ABSTRACT This article concerns the Russian ‘oligarchs’ targeted with sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine. It makes three contributions. First, the article presents a dataset on 60 ‘oligarchs’, which illuminates the lives and wealth strategies of super-rich Russians before and after the sanctions. Second, it assesses the motivations behind the targeted sanctions against the ‘oligarchs’, and examines the flawed logics that made their failure, on any metric, a foregone conclusion. Third, having contextualised the sanctioned Russian ‘oligarchs’ within a much broader trend of super-rich individuals moving themselves or their assets out of their autocratic country of origin, the article outlines what a more coherent liberal democratic policy towards such globalised ‘oligarchs’ should look like. It proposes three policy principles that would together amount to a ‘liberal bargain’ on offer to super-rich individuals from authoritarian states of origin.

ABSTRACT This article explores the transnational diffusion of post-Islamist models among moderate Islamist parties in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, with a focus on Tunisia’s Ennahda. While existing literature often prioritises domestic factors, this study emphasises the role of cross-border influences, particularly the strategic learning derived from the Turkish AKP and Moroccan PJD. Drawing on diffusion theory, content analysis, and sixty interviews with Ennahda members, the article shows how Ennahda selectively emulated aspects of these parties’ experiences, while adapting them to Tunisia’s context. Positive diffusion occurred through learning and collaboration, while negative diffusion emerged in response to the AKP’s authoritarian shift and the PJD’s close ties to its religious parent movement. The findings highlight the agency of Islamist actors in shaping their trajectories and illustrate how transnational engagement has contributed to the evolution of post-Islamism as a context-dependent, pragmatic trend, rather than a coherent or uniform ideological project.

ABSTRACT Thisstudy examines the ‘Westernness’ underlying Brazil’s foreign policy between2003 and 2025. This is an intriguing subject since Brazilian foreignpolicymakers have been identifying the country as a ‘Western power’ and ‘emergingpower’ situated within the Global South. Drawing upon the intrasubjectiveapproach of Ontological Security theory, this article scrutinises how Brazil’sWestern identity has been articulated in its foreign policy across differentgovernments. It concludes that the ways in which foreign policymakers haveexpressed the Western identity of the country have undergone significantvariations as Brazil has demonstrated reflexive capacity while projectingvarious, sometimes competing, identities. Moreover, the country’s ambiguouspositions regarding the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicthave the potential to trigger ‘dislocatory events’ for its ontologicalsecurity. These developments place its Western identity under strain, sincesuch events expose inconsistencies within Brazil’s identities as a Westernpower and a member of the Global South.

ABSTRACT Crises usually serve as critical junctures for institutional reform or regime change. Yet in Lebanon, different crises have not only failed to trigger structural transformation but have also reinforced the grip of entrenched political elites. This article examines how Lebanon's regime has demonstrated resilience across a series of major crises since 2005. The analysis focuses on how external legitimation cycles and elite sequential learning enable regime adaptation across different crises. This allows for a comprehensive understanding of the regime's persistence, distinguishing between top-down elite strategies, bottom-up societal pressures, and the legitimizing role of external actors. It argues that elite survival has relied on deeply rooted patronage networks, strategic use of sectarian governance, and the ability to recalibrate power structures in response to each crisis. This article shows how crisis-enabled adaptation and external legitimation cycles offer broader insights into the durability of hybrid and sectarian regimes under conditions of protracted crises.

ABSTRACT From the outset of his first presidency, Donald Trump rejected the liberal-democratic teleology anchoring U.S. grand strategy in favour of a security-first approach. Rather than a clean break, this sharpened a dilemma for hegemonic powers: whether to seek stability by making secondary states politically similar or strategically safe. This ‘political regime dilemma’ drives U.S. foreign policy oscillations, particularly in democracy promotion. This article offers a structural explanation, arguing that when the international status quo is stable, hegemonic powers pursue long-term transformative goals like reshaping domestic orders. Conversely, when the status quo is challenged by strategic rivals, they prioritise short-term objectives, notably securing alignment or neutrality amid intensifying great power competition. The article tests this hypothesis through a diachronic comparison of U.S. administrations since 1993, showing how structural conditions shaped the prioritisation of democracy promotion within American grand strategy.

ABSTRACT While there is no shortage of scholarship on Turkey’s military industry, the field lacks theoretically grounded and critical political-economy analyses to explain the implications of this recent ‘military turn.’ This study aims to fill this gap by situating the development of the military-industrial complex within Turkey’s shifting growth strategies and the coalition of key actors that underpin them. The military industry plays a crucial role through two main mechanisms. First, it establishes a network of relationships that fosters the development of a relatively high value-added sector, creating a secure environment for capital accumulation across diverse capital groups. Second, it supports a foreign policy and trade strategy that increasingly relies on military power.

ABSTRACT Despite substantial defects, elections in autocracies have become standard, where incumbents face risks of being voted out. But what happens when the opposition wins? To answer this question, we study the scenario where an autocratic party loses subnational elections but retains national power and introduce the concept of ‘subnational autocratic opposition (SAO)’. Through a conceptual exercise studying a unique kind of opposition with unprecedented powers, we contribute to authoritarian regime literature and opposition politics which has remained under-theorised. Building on a case study of Turkey and series of other cases across the world, we first define and clarify the concept and then identify three major strategies that SAO uses: resource deprivation and recuperation, authority subversion, and legitimacy erosion. We argue that SAO can play a significant role in regime survival. The implications of this research extend to the study of authoritarian resilience, demonstrating how autocrats navigate electoral defeats to sustain their rule.

ABSTRACT This study develops the Critical Cultural Deliberative Democracy (CCDD) framework to investigate a central structural deficiency in contemporary governance: the marginalisation of autonomous grassroots public life. It addresses a critical research gap in democratic theory, namely the lack of conceptual tools to diagnose how ostensibly democratic societies use regulatory systems to suppress cultural counterpublics. Focusing on Venster99, a non-commercial cultural association in Vienna, the study uses a critical case study methodology, triangulating semi-structured interviews, media reports, and legal documents. The paper argues that regulatory enforcement reflects a managerial politics of order that reproduces dominant cultural frameworks through administrative power. It provides an analytical tool to diagnose structural exclusion and advancing the scholarly conversation from describing democratic deficits to precisely diagnosing their administrative execution.

ABSTRACT The literature largely lacks an organisational perspective of government impact on radical left and other radical parties in Western Europe, although they have increasingly participated in national governments. How and why do radical parties respond organisationally to government and government seeking? Do different party models provide distinct resistances to government challenges? This study applies cartel theory to two most similar cases, two European radical left parties that have led the government recently: the Cypriot AKEL (2008–2013) and the Greek Syriza (2015–2019). First, the study explores the power distribution and the interaction between the three faces of the party organisation in managing party and government affairs. Second, it examines the relevance of organisational legacies as intermediating effects on party organisation, in office-seeking contexts. Due to their preexisting relations with the state and organisational structures, the two cases diverge in terms of the magnitude of cartelisation.

ABSTRACT Right-wing populists harbour suspicion toward big business, so the literature finds. Despite their general sympathy for private capital, they have been found to manifest outright hostility toward big business or construct uneasy cooperation with it. Hostility has been expressed mainly through noisy politics, while uneasy cooperation has been evident through quiet politics. I draw on the growth model perspective in political economy to challenge this dichotomy. Constrained by the economy's growth model, right-wing populists seek to reformulate the social bloc supporting the growth model to promote their political project. I argue that in so doing they may use noisy politics to advance big business interests. I illustrate this argument through the case of Israel's populist Likud party and its energy policy during 2012–2016 in the context of the discovery of large offshore gas basins.