ABSTRACT This article aims to delineate the underlying causality of gender violence, specifically the perseverance of rape as an institutional failure, in the particular spatio-temporality of France. The nonexistent levels of convictions for rape (0.6%), compared with the increase in reported rapes (a rape every 2.3 min, 1/2 women are survivors, 1/6 women entered sexuality through rape), forge a certain continuity with previous contexts in which rape was a crime against the honour of the family, rather than against the integrity of the victim. Rape is actively shaped by intersecting forms of violence. It is institutionalised because the authorities’ response is first to induce such a failure of justice. The ‘morphogenetic régulation’ approach endows my reflection with meta-theoretical depth to observe how one can explain such systemic persistence. The findings call for urgent academic and policy attention in re-examining the entire training procedures for judicial officers.

ABSTRACT In Part 1 of this interview Professor Benton discussed his early life, education and the start of his academic career and focused in particular on his Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies and his views on realism. In Part 2 he turns to his subsequent work. He discusses his most significant articles and later books. As well as his work as a field naturalist, the discussion ranges across structural Marxism, the moral status of animals, the Red-Green Study Group and Capitalism Nature Socialism, his various exchanges with critics of ‘first-stage ecosocialism’ and views on the ‘metabolic rift’ thesis and its offshoots, and his work to raise the profile of Alfred Russel Wallace. He concludes with some reflections on the role realist philosophy and theory has played in his work.

ABSTRACT By accounting for the role of reflexive agency in the persistence and transformation of capitalist systems, this paper examines how market-driven reforms created momentum for neoliberalization in Palestine after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in the early 1990s, leading to the intensification of neoliberalization after the political intradivision in 2007. To understand how neoliberalization unfolded, the paper draws on the variegated neoliberalization thesis. It supplements this with the ‘morphogenetic régulation' (MR) approach, and its notion of reflexive conatus, which considers ideas in terms of ‘self-explication' and ‘adequacy' originating in the material. Through this lens, the paper investigates Palestinian agents’ actions as they diachronically interacted with the structural constraints of the Oslo neoliberal peace paradigm as they mediated neoliberalization. Their actions were not merely shaped by internal and external pressures. Still, they were also strategically recalibrated to preserve their vested interests in the Palestinian Authority as a structure.

ABSTRACT This article argues that social movement studies need a trans-immanent approach to better understand the persistence of collective action over time. Existing literature, based on immanent accounts of substance, fails to explain why social movements persevere. Immanence, by reducing substance to observable attributes, overlooks the complex causality at play in social phenomena. A trans-immanent perspective, as demonstrated through the morphogenetic régulation (MR) framework, offers a deeper insight into how social movements evolve. The case of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes (NDDL) movement in France highlights the utility of this approach. By applying MR to the NDDL movement, this study shows how the framework captures the interaction between the movement's internal dynamics and external factors shaped by political economic conditions. MR provides the tools to analyze the environment of social movements from a political economy viewpoint, helping researchers uncover the hidden causes of collective action.

ABSTRACT This article aims to illustrate an application of Knio's Morphogenetic Régulation (MR) in education policy scholarship. In doing so, I am particularly interested in revisiting and unpacking the broader reasoning that underpins this framework in order to demonstrate its analytical strength and practical value for applied research. Accordingly, I discuss the roots of MR in Archer's Morphogenetic Approach (MA) and its subsequent refinement through a Spinozian notion of immanent causality and methodological tenets from the French Régulation tradition in political economy, highlighting the implications of these analytical enhancements for the work of social researchers. Among the various ontological innovations introduced by MR, I emphasize how it reinserts the causal role of ideas - always embedded in material conditions - into morphogenetic thinking to elucidate how agents' reflexivity across moments of social interaction creates an opportunity, largely overlooked in the original MA, to address retroductive (or causal) questions in social inquiry.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the crisis of meritocracy within liberal governance, exposing its role in perpetuating inequality under the guise of fairness. Employing the ‘morphogenetic régulation’ analytical approach, it traces the institutional origins of inclusive governance through the tension between meritocracy and systemic privilege. The study contrasts two perspectives: (1) the orthodox view, rooted in rational choice institutionalism, which frames inequality as a technical issue solvable through market-driven reforms, as seen in World Bank policies, and (2) the heterodox perspective, informed by critical theorists, which views inequality as a product of relational power dynamics, demanding structural transformation. Analyzing World Bank reports and theories of oppression, the paper reveals how the inclusive governance, while aiming for equity, reformulates neoliberal logics, failing to address deeper systemic disparities. This analysis highlights the limits of both perspectives, advocating for a reimagined social justice that transcends neoliberal constraints to tackle global inequalities.

ABSTRACT This article examines the systemic persistence of Mexico's militarized approach to drug control, commonly known as the ‘war on drugs’, through the analytical framework of morphogenetic régulation. This model is particularly suitable for understanding how a policy that has demonstrably failed to reduce drug trafficking, violence, or organized crime has nonetheless achieved systemic reproduction, thereby deepening existing social and institutional crises. Applying the problématique of perseverance and the analytical tools of MR, the study shows how the National Security Doctrine and the notion of ‘enemy within’ have sustained the formation, objectivation, and objectification of interests around this failed policy, ensuring its continued reproduction. Furthermore, the article sustains that institutionalizing the Armed Forces’ role in civilian security now conditions a new cycle characterized by militarism. By identifying the underlying causal mechanisms driving the persistence of this policy, the article contributes to broader debates on the militarization and militarism of Mexican institutions.

ABSTRACT This article introduces the morphogenetic régulation (MR) framework to analyze the complex international political economy (IPE) of the Internet following the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI). The paper's necessity is established by first presenting a critique of the value and limitations found in two major works: Fazi on computational indeterminacy and Luhmann’s autopoiesis. The respective problematics of perseverance and absence anchor an explanation of MR’s philosophical foundations and key ontological concepts. The article then provides an illustrative morphogenetic cycle of generative AI. The cycle demonstrates that the linkages between material and ideational imperatives established during the nascent years of the World Wide Web were necessary conditions for data commodification and infrastructural centralization dynamics that structure ethical and regulatory debates on generative AI today.