This review examines the persistence and strengthening of Indigenous communities, identities, and nations in Latin America over the past two decades. Indigenous peoples in the region have transitioned from social movements to wielding actual political power, reshaping national politics, governance structures, and development paradigms. We analyze the evolution of scholarly literature beyond earlier biases in country selection and insufficient attention to racial and gender dimensions, highlighting communitarian feminist perspectives that link body, territory, and collective governance. The review addresses fundamental questions of Indigenous identity formation, linguistic revitalization, and the endogeneity of census categorizations. We examine territorial defense against extractivism, digital colonialism, and threats to data sovereignty, while also exploring traditional governance institutions, legal pluralism, and autonomy claims. Indigenous perspectives challenge conventional political science approaches through holistic worldviews that integrate spiritual, social, and environmental dimensions. Critical emerging issues include historical trauma's impact on political behavior, Indigenous health inequalities (particularly in mental health), and urban Indigenous youth participation. We argue that political science can gain much from recognizing Indigenous epistemologies, learning from Indigenous peoples’ experiences in their transformative processes for reimagining governance, collective action, and political engagement.
Climate change politics in the developing world remains understudied, despite the region's acute vulnerability and centrality to climate futures. This article synthesizes emerging research across three domains: public opinion and climate salience, the political effects of climate exposure, and the institutional production of climate risk. We highlight a central paradox: Widespread public concern often exists alongside low climate literacy, suggesting that political salience stems from lived experience with environmental degradation rather than scientific attribution. Yet the literatures on climate and environmental politics have developed along separate tracks, limiting conceptual integration and obscuring how local environmental decline manifests as climate risk. Turning upstream, we examine how institutions shape climate exposure itself. Climate vulnerability, we argue, is not merely inherited but also politically produced and unequally distributed through the institutions that govern carbon sinks, build adaptive capacity, and allocate political voice. We identify critical gaps around the distributive politics of adaptation, representation, and institutional sources of climate exposure.
At its core, democracy carries a promise of political equality that rests on rules, norms, and procedures that govern the polity to afford equal consideration and freedom from domination to every member. However, despite being widely cherished, political equality is rarely defined precisely. This article offers a framework for studying political equality that can be used to organize thinking. We begin with an idealized notion of direct democracy, then move to its application in representative democracies. We use the framework to argue that political equality requires three conditions: inclusiveness, anonymity, and representativeness. The framework is also useful in characterizing problems of structural power inequalities that can impede political equality.
This article reviews some of the most influential accounts of our democratic duties. It organizes the debate into three normative reasons that ground said duties: reasons of justice, reasons of citizen equality, and reasons of civic virtue. Although this division is somewhat forced—since duties can be justified on several considerations at the same time—it helps us organize the extremely scattered debates in the literature. Finally, the article concentrates more specifically on a number of duties as emblematic of the conversation, including the duty to vote, jury duty, and others.
This review surveys the limits of participatory democracy and reconsiders its merits, with particular emphasis on the limited attention of citizens. I trace the development of participatory democracy within political science and democratic theory and suggest that participation has fallen out of its previously central role as a criterion of democratic quality. What remains is a set of functions and pitfalls, which I explore in a series of inquiries into participation: ( a ) in lottocracy and electoral democracy, ( b ) in its relationship to representation, and ( c ) in local land use planning. I conclude with thoughts for future research informed by the discussion.
