The urban Leviathan: A political economy analysis of economic growth, social displacement, and cultural erasure in the Addis Ababa corridor project

• Industrialization in Ennore is unauthorized, unsustainable, infringed and unjust • Industrialization and urbanization have decreased the area of wetlands by 89.34% • Subnational government had manipulated 1996-CZMP Map to favour political elites • Manipulation had served political elites’ interests, to favor that of global elites • Peri-urban environmental injustice is caused by regulatory capture by the elites Industrialization, urbanization and population growth are the major drivers behind abominable ‘Land-Use Land-Cover Change (LULCC)’, and the loss of local ecosystem services and environmental quality, at peri-urban interfaces. Such dynamics indicate the need to analyse the LULCC pattern, and explore the political drivers behind unsustainable LULCC. This paper, taking ‘Ennore Peri-Urban Region’ as the study area, has adopted a ‘Geospatial Mixed-Methods Case-Study Approach’ that synergises ‘Quantitative LULCC Analysis’ and ‘Qualitative Political Discourse Analysis’. The quantitative LULCC analysis was performed by utilizing ‘Supervised Image Classification’ and ‘Change Detection Analysis’. Quantitative results have revealed that total area of wetland, waterbody and cropland/shrubland has decreased by 89.34%, 14.43% and 10.61% respectively, in the period 1988-2023. Especially, cropland/shrubland has been severely affected in the core industrial region. Such unsustainable LULCC has occurred due to an intensive peri-urban industrialization, and a gradual peri-urbanization. The area under settlement and dense-vegetation have increased by 507.84% and 3.42%, respectively. Qualitative-political discourse analysis has revealed that such an unsustainable peri-urban LULCC has occurred due to the five-year delay in preparing the ‘Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP)’ and its map, and the unauthorized manipulation of 1996-CZMP Map by the subnational ‘Government of Tamil Nadu’, without the approval of the national ‘Government of India’. Such delay and manipulation had initially favoured the vested interests of political elites, and eventually that of global urban business elites, through regulatory capture by the latter. These indicate an inefficient, unfair, unequitable, unjust, incoherent and non-transparent intergovernmental environmental governance, and a weak public participation in decision-making.

Becoming serious young men: Joblessness, platform enterprising, and the contradictory production of Amazon reselling in North India

Community health workers are a feminized cadre often engaged informally with low pay and without labor law protections. Feminist political economy (FPE) argues that the undervaluation of health and care workers relates to gendered assumptions around skill and motivation. We examined the labor rights and protections of Nepal’s Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) through an FPE lens to assess the valuation of their work by decision-makers and the opportunity costs of volunteering. Our case study design collected data from 165 documents, 26 semi-structured interviews and five focus groups from four districts in Bagmati province, analysed via thematic analysis using a two-pronged framework derived from the World Health Organization’s recommendations for CHW programs and health workforce labor rights: ‘remuneration fairness’ relative to cost of living, labor market and workload, and ‘social protection’ as insurance, retirement benefits and legal recognition. Remuneration was not considered ‘fair’ relative to living costs, labor market context or their workload, contributing to turnover among younger, higher-educated FCHVs. Social protection gaps persisted around health and life insurance, and retirement compensation was low relative to the longstanding experience of some FCHVs. Although informality impedes FCHVs’ labor rights, some municipalities have added incentives and expanded social protections, in part through female Deputy Mayors and FCHVs elected into local government. Gendered assumptions around time availability and skill persist among policymakers, contributing to the low valuation of FCHV labor. • Community health workers face occupational hazards but lack labor protections • We analyzed labor rights of Nepal’s Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) • Remuneration did not cover expenses, workload; insurance and retirement gaps found • Under federalism, some municipalities have expanded FCHV labor rights • Gendered assumptions around women’s time availability and skill impede rights

ABSTRACT This article investigates the politics of vertical power transfers in Spain's decentralized territorial system using a dataset of transfers of powers granted between 1978 and 2022. The analysis challenges the centrality and understanding of the ‘credible exit threat’ as suggested by the Siroky et al. (2016. “Center–Periphery Bargaining in the Age of Democracy.” Swiss Political Science Review 22 (4): 439–453) model, in bargaining, showing that the Spanish government sometimes penalizes regions with high non-state-wide parties' electoral support instead. On the contrary, our analysis highlights economic dependence as a critical determinant, moderating the effect of political distinctiveness. This work offers a contribution to federalism research by identifying unique Spanish decentralization patterns and discussing their implications for other federal or regionalized systems.

ABSTRACT The participation of residents in planning and development decision making is an increasingly common objective of government in cities like Sydney. The right to ‘have your say’ has been extended to those who are often most negatively affected by changes in our urban environments. Yet, processes of participatory planning and community engagement struggle to reconcile the varied expectations and desires that communities bring to the consultation table, leaving many residents disillusioned by the very processes designed to include them. To better understand how Sydneysiders are responding to the post-political state in Sydney, with its commitment to the marketisation of infrastructure provision and consensus-seeking community consultations on this strategy, we asked resident groups about how they are creating new networks and arrangements of power to engage with the state on development issues. We found the most successful groups are working well beyond the limitations of the government consensus-seeking community consultation events because they understand the uneven power structure shaping their city. This study of the actions of Sydneysiders adds empirical weight to the critiques of Habermasian-esque consensus politics that seem to dominate contemporary models of community consultation. We use Chantal Mouffe, and particularly her ideas around the politics of agonistic pluralism, to think through the actions of local community action groups and broader alliances in Sydney.

Large language models (LLMs) have disrupted higher education, prompting a wave of scholarship on generative AI in the Political Science classroom. This emerging literature largely converges in arguing that educators should incorporate those tools into instruction and assessment. In this article, I challenge this view. I first provide a typology of current arguments for incorporating LLMs, showing that those rest on the notion that the proliferation of AI is inevitable, inescapable, and irreversible. Given theoretical frameworks beyond technological determinism within Political Science, I argue that the call to integrate AI into the classroom not only lags behind insights of our own discipline, but also risks undermining its primary learning objectives. Instead, I suggest we need to bring politics back into the debate, which not only recovers educators’ agency but also refocuses it on the core interest of a Political Science degree—the study of politics, orders, and power.

Wild insect pollinators contribute significantly to agricultural productivity, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning. Wild pollinators are increasingly affected by multiple interacting stressors. Proactively identifying emerging risks and feasible mitigation strategies will be critical to ensuring the long-term stability of wild pollinators biodiversity and pollination services. We conducted the first continental scale horizon scan focused on wild pollinators in Europe. A structured Delphi-based approach was used to identify emerging issues that may have significant implications for wild pollinators over the coming decade. Ten priority issues were identified, including both potential risks and opportunities. For the first time in a pollinator-focused horizon scan, legislation was identified as a key opportunity, with the European Union Nature Restoration Regulation recognised for its potential to influence pollinator conservation through mandatory restoration and monitoring targets. In contrast, political developments such as the rise of populist parties and post-truth discourse may impede policy implementation. Several issues relating to pesticide use were also identified, including developments in RNA interference technologies and precision application methods, which may reduce non-target impacts if risks are appropriately assessed. These findings provide a foundation for further research and policy evaluation in support of pollinator conservation under changing environmental and political conditions.

ABSTRACT The online environment is becoming increasingly hostile to political science researchers globally and in Aotearoa New Zealand. This research note explores the issues confronted by a group of (mainly) Māori scholars in conducting an online survey about Māori electoral roll choices. Mainly, we describe three effects that ‘trolling’ had on the project: (1) effects on the project administration, (2) effects on the researchers, and (3) the effects on the data. To supplement this discussion, we present an analysis of some of the online comments on the publicly available Facebook advertisements for the survey (n=157). Given the content of the comments, we used codes from Barnes et al. (2012), 14 anti-Māori themes and developed supplementary codes. We describe the effects on the researchers and the need to create a safety plan. We also present analysis of participant data in the survey (n = 1,958) compared to the nationally representative New Zealand Election Study (n = 747of Māori descent), which, encouragingly, shows no apparent negative biases in the data quality or codes that correspond to the sentiment of the online comments. The research note illustrates pitfalls in the online environment for a Māori political science project and highlights potential issues for research within Aotearoa.

ABSTRACT In this article, we show how, through a civically engaged research (CER) process, a political science project on Latino civic organizations was transformed by community-based leaders with decades of experience in organizing, movement-building, and driving change. We offer lessons for building community-academia research partnerships and, through three case studies, demonstrate the benefits of CER methodologies. Ultimately, by drawing on evidence from a multi-phase, multi-year community-academia collaboration, we show how a CER process can produce a more ethical, rigorous, and potentially useful research project for communities under study.

ABSTRACT This study offers a political economy analysis of Afghan newspapers before 1979, examining how print media mediated relations between state power, external actors and projects of modernization and nation-building. Focusing on five key outlets, Shams-u-Nahar, Siraj-ul-Akhbar, Aman-e-Afghan, Anis and The Kabul Times, it traces three phases: the emergence of court-centred print under Amir Sher Ali during the Great Game; the reformist, anti-colonial moment associated with Mahmud Tarzi and King Amanullah; and the selectively liberalized media environment under Zahir Shah, including the ‘Free Parliament’ and ‘Decade of Democracy’. Combining a political-economy of communication framework with qualitative discourse analysis of selected issues, the article shows that newspapers operated primarily as instruments of propaganda, legitimation and developmental nationalism, while at specific junctures also opening constrained spaces for criticism and debate. It argues that pre-1979 Afghan print cannot be understood simply as an externally imposed project: exiled elites and domestic reformers appropriated Ottoman, Iranian, Indian and broader global models to articulate distinct visions of Afghan modernity, even as low literacy, limited infrastructure and linguistic fragmentation sharply curtailed their social reach and impact.

On April 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV delivered a landmark address at Unity Palace, the official residence of President Paul Biya in Yaoundé, Cameroon, during the second leg of his eleven-day Apostolic journey to Africa. Addressing heads of state, military generals, civil society leaders, and diplomats, the Pope’s speech stood out for its direct engagement with corruption, political authority, human rights, and national unity. Drawing on Augustinian theology, postcolonial ethics, and Catholic social teaching, Leo XIV’s address exemplifies what scholars may term ‘prophetic diplomacy’: pontifical speech that blends pastoral care with candid political critique. This article contends that the Pope strategically applies Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) using four primary rhetorical strategies and five central thematic clusters to simultaneously urge spiritual reflection, demand postcolonial accountability, and affirm solidarity with Cameroon’s marginalized communities. The article situates these findings within the wider tradition of papal diplomacy in sub-Saharan Africa.

ABSTRACT South Asia, long regarded as a region of resilient democratic norms and institutions is witnessing a steady erosion of these democratic norms. This article offers a comparative review of five countries – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka – examining how democratic backsliding is unfolding across different political systems, while incorporating recent electoral developments in Bangladesh and Nepal. Drawing on recent political developments, election trends and international assessments, the article highlights how elected governments are reshaping political systems by weakening institutional checks, curtailing dissent and centralising authority – often under the guise of popular mandates. While each country follows a distinct trajectory, common trends include growing authoritarianism, politicised nationalism and suppression of dissent. The article also reflects on the broader implications of this regression for regional cooperation, political stability and South Asia’s democratic future.

Abstract Purpose The study examines how local topics in the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW) are positioned within a disciplinary framework. It explores their size, language profile, and disciplinary profiles compared to the broader topic landscape. Design/methodology/approach Topics were extracted using the clustering strategy of (Guns, R. 2024. “A Bibliometric Map of Local Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities.” In Research Evaluatuion in Social Sciences and Humanities 2024 . Galway, Ireland) with BERTopic, combining multilingual embeddings, UMAP dimensionality reduction, and HDBSCAN. Descriptions were generated with GPT-4o-mini, labelled with Gemini-2.5-Flash, and classified with a content-based model trained on Web of Science data and applied to VABB-SHW (Arhiliuc, C., R. Guns, and T. C. E. Engels. 2025b. “Text-Based Classification of all Social Sciences and Humanities Publications Indexed in the Flemish VABB Database.” In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Scientometrics & Informetrics (ISSI, 2025) ). Findings Out of 517 topics, 76 (17.2 % of publications) were identified as local. They contain more non-English publications, and cluster mainly in “History”, “Law”, “Literature”, “Political science”, and “Art”. Contrasts emerge in their profiles: “Law” topics are internally consistent, “History” topics diffuse across disciplines, and “Literature” is consistently classified when modal but tends to be overattributed otherwise. Research limitations/implications The results reflect the scope of VABB-SHW and the narrow definition of “local”. Topic descriptions and disciplinary expectations may introduce uncertainty. The findings are not directly generalizable, but the approach can be replicated in other national databases and with broader definitions to test robustness. Practical implications The approach illustrates how national bibliographic databases can be systematically analysed to identify and profile locally anchored research, offering a basis for comparative studies across regions. Originality/value This is the first study to systematically analyse local topics in VABB-SHW, combining topic modelling and content-based classification to highlight how SSH research engages with nationally specific issues.

Bangladesh’s caretaker government (CTG) system has historically functioned as a pragmatic institutional innovation to address electoral mistrust and partisan polarization. Introduced formally through the Thirteenth Amendment in 1996, the system oversaw several election cycles before its abolition in 2011 via the Fifteenth Amendment. Yet, the formation of a new caretaker government in 2024 under Muhammad Yunus, following mass student-led uprisings, demonstrates the persistence of this mechanism as a political solution in times of crisis. This paper examines the evolution of caretaker governments in Bangladesh, compares the 2024 case with earlier iterations—particularly the 2006–2008 technocratic-military model—and situates it within global experiences of interim governments in Pakistan, Nepal, and Greece. Drawing on constitutional and judicial documents, secondary scholarship, and ten key informant interviews (KIIs) with political analysts, editors, academics, veteran politicians, and youth activists, the study finds that the 2024 CTG represents a qualitatively distinct “reformist-populist” variant of interim governance. Unlike its predecessors, which were narrowly custodial, the Yunus-led caretaker combines electoral supervision with institutional reforms, civil society inclusion, and populist legitimacy rooted in mass mobilization. While this hybrid form addresses longstanding demands for neutrality and reform, it also raises concerns about overreach, civic restrictions, and the erosion of representative politics. The paper concludes that the 2024 CTG marks both continuity and rupture in Bangladesh’s political trajectory, offering comparative lessons on the promise and perils of caretaker and interim governments globally.

Tracing the political, theoretical and aesthetic developments of acclaimed Mexican novelist and heterodox communist militant José Revueltas, this article argues that their culmination can be found in his theory of academic self-management, as articulated during Mexico’s 1968 student movement. By following Revueltas’s work as it intersects with the historical developments that led up to that moment, this article traces this trajectory through three phases: the 1949 publication of his novel Los días terrenales and the subsequent uproar; the 1962 publication of his major theoretical work Ensayo sobre un proletariado sin cabeza and his expulsion from the Spartacus Leninist League; and the eruption of the 1968 student movement and his development of and advocacy for academic self-management within the movement itself. Looking in depth at Revueltas’s underexplored contribution of academic self-management, the article posits that his legacy offers resonances with the student movements of today.

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the development of Spanish economic thought in the 1940s and 1950s, focusing on the foundation of the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences in 1943. Using a Foucauldian approach, this study explores the power structures that fostered intellectual alignments with the Francoist Regime, while also identifying the academics who shaped Spain’s negotiations for entry into the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. Design/methodology/approach The paper is structured around four themes: 1. The origins of the Faculty of Political and Economic Sciences and its first graduating class. 2. The economic orthodoxy of the 1940s as the foundation for intellectual change and the debates of the early 1950s. 3. The role of a politically influential sector, closely tied to the Catholic Church, that embraced liberal capitalism. 4. The externally driven push for economic liberalization, which led to internal conflict within the 1957 government, particularly involving Castiella and Ullastres. Findings This study has highlighted the crucial role of the first Faculty of Political Science and Economics in dismantling the autarkic framework of the Spanish Franco Regime. The economic orthodoxy of its curricula and the academic rigor of its faculty were decisive in producing specialists proficient in the mechanisms of Western capitalism, which dominated postwar Europe after 1945, a period characterized by reinforced international economic cooperation, particularly following the establishment of the IMF. The database used in this study has been drawn directly from the archives of the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid. Originality/value The role of the first Faculty of Political Science and Economics in the Spanish 1959 stabilization program has never been studied using data from the files of the Faculty itself, which shows the importance of knowledge and university in the transformation of the Francoist regime during the 1940 and the1950s. This study shows that the impulse of the opening of Spanish economy came from the US but was facilitated by the embededness of a internationalist thought that came back to 1943, which was in alignment with the Catholic thought of the time. The different people involved in this transformation are stressed, in particular the role of Castiella, undervalued in the literature.

This article offers a comparative, narrative-based reflection on decolonial pedagogy in political science across three distinct institutional contexts: an elite U.S. university, a women’s university in India, and two state prisons in California. Drawing from our experiences as educators, we examine how race, caste, gender, and carceral power shape teaching conditions and student engagement. Rather than presenting universal models or best practices, we theorize decolonial pedagogy as a relational and contextual practice that must be continually recalibrated to unequal institutional conditions and student lives. Through situated classroom scenes and a set of provisional strategies, we argue that students’ lives—and the institutions that shape them—must be central to any transformative project of political education.

ABSTRACT Given the rising global prevalence of cyberattacks, cyber operations are being deployed with greater frequency in military settings. Despite rapid technological developments and associated threats, there is currently no binding international regulatory framework or agreement in place. It is frequently questioned whether the mechanisms of classic arms control (AC) can be adapted to the realities of cyberspace. In the field of AC, the regulation of chemical weapons represents a highly successful AC regime, effectively addressing various challenges. This paper employs an exploratory approach to address the challenges of AC for chemical and cyber weapons, highlighting both similarities and differences, drawing on expert interviews (n = 14), which are discussed in an interdisciplinary manner from the perspectives of political science and computer science. This study examines how prospective cyber-AC could potentially benefit from insights gained from past experiences. Our findings lay explorative conceptual groundwork, suggesting that AC in cyberspace could be achieved by adopting a broad definition of cyber weapons, shifting the focus from regulating technology to regulating contexts of use. Regarding soft law approaches, more attention could be paid to domain-specific mechanisms, such as an attribution mechanism. Furthermore, any prospective regulation must consider current standards, political will and diverse technical approaches.

Abstract Mutual recognition is a cornerstone of European integration. Famously associated with the Court of Justice’s ruling in Cassis de Dijon , it has expanded beyond the free movement of goods into fields such as criminal justice, services, and risk regulation, enabling regulatory diversity. While often characterised as a general principle of Union law, this account has been questioned in the literature. This contribution reframes mutual recognition not as a free-standing legal principle guiding legal reasoning, but as a judicially developed mode of governance arising from the application of Union rules and principles. The paper traces mutual recognition’s judicial development in the case law of the Court of Justice, and then examines its advancement by the Union’s political institutions and its operationalisation in secondary legislation, with services law as a key case study. The article next links these judicial and legislative strands through their shared doctrinal foundations. Finally, it develops a governance-based account, drawing on political science and EU governance literature, to reconceptualise mutual recognition as a mechanism through which law structures and coordinates public power across the Union.