Earlier conceptual studies suggest that policy bubbles differ from the more common pattern of policy overreaction due to their sustained, self-reinforcing nature, which results in prolonged overinvestment. Although the best way to analyze this phenomenon is through rigorous empirical investigation, such future endeavors require a guiding theory. This article lays the groundwork for a potential theory of policy bubbles by differentiating between micro-level causes, such as cognitive, emotional, and social network factors influencing individual behavior (e.g., whether a person’s friends are connected to one another), and macro-level causes, including institutional and ideational factors, as well as social network dynamics at the aggregate level, such as links density or segregation patterns. A similar distinction is made here between micro- and macro-level positive feedback processes, which may evolve independently, interact with one another, and exhaust themselves during the emergence of policy bubbles and in the lock-in stage. This stage is conceived here as a prolonged conflict between policy entrepreneurs who advance distorted or accurate policy images. This conflict at times involves the use of sheer power in authoritarian regimes, while in democratic ones it often entails strategic action by policy entrepreneurs via mutual reinforcement between policy overproduction and various forms of capture—constitutional, technological, cultural, and informational. These mechanisms are used by policy entrepreneurs to block bureaucratic drift, coalition drift, and drift of accountability forums that may lead to a decline in policy overproduction. If this theory results in conclusions that offer sufficient generalizations, it may have a place alongside the major theories of the policy process.

This paper examines how dominant communities (ethnic or national groups) in divided cities use toponyms (place names) as part of their efforts to establish and maintain various types of political control over urban spaces. To this end, it analyzes an original dataset that includes all the names that the State of Israel, which has been dominated by the Jewish community since its establishment, gave to neighborhoods in West Jerusalem during the periods of the city's post-partition control (1948–1967) and post-unification control (1967–2022), as well as to neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in the latter period. By exploring the formal and informal names given to Jerusalem's neighborhoods in the different periods of Israeli rule, we emphasize the significance of toponymic practices in establishing and maintaining different types of political control in divided cities as well as their practical limitations.

The environmental impacts of infrastructure projects are widely assessed through a procedure known as environmental impact assessments (EIAs). In many regulatory systems, EIAs are carried out by third-party intermediaries. However, their roles and effectiveness within public policy and regulatory governance remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by examining 24 wind energy projects deliberated in Israeli planning committees between 2003 and 2024. Specifically, we ask: (1) What intermediary roles do EIAs and those responsible for their implementation play? (2) What are the strengths and weaknesses of EIAs as an intermediation mechanism? (3) How do these strengths and weaknesses shape their effectiveness? Our analysis identifies five key intermediary roles: two formal roles, which are legally defined—providing advisory services and facilitating enforcement and compliance—and three informal roles, which extend beyond strict regulatory mandates—interpretation, dialogue facilitation, and advocacy. The formal roles ensure compliance with regulatory guidelines and advance environmental expertise, thereby meeting regulatory requirements and contributing to high procedural effectiveness. However, challenges persist, particularly regarding informal roles, which are often influenced by intermediaries’ alignment with developers’ interests. These challenges contribute to relatively low substantive effectiveness, as planning committees frequently find EIAs insufficient for informed decision-making, leading them to seek external consultants for validation. The gap between EIAs meeting regulatory requirements and planning committees’ inability to fully rely on them highlights weaknesses in EIA governance as a mechanism of regulatory intermediation. We argue that formalizing informal intermediary roles with clearer guidelines could improve EIA effectiveness, enhance objectivity, and strengthen decision-making in the EIA framework.

Reading testimonies and diaries of people of ethnic minorities in Amsterdam in the 17^th and 18^th century one cannot but admire Amsterdam for its policies of inclusion, which, actually inspired John Locke when he wrote A Letter Concerning Toleration. And yet, the traumas of the Jews in the Second World War and the Surinamese in the 1970s suggest that this model of inclusion and toleration was unstable and fragile. Indeed, in recent years many Amsterdamers have acknowledged that the city betrayed not only its ethnic minorities but also its own values. The shift in policies of tolerance which characterizes contemporary Amsterdam is interpreted here as a modification of the ethos of tolerance, from tolerance and inclusion based on indifference to tolerance and inclusion based on curiosity. This ethos includes seeing the other as part of one’s own ‘self’, and the ‘self’ as plural, or, as several Amsterdamers told me, ‘hybrid’.

Concerns over democratic backsliding have proliferated recently, as elected politicians have sought to undermine democratic checks and balances. This study examines the underpinnings of public support for democratic backsliding, delineating five theoretical explanations: personalistic leadership, affective polarization, populism, majoritarianism, and entanglement with the legal system. We test the explanatory power of these accounts within the Israeli context, leveraging panel survey data collected before and after the government announced its plan to curtail the courts. Results indicate that support for the plan is best explained by two forces: prior attachment to the leader heading the backsliding effort and animosity toward partisan opponents. Notably, populist attitudes are not associated with support for the government's plan. The theoretical framework and longitudinal research design help explain who supports democratic backsliding.

Religious belief commonly relates to prosocial behavior, yet studies suggest that religious individuals tend to limit their prosociality to ingroup members. In this study, we conducted a door-to-door fundraising field experiment to investigate further religious prosociality and ingroup favoritism in a real-world setting. Our results support the association between religiosity and prosociality, showing that religious individuals (compared to secular individuals) were likelier to donate and display hospitality toward fundraisers. However, we also found evidence of ingroup bias by focusing on the role of religiosity level as a boundary of the religious ingroup among co-religionists. Religious people were more inclined to donate to religious fundraisers than secular fundraisers, despite a shared religious affiliation with both. Furthermore, we explored the implications of religious diversity residential context on this nuanced ingroup bias and suggest that the religious community structure alone may not be sufficient to explain the nuances of religious prosocial behavior.

A well-documented fact is that Muslim citizens tend to vote for the left in greater proportion than non-Muslim citizens. In Western Europe, this difference in the vote for left-wing parties exceeds 30%. Interestingly, the gap endures despite Muslims’ integration into the host society, which is expected to militate against group voting. Why, then, do Muslims continue to vote as a group? And what factors account for their leaning towards the left? We argue that exclusion and discrimination, to which Muslims are regularly subjected as a group, work against the effect of integration on their vote choice, as it strengthens the saliency of group interests and “linked fate” in their voting calculus. Using public opinion survey data, we show that the more Muslims feel discriminated against by their host society, the more likely they are to engage in group voting and vote for the left. We also show that political exclusion, proxied by the electoral strength of radical-right parties, has a positive association with Muslims’ support for left-wing parties. Finally, we delve into the British case and show that experiences of physical violence are also manifested in stronger group voting by non-Western immigrants. Our article sheds light on a phenomenon that has the potential to reshape the electoral landscape in Europe by rendering ethnic and religious identity a crucial dimension of party competition.

(Dis)trust is referred to in the literature as both an antecedent and/or a consequence of regulation and regulatory governance in terms of regulatory content, procedures, and (behavior of) actors, and vice versa. However, trust and regulation might be competing and eroding each other, substituting for or mutually reinforcing each other. The chapter first discusses theoretical perspectives like the regulatory trust triangle, and how choices in terms of institutional design (e.g., mono- versus polycentric regimes, independence), strategies (like command and control versus self-regulation), as well as performance might signal and determine trust in regulatory regimes and regulatory agencies. Existing empirical knowledge from an actor- and relation-oriented perspective is reviewed, discussing trust from citizens and regulatees in regulatory agencies and regulatory regimes, trust between political, administrative, regulatory, and interest group actors in regimes, and how trust and distrust affect the functioning and performance of regulatory regimes. Future research strategies are outlined.

This chapter explores the socio-political dimensions of urban sustainability. Cities play a pivotal role in sustainability, particularly in addressing climate change through mitigation and adaptation strategies and as hubs for progressive, environment-friendly policies. However, cities are also limited in their capacities for environmental governance due to institutional and political constraints and lack of authority to enforce broader changes or implement large-scale initiatives like a ‘green new deal’. Cities’ ‘non-sovereignty’, we argue, is both a strength and a weakness. Thus, while cities are crucial actors in addressing environmental challenges, their efforts must be complemented by state-level and global political system reforms. Ultimately, enhancing cities’ political autonomy is necessary but insufficient. We conceptualise this complexity as the ‘Urbanocene’, suggesting that it is analogous to human agency in this geological epoch. Like humanity, the city has transformative powers, and like human agency in the Anthropocene, these powers are ultimately circumscribed.

This paper moves beyond the conventional view of emotions in policy settings as mere contextual constraints in cases of low-intensity affective processes by introducing the concept of emotional policy storm-a sudden surge in the intensity of collective emotions, either positive or negative, within a policy context, sustained over an extended period. The conceptualization offered here addresses cases where high-intensity collective emotions emerge following a spectacularly emotional event or issue; emotions are thereafter shared at the collective level through bottom-up, horizontal, and top-down processes; and are further sustained over time by emotionally-charged numbers, images, rhetoric, political context, and media dynamics. Emotional policy storms function as mechanisms that link agendas, spaces of policy problems and solutions, and coalitions, over an extended period, while also acting as disruptive forces that reconfigure the policymaking process, generating strong demands for urgent, radical, and large-scale policy interventions. This paper further explores the conceptual reach of emotional policy storms by examining their usefulness in addressing existing weaknesses and ambiguities in the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), particularly regarding the autonomy of streams, the complexity of coupling and policy windows, the endogeneity of agenda-setting and alternative specification, and the role of ideas. It offers an illustrative application of this conceptual addition to the MSF by assessing its feasibility in the case of the U.S. policy response to 9/11. It concludes with a discussion of methodological issues, a series of hypotheses, and final remarks.