This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuations in the nasal and oral cavities. The studied events include nasal spreading (nasal harmony), triggers, targets, blockers, and transparent segments. Meanwhile, differences between nasal phonemes and nasal allophones are also identified along with the effects of morpheme boundaries during nasal spreading events. Results reveal that, unlike many other Tukanoan languages. /m/ and /n/ function as individual phonemes independent of their oral counterparts ( & ). In addition nasal harmony was identified as predominantly rightward spreading apart from syllable-delimited leftward spreading to vocoid segments. Moreover, suffixes responsible for blocking nasal spreading appear to be reminiscent of oral suffixes in Eastern Tukanoan languages. Finally, more blockers were identified in Ecuadorian Siona than in most Eastern Tukanoan languages.

At the level of regime typologies, the uncertain status and inherent weakness of the opposition mark defining features of regimes beyond liberal democracy. However, even the performance and evolution of the latter tend to be shaped by oppositions and the regime’s approach to dealing with them. This article offers a bird’s-eye view of political oppositions in contemporary electoral democracies and competitive autocracies. It focuses on patterns of strategic choices and behavior by both governments and oppositions. That endeavor forms part of a larger joint venture seeking to give center stage to those actors living in the shadows of increasingly unscrupulous power-holders.

This manuscript explores cross-sectoral social partnerships (CSSPs) through a four-tiered model highlighting tensions within individual organizations, between two or more players, within the new partnership and between that newly formed entity and the stakeholders it addresses. We draw insights from and develop the model according to the existing literature. We then provide examples of tensions in each of the four levels based on our case study of a Romanian CSSP formed in response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis beginning in 2022.

José Medina and Claudia Gâlgău discuss the epistemology of protest, epistemic self-empowerment and hope in the midst of persistent forms of oppression. “Social change and liberation often take many generations, and we need to cultivate sustainable communities of resistance that will not give up hope and will help people achieve recognition and dignity, and even flourish, amid structural forms of oppression.”

Democracy is backsliding in Europe and around the world as citizens’ trust in elected representatives and institutions wanes. Representation theories and studies have mostly centred on the representatives, rather than the represented. But how do citizens perceive political representation? Are their perceptions of any consequence at all? In this paper, we set forth a framework of representation in the eyes of citizens, based on Pitkin’s classic concept of representation in conjunction with Weissberg’s distinction between dyadic and collective representations. We use Israel as a proof of concept for our theoretical framework, employing an original set of survey items. We find that, in keeping with Pitkin’s framework, citizens perceive representation as multidimensional and depreciate the descriptive and symbolic—the standing-for—dimensions. Furthermore, citizens’ democratic attitudes are shaped by collective representation by the parliament rather than by dyadic representation by an elected representative. We conclude with a call for a greater focus on representation from the citizens’ standpoint.

Deliberative and agonistic democrats have conceived of political reconciliation and its pursuit in different forms. In this article, I explore how insight can be derived from key tenets of both strands of democratic theory in the struggle to achieve political reconciliation in war-torn or divided contexts. Rather than subsume disagreement or straitjacket it in processes of “rational” deliberation, I propose contingent, open-ended, but inclusive contestation to achieve political reconciliation. This article explores how the deliberative “right to justification,” set out by critical theorist Rainer Forst, can be put to work in an agonistic politics of reconciliation. I want to show that deliberation over the right to justification and the corollary duty to justify constitute conjoined means of consensus-seeking that can be contingent and fluid and can account for entrenched relations of power and inequality—two dynamics that deliberative theorists have been accused of deflecting or obscuring.

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299–318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887–917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’

We conducted an artificial language learning experiment to study learning asymmetries that might reveal latent preferences relating to, and any dependencies between, the edge aligmnent and quantity sensitivity (QS) parameters in stress patterning. We used a poverty of the stimulus approach to teach American English speakers an unbounded QS stress rule (stress a single CV: syllable) and either a left- or right-aligning QI rule if only light syllables were present. Forms with two CV: syllables were withheld in the learning phase and added in the test phase, forcing participants to choose between left- and right-aligning options for the QS rule. Participants learned the left- and right-edge QI rules equally well, and also the basic QS rule. Response patterns for words with two CV: syllables suggest biases favoring a left-aligning QS rule with a left-edge QI default. Our results also suggest that a left-aligning QS pattern with a right-edge QI default was least favored. We argue that stress patterns shown to be preferred based on evidence from ease-of-learning and participants’ untrained generalizations can be considered more natural than less favored opposing patterns. We suggest that cognitive biases revealed by artificial stress learning studies may have contributed to shaping stress typology.

Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2021) posits that “in a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not” (Ganghof, 2021). To consider, examine and theorise about this, Ganghof urges engagement with semi-parliamentarism. As explained by Ganghof, legislative power is shared between two democratically legitimate sections of parliament in a semi-parliamentary system, but only one of those sections selects the government and can remove it in a no-confidence vote. Consequently, power is dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of any one person, which, Ganghof argues, can lead to an enhanced form of parliamentary democracy. In this book review symposium, George Tsebelis, Michael Thies, José Antonio Cheibub, Rosalind Dixon and Daniel Bogéa review Steffen Ganghof’s book and engage with the author about aspects of research design, case selection and theoretical argument. This symposium arose from an engaging and constructive discussion of the book at a seminar hosted by Texas A&M University in 2022. We thank Prof José Cheibub (Texas A&M) for organising that seminar and Dr Anna Fruhstorfer (University of Potsdam) for initiating this book review symposium.

Peer support approaches are gaining increasing importance within the mental health sector as an effective way to assist people with mental and addictive disorders. This article explores peer support volunteers’ motives for voluntary engagement in a model project in Germany. It aims to gain a deeper understanding of peer support approaches and their underlying motivations in an innovative context. Twenty-three qualitative interviews with peer support volunteers were analyzed according to Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. Results showed that voluntary engagement fulfills a heterogeneous range of functions for peer support volunteers. Alongside “typical” volunteers’ motives, there were peer-specific functions such as motivation due to own personal experiences and the objective of changing societal attitudes toward mental health. Furthermore, the context of employment promotion played a motivational role: Many interview partners aimed to transform counseling structures within the institutions they had experienced as clients themselves.

As they deliver services, organizations have to deal with conflicts over competing and sometimes irreconcilable values, especially at a time when they are facing competitive pressure and diminishing resources. The civicness of organizations expresses itself in how they enable positive interaction over such conflicts between their members. This paper focuses specifically on the relationship between professionals and their managers. By infusing social behaviour with civil values, organizations can contribute to a wider culture of citizenship.

Portuguese politics and mainstream media have been resistant to the recent spread of populism. This article examines the specific features of Portuguese politics and media that might explain the apparent exception, and puts it to test by analysing the prevalence of populist discourses and styles of communication in different types of online media. The sample is composed of mediated and unmediated messages on immigration and corruption, two issues that are commonly present in populist discourses by both right- and left-wing political actors. Overall, the content analysis shows that although populist discourses are not recurrent in politics and media, social media have amplified the visibility of this kind of discourses in Portugal.

The work of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in non-democratic country contexts tends to be judged on their contribution to the democratisation process rather than the activities they undertake.This neglects the potential impact NPOs have on societies within such contexts. In this study, we highlight that NPOs can influence public policy deployment in the Russian Federation even if they cannot affect public policy itself. By operationalising the very restrictions placed upon them, NPOs use their relationships with the state to effect change within their immediate environment and scope of their operational remit, even if they cannot hold authorities to account or influence policy development. The key to this is strong organising capabilities and engagement with the Russian public. We reflect on the implications of our findings to the understanding of civil society development and NPOs in Russia and in other similar non-democratic contexts.

This study investigates the suitability of student-driven internationalisation of the curriculum in a diverse educational setting. Despite its vast educational potential, internationalisation of the curriculum is an often-missing component of general internationalisation even in programmes and courses with a diverse student body. To remedy this shortcoming in a course of international politics, I introduced a teaching and learning innovation, which encouraged students to use examples based on personal experiences and regional background—rather than merely from the assigned literature—during their arguments in preparation for and during biweekly seminars. In addition, the assessment criteria were shifted to support the sharing of information and knowledge among peers in this course, called “Theories of Cooperation and Conflict in International Relations”. The study uses a quasi-experimental setup and offers a comprehensive mixed-methods analysis of the innovation and finds that student learning and their classroom experience was positively impacted. While students did use notably more “own experience” examples and improved in their written preparatory work for the seminars, they turned to these very cautiously in the actual classroom debates. The findings are explained by the interplay between internationalisation and decolonisation of the classroom and the increased stakes in assessment criteria.

This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method comprehensive review (MCR). We present this approach and demonstrate its use by the NGO Knowledge Collective, which aims to aggregate knowledge on NGOs in international development. We explain the process by which scholars can identify, analyze, and synthesize a population of hundreds or thousands of articles. MCRs facilitate cross-disciplinary synthesis, systematically identify gaps in a literature, and can create data for further scholarly use. The main drawback is the significant resources needed to manage the volume of text to review, although such obstacles may be mitigated through advances in “big data” methodologies over time.

What motivates a political party to develop overseas development volunteering projects for members? How do such activities affect individual volunteers and the party, more broadly? To address these questions, this paper analyses the UK Conservative Party’s international development volunteering projects. Our data comprise 38 interviews with former volunteers and participant observation of one volunteering project in Rwanda in 2017 by one author. This predominantly self-reported data are supplemented with publicly available sources. We draw on employer-supported and state-supported volunteering literature to develop a framework for analysing drivers and effects of party-supported volunteering. We argue that political parties are under-researched sending communities, and that development volunteering constitutes a strategic resource that can be invoked to legitimise engagement with, and authority in, international development as part of the everyday political identity of Party members. As such, how volunteering is used to signal authority in a policy area warrants further research.

In recent years, INGO legitimacy has been subject to growing scrutiny from analysts and practitioners alike. Critics have highlighted a backlash against INGOs in the Global South, a growing mismatch between INGO capacities and contemporary global challenges, and diminishing support for norms such as democracy and human rights that underpin INGOs’ work. Although these problems have attracted significant attention within the academic literature, this article argues that existing explorations of INGO legitimacy have broadly conformed either to a top-down approach focused on global norms and institutions or a bottom-up approach focused on the local dynamics surrounding states and populations in the Global South. We suggest that this divide is unhelpful for understanding the current predicament and propose a new approach, which pays closer attention to the interaction between bottom-up and top-down dimensions, and to historical context. This new approach can provide important insights into current debates about the future roles and internal structures of INGOs.

Recent advances in machine learning (ML) have transformed protein science, enabling engineering and de novo design of artificial proteins with novel structures and functions. However, experimental analysis of key design features, such as oligomerization, folding, ligand binding, and dynamic conformational changes, remains critical. Here, we outline how mass spectrometry (MS) complements protein design through its ability to corroborate a wide range of design objectives. Furthermore, engineered proteins have become valuable tools for exploring the use of MS in detecting structural features, charge effects, and weak interactions by serving as testbeds for method development. Integrating ML and native MS thus creates a feedback loop: new designs challenge analytical techniques, while improved methods provide richer data to guide and improve future predictions. This synergy is vital for expanding the capabilities of protein engineering, including toward applications in synthetic biology and artificial protocell development.