Politics

This article investigates how the relationship between economic development and income inequality is conditioned by corruption and the informal sector. While corruption has traditionally been believed to worsen inequality through resource concentration, this study suggests that it can also lead to the opposite through the informal sector. In countries with a high level of corruption or a large informal sector, individuals can bypass regulations and barriers by offering bribes or participating in the informal economy; this allows the benefits of economic development to be widely distributed, thereby reducing inequality. The reverse is true when corruption is low or the informal sector is small. However, at low levels of economic development, an increase in informal economy or corruption alone would not lead to a more egalitarian distribution without an economic expansion. The arguments are supported with a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 127 countries from 1964 to 2007. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the relationship between corruption and the informal sector and how they affect inequality jointly with economic development.

This essay approaches the neoliberal tradition of thought through the lens of liberal imperialism. Seeking to bring scholarship on the history of neoliberal ideas together with research on liberal defences of empire, I show that the neoliberal tradition of thought contains a number of formal, explicit, and systematic defences of (European) colonialism. In the first section of the essay, I contextualise neoliberal imperialism by showing that many prominent early neoliberals had close ties to the British Colonial Office. I then offer a close reading of two highly influential instances of the neoliberal defence of empire. The first was articulated between the 1930s and 1940s by Herbert Frankel, who saw colonisation as a form of civilisational improvement that places a heavy ethical and political burden on the coloniser. The second was articulated by Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan between the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to Frankel’s civilisational justification of colonialism, Gann and Duignan articulated a more dispassionate cost-benefit argument, claiming that colonialism’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this shift from a civilisational to a consequentialist frame both for the neoliberal tradition and for liberal imperialist discourse at large.

The existing accounts of the Iranian nuclear programme and the JCPOA suffer from ontological exteriority, in conjunction with the problematic conception of the state and unpersuasive assessments of future outcomes. Grounded on the philosophy of internal relations, which challenges the artificial detachment between political economy and military-security concerns, this article contends that grasping the Iranian nuclear programme and the JCPOA requires unpacking their internal links with neoliberal global capitalism. The article thus presents a three-part argument. First, it asserts that the Iranian nuclear programme and economic sanctions should be viewed as part of the great powers’ efforts, particularly those of the United States and the European Union, to shape neoliberalism in the Middle East and North Africa. Second, it delves into the post-2008 global economy’s imperial rivalry and cooperation, suggesting that the nuclear deal was a result of the US pivot to the East, China’s Belt and Road Initiative in West Asia, and the need for multinational companies to find new avenues for capital accumulation following the financial crisis. Finally, it connects the JCPOA to Iranian neoliberalisation, which gives rise to two competing capital fractions (the internationally oriented capital fraction and the military–bonyad complex) to emphasise the crucial role played by the former in reaching the nuclear deal.

Research frequently contends that support for democracy is a comparatively stable attitude. A previously neglected explanation for this finding is that regime preferences rest on deeply rooted psychological foundations. This article develops theoretical arguments about how the big five personality traits relate to democratic regime preferences in consolidated democracies, and presents empirical evidence using original survey data for six Western European countries. The results show that democratic regime support is substantively higher for more open, conscientious and agreeable individuals, but slightly lower for more extraverted and neurotic individuals. In addition, it highlights that it is important not to conflate support for democracy with authoritarianism, which the previous literature has frequently turned to for personality roots of anti-democratic sentiments. While authoritarianism also goes along with lower openness to experience, conscientiousness displays an opposite relationship, increasing pro-democratic attitudes but also individuals’ levels of authoritarianism. Thus, findings on authoritarianism should not be automatically translated to regime preferences.

Disruptive protest has become increasingly studied and promoted across the social sciences, not least in relation to climate protests. This paper asks what the rationale and effects of disruptive protest are. It argues that disruptive protest carries a prefigurative legitimacy, envisaging a more democratic and just society while aiming for broader appeal and legitimacy rendered by liberal discourses. The paper takes a political theory perspective through both the literature on civil disobedience and the anarchist literature on direct action. It then explores how the key attributes of these literatures render legitimacy to the practices and discourses of two social movements that have made widespread use of disruptive protest in recent years: the Spanish anti-eviction movement Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) and the mainly British climate change movement Extinction Rebellion (XR).

This article revisits scholarly, political, and practitioner debates surrounding the international implications of the Northern Ireland peace process: the so-called lessons. It begins by reviewing the literature on the epistemological and political dimensions of comparing conflicts. It identifies three different approaches to learning from peace processes. These are termed analytical-technical, political-strategic, and educative-psychological. The article applies this framework to Northern Ireland, assessing the conduct, potential, and challenges of each approach. The analysis draws on academic and political sources, as well as unique primary research on ‘lesson-sharing’ dialogues. The article discusses how the educative-psychological approach – which has been the dominant mode of lesson learning/sharing in Northern Ireland and is under-researched – demonstrates the potential for local-to-local connections to support ongoing learning within peace processes. Applying the threefold framework to other peace arenas can further advance understanding of the global dissemination of conflict resolution knowledge.

Despite the demobilisation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), armed groups continue to exist in Colombia perpetuating conflict and violence, many of them motivated by the profits of illicit economies, including narco-trafficking. As a contribution to explanations on the continuity of internal conflict, this article explains the idea of ‘self-sustainment dynamics’ in a system of armed groups and structures, with Colombia as a case study. It assumes that the post-FARC scenario of armed agents needs to be observed as a complex adaptive system where several types of armed structures come together. It argues that self-sustainment dynamics are a consequence of the reaccommodation of structures within the system as they adapt to stimuli from the environment and to key decision and actions of individuals within the structures. It seeks to motivate comparisons with other cases of internal conflict where illicit economies have a significant weight.

This article takes the Yellow Vests (YVs, Gilets Jaunes) movement as a case in point to study the mechanisms by which social media can enhance protest participation. Building on the literature on social media and protest behaviour, we study the association between different political experiences on social media and protest engagement. We rely on novel survey data from the project YELLOWPOL collected in France in 2019 during a period characterised by the mobilisation of the YVs. We find that individuals’ experiences on social media play a role in connecting general social media use with their participation in protests. Specifically, we show that simply using social media cannot predict protest behaviour, but seeking content from the accounts of decision-makers and activists and using social media to express opinions contributes to protest participation. These findings enhance the understanding of the individual-level mechanisms linking social media use and protest behaviour in first-wave democracies, expanding existing knowledge on the use and consequences of Internet-mediated technology on political participation and political change.

The 2019 General Election brought about a significant change in the parliamentary balance of power. There has already been much attention devoted to how parties and their leaders campaigned in the run up to the polling day. Using original leaflet data from the OpenElections project, this study extends the focus to individual candidates by exploring the nature of local campaign communications. We find that candidates make little effort to promote their personal traits, with personalisation of leaflets remaining largely limited to offering visual cues in the shape of candidate photos. We also find that while negative campaign messages are common, they tend to relate to an opposing party more generally. Similarly, we find that highlighting the tactical situation in the constituency remains a rare practice. Our findings suggest that there is still considerable room for candidates to tailor their campaign materials to their personal attributes and the local electoral context.