence reduces marginalized politicians’ participation in debates and whether it disproportionately silences debates challenging hegemonic male interests. We find that women and immigrant-background politicians are significantly more likely than their counterparts to report withdrawing from public debates because of violence and to avoid a broader range of topics. Women are particularly likely to refrain from debates on gender equality, while immigrant-background politicians are not more likely to avoid immigration debates. These chilling effects suggest that violence can narrow the range of voices present in policy debates, potentially diminishing marginalized groups’ ability to represent constituents and reinforcing hegemonic men’s political dominance.

In a recent article published in this journal, Holman, Merolla, and Zechmeister (2022; 2024) report a decrease in support for U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May following the 2017 Manchester bombing, using data from the British Election Studies. Our analysis, however, reveals that once a linear time trend is considered, the bombing does not significantly affect public reactions. We replicate their study with Gallup World Poll data and likewise find no decline in May’s approval rating. Extending the analysis, we examine major terrorist attacks in African countries led by men and similarly find no rally effect. Together, these results cast doubt on terrorism’s capacity to trigger rally ’round the flag dynamics and challenge claims of a gendered pattern whereby women leaders face unique penalties in crises. We argue that broader comparative evidence is necessary before concluding whether citizens rally around, or retreat from, leaders in the wake of terrorism.

This paper sets out the need for, and potential offered by, introducing social media into teaching global challenges. We argue that teaching on global challenges should involve teaching with, through, and about social media as a place of politics. This paper suggests that using social media in our teaching can help to equip students with critical digital literacies as a set of skills for engaging, understanding, and analysing digital materials. We also argue that digital spaces can offer real potential to open dialogue and thought on global challenges in our classrooms. The article presents reflections from our own classroom experiences to think through how social media offers the potential to re-work hierarchies and unpack knowledges of world politics that are taken for granted. In doing so, we are engaged with wider academic discussions on how digital pedagogies are connected to and can enact critical pedagogies. Finally, the article sets out a research agenda that can take this forward to better understand how students learn through social media and how we can best incorporate this into our teaching as a discipline.

To explain why Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this article foregrounds a crucial but understudied dimension: national memory. It argues that both discontinuity in national memory and dislocation between national memory and territory threaten states’ ontological security. The Soviet collapse marked a profound break in Russia’s national memory. To restore the ontological security thus shattered, Russia’s ruling elite adopted a narrative of radical continuity of Russian statehood, linking Kievan Rus, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Romanov Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation into an unbroken thousand-year tradition. Yet by placing its origins in independent Ukraine, this narrative was inherently precarious. While mending the discontinuity in national memory, it produced a dislocation between memory and territory, rendering Russia ontologically vulnerable. By asserting their own claim to Kyiv as the birthplace of Ukrainian nation- and statehood, Ukraine’s ruling elite exposed this dislocation and laid bare both the precarity of the radical continuity narrative and Russia’s resulting ontological vulnerability. The Kremlin’s response was to seek political – and, when that failed, military – control over Ukraine to redress this dislocation and eliminate the sources of ontological vulnerability that flowed from the radical continuity narrative.

This paper examines the simultaneous use of the older handgun and the newer harquebus by Ming Chinese armies before and after the Imjin War (1592–1598), a conflict which saw the Japanese launch a destructive invasion of the Korean peninsula. Although the conflict foregrounded the value of the harquebus in the eyes of many Chinese, its aftermath saw a number of Ming Chinese civil and military officials continuing to affirm the value of the handgun vis-à-vis the harquebus and developing the designs and tactical roles of both types of firearm. Against the backdrop of their discourse on hand-held firearms, I will argue, in this paper, that the Eurocentric focus of modern military scholars has caused them to underestimate the advantages that the older handgun still held over the harquebus in the different Ming Chinese context. In Ming China, the harquebus was valued primarily for its accuracy, which led it to be assigned a different tactical role and undergo a different technological developmental trajectory compared to early modern Europe. Nevertheless, Ming designs tended towards a universal infantry firearm anticipating the solution eventually adopted by early modern European armies: a relatively accurate bayonet-equipped harquebus capable of high rates of fire.

Do men respond to a masculinity threat by adopting more conservative political attitudes? A highly cited 2013 study by Willer et al. – drawing on substantial work in social psychology – argues in the affirmative, reasoning that endorsing conservative views allows men to reaffirm their gender identity. In two experiments with student convenience samples (Ntotal 100–110, Nmen 40–51), the authors find consistent evidence: inducing masculinity threat increases support for war, homophobic attitudes, and endorsement of dominance hierarchies. We conduct a preregistered replication of this foundational study using a nationally representative probability sample (Ntotal 2774, Nmen 2073). Contrary to original findings, we observe no consistent evidence that masculinity threat alters political attitudes. We further do not find support for design differences between the replication and original study driving contrasting findings. Our results call into question the robustness of evidence linking masculinity threat to political attitudes and underscore the importance of re-evaluating widely accepted findings with representative, large samples.

Soil biodiversity is crucial to the maintenance of multiple critical ecosystem functions and services. However, remarkably little is known about the conservation status of most soil-dependent species. To better understand the current situation, we determined the number of soil-dependent species listed in the various categories of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Firstly, a definition of soil-dependent species was developed for IUCN Red List purposes, and this definition facilitated the identification of 8,653 currently listed soil-dependent species. These species included 503 invertebrate and fungal species assessed during the current study; these species were chosen as they were based on priorities for the Red List Strategic Plan, and IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Specialist Group interests. We discuss progress and constraints on the IUCN Red List assessment of soil-dependent species worldwide. Our recommendations for the IUCN SSC to improve the IUCN Red List as a source of information on conservation of soil-dependent species are: (1) scaling up of SSC assessment processes for soil-dependent invertebrates and fungi, including establishment of a Soil Biota Working Group, in line with the IUCN Red List Strategic Plan; (2) building closer connections with other organizations and agencies researching and monitoring soil biodiversity; and (3) broader engagement with and education of governments, landholders and the public as to the fundamental importance of the conservation of global soil biodiversity.

This paper examines the 2016 trial of Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi by the International Criminal Court (ICC) through the lenses of discourse analysis and linguistic anthropology, with a focus on how trial actors navigated legitimacy challenges. Al Mahdi, a member of Ansar Dine, was charged with the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu, which were UNESCO World Heritage sites. This paper argues that the trial actors used a rhetorical “local-to-global parallelism” which sought to consolidate a global range of constituencies and legitimate the ICC’s actions both normatively and sociologically. The local-to-global parallelism served to “talk into existence” a broad-based victimhood, which reinforced the court’s symbolic authority and its claims to jurisdiction. It also relied heavily on intertextual connections between the ICC and UNESCO, thereby legitimating the prosecution of cultural heritage destruction as a grave international crime.

This article is an exploration of leisure practices of military families inside military social institutions such as military summer camps and orduevis (officers’ clubs). Introducing generations of military families to aestheticized forms of seaside leisure as well as bodily forms of self-discipline and militarized forms of sociality, summer camps and orduevis have allowed military families to recognize themselves as a distinct social group and develop classed and racialized sensibilities of cultural difference since the 1950s. Building on ethnographic research among military families, this article examines the role of leisure in the cultivation of the tastes, habits, and sensibilities that define white, modern, secular, and middle-class citizenship for military families.

Donald J. Trump began his second term with a tidal wave of presidential directives. A simple count does not equate to consequence—but, in aggregate, Trump’s directives had an important impact. Many of their targets were consistent with past presidential practice, although even then expanding prior claims to executive authority. Others, which exacted retribution on specific individuals or entities or ordered subordinates to disregard the law, were new and potentially dangerous. The long-term failure of Congress to rein in discretion embedded in past statute has empowered this and future presidencies.

Although donating to private charitable organizations has been studied extensively, donating to local governments remains little examined. We advance this literature by applying Bekkers and Wiepking’s prominent theoretical framework of charitable giving drivers. Using nationally representative data from about 9,000 Vietnamese citizens, we test the relevance of some of these drivers in explaining the willingness to donate to local governments for road improvements. Our results largely corroborate previous findings about the roles of awareness of need (perceived issue importance), costs (the requested donation amount), and efficacy (trust in government). We also find support for the roles of altruism (the desire to help fellow citizens) and solicitation (the government’s ask)––two drivers whose application to local government donations was unexplored. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This article examines recruitment practices in Swedish polar expeditions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on A.G. Nathorst’s Arctic voyages 1898 and 1899, the Swedish-Russian Arc-of-Meridian surveys 1898–1901, and the 1903 Antarctic rescue expedition. Drawing on preserved correspondence, this article explores who conducted recruitment, how it was done, and what competencies were sought. The expedition leader recruited other scientists on his own, relying on recommendations from fellow academics. Hiring of sailors involved several persons; the leader, the ship’s captain, other seamen and semi-professional commissioners. The default mode was to re-hire old shipmates. When that was not possible, new recruits were evaluated through acquaintances or based on their reputation. Experience of travel in icy waters was considered valuable. Sailors with references from scientific expeditions were especially sought after, and could use this to attain higher wages than was the norm in ordinary work at sea.

We define the tropical Tevelev degrees, ${\mathsf{Tev}}_g^{\mathtt{trop}}$, as the degree of a natural finite morphism between certain tropical moduli spaces, in analogy to the algebraic case. We develop an explicit combinatorial construction that computes ${\mathsf{Tev}}_g^{\mathtt{trop}} = 2^g$. We prove that these tropical enumerative invariants agree with their algebraic counterparts, giving an independent tropical computation of the algebraic degrees ${\mathsf{Tev}}_g$.