Time is among the most fundamental categories of political and, specifically, democratic life. While time in the sociopolitical world leaves traces in many (subtle) ways, we do not find it among the guiding concepts of democratic theory. This Special Issue, therefore, understands itself as part of a project that traces the centrality of time and temporality in democratic theory and practice. Our goal is to move toward an in-depth discussion of time in democratic theory by unearthing and systematizing the fragments of this emerging agenda. In this editorial, we deepen the status of time in democratic theory. We do this by discussing both the research that explicitly addresses the relationship between time and democracy and the many latent forms of how temporality shapes democratic thinking. Finally, we identify three dimensions of how time is relevant in and for democratic theory, and we locate the contributions to this Special Issue regarding these dimensions.

Social and sustainable initiatives generally start small and need to scale to create substantial impact. Our systematic review of 133 articles develops a better understanding of this scaling process. From the literature, we conceptualize impact as the result of two different pathways: ‘scaling out’ (extending geographical space or volume) and ‘scaling up’ (influence on public discourses, political agendas and legislation). The review identified strategy, actor characteristics and institutional environment as key factors for scaling. The literature indicates that for strategy a focus on open structures generates speed and higher impact, but we also found critical views on this. The literature shows that the actor characteristics such as the ambition to scale, equal focus on the economic and the social logic, entrepreneurial skills and leadership are positively related to the level of impact. The institutional environment influences actor characteristics and strategy choices and also has a direct effect on the level of social and sustainable impact.

This article analyzes various roles of development practitioners (called outsiders) in five different cases of community-based development (CBD) in rural Iran. It provides a review of the literature on CBD and identifies three main types of roles fulfilled by outsiders to support indigenous development processes. These include preparing the ground, activating community-based organizations as participatory institutions, and taking on the role of brokers who bridge the gap between the local community and outside institutions—especially the state and market. From the analysis of empirical qualitative data collected during fieldwork in Iran, the article concludes that while the roles played by the outsiders in CBD interventions there correspond mostly to those identified in the literature, there are differences in their strategies of intervention and activities under each role which correspond with their contextual contingencies. Recognizing this variation is needed to deepen the understanding of CBD practices and help practitioners think about alternative perspectives and approaches.

This article casts new light on the processes of collective claims and identity formation in social movements, with the help of the radical political framework of Laclau and Mouffe (Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics, Verso, London, 2001). Polish tenants, classified as “losers” of transition and marginalized in the mainstream discourse, nevertheless act collectively, mobilizing alliances with other democratic struggles and thus challenge the hegemony of neoliberal dogmas in the country. The very fact of mobilization of a socially and economically deprived group demanding the right to the city is provocative in the studied context. The empirical foundations of our study are 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with Polish tenants’ activists cross-referenced with media material produced by and about the movement, and previous studies on the topic. The contribution of this article is twofold: it combines social movement theory with radical political framework and fills the empirical gap in the body of literature on social movements in post-socialist Europe.

Against the calls for the development of ‘a more than human’ gerontology, this article challenges the assumptions behind this move by positing that its dependence on post-humanist epistemologies and ontologies risks making age a matter more of the imagination than of human mattering, of assemblage more than of meaning. The ‘decentring’ involved in such approaches of what is distinctly human about ageing has led to an imaginary ontology of flattened ‘assemblages’ of age. While these post-humanist developments might seem to offer an imaginative leap into a ‘more than human’ world, the radicalism implied can equally be understood as being largely rhetorical, designed to impress rather than inform our thinking. If the distinctly human experience of age and finitude is absented from our thinking, the mattering of ageing risks being reduced to no more than the universal flux of an impersonal vitalism. We would conclude that it is still critically important for gerontology to maintain its privileging of the human and more generally of humanism in thinking about and researching the tasks it sets itself.

In civic education and political science classes, simulation games are increasingly recognised as a teaching tool to promote active learning, expecting them to enhance participants’ motivations and to convey transferable knowledge and skills. Furthermore, they have been described as a promising teaching approach with regard to the complex multi-level system of the European Union (EU). Empirical studies have underlined positive effects of simulation games; however, they usually either use purely qualitative or very small-N quantitative approaches. More systematic studies conducted recently didn’t focus on causes of the measured effects and have lacked depth due to a closed items design. The study presented here uses a mixed-method approach, analysing the effects of simulations of European Parliamentarian decision-making conducted with secondary school classes in Germany on students' political knowledge, motivations and attitudes. In addition to a standardised questionnaire with pre- and post-tests (N = 308), qualitative interviews were conducted (n = 12). The paper focuses on the relation between participants' conceptual changes and changes in perceived responsiveness of the EU. The results highlight relevant learning effects students experience in EU simulation games that are not yet captured appropriately by questionnaire studies and can stimulate the development of measurement tools for assessing process-oriented learning outcomes more adequately.

The paper aims to develop a better understanding of the evolution and structuration of contemporary civil society fields. It applies analytical elements from field theories and closely related network governance literature within a qualitative research design to explore collective action around community-led housing (CLH) in England, a label assigned to a range of alternative housing models. We argue that collective action needs to be understood as a loose coupling of earlier and younger social movements, based on their shared awareness of and willingness to address macro-level societal problems. We further identify a gradual evolution of field governance from loose covenanting between sub-fields, development of a common project, to network activation to manage significant external funding. This process has not yet led to a unified field with stable internal governance and wide external legitimacy on the national level. However, an embryonic field structure and permeable boundaries provide CLH actors multiple hybrid identities and strategic positioning opportunities in adjacent fields. We believe that our strategic field perspective can shed light on the nature of collective action in other parts of the civil society.

There are increasing signs that the space for civil society actions is slowly opening up in Vietnam. The existing studies have linked the changes in civil society action to the changing dynamics of state–society relations in one-party-ruled Vietnam. Yet, the majority of this literature has focused on the activities of NGOs. This article fills this gap by highlighting a high-profile case of civil society activism that is not centred on NGO actions. The Trees Movement is a broad-based citizen-led movement established to protest against Hanoi government’s arbitrary decision to cut down thousands of large old trees lining the city’s streets. I use this case study to argue that citizen-led activism, an emerging form of civic engagement, is likely to play a critical role in effecting change and (re)shaping state-society relations in Vietnam. This form of activism, if sustained, will encourage a move toward more deliberative and accountable politics in the same country in the long run. I also argue that environmental activism has opened up a new arena of contestation for civil society activism in Vietnam.

The maiden speech – the first speech given by a newly elected member of parliament (MP) – is a tradition in many parliaments, a personalized rite of passage to political power. As ethnic minority MPs remain relative newcomers, the maiden speech is, for them, even more politically charged. How do ethnic minority MPs represent their identities in this transformative moment? Our data set includes 93 ethnic minority MPs who have held a seat in the Dutch parliament, covering 88 maiden speeches, spanning 11 cycles (1986–2023). The diachronic and intersectional analysis shows that the relation between descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation for historically marginalized groups fluctuates and is influenced by the political environment. The ‘firsts’ of a particular gender/ethnicity intersectional group are less likely to narrate a minority identity than non‐firsts. Progressive party ideology influences the extent to which ethnic minority MPs emphasize an (intersectional) minoritized identity. Personal stories and family histories are often used to counter stereotypes, unmute silenced cultures and share values. The focus on the maiden speech as a political narrative sheds light on the blurry lines between substantive, symbolic and descriptive representation. The political narrative is a strategic tool for MPs from historically disadvantaged groups to represent collective identities.

The accountability of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) has come under closer public and academic scrutiny. Critics call for a more comprehensive approach to accountability—one that addresses a wider set of stakeholders, and beneficiaries in particular. There is an increase in empirical evidence suggesting that comprehensive accountability has positive implications for the organizational performance. This article develops a framework for comprehensive INGO accountability and tests its implications on program effectiveness. The framework describes three accountability meta-logics: the resource logic, outcome assessment logic, and discursive logic. Applying partial least squares structural equation modeling, the impact of these meta-logics on perceived program effectiveness as well as their drivers is tested. The analysis is based on a unique data set from an international survey among 201 INGO leaders from 21 countries. The findings suggest that comprehensive accountability indeed strengthens the perceived program effectiveness. The study emphasizes the managerial argument that implementing comprehensive accountability, not only is the “right thing” to do, but also has the strategic advantage of strengthening perceived mission achievement.

The article analyses 360° video production in international humanitarian aid nonprofit organizations from 2015 to 2019 as 360° video storytelling is one of the latest innovations in organizational digital communication. Through a content analysis and interviews, a specific use of the 360° video format for particular issues or campaigns in order to bring a distant reality to the organization’s audience has been detected. Thus, putting the users in the shoes of “the other” seems to be the objective pursued. NGOs may soon begin to understand long-term interactivity and engagement not just as action and reaction between organization and receiver (almost non-existent to date), but above all as the receiver’s behaviour, which they may strive to orient towards one of the organization’s end goals, depending on the communication strategy set by the organization’s director. With this objective, common to entities from other sectors, they could be moving towards an innovative conceptualization of engagement.

Prior research has suggested three explanations why levels of voluntary engagement rise and fall over time within societies. A social structural explanation considers individual resources crucial for engagement and argues that a redistribution of those resources may bring about changes in engagement. A cohort-based explanation considers socialisation and experiences in formative years as crucial for the uptake of engagement. Finally, a period-based explanation considers extraordinary events, external shocks, and crises to be crucial for engagement. So far, these explanations have mainly been tested separately and little is known about the relative strength of each of the proposed factors. Using data from a large German household panel survey that assessed engagement almost annually across four decades, we found that most social structural factors (e.g., education, employment, income) maintained their predictive effects for engagement, irrespective of cohort or period. The only notable exception was that the gender gap observed has narrowed substantially across periods and cohorts. Moreover, cohort effects were rendered almost negligible once we factored in periods. Taken together, our results suggest that individual characteristics and extraordinary events are the main factors influencing voluntary engagement rather than shared societal experiences of cohorts.

This issue of Democratic Theory aims to contribute to critical social science by bridging the gap between democratic theory and critical political economy (CPE). Despite a common grounding in a normative commitment to emancipation, these fields have lately spoken past each other. Democratic theory is relatively voluntarist, focusing on the realization of normative principles through institutional design. However, it has often overlooked capitalism's influence on democracy, and accepted the artificial separation of the political and economic realms in ways that constrain the possibilities for democratic expansion. CPE, on the other hand, has developed realist and historical analyses of capitalist constraint and dynamism. It can offer a structural compass for democratic theories’ interventionist energies, while also being moved beyond pure critique by them. The central theme of this issue, “democratizing the economy,” shifts the focus toward a deeper exploration of the potential for democratic designs to transform economic structures.

Openness is central to scientific enquiry and can enable faster and more effective return on investment in research. Open access is linked to innovation in research communication and can help increase the reliability and reproducibility of published research. Growth of open access journal publishing in the social sciences and humanities is second only to life sciences. Surveys show researchers are interested in open access publishing, but some researchers perceive that there is a lack of quality journals offering open access. However, a number of established publishers have recently launched fully open access journals for political and social scientists, such as Palgrave Communications and Research & Politics. Open access journals often operate an article processing charge (APC) or ‘author pays’ business model, to support making articles freely available without charging readers. The APC model could provide financial benefits to society in the long term, but can present challenges for researchers without access to grant funding in the short term.

The absence of an electoral connection is a widely held assumption in the scholarship on the European Parliament (EP) and a cause of serious normative concern about the functioning of the European Union. Weak individual legislator accountability is part of this assumption, even if we still know little about the extent to which legislative performance matters for citizens in EP elections that allow preferential voting. This study is the first to analyse how legislative performance influences the preference vote shares of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and whether this is moderated by their parties’ EU salience and incumbent intra‐party competition. It draws on an original dataset that combines candidate and electoral data from three rounds of EP elections held between 2004 and 2014 under open or flexible list rules with information on individual legislative activity (i.e., number of reports, parliamentary questions and speeches) and leadership positions at EP and committee level. One dimension of legislative performance, report writing, is associated with a larger share of preference votes but only for incumbents of parties assigning high salience to the EU. While MEPs win a higher share of preference votes when they face limited co‐partisan incumbent competition, this factor does not moderate the electoral connection.

This article investigates opposition to the competitive authoritarian regimes in Montenegro (1997–2020), North Macedonia (2006–2017), and Serbia (2012–). In each of the three countries, opposition parties face or have faced the challenge of competing on an electoral playing field that is structurally skewed in favour of the incumbent. The articles explore the question in which circumstances opposition parties have been able to contest the dominant parties. In doing so, it focuses on three dimensions, namely the relationship between spatial party competition, different levels of opposition cohesion or fragmentation, as well as extra-institutional strategies of contestation. The country comparison illustrates that party systems with cross-cutting cleavages tend to produce divided patterns of contestation (Montenegro and Serbia), whereas reinforcing cleavages facilitate the coordination among different types of opposition actors (North Macedonia). Finally, large protests, rather than boycotts, prior to elections have been important factors in facilitating opposition cohesion and signalling broad support (Montenegro and North Macedonia).

In Central Europe, people trust each other less than in Western European countries. According to the common approach to volunteering, this should also mean fewer volunteers available. Our research examines whether two forms of volunteering—formal and informal—compete for engaged individuals in Central Europe. On a sample of 2,034 respondents from Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, we analyzed by structural equation model on how social capital and human capital influence wealth and time availability in relation to formal and informal volunteering. Our findings show that the two forms of volunteering do not compete but rather complement each other. Additionally, income has a stronger influence on both formal and informal volunteering than time availability. Furthermore, formal volunteering appears to be more sensitive to fluctuations in the availability of financial resources and time among potential volunteers, confirming resource theory.

Are immigrants entitled to the right to vote in receiving societies? Or is voting the most effective path to fostering immigrants’ political agency, integration, and protection of their interests? This special issue explores these core questions through a range of contributions that offer nuanced and forward-thinking insights. In this introduction, we survey key literature at the intersection of democratic theory and migration justice, outlining major arguments and tensions in the field. By weaving together diverse perspectives, we propose a framework to navigate what may seem like deep divisions, ultimately clarifying the evolving role of political participation in immigrant inclusion and democratic legitimacy. While we recognize the differing positions among scholars, we emphasize points of convergence and the broader trajectory of the debate. This approach reflects our hope to promote constructive dialogue and highlight emerging consensus, particularly in light of the contentious nature of migration and its implications for democratic practice.

Increasingly many citizens residing abroad maintain connections to their country of origin and follow its national elections. Considering that this group constitutes a growing share of the national electorate, it is essential to better understand factors that motivate electoral participation. In this study, we explore the role of economic, social and cultural ties in a unified analysis of turnout among Finnish citizens residing abroad. We rely on individual-level register data that cover the entire Finnish expatriate electorate (n = 96,290) and match their personal background characteristics (e.g. property ownership, length of stay abroad, language) with official turnout from the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections on the bases of personal identification codes. In line with the theoretical expectations, the results provide strong empirical evidence that non-resident citizens who maintain connections to the country of origin are more likely to vote in homeland elections.