This article investigates how the sex of party heads impacts party positions and uncovers that parties led by a woman modify their stances on sociocultural but not economic debates. I argue that this pattern is a consequence of dissimilar gender gaps in policy preferences across the two ideological dimensions at the elite level. The empirical evidence, based on data for 19 developed democracies around the world between 1995 and 2018, reveals that parties led by a woman tend to emphasise green, alternative and libertarian issues. In particular, anti‐growth, environmental protection and freedom and human rights become more prominent elements of party manifestos under women's leadership. Overall, these findings stress the importance of critical actors and the conditions under which the presence of women in political offices translates into responsiveness towards female citizens.

In this paper, I propose an updated analysis of the tone system of Paicî, one of the rare tonal Oceanic languages. Building on Jean-Claude Rivierre's (1974) work, I show that the tonal system of Paicî is best described with three underlying primitives: a High tone, a Low tone, and a downstep /↓/ analyzed as a register feature independent of tone. Paicî is particularly interesting for the empirical documentation as well as the typological and theoretical understanding of downstep, because it combines many rare properties: (i) only downstepped ↓L is attested; (ii) downstep is incompatible with H tones within the prosodic word (*↓H, *H…↓L); (iii) it is realized utterance-initially; (iv) it has accentual properties, and very likely derives from a former accentual system. The paper also provides an acoustic description of tone and downstep in Paicî, an important step toward filling a serious gap in the documentation of downstepped ↓L tones and their properties.

Political parties maintain connections with various sub-organisations to engage different segments of society. Common among these are party youth wings. These relationships are often described as mutual, where votes are exchanged for policies. However, little research delves into how members of these sub-organisations perceive their roles in relation to the senior party. Based on a web survey of approximately 3000 respondents, this study investigates the views of youth wing members within Swedish political parties. Specifically, it explores whether members believe their youth wing’s primary role should be to influence or support the senior party. Drawing on theories of political engagement incentives, it examines the connection between members’ political and career motivations and their perceptions of these roles. Results suggest that those with career-oriented incentives tend to view the youth wing as supportive, while politically motivated members prioritise influencing the senior party. This research contributes to our understanding of the complex dynamics within political parties and their affiliated organisations, shedding light on how individual motivations shape organisational roles.

The constituted legal status of “Union citizenship” has added another democratic static to the European Union's institutional architecture but it is not yet a status of full political empowerment. What is missing is a citizen-centered opening-up of the (technocratically disguised) European level as a political arena. This article argues that the idea of European citizenship can function as a normative reference point for struggles of political empowerment and institutional reform. Democratic innovations such as sortition-based citizens’ panels organized within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe have a socializing function, paving the way for a European-wide public debate on issues of common concern and opening up a chance of (re)appropriating the European Union's institutional structure as a political space. But in order to support lasting democratic transformations they must be backed up by institutional reforms that make European political rights more effective.

This study aimed at developing a scale to measure Social Added Value (SAV) according to the perspective of community members, building on the relational framework and complementing the work of Mannarini et al. (Voluntas: Int J Voluntary Nonprofit Organ 29(6):1315–1329, 2018). The study was conducted on 720 Italian citizens who were not directly involved in Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations (NPVOs) as active members to examine the statistical validity and psychometric properties of the SAV scale. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that good and satisfactory fit indexes were obtained by a third-order factor model saturated by two second-order variables (contribution to community and quality of external relationships) and eight first-order variables (services and tasks, vision, social responsibility, control mutuality, communality relationship, trust, commitment, capacity to build community connections). Additional analyses revealed that both perceived NPVOs target values and sense of belonging to the community were positively associated with SAV. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The presence of an elite group in civil society elicits a discursive friction between the long-standing normative understanding of civil society, acting as a check on government overreach and autocratic tendencies, and elite theories. Robert Michels’s iron law of oligarchy posits that as individuals rise in the ranks to become organizational leaders, they begin to take on elite attributes, and their priorities align with those of other elites and away from those of their constituents. Michels’s argument echoes with today’s populist anti-elitist rhetoric and the way populism rejects any intermediary bodies between the people and the political leaders, including interest organizations in civil society. As an attempt to empirically probe this theoretical tension, this paper explores satisfaction with the way democracy is working among the top-level leaders of the most well-resourced national-level civil society organizations in Sweden and in the UK, drawing on a survey study conducted in 2020–21.

A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk reduction in India and developed a typology of complementarities in this domain. The article considers the implications for understanding complementarity in broader CSO collaborations. We find that constructing collaborations through the lens of complementarity may facilitate capitalising on diversity among CSOs and help build collaborations that consider the domestic orientation of many Southern CSOs and reshape the roles of Northern CSOs as complementary rather than leading.

Existing explanations of individual preferences for decentralisation and secession focus on collective identity, economic considerations and party politics. This paper contributes to this literature by showing that preferences for fiscal and political decentralisation are also driven by concern about the quality of government in the face of corruption. It makes two claims. Firstly, information on national‐level corruption decreases satisfaction with national politicians, and subsequently increases preferences for decentralisation and secession. Secondly, information on regional‐level corruption pushes citizens of highly corrupt regions to prefer national retrenchment and unitary states. The effects of this political compensation mechanism crosscut national identities and involve regions that are not ethnically or economically different from the core. We test our argument using a survey experiment in Spain and confirm its cross‐national generalisability with data from the European Values Study.

This paper introduces Development Led Inquiry (DLI) as an approach to improve situations incorporating relationships between third sector organisations (TSOs) and agricultural scientists, universities, and the public-sector agricultural establishment. There is limited scholarly work on the role of TSOs in agricultural research. Current approaches appear premised on TSOs being researched upon, and recipients of research outcomes rather than partners in generation and application of new knowledge. DLI expands the boundaries of research systems and roles of TSOs as supporters within them. DLI builds on partnerships between NGOs, farmers’ organisations, and women’s associations; it integrates researchers and research organisations to develop, manage and report knowledge generation and application. DLI is dynamic and developmental with learning for all participants central to the process. DLI unsettles current power structures within research systems and sees research and knowledge generation as a supporter rather than leader of development. DLI is embedded in an inquiring systems approach and applies six interrelated conceptual systems thinking tools. The approach emerged from, and was applied in, a twelve-year agricultural research project in India, and was subsequently introduced to, and further developed in a research project in Pakistan.

This article addresses the limited understanding of how variegated practices of everyday automobility shape – and are shaped by – ageing processes of older adults in urban contexts, focusing on Brescia, Northern Italy. While automobility, driving and driving cessation are often studied as functional aspects of older adults’ (im)mobility, their relational dimensions – spanning multiple and diverse practices – remain largely under-explored. The research examines how older adults navigate the contradictions and challenges of urban life, health conditions and social structures through relational automobilities. Drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study, the article highlights how automobility serves simultaneously as a resource, a limitation and a medium for forging and sustaining social, emotional, geographical and material relationships. The findings reveal that diverse practices and experiences of automobility are deeply embedded in affective economies, interdependencies and the biopolitics of ageing, shaping – and being shaped by – the lived experiences of older adults. By conceptualizing automobility as a socio-material and relational process, the article aims at bridging critical gerontology and mobilities studies, offering new insights into how ageing and mobility practices co-produce ageing selves and conditions of being (im)mobile. This study contributes to ongoing debates in critical gerontology by problematizing dichotomic understandings of older adults’ experiences in terms such as independence versus dependence and mobility versus stasis, while also informing urban policies aimed at fostering inclusive mobility practices. This article emphasizes the need to address the socio-material and relational networks underpinning automobility, offering a nuanced perspective on the interplay between mobility, ageing and urban life.

This study examines political media consumption among non-resident citizens, and whether following politics in traditional and social media in their country of residence and origin has a mobilizing effect on voting in origin-country elections. The topic of our study is inspired by the trend towards increased enfranchisement of external citizens, improved methods for participation from abroad, and the transformation of the media landscape with enhanced possibilities for external voters to follow politics in their country of origin. Based on a survey directed towards a stratified random sample of Finnish external citizens in 15 countries, we find that politically oriented media consumption in the country of origin substantially increases the likelihood of participating in origin-country elections and that this effect holds for traditional media channels as well as for social media. A corresponding mobilizing effect is, however, not found for following politics in the country of residence. This demonstrates the value of relevant information for political participation.

The article focuses on the intellectual legacy of Giovanni Sartori, describing this figure as the “screenwriter” of an innovative project for Italian and European political science. Retracing the stages of Sartori’s journey as an author, academic leader, and scientific organizer, it highlights how other scholars have been able to build upon his work, showcasing the enduring impact of his vision. The article also provides data describing the scale and profile of the scientific community in Italy, since the phase of consolidation of political science, until nowadays. The analysis stresses the persistence of the original project designed by Sartori and sheds a light on the responsibilities of the “middle generation” of scholars in the dissemination of the discipline toward the new generations.

For decades, the cooperative enterprise (CE) produces market goods and/or provides services in the interest to its members, such as communities, customers, and suppliers. The upsurge of interest in social enterprises, and their balancing of social and economic interests, has also led to a renewed interest in CEs, often seen as a specific type of social enterprise. However, from an organizational perspective, this renewed interest has been both limited and scattered over a variety of fields. In this paper, we systematically review papers on CE in the mainstream organizational literature, defined as literature in the fields of economics, business, management and sociology. Our review integrates and synthesizes the current topics in the mainstream organizational literature and provides a number of avenues for future research. In addition, we compare our findings in the organizational literature to the social issues literature as these appeared to be quite complimentary. We found multilevel studies, determination of social impact—in particular measurable impact, managerial practices for sustainable (organisational) development, and the entrepreneurial opportunity generation process as the four key avenues for future research.

While public support is central to the problem‐solving capacity of the European Union, we know little about when and why the EU can increase its citizens’ support through spending. Extensive research finds that citizens living in countries that are net beneficiaries of the EU budget are more supportive of the EU, assuming that citizens care equally about all forms of spending. It is argued in this article, however, that the amount of spending is only part of the story. Understanding the effects of spending on support requires a consideration of how transfers are spent. Drawing on policy feedback theories in comparative politics, it is shown that support for the EU is a function of the fit between the spending area and economic need in individuals’ immediate living context. Results from a statistical analysis of EU spending on human capital, infrastructure, agriculture, energy and environmental protection in 127 EU regions over the period 2001–2011 corroborate this argument. As the EU and other international organisations become increasingly publicly contested, the organisations themselves may increasingly try to shore up public support through spending, but they will only be successful under specific conditions.

Multiple interrelated global crises challenge political thinkers and activists to engage with temporality. Taking the diagnosis of already unfolding planetary environmental catastrophe seriously, climate activists and environmental scholars in the Global North have increasingly focused on experiences of irredeemable loss. These “postapocalyptic” discourses draw on Indigenous, decolonial, and feminist engagements with temporality to highlight the interconnections between different temporal scales, speeds, and rhythms in the Anthropocene. Moreover, the notion of the postapocalyptic present offers an analytical link between historical narratives about the development of extractive capitalism and social “lived” temporalities of mourning, care, and disruption. Feminist debates about the limits and possibilities of social (care-) strikes here provide important insights about the need to interrupt dominant temporal regimes defined by an incessant drive for heightened economic productivity. Disruptive and prefigurative political practices can in turn create room for experimentation with more sustainable and caring forms of societal organization in a diminished present.

The recent crises in Europe impacted the volunteering patterns within formal organizations that provide support in regular and crisis times. In our paper, we investigated how volunteer coordinators from formal entities (public/governmental and non-governmental) perceive (1) the patterns of volunteering engagement (long-term versus episodic) in regular and crisis times, (2) the processes of retaining volunteers during crises; (3) the trust of the community toward various types of organizations during social crises; (4) the role of informal support groups in relation to the tasks of their organization. Between June and October 2023, we performed an online-based study (total N = 55)—in Poland (N = 28) and Italy (N = 27). The survey had multiple-choice and open-ended questions, and the results were analyzed qualitatively using the thematic analysis framework. The findings indicated that volunteer coordinators reckon that long-term and episodic volunteers play crucial and complementary roles in helping organizations achieve their objectives. This implies that organizations should recognize the value of both types of volunteers and consider them essential resources for pursuing organizational goals. The results also suggest that the volunteer retention strategies are worth outlining or revisiting within organizations, and attention should be paid to psychological support. According to coordinators, trust in non-governmental organizations is perceived as crucial in the beneficiaries' decisions about where to seek help. Collaboration with informal groups is advised, given that the goals can be achieved together, mutually using the resources provided by both types of helping entities.

Coalition building depends on citizens having a ‘compromising mindset’: they must accept that parties need to compromise in order to gain influence and that this entails deviating from the original policy positions. In this study, we show that European citizens understand that compromise is essential for democratic governance and that they, holding everything else constant, prefer political parties that express a willingness to compromise. This finding appears to be independent from specific forms of coalition politics and to be widespread across different levels of political interest, formal education and even ideological extremity. Our analysis compares observational data from the Austrian National Election Survey (AUTNES) 2020 and an original survey from Denmark in 2021. We also present results from a conjoint experiment fielded in Denmark, which evaluates the effect of willingness to compromise on vote choice. Our finding is good news for European democracies where coalition politics and thus compromise is a necessity for governance. Yet, for vote‐seeking politics, the situation is complex as citizens might sometimes punish parties for compromising, but sometimes also punish them for not compromising.

Our understanding of human sound systems is increasingly shaped by experimental studies. What we can learn from a single study, however, is limited. It is of critical importance to evaluate and substantiate existing findings in the literature by directly replicating published studies. Our publication system, however, does not reward direct replications in the same way as it rewards novel discoveries. Consequently, there is a lack of incentives for researchers to spend resources on conducting replication studies, a situation that is particularly true for speech production experiments, which often require resourceful data collection procedures and recording enviromnents. In order to sidestep this issue, we propose to ran direct replication studies with our students in the classroom. This proposal offers an easy and inexpensive way to conduct large-scale replication studies and has valuable pedagogical advantages for our students. To illustrate the feasibility of this approach, we report on two classroom-based replication studies on incomplete neutralization, a speech phenomenon that has sparked many methodological debates in the past. We show that in our classroom studies, we not only replicated incomplete neutralization effects, but our studies yielded effect magnitudes comparable to laboratory experiments and meta analytical estimates. We discuss potential challenges to this approach and outline possible ways to help us substantiate our scientific record.