ABSTRACT This paper provides the first empirical evidence of the French stock market reaction to the recent French snap legislative election amid growing concern about the rise of the Far Right in France. Using the Difference-in-Differences method, we analyze daily stock returns for a sample of French and other European firms listed in the STOXX Europe 600 Index from 11 January 2024 to 16 July 2024 and document negative stock market reactions surrounding the unexpected announcement of the legislative election. Specifically, we observe a 0.054% reduction in stock market returns for French firms, compared with other European firms unaffected by these snap elections. This negative reaction persisted irrespective of the election rounds, albeit with a slight improvement in the second round following improved investor sentiment occasioned by lower results for the Far Right than those predicted in the polls. Further sectoral analysis reveals that the negative impact of the election was evident in most sectors, except for the utility sector. Overall, we provide robust evidence of the significant negative impact of the snap legislative election on French stock returns. We discuss the implications of these findings for investors and policymakers.

ABSTRACT Since the democratic transitions of the 1990s, the Northern Triangle has exhibited persistent governance fragility. Under Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), Honduras experienced democratic backsliding marked by electoral irregularities, institutional capture, state violence, and transnational criminal entanglements. In response to sustained civic mobilization, the JOH administration endorsed the MACCIH (2016–2020), a hybrid anti-corruption initiative backed by the OAS. This study – drawing on official documentation, over 1,000 press sources, and fieldwork in Tegucigalpa and Washington D.C. – argues that, despite its mandate, the MACCIH inadvertently reinforced corrupt entrenchment and elite convergence, becoming a reluctant agent in Honduras’s democratic backsliding.

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship of qualitative data to place-based decision-making and the role of data observatories in these emerging debates and practices. Qualitative data enables the understanding and evaluation of the lived and felt experience of place. This article identifies where qualitative data approaches intersect with place-based policy and existing data observatory initiatives. While data observatory initiatives and projects address how data is stored and shared, the specificities and nuances of doing this work for qualitative data remain unexamined. This article analyses findings from a project that scoped the potential of a qualitative data observatory. It draws together empirical data from a review of different types of data observatories, a series of interviews and focus groups with qualitative data users, and two workshops with creative practitioners and stakeholders. This mixed-methods approach seeks to outline the possibilities of combining qualitative data and data observatory methods. The findings suggest three themes that guide a framework for designing, building and sustaining a qualitative data observatory: generation, connection, use.

ABSTRACT The fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the end of the twentieth century was not without its fair share of challenges. One of these was the dilemma of whether it was possible to repair the injustices committed by these oppressive regimes and what shape a reparatory scheme ought to take in case of a positive answer to this question. In this article, we adopt a position according to which achieving reparatory justice was necessary in the context of the political transitions of the 1990s in order to restore the moral fabric of societies affected by egregious historical injustices. We focus on the specific case of the former communal villages in Romania. We employ the Institutional Analysis and Development framework in order to analyze the development of the obști, but we go further than preceding studies in also assessing the normative implications of the restitutive measures adopted in the 1990s. We argue that the obști case study shows a failure to instantiate even a minimalist conception of historical justice. We end the article by presenting a way forward, one that is based on social capital as opening the possibility of a more meaningful return to self-governance.

ABSTRACT Since the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka has increasingly drifted toward a competitive authoritarianism, representing a cumulative outcome of the executive presidential system. The concentration of power in the executive presidency has progressively weakened the legislature, judiciary, and civil service, rendering the public administration subservient to political authority. This article, thus, examines how competitive authoritarianism – entrenched through constitutional engineering and political manoeuvring – has eroded Sri Lanka's democratic public administrative system, a topic that has received limited scholarly attention among South Asian scholars. The 1978 Constitution and subsequent constitutional amendments institutionalized competitive authoritarianism by centralizing authority in the hands of the Executive President, thereby dismantling the independence of the civil service and other key accountability institutions. The article contends that the executive presidency empowered successive leaders to manipulate governance mechanisms, undermine watchdog institutions, and weaken the accountability framework, ultimately subverting both public administration and democratic norms. Thus, Sri Lanka serves as a critical test case for understanding how an executive presidential system can contribute to democratic backsliding and the deterioration of a public administration originally established during the British colonial period as an impartial, legitimate, rational, and rule-based system.

ABSTRACT This study examines disability governance in a rentier state context, to determine whether it sustains institutionalization or advances deinstitutionalization. Employing the meso-level Policy Arrangement Approach, the study explores four dimensions – discourse, actors, resources, and rules. Using a corpus of 427 coded text segments analysed through qualitative and computational (R-based) methods, the findings reveal a hybrid governance model – controlled neo-corporatism – where the state retains centralized authority while permitting structured roles for non-state actors in service delivery. The findings identify a “controlled neo-corporatist” model that paradoxically combines state dominance in agenda-setting and resource allocation with structured non-state participation in service delivery and advocacy. This model partially aligns with rights-based framework, but is constrained by institutional resilience. The study rejects the hypothesis of persistent centralized control, supporting instead a transition to hybrid governance driven by global norms and modernization, though full deinstitutionalization remains limited by state-centric priorities. This contributes to comparative disability studies by highlighting unique governance dynamics in rentier states, bridging macro-level policy with micro-level exclusionary outcomes.

ABSTRACT The ageing populations in countries across the world raise concerns about the effectiveness of welfare policies to support the health and well-being of older people (aged 66 years and older). Many older people live in poverty without a regular income and the welfare support available can vary considerably across different countries. In the UK, an estimated 2.2 million older people live in relative income poverty and many have unmet care needs. However, not all older people in the UK take-up the means-tested welfare benefits that they are entitled to. Research in the North West of England suggests that a number of interlinked factors were associated with older people not taking up welfare benefits including: awareness, not recognizing vulnerability, fear, a lack of trust, the complexity of applying, stigma and embarrassment, language barriers and concerns about having money taken away. There was a determination amongst older people not to be seen as being a burden or in need, but also frustration and anger about their right to welfare support. As the population ages, more effective and accessible welfare systems are required, which recognize the support needs of older people, as part of a renewed relationship between citizens and the state.

ABSTRACT This article examines Qatar's evolving governance model as it transitions from a rentier, state-centric welfare regime towards a more participatory framework, integrating the private sector and civil society. Grounded in administrative-governance and collaborative-governance theories, the analysis tests four key conditions for effective state-society collaboration: regulatory coherence, inter-sectoral coordination, legal-institutional flexibility, and stakeholder inclusiveness. Employing a mixed-methods design, the study draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, experts, and NGO leaders, complemented by a systematic review of academic and policy literature, and triangulated with legal texts and public project data. The 2020 Public-Private Partnership Law has spurred private investment, demonstrating that UNCITRAL-aligned regulation can strengthen performance legitimacy. Yet overlapping statutes, rigid contractual frameworks, and a charitable licensing model for NGOs continue to hinder adaptive governance. These constraints result in duplicated services, delays, and limited civic input-undermining procedural legitimacy in a non-electoral context. The article proposes policy recalibration through statutory harmonization, an NGO advocacy license, a supra-ministerial interpretive council, and institutionalized feedback mechanisms linking public input to policy outcomes. By situating empirical findings within Gulf political realities, it contributes to debates on collaborative governance in hybrid regimes seeking legitimacy through institutional innovation.

ABSTRACT Social sciences have seen a so-called practice turn, moving beyond a preoccupation with individual attitudes and behaviour towards the more contextually-embedded concept of social practices to understand drivers and change levers of social action. However, in the policy sciences engagement with Social Practice Theories (SPT) is relatively scarce. Approaches and studies endorsing behaviourist approaches continue to outnumber more sociological, relational perspectives, including SPT. Behaviourist and SPT approaches rest on divergent understandings of social action and change, with contrasting implications for understanding the impact of policy alternatives and the policy processes. In this article, we stimulate discussion on how wider use of SPT – as developed in the field of sociology – in public policy can advance understanding of the dynamics of policy impact and policymaking. Based on a systematic review of current applications of SPT in public administration journals we identify the motivations for and scope of SPT in policy research, after which we propose a research agenda along two streams of theorization which may benefit from engaging more thoroughly with SPT: (i) the practices of target groups, and (ii) the practices of policy work and public administration.

ABSTRACT Democratic backsliding threatens core principles of public administration, particularly merit-based recruitment and bureaucratic impartiality. While most existing research relies on single-country analyses, this study offers a cross-national perspective using data from 85 countries between 1996 and 2022. We distinguish among three sequential stages of backsliding – mild erosion, complete erosion, and reversion – and assess their effects on merit and impartiality. The findings show that both principles weaken as backsliding deepens, with the steepest declines occurring in the transition from mild to complete erosion. We further explore contestation and participation as distinct dimensions of democracy. The results indicate that declining contestation is closely linked to losses in merit, while reductions in participation are more strongly associated with diminished impartiality, particularly in later stages of backsliding. Overall, the study illustrates that democratic backsliding affects public administration in differentiated ways, depending on both the stage and the dimension of decline.