There is something utopian about constituent power, whether this is the unrealisable idea of “the people” or the world-building nature of constitutional change. However, in contemporary constitutional scholarship “utopia” is more often used as a pejorative critique of reform projects that are seen as idealistic ambitious calls for constitutional change, which might fail for being “too utopian”, “too idealistic”, “too unrealistic”. In an attempt to move beyond this critique, this article draws on alternative approaches to utopianism to uncover the temporal assumptions underpinning contemporary approaches to constituent power and highlights the different approaches that can be exposed if theories of utopian-thinking are foregrounded. Both utopia and constituent power are closely aligned with visions of alternative futures, and constitutional scholars agree that there is an intersection between utopian thinking and the subjectivities, temporalities and operationalisation of constituent power. Moving away from utilising utopia as a pejorative label and engaging instead with what it can expose about temporalities, offers alternative approaches to the study of constituent power.

It is established that the sporadic simple groups, the alternating groups and the projective special linear groups $L_2(p)$ for primes $p \geq 5$ are uniquely determined by their group orders and the minimum nontrivial codegrees of their irreducible characters.

Extensive research has examined whether political satire promotes or suppresses political discussion, but far less attention has been paid to how it shapes discourse quality. This study investigates the impact of political satire on discourse quality by scrutinizing the substance of online discussions in a non-democratic context. Drawing on manual content analysis of discussions on a major Chinese social media platform surrounding China’s controversial policy to raise the age of retirement, we analysed original posts and subsequent replies (N = 3,400) to assess the impact of satire on online political talk. The results show that political satire significantly decreases topic relevance and rationality, while exerting no significant effect on civility, and virtually precludes argument reciprocity. These findings contribute theoretically by shifting the focus from whether satire stimulates political engagement to how it influences the substantive quality of deliberation. They also invite a reassessment of the often-overemphasized optimistic role of political satire, highlighting its potential to erode rational and constructive discourse.

This article investigates the lives of Sufi leaders following the Turkish state’s abolition of Sufism in 1925. Examining the professions and career paths of Sufi shaykhs, it demonstrates that Sufi masters worked primarily in government jobs and institutions, and maintained a relatively high social status in the new nation-state, despite official denunciations of shaykhs as spiritual charlatans and parasites. As such, it argues that the state pursued a policy of inclusion and integration rather than one of persecution or elimination. While acknowledging that some Sufi leaders were victims of state policy, this article casts doubt on the persecution narrative and demonstrates a broad range of experiences and trajectories for Sufis in the early Turkish Republic. It illustrates that the state welcomed many shaykhs into the new institutions of the nation, including the Grand National Assembly, local government, schools, and libraries, as well as academia and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

Octahedral transition metal complexes are increasingly recognised as useful tools for the development of complex cations that recognise and interact with specific DNA sequences and higher-order DNA topologies. The versatility and diversity of these complexes is particularly due to their rich photophysical and electrochemical properties at the octahedral metal centre, which can be modulated by changing the surrounding ligands. While X-ray crystallography provides uniquely direct structural information on metal-DNA binding, it is one of several essential approaches; solution-state methods such as NMR and complementary biophysical studies are critical for defining predominant binding modes in solution and in biologically relevant environments. Here, we present an overview of the different binding modes of some of these octahedral transition metal complexes with DNA, emphasising the structural and biophysical studies employed to understand metal complex–DNA interactions.

The onset of vortex breakdown in supersonic flows remains an unsolved problem in physics. In this study, a sufficient condition for spiral vortex breakdown to occur in supersonic flows was derived from the conserved total enthalpy at the vortex axis under complete supersonic inflow conditions. The theoretical threshold was simply determined by the relationship between the magnitudes of the kinetic and internal energies (i.e. axial velocity squared and static temperature, respectively) downstream. In addition, it was found that the squared velocity and static temperature in the sufficient condition were closely related to a rapid reduction in the helicity, which indicated that vortex breakdown occurred. Numerical simulations confirmed that the theoretical threshold corresponds to the onset of spiral vortex breakdowns in supersonic flows.

Since the Global Financial Crisis, the European Union (EU) has gone from crisis to crisis. The chronic growth and productivity problems have been compounded by the poor management of the Eurozone crisis, by the no-longer postponable green and digital transitions, and by the changing geopolitical environment, with the end of the old multilateral order. The European institutions still embed the principles of an old consensus based on market efficiency, and do not allow for macroeconomic and industrial policies for the structural transformation. We discuss possible reforms to realign the EU institutions with the needs and the challenges the bloc faces.

China’s growing technological power and the resulting US–China rivalry prompted various countries, including Japan, to adopt necessary countermeasures. This study examines Japan’s strategic approach to economic security and technology policy under the framework of policy emulation and vested interests. The US–China technology competition urged Japan to reformulate its technological strategies with the aim of reducing economic dependence on China. Japan’s policy reactions are characterized by policy emulation with two orientations: rational emulation to follow the US policy developments and symbolic imitation as a way of reverting to the previous industrial policy. Concurrently, Japan’s policy initiatives were constrained by vested interests to maintain stable economic relations with China and past cooperative practices formed by the Japanese business group.

This editorial examines the current debate surrounding attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder prevalence, the perceived surge in diagnoses and the growing pressure on healthcare services. It discusses the wide methodological variation in recent studies, the limited pool of high-quality evidence and the challenges this creates when trying to understand true population rates. The article highlights the gap between stable epidemiological estimates and the marked rise in referrals, waiting lists, private assessments and prescribing. It explores how increased awareness, evolving diagnostic criteria and improved detection of previously unrecognised cases contribute to the overall picture, along with the role of social media and shifting societal attitudes. Implications for policy and clinical practice are outlined, emphasising the need for efficient clinical pathways, better-quality data and more comprehensive, multi-informant assessments.

Does the way people talk about time affect how they think about it? Whereas English speakers describe the duration of events most often in terms of spatial length (e.g., a long night), Greek speakers tend to talk about duration in terms of multidimensional spatial size (e.g., mia megali nychta, tr. a big night) or amount (e.g., poli ora, tr. much time). After quantifying these linguistic patterns, we gave non-linguistic tests of duration estimation to English and Greek speakers. English speakers’ estimates were influenced more strongly by irrelevant length information and Greek speakers’ by irrelevant amount information, consistent with verbal metaphors for duration in English and Greek. Next, we tested duration estimation with concurrent verbal interference, to confirm that the observed effects did not depend on participants verbally labeling the stimuli during the task. Finally, we trained English speakers to use Greek-like metaphors for duration, which resulted in Greek-like performance on a non-linguistic duration estimation task. Results show that (a) people who talk about time differently also think about it differently, (b) these effects are not due to participants’ using verbal labels during the task, and (c) language can play a causal role in shaping even basic non-linguistic mental representations of time.

Economic liberalisation and labour market reforms have radically transformed China’s socio-economic landscape. Although awareness of disability equality has improved – particularly following the introduction and enforcement of disability quota schemes – existing research has not yet adequately explored the lived experiences of disabled individuals within these frameworks. This deficiency is especially glaring in the context of public-sector employment, which is often considered a more stable and secure option for workers. Using institutional theory and its three-pillar framework from W.R. Scott’s Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities, this paper aims to fill this research gap by investigating key institutional features of public-sector employment, focusing on bianzhi, pre-employment physical examinations and workplace social dynamics. By doing so, it aims to assess the real-world impact of progressive policies such as disability quotas on disabled workers. Our findings indicate that structural institutional barriers continue to impede and marginalise disabled employees in the public-employment sector, underlining the need for a more robust and collaborative strategy to elevate awareness of disability equality in China.