Introduction: research on transformational teaching has not yet clarified whether its effects arise through parallel cognitive and affective routes that emanate from flow, or through a sequential chain in which political expertise precedes political efficacy and then shapes performance. Resolving this issue matters for political education because it identifies the instructional levers most likely to cultivate democratic competence and durable academic gains.Objective: this study positions flow as the proximal hub in the learning process and contrasts a parallel mediation model with a serial alternative that situates political expertise before political efficacy and, in turn, academic performance, estimating the relative strength of these pathways in political education.Method: a cross-sectional survey of 312 undergraduates in West Sumatra was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling with bias-corrected bootstrapping. The four dimensions of transformational teaching, namely Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, Individual Consideration, and Idealized Influence, were modeled simultaneously.Results: Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, and Individual Consideration were positively associated with flow, whereas Idealized Influence showed no direct association when the other dimensions were entered jointly. Flow related positively to political expertise and to political efficacy, and both outcomes predicted academic performance. The indirect association from flow to performance via political expertise exceeded the association via political efficacy, indicating a dominant cognitive route; a complementary serial chain from flow to expertise to efficacy to performance was also supported.Conclusions: in political education, transformational teaching most reliably improves performance by activating flow that strengthens political expertise, with affective efficacy contributing a smaller share and a serial mechanism operating alongside. Emphasizing Intellectual Stimulation, Inspirational Motivation, and Individual Consideration appears to be an effective strategy for triggering consequential learning states and enhancing outcomes.

This study examines whether high school seniors develop voting habits after their initial experience with national voting by leveraging a natural experimental situation, focusing on the reform that allowed Korean high school seniors to participate in national elections starting in 2020. Employing a regression discontinuity design, which utilizes the eligibility criteria determined by birth date, we find no clear evidence that students who voted during their senior year in high school were more likely to participate in the presidential election 2 years later or the National Assembly election 4 years later. Furthermore, there is no significant evidence that their political knowledge, political efficacy, or political interest improved meaningfully. These findings suggest that merely granting the right to vote is insufficient; systematic political education concerning political participation should be provided alongside this right.

The commentary discusses O Avesso de Marx (2024) by José Crisóstomo de Souza, a work that reinterprets historical materialism through a social ontology centered on "sensible praxis," rejecting essentialisms and proposing an affirmative project of emancipation. Despite its theoretical contribution, the analysis questions the neglect of the Marxist critique of exploitation and fetishism, fundamental mechanisms for understanding capitalist domination. It argues that by displacing dialectical negativity in favor of an exuberant normativity, the author dilutes the analysis of material contradictions — such as the subsumption of labor and financialization — reproducing abstractions that limit the political efficacy of his proposal. The conclusion is that the absence of mediations between ontology and concrete critique weakens the emancipatory potential of the project, reinforcing the urgency of reclaiming the immanence of Marxist critique.

Political efficacy plays a critical role in shaping individuals’ political engagement and serves as a key indicator for civic participation and democratic performance. In developing countries such as Pakistan, women often encounter societal and institutional obstacles to political engagement. This study explores how communication and cognitive factors enhance women's political efficacy by addressing the gender gap in political engagement. It examines the impact of interpersonal communication, political interest, and political knowledge on both internal and external political efficacy among Pakistani women. Adopting a quantitative approach, data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire, distributed to female employees of women’s organizations in Karachi, Pakistan. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that interpersonal communication, political interest and political knowledge increase women’s political efficacy. This study contributes to the existing literature on gender-based political behaviour by identifying factors that strengthen women's political efficacy and empowerment within political spheres in Pakistan. The paper also discusses the limitations and offers suggestions for future research.

ABSTRACT South African community-based organisations (CBOs) are integral to participatory democracy in South Africa, yet few studies have been done on South African CBO communication, including little research on CBO’s choice of collective action frames and their political efficacy. Therefore, this research analysed the collective action frames of two Johannesburg CBOs, i.e. the Inner City Resource Centre, a housing rights organisation, and One Voice of All Hawkers Association, a street traders organisation. Using organisational documents, and notes on member and office bearers’ communication (at Participatory Action Research workshops organised by the researcher and during ethnographic observation), the analysis identified the key frames used by each organisation and the extent to which they were useful for building power, in terms of building solidarity (logic of membership) and/or challenging the political status quo in inner-city Johannesburg (logic of influence). The main frames identified were claims-making (poverty and rights), contesting government (crime and grime) and insider/outsider frames (xenophobia/anti-xenophobia). While these were somewhat useful in attracting members, they were not powerful enough to challenge the City of Johannesburg’s neglect of its marginalised residents.

ABSTRACT Scholarly and journalistic discourse outside China often portrays Chinese Gen-Z, as shaped by state propaganda, promoting anti-American and anti-Indian sentiments. This study examines this prevailing assumption by analyzing the relationship between incidental news consumption in an algorithm-driven social-media environment and Chinese Gen-Z’s perceptions of India. Adopting structural-equation modeling on surveys from 602 respondents, we find that Chinese Gen-Z holds nuanced, multidimensional views of India. Our findings indicate that Gen-Z’s incidental news consumption contributes to variations in perceptions of India, mediated by factors, such as media literacy, online political efficacy, and engagement in political discussion. Specifically, higher media literacy correlates with objective, diversified perspectives in India, whereas lower literacy aligns with egocentric and nationalistic worldviews. Additionally, our study highlights that despite the influence of algorithmic content curation, Chinese Gen-Z exhibits a broader exposure to diverse media sources and is generally less susceptible to official state media narratives compared to older generations. This suggests that while incidental news exposure shapes their understanding of India, it does not necessarily reinforce a monolithic nationalist perspective. These findings have broader implications for Sino-Indian relations, as they suggest that digital media consumption patterns among Chinese youth could foster more nuanced and independent perspectives, potentially shaping future public discourse and diplomatic engagement between the two nations.

Social studies classrooms can serve as sites of educator activism. This reflective article traces one educator’s formation as an educator‑activist and links biography to classroom practice and program design. An early love of history—nurtured by wide reading and influential secondary teachers of U.S. history and English—anchored a commitment to social studies. University experiences, including witnessing September 11, 2001 in New York City, further oriented the author toward civic engagement and positioned social studies teaching as a venue for activism. The article outlines practices intended to cultivate students’ critical thinking and political efficacy. It concludes with lessons from EdD coursework and an action research study on teacher financial capability conducted while preparing to implement a required personal finance course for graduation. Together, these reflections show how personal experience, professional learning, and inquiry can shape activist praxis and inform teacher education.

The Yogyakarta Principles (YPs) were produced by transnational civil society actors involved in sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) human rights activism. The document has had a significant impact on debates surrounding gender and sexual diversity in international human rights law. As such, it provided a new source, a queer source, of law for friendly actors who were already inclined to decide favourably on issues regarding SOGI rights. This article analyses the extent of the YPs’ political efficacy in the context of global governance and international law institutional mechanisms. More concretely, the main research question asks: what is the nature, or quality, of the application of the YPs by international human rights monitoring bodies? What does it tell us about their level of political influence? In responding to these questions, the article employs the analytical framework of expectation of compliance as an indicator to measure the YPs’ political efficacy. Keywords: Yogyakarta Principles; sexual orientation and gender identity; international human rights law; queer; law-making.

Drawing on a survey of 1,386 South Korean young adults, this study finds that news curation mediates the association between social media news use and political efficacy and participation. Analysis also reveals that political interest moderates the relationship between news curation and political efficacy and participation, with politically less interested people being more influenced by news curation than politically more interested people. The finding has significant implications as to how to rekindle young adults’ political involvement. This study contributes to the existing literature about social media’s impact on news consumption, by conceptualizing “news curation” as a unique method of engaging with social media and by illuminating its effects on democratic engagement.

ABSTRACT Research on diasporic citizenship focused on how migrants engage in transnational activism in their home and host countries. However, this research has overlooked the critical question of how migrants develop their practices of diasporic citizenship, particularly during the early stages of resettlement. This article addresses this gap by examining the citizenship practices of Hong Kong BN(O) migrants in the U.K, and argues that their past experiences in homeland and the political opportunity structures are key factors shaping their diasporic citizenship. Drawing on focus groups, we demonstrate that these migrants, despite paying attention to homeland affairs, have refrained from collective mobilization due to low political efficacy and fear of transnational repression. However, rather than becoming politically inactive, they have adopted individualized strategies to transplant their civic aspirations from their homeland. These include building a distinct Hongkonger identity, branding themselves as ‘good’ immigrants, and exercising their voting rights. Our findings provide nuanced understanding of the formative stage of migrants’ sense of diasporic citizenship.

ABSTRACT In recent years, tensions between eco-Marxism and new materialism have constituted an increasingly permanent fixture in the theoretical terrain of the environmental social sciences and humanities. These tensions have been exacerbated by polemical eco-Marxist texts, such as Andreas Malm’s The Progress of This Storm (2018) and Kohei Saito’s Marx in the Anthropocene (2023), that have dismissed any commensurability between a more-than-human ontology and a dialectical materialist critique of capital by rendering new materialism as "absolue monism." This paper refutes the eco-Marxist rendering of new materialism as “absolute monism,” while simultaneously recognizing that the pluralistic ontologies of new materialism can be prone to a theoretical slippage towards a “relational monism” that can pose methodological hurdles to the construction of radical political projects. However, instead of dismissing the political efficacy of new materialism entirely, this article refers to Levins’ and Lewontin’s dialectical ecology, arguing that an accounting of more-than-human agency in capital accumulation processes is entirely consistent with dialectical materialism. Overall, a critique of capital does not require a methodological reversion to an anthropocentric dualism; new materialism can provide Marxism with the theoretical tools to cultivate a more rigorous socio-ecological critique of capital through a dialectical materialist orientation.

ABSTRACT This study aims to expose the factors that affect the underrepresentation of women in the policy outputs of Turkish political parties. It defines political representation of women in politics not just in terms of numbers but also efficacy. It reveals how parties can limit women's numbers and influence in policy outcomes. The study argues that women selected for different party posts are less effective than their male counterparts, which means their interests are underrepresented in policy outcomes. The study also finds that the ideological, incumbency and strategic concerns of parties also affect the number of women in them.

ABSTRACT Politicization—the expansion of conflict in the political system—is often assumed to be associated with high levels of participation. Yet, this is not necessarily the case, especially in contexts of democratic backsliding. This study investigates how politicization of protest events affects individuals’ willingness to participate in protests, using Hungary as a most likely case. We examine three causal mechanisms that may mediate this effect: perceived risks of participation, political efficacy, and public support. Empirically, we rely on a pre‐registered survey experiment conducted in August 2024. To operationalize politicization, we manipulated the issue's salience, the polarization of positions presented, and the number of actors involved in the protest. Our findings challenge the prevailing assumption by demonstrating that increasing politicization leads to lower levels of protest participation. In addition, causal mediation analysis shows that this demobilizing effect is primarily due to reduced perceived political efficacy and expected public support.

ABSTRACT Exposure to political comedy content has served as a gateway to greater, albeit modest, involvement in the public sphere, encouraging those who would otherwise sit on the sidelines of political life to seek out additional information, participate and engage on key issue debates, and feel better about their own political efficacy, or ability to understand and influence politics. As a textual form, comedy has elevated our deliberative discourse, inspired collective activism and culture jamming, and reshaped our public culture. In 2025, it is no longer clear whether entertaining political content is helping to encourage a more active, responsible, and well-informed citizenry or whether it is simply preaching to the choir, only reaching those who agree with the political orientation of the programming. Does political comedy still have the power to bring us together or does it further separate us into our ideological silos? Focusing on implications and with an eye towards the future of political humor as we begin a new quarter century of media engagement, the research outlines what political comedy needs to do to adapt to continue to play a role in fostering a more engaged, less polarized, and more informed citizenry.

The article explores the complex interplay between resentment and democratic society, and the material and visible forms that this emotion takes within the city. Ressentiment emerge as key explanatory categories, influencing individuals’ perceptions and actions within social processes. Resentment is portrayed as a deeply democratic sentiment, arising from the perceived betrayal of the promise of equality inherent in democratic ideals. The article examines how this perceived injustice fuels a pervasive sense of resentment, which can either fragment social bonds or, alternatively, serve as a catalyst for political and social change. Urban space, with its dense and heterogeneous environment, is identified as a critical site where these dynamics become particularly visible. Cities, as synecdoche of society, not only reflect but actively shape social processes and collective feelings. They are arenas where perceived inequalities can either lead to social envy and resentment or foster solidarity and transformative activism. The article argues that addressing the roots and manifestations of resentment through inclusive and participatory processes is crucial for mitigating its destructive potential and harnessing it for positive social change. This approach involves creating urban spaces that facilitate critical reflection, social interaction, and collective action, thereby strengthening social and political efficacy among individuals and communities.

ABSTRACT With the proliferation of social media and the internet, interactions between the police and public are increasingly occurring in virtual spaces, reducing opportunities for traditional face-to-face exchanges. This study explores how the perceived propagation of occupational stigma impacts police-public online trust. Police-public online trust refers to the relationship of trust formed between the public and law enforcement agencies through digital and online platforms. Empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of 622 Chinese citizens using multivariate statistical regression methods to determine the relationships among the variables. The findings indicate that the perceived propagation of occupational stigma events exerts a significantly negative influence on police-public online trust. Emotional and cognitive identifications mediate the relationship between the perceived spread of these events and online trust. Furthermore, Perceived External Political Efficacy and rumor control exert negative regulatory effects on the impact of perceived stigma event dissemination on emotional and cognitive identification. This research constructed a ‘Perception→Identification→Trust’ model framework, providing strategic guidance for police authorities in managing occupational stigma incidents. It underscores the importance of strengthening external political efficacy beliefs among the public and implementing robust rumor control measures to foster a harmonious digital relationship.

ABSTRACT Italy has traditionally stood out for both high participation rates and positive attitudes towards the European Union. Over time, however, this picture has shifted. In the 2024 European parliamentary elections, Italy registered a historically high level of abstention, with a majority of eligible voters staying away from the polls. This study situates and explains that outcome in comparative perspective, drawing on longitudinal turnout data and two survey sources. It finds that abstention in Italy was not primarily the product of decisions made on or immediately before election day; circumstantial factors played only a limited role. Instead, non-voting reflects a longer-term pattern of aversion to, and distrust of, politics and politicians. The analysis also indicates that, although Italians are less likely than others to define themselves as lifelong abstainers, they ascribe to European elections many of the negative qualities they associate with national contests, reinforcing a broader trend of gradual disengagement. In addition to widespread feelings of poor representation and low political efficacy, attitudes towards the EU itself play an important part: Italian non-voters hold more negative views of the Union than their counterparts in other EU member states. Yet these abstainers are not markedly less interested in politics, nor do they appear wholly detached from it.

ABSTRACTThis study examines how protest episodes foster political efficacy among ordinary citizens. Based on 44 in‐depth interviews with participants in two major 2018 mobilizations in Spain—the feminist strike of International Women's Day and the pensioners' protests—the analysis identifies discursive expressions that reflect attitudinal change across three dimensions: cognitive, agentic, and collective. These include increased political attentiveness, feelings of empowerment, and renewed belief in collective action. Notably, these expressions often combine in participants' narratives, suggesting a dynamic interplay between efficacy dimensions that reinforces perceptions of political agency. The study highlights three key mechanisms behind these transformations—exposure to reliable information, vicarious learning, and shared mastery experiences—that nurture both individual and collective efficacy. The analysis shows that the specific forms of efficacy change are shaped by both the nature of the protest episode and participants' prior protest experience, with first‐time participants displaying the most varied changes. These findings underscore the transformative potential of emotionally resonant protest episodes. Far from being trivial or symbolic, even low‐cost protest episodes may function as socially embedded learning environments.

Sport and politics are often intertwined, as political and social issues “play out” during a game. Not all sports media consumers may read the same news topics as political, however. By analyzing data from three years of cross-sectional surveys of sports fans in the United States, we generate inferences about how political perceptions of sports media topics may vary by political party and other key variables. Guided by social identity theory, results support the idea that social identification with a person’s political group may be associated with seeing some sports media topics as more political and may increase partisan differences in political perceptions. By contrast, social identification with being a sports fan may have the opposite relationship for some sports media topics. Political efficacy may also decrease partisan differences for some sports media topics. These results are discussed in the context of contemporary political debate around sports issues.

ABSTRACTThis study examines the relationship among e‐government use, political efficacy, and e‐political participation amid intermediate position of Indonesia in global democracy and e‐government. Using survey data and structural equation modeling, the study finds that quality of e‐government information significantly impacts on external political efficacy. While trust in e‐government improves internal efficacy, it also raises concerns about transparency, which in turn negatively affects external efficacy. User needs does not have significant impact on internal and external political efficacy, but internal political efficacy has significant impact on e‐political participation. These findings suggest that although Indonesia's e‐government platforms provide accessible and reliable information, they remain limited in fostering a politically literate and engaged citizenry. The study underscores the importance of not only expanding technological access but also ensuring secure, transparent, and participatory digital governance. Strengthening political efficacy requires both civic‐oriented services and institutional reforms that address public distrust and promote meaningful democratic engagement.