We tend to regard free movement as a legal and institutional achievement, but this view overlooks the lived realities in the Global South. Drawing on research in West Africa and South America, Zoé Perko shows how informal practices and historical networks redefine how ‘free movement’ really works
Politicians communicate with their constituents every day, but what are they saying? E-newsletters allow MPs to send direct, unfiltered messages to their desired audience. Daniel Casey and Adam Ozer examine new datasets which allow researchers to access every e-newsletter sent by MPs in Australia and the UK
Cold War-era nuclear thinking can help explain how today’s challenges emerged. But Linde Desmaele warns that uncritical reliance on such thinking leads to misguided policies. Outdated frameworks can distort our understanding of how nuclear weapons are classified, how Russian intent is interpreted, what counts as success, and which actors will shape Europe’s nuclear future
Western governments have armies of Mandarin speakers and AI translators, yet they keep misreading Beijing. What’s missing, as Stefan Messingschlager argues, is independent, context-rich expertise – people able to decode China’s history-laden signals and puncture bureaucratic groupthink. This kind of knowledge is strategic insurance every democracy needs before the next crisis hits
Internationally hailed as a breakthrough, Armenia’s US-brokered peace with Azerbaijan has come at steep domestic cost. Logan Liut explores how Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s foreign policy pivot triggered a rupture between the state and the influential Armenian Apostolic Church — threatening a vital source of Armenian soft power
In the current climate of populist narratives, citizens need a clear message about democracy. Agnieszka Pawłowska draws inspiration from the notion of plain language. Here, she proposes that citizens should be provided with plain democracy, which would empower them to recognise, understand, and use the fundamentals of democracy
Many regard cash transfer programmes as cost-efficient tools to alleviate poverty across the Global South. But, as Guido Maschhaupt and Ahmed El Assal argue, in autocratic contexts, these programmes can have unintended – and politically significant – consequences. By supporting them, international aid donors may advertently bolster authoritarian regimes
Keir Starmer’s speeches before and after the release of the UK's Strategic Defence Review contain narratives that make nuclear strengthening seem prudent and logical. But Zeenat Sabur argues that these narratives are fallacies, that if poked at, alert us to the insecurity to which nuclear posturing leads us
Analyses of Syria's new government focus on sectarianism. But this obscures the logic behind its dual policy of co-optation and brutality. Andrea Novellis has developed a new framework to explain this seeming contradiction. Here, he reveals how the logic of post-conflict consolidation drives the strategic use of both approaches
Opposition parties are expected to challenge the government, but they do not simply oppose for opposition's sake. Drawing on over 75 years of data, Rick van Well explains that when deciding how to behave in parliament, opposition parties make strategic trade-offs between winning votes, entering the government, and influencing policy
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