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.

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.