Populist politics in Southern Europe displays several distinctive patterns related to a shared history, geography, culture, and economy, while being subject to similar geopolitical pressures. In the last decade, moreover, the Euro-Mediterranean region has been struck by destabilizing shocks: the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis, which led to a realignment of party politics, with populist parties of both the left and the right enjoying high levels of popular support and taking, or have gotten close to taking, governmental power. These patterns make Southern Europe an interesting case for the study of populism and foreign policy through a (sub-)regional comparative approach. This article applies a structured, focused comparison of the populist foreign policies (PFP) of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, seeking to explain how populist leaderships have shaped foreign policy in these countries and the conditions under which their PFP were translated into action. After putting Euro-Mediterranean populism in context, we examine four structural themes of catalysts or constraints that populists face when ‘navigating’ PFP around the European Mare Nostrum: international power distribution, ideological underpinnings, domestic political system, and policy domains. The comparative analysis reveals how; while, populist performances are often aimed at executing a rupture and, as a result, gaining legitimacy, the implementation of PFP in Southern Europe has ultimately been affected by structural pressures to discard these revolutionary impulses and align with the mainstream.

Populist parties are held to be the drivers of unprecedented emotionalisation in electoral politics. Advancing theories of realignment and detachment, this article studies the temporal development in the affective alignments between voters and parties. In particular, it analyses the relationship between social structure, voters’ affective orientations towards political parties, and vote choice over time by drawing on 625 representative population surveys from Germany over 44 years. The results show that voters’ affective orientations are indeed becoming more important to vote choice. However, this reflects a return to the close link that already existed at the heyday of the original cleavages rather than something novel. What seems to have changed is the degree to which affective orientations are rooted in social structure. This not only qualifies overly myopic interpretations of populist success but has more general implications for the contemporary linkages between parties and voters.

Practitioners, pundits, and scholars increasingly recognize the role that international organizations play in conflicts. Regional organizations (ROs), as brokers of collective security, welfare, and identity, have become particularly active agents during violent crises by granting legitimacy to certain protagonists and discrediting the legitimacy of others, thus affecting international policymaking. However, existing research generally assesses the legitimizing effects of ROs in either a static way, in which the stances of their member states do not change over time, or in an institutional vacuum, where ROs are not challenged by other ROs. This study aims to shed light on the impact of multiple ROs dynamically and simultaneously intervening in legitimation struggles. It focuses on the 2014–2020 regional “battle” over the legitimate authority of the Chavista–Madurista regime in Venezuela, examining how multiple Latin American ROs articulated their discourse seeking to influence the crisis’ outcomes. To this end, a multi-step process tracing based on four phases (opening, deliberation, judgment, and denouement) is applied. The findings reveal the lively competition between involved actors for the recognition of ROs as the relevant legitimating agents, and the limits faced in achieving collective action when polarization over such a regional legitimating role prevails. The study has novel implications for scholarly understanding of the role of legitimation dynamics in promoting international cooperation during periods of disruption.

Objectives: This study aims to examine the relationship between the outdoor mobility of older adults with and without cognitive impairment and the built environment in three urban neighbourhoods in Singapore. Methods: Outdoor walking mobility in daily life gait speed (DGS) was collected continuously for one week using a previously validated hybrid mobility tracker. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) cut-offs by educational levels were used to differentiate cognitive impairment (CI) and without cognitive impairment (non-CI). The environmental characteristics examined were gross plot ratio and land use. Statistical correlations (one-way ANOVA test and linear regression) were used to examine the associations between older adults’ outdoor mobility and built environment for all CI and non-CI groups. A case example was also used to provide a location-based heatmap on DGS for 2 older adults (CI and non-CI) navigating the same neighbourhood for 3 consecutive days. Results: Thirty-three participants registered a total of 2,428 kilometres with an average DGS of 0.74 m/s outside of their homes over a period of 220 days. The mean (SD) age of the participants was 69.2 (7.14), and 21 (64%) of them were female. Fourteen of the (42%) participants were classified as cognitive impaired. Overall, a higher gross plot ratiowas found to be associated with faster outdoor gait speed (DGS) for the non-CI group (β = 0.04, r = 0.69, p =.03) and slower DGS for the CI group (β = -0.13, r = 0.75, p =.01). The DGS of individuals with CI was slower than that of non-CI individuals, with the greatest difference observed in business and commercial areas; however, the DGS of individuals with CI was faster than that of non-CI individuals within community and residential locations. Conclusions: Individuals with CI had a slower outdoor gait speed and may require higher adaptation to the environment. Although DGS could be used in differentiating older adults with and without cognitive impairment while mobilizing in an urban environment, considerations should also be given to understanding the interaction of DGS with different land use and typology.

Beyond its variable organizational structures, the nation-state is an idea or model – a now-global institution. Since the late nineteenth century, and at an accelerated rate after World War II, the core ideological model of the state has expanded to incorporate authority over, and responsibility for, more aspects of society. We track the worldwide impact of this process by describing and analyzing the rise of eleven relevant cabinet ministries across 190 countries, from 1870 to 2000. We find that early in the period, state penetration occurred in areas seen as central to the collective good – education, welfare, health, statistics, and labor. After the war, areas involving the status of the individual and the rationalization of nature and society were added in global formulations. New ministries focused on women, children, and family life, along with ministries of higher education and the environment. We show that these changes occur globally, rather than mainly as the result of the internal characteristics of countries. The expanded state, beyond its power, reflects structuration under the influence of global models: as the nation-state model expands in associations and discourse at the world level, organizational structuration develops at the national level.

Israeli–German relations have come a long way: from the time when Israeli passports were ‘valid for all countries, except Germany’, to today’s close partnership, with cooperation on a myriad of levels that extends virtually to all areas. Today, Germany is considered Israel’s second-closest ally after the United States. It is also Israel’s most important economic partner in the EU and a highly popular tourist destination. Frequent visits of German politicians and sought-after receptions at the residence of the German ambassador in Herzliya have become routine. These strong ties are often likened by Germany to a ‘miracle’, whereas Israelis see these relations as an evolving process fraught with many tensions and crises.

Political parties commonly experience internal disagreements. Recently, evidence is accumulating that outright internal discord makes a party much less attractive to voters. However, we do not understand well when citizens perceive a party to be internally conflicted in the first place. We here explain citizens’ perceptions from a democratic life cycle perspective: Factors related to the periodic conduct of elections induce higher levels of intra-party conflict and make it more visible to citizens. To test this argument, we combine survey data on citizens’ perceptions of political parties in Germany spanning 16 years with indicators moderating (the visibility of) intra-party conflict. The analysis shows that citizens perceive more internal conflict when parties are heterogenous, when they are governing, when election day is distant, and when electoral losses accumulate. This demonstrates the recurring patterns in citizens’ perceptions of political parties and suggests self-reinforcing dynamics between citizen assessments and election outcomes.

The severe restrictions on public life following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic affected Holocaust memorials and museums worldwide, especially in Europe, Israel, and the United States. These measures posed significant challenges to contemporary forms of Holocaust commemoration, which were based on collaborative practices of remembering, particularly related to the experience of presence at the memorial sites. In our chapter, we ask in which ways the pandemic had an accelerating effect on global Holocaust memory by tracing, analyzing, and identifying the institutionalized use of online platforms and digital formats on social media. We present results from an online survey conducted with 32 key institutions in the field of Holocaust commemoration in the Spring and Summer of 2020 and discuss them in the context of various forms of digital activities initiated by Holocaust memorials and museums in response to the pandemic. For that purpose, we have created a comprehensive database of 45 digital projects, which were released in the first months of the pandemic, and conducted a multimodal analysis of selected projects. We identified a significant increase in social media use and digital tools, in particular video formats, helping institutions to communicate virtually with potential audiences. Memorials utilized various social media features like live streams, stories, and hashtags to implement elements of participatory memory culture that offer users the possibility to participate in new collaborative forms of mediated commemoration. In doing so, they helped to establish like-minded and co-creative commemoration communities.

The analytic distinction between internationalization and globalization parallels the distinction between organizational strategy and organizational ethos. In higher education, internationalization revolves around the increasing mobility of students, faculty, and research funding, whereas globalization refers to the long-standing translocal ethos of science, academia, and higher education. Multilingualism serves as a sphere for expressing both strategy and ethos: Academia operates in the global and epochal lingua franca (Mauranen, 2012), namely Latin in the Middle Ages, German in the nineteenth century and, currently, English, which expresses the global and humanistic unity of science and academia while enabling strategic acts of communications and mobility. Nevertheless, for higher-education systems outside the global core (i.e., in societies whose native language is different than the dominant academic lingua franca), multilingualism frames the paradox of glocality (see Stevens & Giebel, 2020), global-local orientation. Seeing scant study of multilingualism and glocality in higher education, in this chapter we outline paradoxes driven by multilingualism in an Israeli research university. We analyze the debates about multilingualism around three academic practices: (1) organizational identity as expressed in the university’s mission documents, in English and in Hebrew; (2) the use of non-native languages in the university’s public space, namely in signage; and (3) language requirements on faculty members.

This chapter explores the evolution of the diplomatic relations between Israel and Latin America, with a particular focus on the ways the dynamics of their relations has been affected by a reciprocal (though asymmetrical) search for legitimation and recognition; economic cooperation and development; and power and influence. Special attention is devoted to identifying the underlying patterns that characterized the gradual development of diplomatic links as well as the elements that have influenced the shifts experienced over seven decades of international interactions. The chapter refers in general to the relations between Israel and the region, as well as to specific examples from key Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela.