This study investigates the interactions of forced migrants with state actors in transit countries at critical decision nodal points (DNPs) along their journey—defined as turning points where migrants make decisions about resuming mobility or altering the course of their journey. Granted official legal power by the state, transit state actors operate on the ground in various ways using their power. Nevertheless, their roles in the decision-making as experienced by forced migrants have been studied very little. We examine the journey narratives of forced migrants originating from Eritrea and Sudan. We quantitatively identify and analyze spaces of mobility, immobility and DNPs, within their trajectories. The findings demonstrate that state actors in transit countries can serve as integral and concrete journey components that shape migration outcomes. The study concludes by presenting two insights into (i) the directionality of influence (enabling versus halting journey plans) and (ii) the encounter space (direct-official spaces versus indirect spaces).

Recent studies portray civil servants as potential guardians against populist attempts to undermine liberal democracy. However in polarized societies, bureaucrats, like citizens, tend to hold divergent perceptions of the threat that politicians’ actions pose to democracy. This, in turn, likely shapes bureaucrats’ responses. We examine this in the context of the attempt by Israel’s extreme right-wing populist government to curtail the powers and independence of the Israeli Supreme Court and replace legal advisors with political appointees (hereafter the “legal overhaul”). We employ a mixed-methods design, combining a survey, interviews, and a focus group with career civil servants, showing that those who perceive the legal overhaul as a threat to democracy are more inclined to exit government and less likely to voice and exert effort at work. These findings are attributed to respondents’ views of the legal overhaul as leading to future politicization, curtailed influence, and a threat to their role as civil servants.

Transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness are central concepts in the literature on public administration. They are considered qualities that enable administrative bodies to share power with social and political actors and strengthen their democratic nature. These qualities have also been recognized as crucial for regulatory bodies, especially because of the technocratic nature of these bodies. Despite their importance, the literature provides limited measurement of these qualities, which means that neither the extent to which regulatory bodies are formally required to provide for transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness nor the extent to which they do so in practice can be captured and compared adequately. To address this gap, we develop measures of ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ transparency, accountability, participation and inclusiveness from a novel data set of 49 national, subnational and supranational regulatory bodies in three sectors (data protection, food safety and finance) and in nine countries. We use Item Response Theory methods to validate the indicators and their relative weight in the measure, providing a tool substantiated by comprehensive data to assess how regulatory bodies enhance democratic governance.

In recent years, an increasing number of women have been elected as candidates by radical-right parties. Does this trend toward feminization of the radical right improve the substantive representation of women's interest? Our investigation reveals that instead of moderating their positions on gender roles in response to increased female visibility, radical-right parties have further radicalized their ideology, as evidenced by their parliamentary discourse. We analyze speeches delivered in the European Parliament between 2009 and 2023 by delegates from nine parties, four of which are radical-right. Results show that a higher proportion of women in radical-right parties is associated with their representatives’ greater preoccupation with conservative ideology on gender issues. The article discusses the implications of its findings for the study of gender and anti-democratic politics.

Does spontaneous contact between individuals from different ethnonational groups affect their social resilience, specifically their ability to avoid escalation and radicalization following eruptions of ethnic violence? To address this question, we conducted a series of studies in mixed Jewish–Palestinian cities and academic settings. Study 1, based on data collected through large-scale online surveys of residents in both mixed and non-mixed cities in Israel (n = 944), reveals that Jewish and Palestinian residents living in mixed cities exhibit higher social resilience than residents of homogeneous cities. This heightened resilience is manifested through more favorable attitudes toward the outgroup and reduced feelings of tension during and following episodes of intercommunal violence. We propose that the underlying mechanism explaining this resilience to the disruptive effects of violence is the higher prevalence of spontaneous intergroup contact enabled in mixed settings compared to more homogeneous ones. This explanation is supported by Study 2, which involved two rounds of surveys completed by Jewish and Palestinian students (n = 6467) at a heterogeneous campus in a mixed city in Israel. The findings demonstrate that positive attitudes toward the outgroup following incidents of intercommunal violence were more durable among students exposed to spontaneous intergroup contact. We discuss the implications of our findings for deepening our understanding of conflict and conflict management in ethnically mixed and conflicted settings.

Philosophers have been preoccupied with the future from time immemorial. But for egalitarians, the future of humanity constitutes a relatively new frontier. The premise of this book is that a complaint-based ideal of egalitarianism faces problems when applied to the future. For one thing, if we suppose that future people are destined to fare better than us (say, in terms of overall wellbeing), then allowing humanity to flourish would then represent a net increase in terms of egalitarian complaints. With respect to equality, at least, it would be better to refrain from bringing new life into being. That seems absurd. This is the Anti-Natalist objection to egalitarianism. In addition, any policy aimed at reducing future inequalities, and indeed any population policy at large, will in all likelihood affect the identity of those who will be born. This familiar Non-Identity problem poses unique problems for egalitarianism, especially ones of the complaint-model. Arguably, a person cannot have a complaint (about being worse off than another) when the only other alternative distribution is one in which she does not exist. Put differently, such a person lacks a standing to complain about this future inequality. This can be referred to as the Non-Identity objection or as the Standing objection to egalitarianism. The book thus examines how to evaluate different scenarios for humanity’s future from an egalitarian perspective. It is argued that planning for the future does require egalitarian considerations, but that egalitarianism also needs to be adapted to handle future persons. As indicated, a key challenge concerns how to evaluate mixed populations containing both necessary and possible persons. The book proposes a pluralist approach combining egalitarianism with prioritarianism. Prioritarianism, itself, also suffers unique problems when applied to the future, chief among them the Separateness of Persons objection, and the Super Repugnant Conclusion. The book attempts to deflect these types of obstacles, and aims to develop a coherent framework that maintains egalitarian principles while appropriately discounting the status of merely possible people. Overall, the book seeks to advance both our ethical assessment of humanity’s future and our understanding of the nature of equality (and distributive ethics more generally) itself.

This book illustrates how cities possess unique normative identities, referred to as 'ethoses', and how the residents shape and perceive them. The question of identity and which social relations constitute it has been a central topic in philosophy and social science for centuries. While the state played a key role in shaping identity during the 20th century, its influence has waned in recent years due to market pressures, international agreements, migration, and institutions like the IMF, which limit state autonomy, hence its ability to design policies that sustain and enhance particular, national identities. This collection argues that cities are emerging as new sources of identity, possessing their own "ethoses"—distinctive normative characters. The contributors explore this idea through six cities: London, Qingdao, Tokyo, Mumbai, Istanbul, and Amsterdam. Their analysis draws on extensive document research, personal experiences, urban exploration, and interviews with residents from diverse social, ethnic, and gender backgrounds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

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.

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.

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.