This article analyzes Southern cotton interests and the agricultural politics within the Roosevelt Administration, offering insights into how market conditions can shape reform agendas and the considerable opportunities for capture that accompany ambitious reform agendas that rely on interested experts. It shows that Southern cotton interests within the Administration were divided into interest groups, depending on their market position, that mapped onto a broader national constellation of agricultural interest groups. These groups competed among themselves for capture of a reform agenda that was adjudicated by the responses of the cotton market to different interventions.

Temporary Childbirth Migration (TCM), where women return to their natal homes during or after pregnancy, is a common but understudied practice in India and South Asia. This study examines the influence of social support systems on TCM decisions among Indian women, focusing on the roles of husbands, in-laws, and parents. The study was conducted in the Vadu Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) in Western Maharashtra, India, and involved 41 in-depth interviews with triads comprising women, their husbands, and mothers-in-law. Participants varied in age, education, occupation, marriage, migration type, and delivery method and included women with infants up to two years old. Data were analysed using rapid and traditional coding approaches with predefined and emergent codes. Findings were categorised under four key domains of social support: emotional, financial, instrumental, and informational. Emotional support from mothers fosters a stress-free environment; financial support from family influences location; instrumental support for household tasks differs across settings; and informational guidance from experienced family members guides expectant mothers. Healthcare access, household status, and the husband’s role also shape migration choices. Women prioritise proximity to medical facilities, comfort, and freedom in their natal homes. Decisions are typically inclusive, involving multiple family members. The study shows that social support, cultural norms, and practical needs influence TCM decisions, and further research is needed to support women’s choices during the perinatal period. In conclusion, recognising emotional, financial, informational, and instrumental support can help providers and policymakers improve maternal and child health outcomes.

In recent years, mental health policy and legislation have changed dramatically, allowing for more human rights-based and recovery-orientated services to come into being. One example of this is the enactment of The Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015 which allowed for conversations to begin within mental health about respecting the wishes of the person, even when they are in crisis. Within health discourse, this can be achieved through the creation of an advance healthcare directive. However, to date, within mental health services, clinicians, and service users do not have a recognised template that can be adapted for this purpose when a service user loses capacity to make decisions about their own life and care they receive. This paper proposes that Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP), and particularly the crisis and post-crisis planning section of the programme should be used as a potential structure for such advance healthcare directives to be formulated. This is potentially plausible due to how engrained WRAP is in Irish mental health services, the evidence base backing for WRAP as well as the ease of use of the initiative to support overall well-being. As such, this paper has laid out how such plans can be used as an advance healthcare directive in an Irish setting and is also likely to be applicable internationally.

In a globalised world, authoritarian politics does not stay within state borders. Autocrats and their allies reach abroad to influence their international environment to, at a minimum, protect authoritarianism at home or, more ambitiously, to promote pro-authoritarian norms and practices abroad. A rich stream of political science literature – comparative, international and area studies – has mapped the contours of this ‘transnational authoritarianism’ in an increasingly permissive international environment. This review article argues that transnational authoritarianism is facilitated by the rise of authoritarian powers and deepening globalisation. It first examines the drivers of contemporary transnational authoritarianism before identifying and categorising its central actors. The review then organises the literature on this topic into two strands, each enabled by autocracies’ ascendance in a globalised era. First, official channels of transnational authoritarianism see mostly state actors advance regime goals with familiar instruments such as security cooperation agreements, but with renewed vigour and support. Second, unofficial channels feature a mix of state and non-state actors exerting leverage and influence within the networks and channels of global interconnectedness. By necessity, these categories traverse the fields of comparative politics and international relations, revealing how these transnational dimensions are critical to the success of contemporary authoritarian regimes. The review concludes by revisiting earlier literature on autocracy promotion considering these emergent realities, and reflecting on how recent political developments in the United States relate to these processes.

In high-income countries, fertility is increasingly postponed into ages when fecundity declines, elevating the risk of unmet reproductive goals. In this context, how individuals perceive their own and their partner’s reproductive potential may carry important implications for well-being and relationship stability, long before clinical infertility is diagnosed. Drawing on 13 waves of longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), this study uses individual fixed-effects models to examine how within-person changes in perceived fecundity – both one’s own and one’s partner’s – are related to life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and union dissolution. By capturing both individual and partner assessments, this approach emphasizes the couple as the key unit of reproductive experience. Declines in both own and partner’s perceived fecundity are associated with lower life and relationship satisfaction. However, perceptions of a partner’s fecundity exert a stronger influence on relationship outcomes than self-perceptions. In particular, decreases in partner-perceived fecundity increase the risk of separation, a pattern not observed for changes in one’s own fecundity. These associations do not vary significantly by gender but are moderated by parental status and age, with effects being weaker among parents and older individuals. By integrating both self- and partner assessments of fecundity, this study advances a dyadic, life course perspective on fertility. It shows that subjective reproductive potential functions as a relational stressor with meaningful consequences for emotional well-being and relationship trajectories.