In this article, I question whether the widely endorsed functional demos views—like the “all affected interests” and “all subjected” approaches—adequately measure legitimacy in democratic inclusion. I argue that these views fall short of this task and propose an alternative criterion for evaluating electoral rights allocation. The “permanent disenfranchisement condition” asserts that electoral regulations leading to involuntary, permanent disenfranchisement are undemocratic. This condition challenges traditional exclusions based on factors like denizenship or mental illness. Age-based or residency requirements, however, remain permissible, as they do not imply inherent unfitness for political participation. Additionally, I introduce the “democratic ethos proviso,” which is less stringent and failure to fulfill it is less consequential. It stipulates that electoral regulations should be justifiable with reference to the specificities of the relevant democratic ethos.

Concerns about the use of online political microtargeting (OPM) by campaigners have arisen since the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit the international political arena. In addition to providing conceptual clarity on OPM and explore the use of such techniques in Europe, this paper seeks to empirically disentangle the differing behaviours of campaigners when they message citizens through microtargeted rather than non-targeted campaigning. More precisely, I hypothesise that campaigners use negative campaigning and are more diverse in terms of topics when they use OPM. To investigate whether these expectations hold true, I use text-as-data techniques to analyse an original dataset of 4,091 political Facebook Ads during the last national elections in Austria, Italy, Germany and Sweden. Results show that while microtargeted ads might indeed be more thematically diverse, there does not seem to be a significant difference to non-microtargeted ads in terms of negativity. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for microtargeted campaigns and how future research could be conducted.

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern about non-governmental development organisations’ (NGDOs) sustainability especially in countries including Ghana that have transitioned into lower-middle-income status. The effect has been donor withdrawal and funding cuts for NGDOs. This presents opportunities and challenges for NGDOs in their attempt to mobilise alternative funding routes in ensuring their sustainability. Drawing on secondary literature and semi-structured interviews with fifty-seven respondents from national NGDOs, government, donors and corporate organisations, this article documents and expands our understanding of the different typologies of philanthropic institutions in Ghana as potential alternative funding routes for NGDOs. It finds that a weak enabling environment including the absence of a regulatory framework and fiscal incentives for domestic resource mobilisation stands to affect the potential of philanthropic institutions as alternative funding routes for NGDOs’ sustainability.

Fiji’s multi-ethnic society is historically characterised by low levels of inter-ethnic trust and a segregated civil society, typified by low participation of youth, the poor, ethnic minorities, and less literate members of society. How does this actually existing civil society shape the social transactions, value subjectivities, norms and habits of citizenship bred through volunteering and other forms of civic engagement in these contexts? Drawing on data from a mixed method study on youth volunteering in Fiji, this paper interrogates prevailing normative assumptions on volunteerism’s role in retooling civic renewal and citizenship. Being socially situated, the outcomes of youth volunteering vary. Specifically, youth volunteering in organisations that value inclusion has midwifed progressive citizenship values; while, participation in bonding type civil society reproduces exclusionary citizenship, social disparities and patterns of discrimination and privilege. The implication is that for volunteerism to produce desired progressive citizenship values and attitudes, civic organisations transmitting such values need to be specifically focussed on progressive goals.

Environmental activism organizations depend on recruiting and retaining individuals willing to engage in leadership tasks on a voluntary basis. This study examined the resources which help or hinder sustained environmental volunteer activist leadership behaviors. Interviews with 21 environmental volunteer activist leaders were analyzed within a Resource Mobilization Theory framework. While six resources supporting sustained engagement in volunteer activist leadership behaviors were identified, only three were sought by all participants: time, community support, and social relationships. Money, volunteers and network connections were considered valuable resources, however their acquisition generated significant additional administrative burdens. Social relationships sustained volunteer activist leaders through fostering feelings of positive emotions connected with the group. We conclude with suggestions for organizations seeking to increase retention of activist volunteer leaders: namely larger organizations sharing their resources to reduce administrative demands on volunteer activist leaders in smaller organizations; developing movement infrastructure groups to build and sustain networks; and the prioritization of positive relationships within volunteer teams.

This article presents a case of allotony based on the phonation of the vowel in Nuer, a Western Nilotic language; the falling tone is found only on modal vowels in this language, while the high level tone is found only on breathy vowels. We describe the phenomenon and present evidence suggesting that it may be due to the neutralization of two separate tonal contours, H and HL, conditioned by the phonation of the vowel. We place this phenomenon within the known typology of phonation-tone interaction and advance a proposal as to the phonetic factors behind its development.

If we want to develop a comparative democratic theory, we need a methodology that is open for unusual data, suspends previous knowledge, and develops concepts inductively. We argue that Grounded Theory as a general methodology can be used to systematically develop a comparative democratic theory strictly rooted in empirical data. In this article we first present and discuss concepts of Grounded Theory and then use 17 exemplary speeches of politicians from three centuries and five continents to illustrate how such theory development, including unusual sources, proceeds. Finally, we discuss the results by focusing on promises and perils of applying Grounded Theory as a strategy for developing a comparative democratic theory.

Lookism, wrongful appearance discrimination, is prevalent and impactful, and yet largely neglected. This paper explores why this form of discrimination is ignored, when other forms of discrimination which have similar impacts in, for example, employment and education, are taken seriously in policy, practice, and everyday life. It offers five possible reasons for why lookism is neglected; that it is unfamiliar, that people believe lookism should not be prevalent, that people believe lookism is natural, that lookism is not legislated against and that shame attaches to experiences of lookism. The paper seeks to offer an account of the reasons that underpin the otherwise confusing neglect of lookism. The paper argues that far from being an acceptable form of discrimination, lookism is a serious form of discrimination that all, irrespective of political and ideological commitments, have reasons to address.

Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s adherence to existential phenomenology, the article advances a political understanding and interpretation of community organizing. Arendt, it is maintained, offers valuable insight into political phenomena which are constitutive of community organizing. Four aspects, in particular, are highlighted—what I refer to as the four “A”s of association, action, appearance and authenticity—understood in existentialist, phenomenological, ontological and ultimately political terms, as primary ways of being-together-politically. The first part of the article examines Arendt’s existential phenomenological approach in shaping her understanding of the political. This provides the theoretical basis for examining in the second part of the article, phenomena which are constitutive of community organizing, highlighting how association, action, appearance and authenticity form distinctive political characteristics of community organizing as an approach. At different points, brief reference is made to the work of London Citizens, the largest broad-based organization in the UK, in order to illustrate the connections between Arendtian thought and community-based organizing.

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non‐Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religion's place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.

This article examines the legal foundations of an equitable global fossil fuel phase-out under international law and considers how legal principles could shape the scope of existing obligations and development of a future regime limiting the production of fossil fuels. While fossil fuel production remains largely unregulated in the international climate regime, emerging scientific, political and normative pressures demand clearer legal guidance. The article argues that a principle-based approach, grounded in established norms of international law, can clarify what equity entails in this context, and offer a coherent framework for a managed phase-out. Drawing on principles of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, common but differentiated responsibilities, cooperation, prevention, precaution and non-regression, it is demonstrated that the substantive and procedural obligations needed for an equitable transition away from fossil fuels are already part of existing international law.

Political theorists have developed well‐defined normative understandings of what constitutes ethical political conduct. Based on democratic theory as well as the demands of practical politics, these understandings prescribe certain types of behaviour and proscribe other types. However, it is unclear to what extent this normative framework has resonance for ordinary citizens. This article demonstrates that attention to politics tends to increase the resonance of this normative framework. The analysis identifies three norms about the holding of public office that are expected to structure citizens' ethical judgments: the avoidance of conflicts of interest; conformity with the law or institutional rules; and the maximisation of the public good. The article assesses the importance of these norms in structuring judgments by means of an experiment embedded in a population survey conducted in Great Britain. The analysis finds that informational cues pertaining to conflict‐of‐interest avoidance only condition responses among the attentive, while information pertaining to law conformity has far wider resonance. This finding has implications for approaches to political ethics focusing on normative considerations that appear to have low salience for much of the general public.

Play languages (also known as language games or ludlings) represent a special type of language use that is well known to shed useful light on linguistic structure. This paper explores a syllable transposition play language in Zenzontepec Chatino that provides evidence for the segmental inventory, syllable structure, the limits of the phonological word, the prosodic status of inflectional formatives, and the autonomy of tone, all of which aligns with independent phonological evidence in the language. While recent theoretical and cross-linguistic studies have questioned the nature, and even the validity, of constituents such as the phonological word, the syllable, and the onset, this study provides an example of a language with strongly manifested phonological constituents. Following the International Year of Indigenous Languages, the study also highlights the importance of in-depth analysis of less-studied languages for linguistic theory, typology, and language maintenance or reclamation for communities.

Food banks have grown substantially in Canada since the 1980s but little is known about patterns or predictors of engagement including frequency or duration of service use. This study examined food bank program data from a large food bank organization in Vancouver, Canada, finding that between January 1992 and June 2017, at least 116,963 individuals made over 2 million food bank visits. The majority of members were engaged for a short time and came for relatively few visits, but 9% of members engaged in longer-term episodic or ongoing usage over several years, accounting for 65% of all visits. Results from cluster and regression analyses found that documented health and mobility challenges, larger household size, primary income source, and older age were predictors of higher frequency and duration of service usage. Findings add to growing critical examinations of the “emergency food system” highlighting the need for better understanding of the broader social policies influencing food bank use.

Despite the normative origins of our discipline, political scientists often embrace our role as objective scholars, to the point of teaching our students to undertake research without also helping them to become public-spirited citizens. This essay argues that this restrained approach is inadequate to maintain political science’s relevance in an era characterized by heightened partisan polarization, rising authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. To help our students sustain democratic systems of government going forward, political scientists must not only recognize our normative roots, but must also extend our normative agenda to a reinvigorated civic engagement pedagogy that is timely, intersectional, and internationalized. In short, how and what we teach our students is the key to our discipline’s relevance in difficult political times.

This paper investigates what kinds of social networks nudge volunteering by applying social network analysis. Unique Japanese data with various social network variables are used to explore the association between formal and informal social networks and volunteering. The results show that “attending meetings of neighborhood associations” and “enrollment in a membership association,” which involve forms of formal social networks, are positively correlated with the probability of both “any volunteering” and five kinds of volunteering. “Frequency of meals with friends,” an indicator of informal social networks, has statistical significance for volunteering. Notably, friendships, even if meals are infrequent, are enough to lead to volunteering opportunities. The author thus concludes that greater social participation can be fostered by promoting not only organizational assistance but also friendships.

The past decade has seen significant advances in our understanding of the early modern reception of 1 Enoch, thanks to the pioneering work of Ariel Hessayon, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and Gabriele Boccaccini among others. Building on their research, this article reconstructs the dynamics that generated interest in 1 Enoch in early modernity, focussing on the reception of the Syncellus fragments published in 1606 by Joseph Scaliger. To do so, it offers three observations. Firstly, it expands our understanding of the nature of interest in 1 Enoch prior to 1606. Secondly, it corrects a common misinterpretation of Scaliger’s comments on the Syncellus fragments. Finally, it reconstructs three trends which arose after Scaliger and which functioned to perpetuate interest in 1 Enoch. This account should interest both scholars of Enoch’s afterlives and historians of scholarship for the light it sheds on the development of early modern biblical criticism.