This article explains why opposition movements in the Middle East cycle between radicalization and moderation over long periods. I argue that twentieth-century colonization shaped both exclusionary state institutions and radical opposition groups, structuring how later episodes of inclusion and exclusion influenced movement strategies. The paper explains subsequent oscillations through a single core mechanism: shifting factional balances of power. State inclusion and exclusion redistribute influence between moderates and radicals, generating shifts between confrontation and accommodation. I develop and evaluate the theory through longitudinal process tracing of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Iraqi Communist Party, supplemented by shadow cases illustrating colonial presence (Palestine) and absence (Turkey), using evidence from 96 semistructured interviews, archival materials, and participant observation conducted between 2021 and 2024 in Palestine, Iraq, and Turkey. By foregrounding temporality and factional dynamics, the article reframes debates on Islamist moderation and authoritarian durability as path-dependent and iterative processes rather than linear transformations.
Dominant models of news consumption in political science treat citizens as rational individuals, gathering information to make materially or politically consequential choices. This assumption, developed largely in democratic contexts, risks obscuring other incentives that may be equally or more influential—particularly in authoritarian regimes, where the informational value of news is often constrained. This article advances the concept of social rationality: the incentive to consume news to sustain conversations, reinforce social bonds, and participate in communities of shared meaning. Drawing on original survey data from Belarus and Russia—two highly authoritarian states with divergent approaches to media control—the analysis shows that social motivations are powerful predictors of both the intensity and breadth of media consumption, while decision-rational considerations also help to explain breadth. Divergent interactions between social motivations and intrinsic prosocial orientations in the two cases further complicate theories of “informational autocracy.” These findings challenge classical models and underscore the need to place social incentives at the center of explanations of media use.
Previous research overlooks how certain ascribed characteristics, such as skin tone, correlate with the representation of marginalized groups. Yet research also demonstrates how colorism shapes candidate evaluations and life experiences. We theorize that colorism, the systemic privileging of lighter skin, structures the motivations and electoral incentives of Black lawmakers. We hypothesize that darker-skinned Black members of Congress will better represent Black Americans on racialized issues than lighter-skinned Black members, depending on the form of representation: rhetorical or legislative. We test this hypothesis with a combination of human and computer-assisted content analyses of 204,806 press releases and 18,025 bill introductions from the 114th, 115th, and 116th Congresses and a crowdsourced measure of skin tones. We find that on average, darker-skinned Black members of Congress provide more representation in press releases, but not in legislation. Our findings highlight the need to examine diversity among descriptive representatives.
Illiberal governments increasingly target universities as sites of political dissent and ideological opposition. This paper compares three illustrative cases—Boğaziçi University under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Central European University under Viktor Orbán, and elite US universities under Donald Trump—to examine how illiberal governments deploy state power against autonomous, high-profile, liberal-aligned institutions of higher education, and how students and faculty respond. Although universities are not always bastions of pluralism, tolerance, and democracy, attacks on universities are often concurrent with illiberal governance. We argue that illiberal governments perceive universities as vanguards of hegemonic liberalism and as partisan opponents in certain contexts, and that state repression operates along a continuum of coercion, legal displacement, and discursive delegitimation. These attacks on academic autonomy trigger varied responses—from mobilization, to fragmentation, to withdrawal—shaped by domestic political opportunity structures, the intensity of state repression, and campus culture. By conceptualizing the university as a contested political institution rather than a neutral educational space, this article contributes to broader debates on democratic backsliding, populism, culture wars, and higher education.
According to the standard definition of hope, for one to be hopeful, the desired outcome must be considered at least possible. The literature on climate activism has incorporated this notion of hope, but we argue that this notion alone cannot fully account for hopeful attitudes in situations where collective action is demanded. For hope to be justified in the case of climate activism, it must be supported by some form of trust. We then outline different forms of trust that can be found in activist practices to ground hopeful attitudes, including procedural and moral trust in institutions and in fellow citizens or activists. We finally argue that mistrust represents a democratic equilibrium between the activists’ duty to exercise vigilance and critique toward institutions and the need for institutions to be perceived as trustworthy by activists and citizens more broadly.
In this article, I interrogate the theoretical architecture that underpins three increasingly influential normative prescriptions for a just political configuration in Israel–Palestine: reconciliation, decolonization of relationships, and egalitarian bi-nationalism (RDB-N). Although recent scholarship has attempted to integrate them into a shared framework, they remain insufficiently articulated, delaying the emergence of a transformative praxis. Here, I argue that the core impasse lies in the dominant “top-down” conception of reconciliation, which, by presuming that a postconflict political order is a prerequisite for implementation, produces a dependency that obstructs the normative potential of RDB-N as a coherent framework for structural transformation. In response, I advance a “bottom-up” conception of reconciliation that is both theoretically plausible and normatively desirable. This reimagines reconciliation as an implementation-driven and grassroots dynamic capable of initiating decolonial transformation and prefiguring an egalitarian binational future, rather than a postconflict process led by the state and its institutions. In proposing this theoretical rearticulation, I set the groundwork for a new praxis of RDB-N grounded in localized political agency. The analysis culminates in the Palestinian Community of Israel (PCI), whose liminal position and situated political condition potentially make it a particularly fertile site for developing such a praxis. Although largely theoretical, this contribution has practical implications for conflict resolution, settler-colonial critique, and political transformation in asymmetric contexts. It also opens avenues for future empirical and normative research into both justice in non-ideal conditions and collective action.
The US has traditionally played a key role in fighting global impunity for atrocity crimes, but the policies of Donald Trump’s administration suggest that a dramatic shift in American priorities may be underway. This article examines America’s commitment to addressing impunity in the context of US relations with the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump presidency, I argue, showcases a curious mix of continuity and change in America’s relationship with one of the world’s most prominent international institutions. In particular, Trump’s general strategic approach to the ICC represents continuity with past American presidents, but the brazenness of the specific tactics Trump has used to oppose the ICC represents a notable change. The reverberations of recent American attacks on the ICC raise implications for the future of global impunity that will be felt in three distinct areas: in the US–ICC relationship, among ICC adversaries, and among ICC allies.
Decades of research in political behavior show that citizens struggle with information, rely on cognitive shortcuts, and face barriers to participation. They are increasingly using AI tools to make sense of political information and express views, while interacting with platform curation systems that shape how views circulate through democratic politics. Although these tools appear suited to address the limits of democratic citizenship, they do more than transmit content. They help interpret information, articulate views, and affect what is prioritized, seen, and circulated. In doing so, these systems shape the formation of political judgments and citizens’ capacity to translate them into action. As a result, they can reduce barriers to participation while weakening the independence of political judgment, or they can support reflective preference formation while constraining citizens’ ability to act on those preferences effectively. We call this tension the autonomy paradox. To make sense of it, we focus on how citizens engage with AI systems in ways that affect belief formation and political action. We develop a framework and research agenda for identifying when AI supports autonomous citizenship, when it substitutes for citizens’ judgment or agency, and why the same systems produce different outcomes across political tasks depending on how citizens use them.
