Zarina Burkadze
Promoting democracy without challenging external autocratisers and checking local democratic elites may be counterproductive, argues Zarina Burkadze. Great power competition has always had an impact on the domestic politics of small nations, and this is apparent in the conflicts and international politics of today Read more
Raza Rahman Khan Qazi
Pakistan’s foreign policy over the decades has proved disastrous for the country and has had a profound negative impact on the South Asian region, argues Raza R. Khan Qazi. Its policy has had a consistently conservative formulation based on purely realist objectives, with no place for liberal ideals and goals Read more
Eun A Jo
How does collective memory shape politics? Eun A Jo provides an interactive framework for studying memory politics and, as a case study, illustrates how South Korean struggles for democracy became bound up in understandings of Japan Read more
Sebastian Elischer
Many autocracies emerge through military coups, but studies of hybrid regimes and electoral autocracies largely disregard the role of militaries in their trajectory. Sebastian Elischer shows how armies consolidate their power when they take control and suggests a further research agenda Read more
Hager Ali
When democracies’ most basic features lose their distinctive edge, differentiating regime types becomes a problem for scholars of democracy and autocracy alike. Hager Ali wants to redraw demarcations between regimes across the political spectrum. To do so, she argues that civilian control over militaries is just as fundamental as suffrage Read more
Nitesh Anchan
Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine mainly on political grounds, but also claimed a cultural reason: the construction of a Eurasian civilisation. To Nitesh Anchan and Priya Vijaykumar Poojary, the Russia-Ukraine war signifies that global politics in the 21st century will be dominated by the rhetoric of the civilisation state Read more
Paul Whiteley
Paul Whiteley, assessing Russia's difficulties and Putin's potential next steps in the offensive against Ukraine, wonders whether it is time for NATO to issue a nuclear guarantee to Ukraine in order to prevent a further escalation of the conflict Read more
Bernhard Reinsberg
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not only a ‘lender of last resort’ but also a security actor. New data and analysis from Bernhard Reinsberg and Daniel Shaw at the University of Glasgow shows that IMF interventions often have a negative effect on human security Read more