The main goal of this article is to prove the statement that a powerful neopatrimonial trend constitutes a key tendency of contemporary political development, having intensified amid the broader crisis of Western liberal democracy and the growing political radicalism and extremism observed in many developing countries. Under these conditions, the vector of political development has shifted toward the “center”, giving rise to such political phenomena as “Trumpism” and a number of closely related phenomena. Having reviewed the existing approaches in the scholarly literature to defining the concept and essence of neopatrimonialism, the author turns to an analysis of changes in the political culture of contemporary societies that may either facilitate or hinder the development of this trend. To address this task, the author conducts a comparative analysis of political attitudes germane to the populations in countries with different political systems and representing diverse world regions. Empirically, the study draws on the data from the fifth (2005—2009) and seventh (2017—2022) waves of surveys conducted within the international World Values Survey project. The research proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, the author systematizes the relevant data, presenting it in the form of the summary tables. In the second stage, the countries under study are divided into several groups depending on the intensity and specific manifestations of the neopatrimonial trend, with the results compared to findings from the global studies indicating a rise in conservative orientations within the political culture of many countries worldwide. The analysis demonstrates that the cultural shift observed today cannot be interpreted as a mass demand for authoritarianism. Rather, the strengthening conservative turn and the rise of authoritarian populism are manifestations of a powerful neopatrimonial wave currently affecting diverse countries and regions across the globe.

ABSTRACT This article examines the complex interplay between domestic and foreign policy in Portugal during the early phase of its democratic transition (1974–1976). It offers a relational analysis of the ideas held by political actors during this period, along with their practices concerning various options for Portugal’s post-imperial international role. By cross-referencing primary and secondary sources, this article contextualises the political and ideational culture of the Portuguese transition, identifying the diverse cultural images and foreign policy options that emerged during this experimental phase. Through an ideational approach, it highlights alternative projects to the Western and demoliberal normalisation of Portugal, establishing a correlation between domestic policy projects and foreign policy options.

Labour, politics and urban culture: Malawi’s Southern African diaspora

This article examines Irish language activism in Northern Ireland, an understudied yet successful case of grassroots mobilization in the context of a post-conflict consociational democracy. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, it analyses how language campaigners navigated and ultimately overcame a range of challenges—civic malaise, consocational vetoes, and elite-driven political culture—to achieve official recognition of their language via historic legislation in 2022. We show how a group of activists developed community spaces and language reclamation infrastructure to cultivate an independent political ecosystem prepared to upset norms of top-down consociational politics. This strategy enabled the movement to decouple from dominant ethnonational elites, broaden support beyond traditional communal boundaries, and exploit the UK’s multi-level governance system through strategic venue-shopping during periods of consociational collapse. By foregrounding the interaction between civic activism, ethnonational identity politics, and power-sharing institutions, the article contributes to scholarship on mobilization in divided societies and offers wider insights for minority language campaigners operating in similar political environments.

ABSTRACT The notion of litigating the cultural merits of pornography is as relevant now as it has ever been. Multiple boutique media companies have worked to legitimate vintage pornography as cultural commodities valuable enough to restore and package into prestige home media products. However, how one works to legitimate media is as important to consider as the pursuit of legitimation itself. This article examines the efforts of the social platform Letterboxd to curate porn for its niche user base of cinephiles. The re-evaluation of pornography on Letterboxd sees both the platform and its users grappling with the politics and rhetorical complexities of porn. Through a reception analysis of user posts about porn titles, the article works to locate where the stigmas which hinder porn’s cultural recuperation are either challenged or reinforced. Ultimately, three strands of user discourse are extracted and discussed for their use value to the recuperation narrative of porn: non-fan reception, the art–porn distinction, and tactical uses of humour. I argue that how these users work to situate porn titles within the parameters of a broader film culture poses a meaningful rhetorical framing of existing debates in porn.

ABSTRACT George Treby’s ‘Cases in the King’s Bench, 1667–1672’ at the Middle Temple Library provides a unique, behind-the-scenes glimpse of both proceedings and personalities in the Westminster law courts. These detailed manuscript reports include proceedings from other courts (such as the landmark Bushell’s Case [1670], in Common Pleas), as well as substantial shorthand insertions and marginalia. Treby’s carefully coded annotations range from commonplace editorial explanations and observations to irreverent and gossipy asides about Restoration judges such as Kelynge, Vaughan and Hale and even include some pointed criticisms of Charles II and his entourage. The shorthand thus sheds new light both on the broader legal and political culture of late seventeenth-century England and the views and preoccupations of a future Whig MP and chief justice, while he was a law student and newly-minted barrister.

This study investigates the portrayal and age-related stereotypes of older adult characters in popular Chinese films. Content analysis of 100 films (2000-2024) yielded 305 older adult characters. Findings show older adults remain underrepresented, with a pronounced gender imbalance favoring older males. Contrary to prior research, positive portrayals predominate; over 90% of characters showed positive stereotypes like Tidy, Experienced, Face-conscious, and Polite. Tidy was the most frequent positive stereotype, while Despondent was the most common negative one, differing from Western stereotypes of The Perfect Grandparents and Shrew/Curmudgeon. Gender differences occurred in positive stereotypes: older men were more often Experienced and Hard-working, whereas older women were more likely Noncompetitive and The Perfect Grandparent. Negative stereotypes showed no gender differences. These findings contribute to understanding the evolving media construction of ageing in contemporary popular Chinese films and hold important implications for future research on age stereotypes and the cultural politics of media representation.

ABSTRACT This study re-examines the 1907 “Expel Fujianese Incident” at the Anhui Higher School, situating it not as an isolated local struggle but as a pivotal expression of the cultural identity conflict embedded in China’s late Qing educational reforms. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of cultural identity, it explores how regionalism, linguistic authorities, and cultural hierarchies shaped the contested pursuit of modernisation. Through historical and discourse analysis of different primary sources, the article contends that the expulsion of Fujianese elites – including the prominent reformer Yan Fu – did not signify resistance to Western learning but a deeper struggle over who possessed the right to define and transmit “modern knowledge”. The study outcomes underscore the decisive role of cultural politics in educational transformation and challenge macrostructural narratives by emphasising local agency. By adopting a microhistorical perspective, this study enriches debates on identity, representation, and the contested meanings of modernity in early twentieth-century China.

This article examines the long-distance bicycle journeys undertaken by Indian travellers during the inter-War period, focusing on two Bengali globe cyclists, Bimal Mukherjee and Ramnath Biswas. Through an analysis of their travelogues and press writings, the study explores how cycling served not only as a mode of mobility but also as a form of anti-imperial political expression, helping the riders craft counter-narratives to colonial discourses of dominance and project a vision of resilient, self-reliant Indian subjecthood. The article situates their travels at the intersection of international travel, knowledge production and political consciousness, demonstrating how Indian globe cycling emerged as a radical practice that challenged imperial monopolies on mobility and the making of political cultures.

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the contested institutionalization of Jewish theology in contemporary Germany, focusing on the founding and crisis of the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam. It situates this within broader debates over theology's scientific status and the conditions under which it gains institutional legitimacy in secular, democratic societies. Following Paul Feyerabend's call to contextualize science historically and sociologically, the paper challenges essentialist accounts of science and religion. It argues that academic Jewish theology must be understood within Germany's shifting social system of public knowledge—shaped by political culture, communal authority, and contested epistemic norms—contributing to debates about pluralism, religious authority, and theology's role in the modern university.

ABSTRACT This article examines the strategic integration of artificial intelligence (AI) within Francophone parliaments, an area that remains overlooked in current research on digital governance. While AI is increasingly used to support legislative functions such as transcription, translation, and document processing, Francophone institutions encounter structural challenges stemming from linguistic biases inherent in English-centric Large Language Models (LLMs) and the scarcity of high-quality French-language data. These limitations pose specific risks to multilingual and culturally diverse political systems. To address these issues, the study explores two main questions: How do Francophone parliaments’ AI strategies differ from those of other linguistic groups? In what ways do the French language and specific political cultures influence AI adoption? Utilizing a structured expert survey based on a high-level strategic framework covering strategy, implementation, and governance, this study analyzes data from parliamentary experts across diverse regions. Drawing on data collected, the results indicate extensive experimentation with AI but reveal fragmented implementation, minimal formal governance structures, and a reliance on quick-win applications, that is, on short-term solutions. Thus, the findings underscore the necessity for culturally and linguistically tailored AI tools that adhere to regional legal and normative frameworks. They also show that a more strategic approach to studying and deploying AI can lead to a more integrated framework, offering numerous opportunities for institutional development. This research provides the first systematic evaluation of AI adoption among Francophone parliaments and delineates key priorities to inform an updated research agenda, thereby supporting coherent and sustainable digital transformation across the Francophonie.

Abstract This article analyzes Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) as an expression of 1960s political radicalism and a “history-from-below” perspective. The oppression faced by the novel’s time traveling protagonist, Consuelo Ramos – a victim of the “prison/psychiatric state” – and her struggle in support of a possible utopian future are situated in relation to Piercy’s participation in SDS and the women’s movement in confrontation with postwar US political culture. Consistent with Walter Benjamin’s call to uphold the subversive meaning of radical traditions threatened by historical erasure, Piercy explores contemporary acts of resistance as potentially germinal moments in a longer arc of insurgency obscured and denied by “official” history.

Front-of-package warning labels on junk foods, first implemented in Chile in 2016, have diffused rapidly despite sustained opposition. This pattern challenges policy diffusion frameworks that inadequately explain how contested regulatory innovations spread. I propose communicative infrastructure-durable channels and routines enabling coordinated cross-national action-as a governance lever in global health policy transfer. Mixed-methods comparative case study of Chile, Mexico, and Peru using elite interviews (N = 18), document and media analysis (N≈200), participant observation and public meeting transcripts (2019-2025). Process tracing identified causal mechanisms. Three communicative mechanisms enabled policy diffusion despite industry contestation: strategic frame adaptation aligned policy rationales with diverse political cultures; coordinated counter-messaging provided policymakers with ready-to-deploy evidence to neutralize industry arguments; and, through networked knowledge exchange, national actors shared implementation lessons, enabling later adopters to design robust policies before adoption. These mechanisms operated synergistically as infrastructure, or systems that proved resilient to political turnover, legal challenges, and corporate resistance. This study extends policy diffusion theory by theorizing communication as infrastructure and demonstrating how it enables diffusion in contested regulatory spaces where traditional mechanisms prove insufficient. Findings contribute to scholarship on transnational advocacy networks, commercial determinants of health, and South-to-North policy flows.

ABSTRACT This paper examines place branding approaches in two shrinking European regions: Satakunta (Finland) and Parkstad Limburg (Netherlands). Using comparative analysis, it develops and applies a six-dimensional framework to evaluate these approaches. Findings reveal that Satakunta pursues outward-facing, growth-oriented branding centered on industrial modernization and external investment. Conversely, Parkstad adopts inward-facing, symbolically driven branding to restore civic pride and institutional trust after post-mining decline. Although both regions confront structural shrinkage, their branding practices diverge less in terms of policy response (growth-restoring or smart shrinkage) than in governance cultures and socio-spatial trajectories. The paper concludes that place branding in shrinking contexts is notably path-dependent and contextual, shaped mainly by institutional histories, political cultures, and spatial imaginaries.

Abstract: Racism, anti-Black terror, labor exploitation, sexual violence, and the expansion of slavery in the early republic made it necessary for Black women—Northern and Southern, free and enslaved—to forge a distinct political culture. Black feminist historical analysis recasts Republican motherhood as a racialized construct rooted in the exploitation of Black women during the long 19th century. Scholars have fruitfully reconstructed and analyzed the social and cultural implications of Black women’s networks within Black communities in the Antebellum South. This essay calls attention to the political dimensions of women's social networks, where they nurtured ideas about legal culture, fugitivity, and protection in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Expanding the political sphere by prioritizing the concerns of enslaved and free Black women and girls enriches the conceptual categories we explore to analyze politics and political culture in the early republic—and it helps us see the political implications of women’s actions and bodies in ways not available from within the most prominent paradigms for studying women’s history.

Recent data show that loneliness is more prevalent in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs), compared to higher-income countries (HICs). This evidence suggests that loneliness is not simply an issue in HICs or a result of living alone. Instead, loneliness is closely tied to structural factors, some of which may be more salient in LMICs. In this perspective article, the contextual aspects that are closely tied to loneliness in research from LMICs, where the majority of the world's population resides, are presented. The discussed aspects go beyond the differentiation between individualism versus collectivism found in loneliness literature from HICs. Instead, the article sheds light on the often-cyclical relationships between loneliness and poverty, political instability, stigma, migration, culture, religion, and climate change. Shedding light on loneliness research from LMICs, this perspective provides novel and exciting directions for loneliness research in both HICs and LMICs. As these structural influences are often entangled and mostly affect those populations who are already socially and economically disadvantaged, this perspective echoes scholars who view loneliness as a social justice issue and, additionally, calls for recognizing loneliness as a truly global phenomenon.

ABSTRACT Contemporary political system, culture, and economy are undergoing a profound transition that can be described using Gramsci’s notion of the interregnum. Education is equally caught in this historical interval: its established ideals are fading, while new ones are only beginning to emerge. I analyze this decline through the concepts of expiration, mutation, and bifurcation. Liberal democratic ideals – plurality, diversity, universality, and egalitarianism – do not simply collapse; rather, they mutate and bifurcate into forms such as collective identities, particularism, and inequality. These developments reveal that liberal democratic education is losing its capacity to address the challenges of our time. I then turn to Alain Badiou’s philosophy to show how a ‘pedagogy of truths’ can provide an alternative horizon. By drawing on concepts such as event, truth procedure, and equality, this pedagogy outlines possible ways forward for educational thought and practice.

This paper examines how financial actors enter and reshape healthcare systems, building new, often transnational, social, technical, and financial infrastructures for organising and providing care. We use the concept of assetization - the transformation of 'things' into rent-generating assets for investors - to explore how financial actors appear within healthcare. Drawing on empirical case studies from England, Canada, and the Netherlands, we show how assetization unfolds differently across national contexts, shaped by political cultures, regulatory environments, and institutional legacies. Rather than deploying uniform strategies, financial actors respond strategically to systemic frictions and perceived crises, positioning themselves as problem-solvers and embedding investor logic into healthcare provision. As such, assetization is an active process that constructs new infrastructures facilitating future investment and normalising financial presence in healthcare. By tracing how an emerging investor logic reshapes the conditions that allow financial actors to turn healthcare into an asset across different socio-political and institutional contexts, and by tracing the mechanisms through which this logic is articulated and enacted, this paper reveals how care is increasingly integrated into broader circuits of financialization. In doing so, we raise critical questions about the evolving governance, valuation, and organisation of healthcare under expanding financial influence, pointing towards a future research agenda.

ABSTRACT This paper argues that in fourteenth-century Italy the vernacularisation of Latin municipal constitutions and the direct vernacular composition of the law were purposely sought out by the ruling elite as ideological and political mechanisms to build consensus and achieve support in municipal and regional states. By analysing the statutes of some of the most important communal cities as well as the fundamental laws of the Papal State and the Sardinian judicate of Arborea, it brings to light the workings and driving forces behind the translation or composition of legal texts in the vernacular. The thesis challenges scholarly views claiming, on the basis of evidence found in rhetorical declarations of the time, that the vernacularisation of law aimed to address common people who could not understand Latin.

This article examines the riots that followed the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré in 2005 and Nahel Merzouk in 2023 as moments of political expression rooted in the French banlieues. Challenging dominant republican and media narratives that frame these unrests as irrational violence, it mobilizes political thought, affect theory, and a genealogical approach to read riots as embodied claims to justice. Drawing on testimonies, sociological analyses, and public discourse, the article argues that these events emerge when legal frameworks fail to acknowledge racialized police violence. Far from exceptional, the riots reveal a recurring grammar of protest within contemporary French political culture.