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Public university campuses in Bangladesh have been historically significant sites of negotiating with social and political orders. Based on in-depth interviews with male and female students from three public universities in Dhaka, conducted between 2022 and 2023, this article identifies the ways in which formal and informal structures of power on campus reproduce patriarchal norms and gendered inequities. The students' narratives shed light on how the culture of residential halls, and practices of policing and surveillance, interact with patriarchal norms to limit women's agency and mobility. They also show the ways in which masculine practices which draw from hypersexual views on women and glorify violence become enabled and sustained by institutional power dynamics, wherein harassment and policing become instruments to negotiate power. The article provides new insights into the ways in which patriarchal power dynamics and gender norms promoted and practised within an institutional space create drivers of anti‑feminist backlash.

Within the experience of our work in India, context and positionality determine what we perceive as backlash against gender justice. An important underlying cause of backlash today is the widespread crisis of masculinities, where subaltern masculinities are evolving differently in response to the aggressive nationalist Hindutva masculinity. Gender and development strategies have failed to recognise or address this. This article analyses grounded examples from our action research towards generating new knowledge on how two collectives are negotiating backlash. These include the community-based transgender organisation Kolkata Rista and Humqadam, a platform comprising male activists in Uttar Pradesh working with men on gender equality. Applying the framework of ontological insecurity, this article explores ways for discovering common ground in situations where polarisation destroys the space for debate and discussion. Reflecting on the political practice of fraternity, the article examines how social movements can shift strategies when faced with exclusionary discourses.

Abstract
The replacement of cash by cashless alternatives carries huge potential to aggravate social inequality. Governments struggle to manage these dynamics since they must keep a delicate balance between the formation of strong players and the provision of inclusive payment options. Studying the political economy behind the payment industry is crucial to understanding how digitalization has transformed payments. To this aim, we look at the history of the payment industry in two cases: the USA and the euro area. In the USA, the cashless revolution gave rise to an oligopoly of two extremely successful credit card companies, which, however, resulted in a banking system that does not serve the needs of at least one-fifth of the population. In the euro area, the population has access to affordable financial services; however, neither the private nor the public sector has been able to provide the infrastructure to integrate European payments.

AbstractThis paper empirically examines the impact of investment treaties on domestic governance in developing countries, through cross‐country quantitative analysis and a detailed qualitative case‐study on Myanmar. We clarify a variety of mechanisms that plausibly link investment treaties to impacts on domestic governance. Considering incentive, acculturative and political economy mechanisms, we find little evidence that the treaties lead to changes in domestic law, institutional structure or policy‐making. The treaties also have surprisingly limited relevance in investor‐state bargaining outside formal adjudicatory processes. Overall, our findings point to a profound decoupling between investment treaties and domestic governance; they also clarify the conditions under which such decoupling can persist, notwithstanding material incentives for states to ensure tighter alignment. Rather than interpreting decoupling as a failure of domestic implementation, our case study suggests that the problem is with the treaties themselves, in that they place obligations on developing countries that cannot realistically be implemented.

The paper offers an overview of the academic and practical discussion on 'polarity' as a fundamental element of the system of international relations and IR theory. The history of the question shows that the abstract, speculative, and essentially reductionist concept of the 'pole' hit the taste of political leaders as an indicator of a country's power potential and international status, and a pillar of the world order. An academic concept has eventually turned into an instrument of international politics. As a result, the current 'polar' discussion has got stuck, unable to expand the analytical framework beyond the concepts that emerged in a completely different historical era. Today, the discussion about 'poles' constantly leads the academic community away from studying the reality of world politics, shifting the focus to a plot that has little to do with the changes that form the fabric of international life. Hence it seems it is the time to close it.

Abstract
In recent years, Sweden has witnessed a rise in criminal activity, notably in organized crime, gang violence, and incidents like shootings and explosions. This trend has sparked considerable political and media debates, in Sweden and internationally. This paper analyses how the Swedish police authority comprehend the situation discursively. How do they define their role and mission in society? What problems do they identify? What goals and strategies do they propose, and what values are attached to these? This is illustrated by policy documents and website materials from the police authority. The results show three main problematizations: crime and crime fighting, working within the police organization, and relations between the police and citizens. Key findings are that the police authority represents crimes and the role of the police in different ways depending on what type of crime discussed, and that they connect various aspects of police work to non-repressive values, such as trust and safety.

This paper poses the following questions: What is pluralistic hegemony? Which are its defining features? Can populism be seen to possess them? We draw on Laclau's thought to examine whether antagonism and "the name of the leader" as an empty signifier are incompatible with pluralism. With reference to various different perspectives regarding the relationship between pluralism, hegemony and populism, we present our own particular understanding. Our conceptualization distances itself from the notion that pluralism involves an endless proliferation of difference and the agonistic view that seeks to sublimate antagonism, and also from Laclau's "the name of the leader" as an archetypal signifier of populism. Rather than the political frontier being the antithesis of pluralism, we see it as its precondition, with the empty signifier not representing a problem in itself, except when its name is pre-given. We perceive pluralism as being open to contingency, as a logic of the production and flow of differences.

Historically, there has been close cultural interaction between Russia and China, which was largely influenced by Russian literature. Russian classics translations in China occupy a special place, and it is generally recognized that many Russian writers have had and continue to have an impact on the attitude of Chinese society towards Russia. Creativity I.S. Turgenev shaped the worldview of more than one generation of Russians, and with the advent of translations of his works into Chinese, it continued its influence on Chinese society. Interest in the prose of I. S. Turgenev in China has been going on for decades, but today there is an intensification of research into his work. The article reveals the influence of China's political course on the literary process in the country, traces the line of historical development of attention to Russian literature and, in particular, the attention of Chinese translators to the cycle of stories "Notes of a Hunter".

abstract: Why do national governments choose to transfer some of their administrative, political, and fiscal powers to regional authorities? This article develops and tests a nationally focused strategic account: decentralization is a targeted means to bolster a governing party's national-level electoral strength by appeasing the voters of threatening ethnoterritorial parties in national parliamentary elections. Statistical analyses of decentralization across the subnational regions of Western European countries confirm that governing parties transfer additional competencies to regions in which an ethnoterritorial party threat exists, when the government is legislatively vulnerable. In contrast, if a government is not dependent on a region for maintaining national parliamentary control, the presence of a strong ethnoterritorial opponent will not motivate the government to decentralize. These findings help to explain patterns of asymmetrical decentralization across regions within a country and why governing parties decentralize competencies to subnational governments that they do not expect to control.

The research investigated the scope, motivations and implications of Palestinian minority social workers permanently leaving the profession. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with ten former social workers. It was found that leaving their social work posts, either temporarily or permanently, was a rare occurrence in Palestinian society. The few who abandoned the profession explained that two factors hindered their proper functioning and provision of appropriate services: a severe lack of essential resources; and inappropriate intervention programmes for the unique nature of Arab culture. Those who left the profession expressed satisfaction with their new careers, working as self-employed or senior employees, explaining that their new work compensated for the deficiencies endured in social work. Their departure seems to be a direct result of the socio-political context in which Palestinian social work develops, in particular, Israeli government policies that do not adequately address the needs of Palestinian society's welfare services.

Abstract Recent disasters involving mining companies in Brazil have drawn attention not only because of the scale of the social and environmental damage caused, but also due to the management practices implemented by the state. In November 2015 the world's largest iron ore tailings spill occurred when the Samarco dam, located in the municipality of Mariana, Minas Gerais, failed catastrophically. A trail of destruction and death extended downstream for 700km until the mud reached the Atlantic ocean. Accompanying the reconciliation meetings and hearings at the Mariana Justice Forum with local communities, corporations and State officials, I identify some of the traps set by the negotiation space that, rather than offering an ideal condition of autonomy and symmetrical capacity for choice, operates as a mechanism for containing criticism and indirectly manipulating behaviour. Pursuing this line of analysis, the article discusses the political rationality and forms of control contained in extrajudicial conflict resolution strategies.

International relations scholarship has long overlooked the role of parliament in shaping states' decision to go to war. In contrast, recent studies explored variations in parliamentary war powers across time and countries and their impact on troop deployments abroad. However, a systematic analysis of the determinants of support for military interventions in parliament is still missing. This article fills this literature gap by examining votes on 119 missions in twenty-one democracies between 1990 and 2019. Our findings suggest that parliamentary contestation is fundamentally driven by government ideology and the type of mission. Parliamentary support for military intervention is significantly higher when a left-wing government is in power. Moreover, "inclusive" missions with a robust humanitarian dimension draw a considerably lower level of contestation than "strategic" missions aimed at contrasting a security threat. Through such findings, the article contributes to the debates on the relevance of domestic political institutions in foreign policy and the party politics of military interventions.

UN peace missions are constantly evolving. Yet, we lack a detailed understanding of the shifting types and objectives of peace missions beyond broad categorizations that distinguish for instance between observer, traditional, multidimensional, and peace enforcement missions. To address this gap, we present the UN Peace Mission Mandates (UNPMM) dataset. With global coverage, 30 years of data between 1991 and 2020, a broad scope that includes peacekeeping and political missions, and information on 41 mandate tasks, the UNPMM represents one of the most detailed and up-to-date datasets on UN peace mission mandates. We use it to highlight how mission types, objectives, and specific tasks have changed since the end of the Cold War, and to analyze what factors influence the kind of missions the UN is willing to authorize. The descriptive statistics and empirical analysis reaffirm the need for a greater disaggregation of data on UN peace missions and their mandates.

This paper presents the first systematic study of the political behaviour of female members of China's national legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC). Women held 23 per cent of seats in the 12th NPC, yet they sponsored 44 per cent of all legislative bill proposals and more than half of the bills relevant to women's interests. Women sponsored more bills (4.8 bills) than did men (3.1 bills). We propose that there are two mechanisms driving women's outperformance: (i) women are more collaborative than men, and (ii) female leadership encourages female participation. We analyse 2,366 bills and show that women are disproportionately more active than men in all issue areas and are particularly engaged with women's issues. Our findings demonstrate that underrepresented regime outsiders (women) can carve out a space to amplify their voices, outperform insiders and shape policy direction to a certain extent within an authoritarian legislature. (China Q / GIGA)

How can we ensure quality elections when the key institutions responsible for the organisation of polls are openly partisan and anti-democratic? In their 2017 paper, Birch and van Ham suggest that partisan electoral management bodies (EMBs) do not matter for the quality of polls so long as effective alternative oversight institutions exist, are active and independent. These institutions can make up for the EMBs' shortcomings and ensure that a relatively high-quality election is still achieved. I argue that the notion of active and independent alternative oversight institutions leaves us guessing under which conditions it works. Adopting James's network-based approach to electoral management, I show on the example of the 2019 Thai election that electoral governance networks that are characterised by high levels of political polarisation, the presence of entrenched authoritarian elites and formally independent EMBs that are too powerful make substitution untenable. (JCSA/GIGA)