This article examines to what extent ideological incongruence (i.e., mismatch between policy positions of voters and parties) increases the entry of new parties in national parliamentary elections and their individual‐level electoral support. Current empirical research on party entry and new party support either neglects the role of party–voter incongruence, or it only examines its effect on the entry and support of specific new parties or party families. This article fills this lacuna. Based on spatial theory, we hypothesise that parties are more likely to enter when ideological incongruence between voters and parties is higher (Study 1) and that voters are more likely to vote for new parties if these stand closer to them than established parties (Study 2). Together our two studies span 17 countries between 1996 and 2016. Time‐series analyses support both hypotheses. This has important implications for spatial models of elections and empirical research on party entry and new party support.

Through what mechanism do interest groups shape public opinion on concrete policies? In this article, three hypotheses are proposed that distinguish between the effect of the arguments conveyed by interest groups and the effect of interest groups as source cues. Two survey experiments on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TIPP) and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change allow the testing of these hypotheses. The resulting evidence from several countries shows that, with respect to interest groups’ attempts at shaping public opinion, arguments matter more than their sources. This is so even when accounting for people's trust in the interest groups that serve as source cues and for people's level of information about a policy. The finding that interest groups affect public opinion via arguments rather than as source cues has implications for the literature on elite influence on public opinion and the normative evaluation of interest group activities.

While there is apparent evidence that individual philanthropic behavior and the motivations for this behavior are at least to some extent universal, there is also evidence that people across the world do not equally display this behavior. In this conceptual article, I explore how we can study philanthropic behaviors from a global perspective. I contend that the macro-level study of philanthropy is underdeveloped, because of three problems intrinsic to the study of global philanthropy: problems with geographical orientation, connotations and definitions. As a first step to overcome these problems, I suggest the use of the term generosity behavior over philanthropic behavior, as this term appears more inclusive of the multitude of definitions and connotations across cultures. I conclude by formulating a collaborative research agenda for a more inclusive study and understanding of global generosity behavior, focused on generating publicly accessible knowledge and informing policy.

Can civil disobedience be transnationalized? This question presumes civil disobedience to be a fundamentally domestic concept—one constitutively tied to both the nation-state and the normative underpinnings of liberal, constitutional democracies. This article shows how this assumption mistakes one version of civil disobedience's twentieth-century intellectual history for the whole of it, and risks reproducing binaries (domestic vs. international, democracies vs. non-democracies) that trouble attempts to theorize the transnational. Turning to an alternative intellectual history—a network of civil rights and anticolonial activists—reveals a novel theory of civil disobedience as decolonizing praxis, as well the stakes of these binaries: the disavowal of white supremacy as pervasive and durable global structure of governance, linking the domestic to the international, and democratic rule to domination.

This paper outlines the UK publishing landscape for the social and political sciences, with particular reference to academic journals. The changes and challenges being brought to this environment by open access (OA) are described and the response of UK publishers examined. While some of the initial caution among publishers towards OA in the social and political sciences is beginning to recede, the pressures of funding, perception and engagement remain considerable. Despite scepticism from some quarters about the future role of so-called ‘legacy’ publishers, it is argued that their skills, knowledge and innovation will make them a valuable part of the evolving, and ever more varied, scholarly communications arena.

Right‐wing populist (RWP) movements have been on the rise in Western democracies. Outside of party politics, such movements regularly organize demonstrations against political elites and minority groups. At the same time, civil society coalitions have mobilized against these movements. Yet we know little about the effect of counter‐demonstrations on RWP protest activities. We derive competing theoretical expectations from previous work. On the one hand, counter‐mobilization reduces mobilization because the original movement is less likely to achieve its goals (expected utility/costs). On the other hand, clashes and standoffs between opposing movements facilitate mobilization through polarization and anger (identity/emotions). We empirically analyze movement–countermovement dynamics using a new city‐level event dataset on street protests by the German Pegida movement and its opponents. In our quantitative analysis, we investigate how counter‐mobilization is associated with the onset of Pegida protests, their intensity in terms of participant numbers, and their demobilization. Counter‐mobilization does not prevent protest onset, but large counter‐demonstrations are associated with larger subsequent Pegida protests, and violence against Pegida supporters reduces the likelihood that they will stop protesting.

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) contribute to vital neighborhoods by building communities of citizens and acting as intermediaries between citizens and organizations. We investigate how NPOs’ engagement in social and systemic integration is shaped by neighborhood characteristics, and how it relates to the organizational practices of managerialism and organizational democracy. We combine survey data with administrative data from a representative sample of NPOs in a major European city. To measure the effect of neighborhood on organizational integration, we separated the city into 7,840 grid cells characterized by population, per capita income, share of immigrant population, and density of organizations. Findings indicate that managerialism positively relates with systemic integration, as organizational democracy relates with social integration. Neighborhood characteristics, however, are not related with NPOs’ engagement in integration. Our findings contribute to research on urban social cohesion by illuminating the interplay between NPOs’ organizing practices, local neighborhoods, and contributions to both forms of integration.

For public organizations to harvest the benefits of co-producing emergency response, incident commanders must trust citizens to carry out hazardous tasks under immense pressure. This article examines how non-profit organizations (NPOs) serve as trust-supporting infrastructures that facilitate the co-production of emergency response operations. Reporting on a qualitative study of emergency management co-production in Denmark and Norway, it shows how NPOs provide temporary structures, procedures, and practices for registering, leading and commanding engaged citizens that enhance trust and thus sustain co-production of emergency response. Comparing intermediated co-production to organized volunteerism, however, the study also shows how intermediated co-production suffers from inherent trust limitations. Eliciting the role of NPOs as trust-building intermediaries, the study contributes with new knowledge for scholars, practitioners and policymakers involved in issues of co-production within and beyond the field of emergency management.

The increasing health inequity and injustice of the COVID-19 pandemic rendered visible the inadequacy of global health governance, and exposed the self-interested decision-making of states and pharmaceutical companies. This research explores the advocacy activities of humanitarian and development international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in responding to this inequality and investigates how they framed alternatives for global health justice. It reviews 47 organizational documents and 43 media articles of five INGOs (ActionAid, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision) and points to the importance of understanding advocacy frames in analyzing how these organizations prioritize agendas and advocacy strategies. The dominance of the ‘human rights’ frame, sometimes in combination with ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘security’ frames, reflects the identities, mandates, and histories of campaigning and collaboration of these INGOs. This paper contends that the advocacy of humanitarian and development INGOs highlights both deontological and teleological ethics, promoting the voices of people in lower-income countries, clarifying duty bearers and their accountabilities, and addressing structural barriers from a human rights perspective in a global health agenda setting.

Parliamentary questions are an essential tool of legislative oversight. However, the extent to which they are effective in controlling the executive remains underspecified both theoretically and methodologically. This article advances a systematic framework for evaluating the effectiveness of parliamentary questions drawing on principal–agent theory, the public administration literature on accountability and communication research. The framework is called the ‘Q&A approach to legislative oversight’ based on the premise that the study of parliamentary questions (Q) needs to be linked to their respective answers (A) and examined together (Q&A) at the micro‐level as an exchange of claims between legislative and executive actors. Methodologically, the Q&A approach to legislative oversight offers a step‐by‐step guide for qualitative content analysis of Q&A that can be applied to different legislative oversight contexts at different levels of governance. It is argued that the effectiveness of Q&A depends on the strength of the questions asked and the responsiveness of answers provided, which are correspondingly operationalised. To illustrate the merits of the approach, the article includes a systematic case study on the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank in banking supervision (2013–2018), showing the connection between specific institutional settings and the effectiveness of parliamentary questions.

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re‐election, career‐progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non‐legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self‐reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine‐grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision‐making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible‐ and open‐list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.

This article examines the origin of and controversies surrounding the Nicene Creed and discusses its limitations as a statement of faith. It points out, for example, that the Creed fails to affirm either the unity of the three persons in one God or even the divinity or personhood of the Spirit. It neither affirms the creation of the world from nothing nor denies that the Son is a creature. The article then seeks to answer the following three questions: (1) why is the Creed so indecisive even on points that were under debate at the Council of Nicaea?; (2) if there was so little that could be defined, what did those who promulgated the Creed hope to accomplish?; and finally (3) where should we look for a trustworthy statement of the ecumenical teaching of the Church on creation, the Trinity and the mission of the Son?

This paper establishes the lexical tone contrasts in the Nigerian language Izon, focusing on evidence for floating tone. Many tonal languages show effects of floating tone, though typically in a restricted way, such as occurring with only a minority of morphemes, or restricted to certain grammatical enviromnents. For Izon, the claim here is that all lexical items sponsor floating tone, making it ubiquitous across the lexicon and as common as pre-associated tone. The motivation for floating tone comes from the tonal patterns of morphemes in isolation and within tone groups. Based on these patterns, all lexical morphemes are placed into one of four tone classes defined according to winch floating tones they end in. Class A morphemes end in a floating ( ‘wife’), class B in ( ‘salt’), class C in ( ‘sand’), and class D in ( ‘him’). This paper provides extensive empirical support for tins analysis and discusses several issues which emerge under ubiquitous floating tone. Issues include the principled allowance of OCP(T) violations, and the propensity for word-initial vowels and low tone to coincide.

In this paper, I provide a new type of evidence for sub-tonal features (Yip 1980, 2002; Bao 1999) from the Eastern Sudanic language Gaahmg (Stirtz 2011): Gestalt contour formation where specific morphological categories change the tone of a base word to a falling contour, but with different absolute tone values (High-Mid, Mid-Low, and High-Low) depending on the input tone. I show that the three different Gestalt contours in Gaahmg can be captured succinctly via feature affixation using Register Tier Theory (Snider 1990, 1998, 1999), and that this analysis receives independent support by other general patterns in the morphophonology of the language. Thus, following McPherson (2017) and Meyase (2021), the paper undermines the major objection against tonal feature geometries that they lack broad support in language-specific tonal grammars (Hyman 2010; Clements, Michaud & Patin 2011). By developing a virtually complete tone-affixation analysis of Gaahmg's tonal morphology in Autosegmental Colored Containment Theory (Trommer 2015; Zaleska 2020; Paschen 2021), the paper also provides evidence for the viability of this formalism in the context of the Generalized Nonlinear Affixation (GNA) program to reduce all productive non-concatenative morphology to affixation of partial phonological representations (Bermúdez-Otero 2012).

While environmental challenges are high on the public agenda, they have raised many questions concerning the ability of society and politics to cope with them. In liberal democracies, they challenge the traditional interplay between the state, business sector, and the various forces of civil society. Relating to the concepts of a more interactive and collaborative governance agenda, this study focuses on the local level of climate governance in municipalities and urban politics. It is based on material, documents, and interviews with representatives of public administration and civil society from seven major towns in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Our findings show progress in local governance, driven by municipal climate action plans, the recognition of climate action as a cross-cutting issue, and the influence of national and federal policies and programmes. The study identifies four main forms of revitalising and institutionalising intermediation across sectors: (1) public participation through various formats meant to give citizens a voice; (2) stakeholder involvement for co-designing measures and plans by partners and opponents most affected; (3) strategies of influencing public opinion and the prevailing discourse on climate politics; and (4) forms of co-production in policy implementation. While the impact of these forms of conflict management, bridge-building, or even cooperation may vary, they altogether define the nature of local interactive governance and its capacities for promoting sustainable development and democracy.

The symbolism of donor aid has brought humanitarian relief to communities in despair in Northern Ghana, as NGO projects continue to target beneficiaries. Challenges with project implementation processes have, however, reduced their effectiveness and impact. Deploying an ‘adaptive grounded theory’, coupled with questionnaires and interviews, this paper relied heavily on the iterative process of systematic literature review. It investigated the problem of project fragmentation and the imagery of development aids within the five northern regions of Ghana. Focusing on donor projects within the beneficiary communities, the study found joint causation for donor weakness in relation to the imagery of development efforts and beneficiary stress as consequences of the thwarted attempts at poverty intervention. The prognosis is the phenomenon of poverty dance of beneficiaries. Consequently, we conclude that for the effectiveness of substantial aid investments, there is the need to move policy dialogue of development interventions from ‘community needs assessments’ to targeted-infrastructure needs assessment.

The gender gap pervades many core aspects of political science. This article reports that females continue to be under-represented as authors and reviewers in European Union Politics and that these differences have only diminished slightly since the second half of the 2000s. We also report that females use more cautious and modest language in their correspondence with the editorial office, but do not find evidence that this under-studied aspect of the gender gap affects the outcome of the reviewing process. The authors discuss some measures European Union Politics and other journals might take to address the imbalance.

Most cases of long-distance consonant dissimilation can be characterized as local (occurring across a vowel) or unbounded (occurring at all distances). The only known exception is rhotic dissimilation in Sundanese (Cohn 1992; Bennett 2015a,b), which applies in certain non-local contexts only. Following a suggestion by Zuraw (2002:433), I show that the pattern can be analyzed in a co-occurrence-based framework (Suzuki 1998) by invoking two unbounded co-occurrence constraints, *[r],..[r] and *[l]…[1], whose effects in local contexts are obscured by a drive for identity between adjacent syllables. Statistical trends in the lexicon are consistent with this analysis. I compare the predictions of this analysis to those of Bennett's (2015a,b) and suggest that the present proposal is preferable.

Policy institutes, or “think tanks”, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our societies. In this article, we conceptualize think tanks explicitly as a civil society phenomenon, linking the proliferation of this relatively new type of actor to the transformation of civil society structures and of systems of interest representation. Using the case of Sweden as an illustration, we argue that the recent decades’ rise of think tanks in institutional settings outside of the USA can only be understood if we take into account the particular features and institutional policy access opportunities of the domestic civil society in each national case, and that think tanks should be analytically understood as the allies of, rather than competitors to, the older, established forces in civil society.

Multi-organizational cross-sector partnerships on social media involving nonprofits, governments, and corporations are increasingly important for addressing complex social issues. Such large-scale cross-sector networks would not be possible without brokers who connect otherwise disconnected clusters. Nevertheless, cross-sector brokers are not always positively received by the public. Drawing from the brokerage typology literature, we classify five distinctive types of brokers (i.e., representative, gatekeeper, liaison, itinerant, and coordinator) and explore public responses associated with them, and how such effects spill over to connected same-sector organizations. Our findings show that different types of brokers receive different public responses, which are moderated by organizations’ sectors. In particular, nonprofits playing brokerage roles are more likely to be positively received by the public compared to government agencies.