Networks, institutions, and corruption in Russia are the central themes of this article. Our focus will be in the context of the century from 1917 to the present. The article provides background on the country and its culture while looking at three periods individually, and discusses how corruption co-evolved with networks and institutions. The change in institutions and networks that occurs during political upheavals provides fertile ground for variations in the predominant type of corruption. We posit that there is much more to be learned by studying these three phenomena as a linked set of constructs beyond analysing them individually. Additionally, our review of these phenomena co-evolving throughout the past century provides a longitudinal perspective. This article seeks to shed light on these phenomena over three consecutive periods - the Soviet era, the post-Soviet period, and the current Putin era, all of which have markedly different institutional arrangements. In addition to analysing the practices of blat and sviazi, we discuss the concept of sistema that developed during the Putin years, and which provides the current foundation for corruption.

This paper aims to explore how staff members in women's prisons understand their role in relation to the food practices. Given the budgetary restrictions, staff shortages and overall concerns around the quality of food in prison, there is a critical gap in engaging with these staff perspectives which urgently needs addressing. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in four women's prisons in England, this paper will explore the food practices in prison from a range of staff ( n = 10). The paper focuses on the following themes: (i) understanding the different ways in which staff navigate structural issues in serving food practices; (ii) examining how staff manage the expectations of women in prison around food; (iii) analysing how they link food practices to notion of normality; and (iv) exploring the ways in which staff navigate the debates on whether food should be seen as a form of punishment or rehabilitation.

Prison visits are important opportunities for those incarcerated to see their family members and maintain and strengthen family relationships. However, prison visits can be experienced as a stressful environment where family members lack control. This article advances understandings of the prison visiting room as a space for foodcare - one that presents opportunities for incarcerated women and their family members to 're-do' family by demonstrating care through food choices. Consuming refreshments together and purchasing items that would 'treat' incarcerated family members helped to evoke memories of eating together in childhood or prior to incarceration. The qualitative data from incarcerated women in a prison in England and their visiting family members documented how restrictions brought in concerning refreshments in the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily eliminated opportunities for family foodcare. Furthermore, when refreshments were re-introduced in a limited way, they were interpreted negatively due to an assumption that their pre-packaged nature meant they were lacking care, simultaneously demonstrating the social and familial importance of refreshments within the space of the prison visiting room. Les visites & agrave; la prison sont des occasions importantes pour les d & eacute;tenus de voir les membres de leur famille et de maintenir et renforcer leurs relations familiales. Ces visites peuvent cependant & ecirc;tre per & ccedil;ues comme un environnement stressant sur lequel les membres de la famille n'ont gu & egrave;re de contr & ocirc;le. Cet article propose de consid & eacute;rer la salle de visite de la prison comme un espace d & eacute;di & eacute; & agrave; l'attention & agrave; travers l'alimentation, un espace qui offre aux femmes incarc & eacute;r & eacute;es et aux membres de leur famille la possibilit & eacute; de << refaire >> famille en t & eacute;moignant leur affection & agrave; travers leurs choix alimentaires. Le fait de consommer ensemble des rafra & icirc;chissements et d'acheter des articles d'alimentation pour << g & acirc;ter >> les membres de la famille incarc & eacute;r & eacute;s a contribu & eacute; & agrave; & eacute;voquer des souvenirs de repas pris ensemble pendant l'enfance ou avant l'incarc & eacute;ration. Les donn & eacute;es qualitatives recueillies aupr & egrave;s de femmes incarc & eacute;r & eacute;es dans une prison en Angleterre et des membres de leur famille qui leur rendent visite ont montr & eacute; comment les restrictions impos & eacute;es sur les rafra & icirc;chissements pendant la pand & eacute;mie de Covid-19 ont temporairement & eacute;limin & eacute; les occasions pour les familles de d & eacute;tenus de t & eacute;moigner leur affection & agrave; travers l'alimentation. En outre, lorsque les rafra & icirc;chissements ont & eacute;t & eacute; r & eacute;introduits de mani & egrave;re limit & eacute;e, ils ont & eacute;t & eacute; per & ccedil;us n & eacute;gativement au motif que leur nature pr & eacute;emball & eacute;e signifiait potentiellement qu'ils n'avaient pas fait l'objet de soins suffisants, ce qui d & eacute;montre en m & ecirc;me temps l'importance sociale et familiale des rafra & icirc;chissements dans l'espace de la salle de visite de la prison. Las visitas en prisi & oacute;n son oportunidades importantes para que las personas encarceladas vean a sus familiares y mantengan y fortalezcan sus v & iacute;nculos familiares. Sin embargo, estas visitas pueden experimentarse como un entorno estresante en el que las familias carecen de control. Este art & iacute;culo promueve la comprensi & oacute;n de la sala de visitas de la prisi & oacute;n como un espacio dedicado al cuidado de la alimentaci & oacute;n, que ofrece oportunidades para que las mujeres encarceladas y sus familiares 'reconstruyan' la familia haciendo muestras de cuidado a trav & eacute;s de la elecci & oacute;n de alimentos. El hecho de consumir refrigerios juntos y comprar art & iacute;culos para 'mimar' a los familiares encarcelados ayuda a evocar recuerdos de comidas compartidas en la infancia o antes del encarcelamiento. Los datos cualitativos de mujeres encarceladas en una prisi & oacute;n de Inglaterra y los familiares que las visitan documentan c & oacute;mo las restricciones impuestas a los refrigerios durante la pandemia de COVID-19 eliminaron temporalmente las oportunidades para hacer muestras de cuidado a trav & eacute;s de la alimentaci & oacute;n familiar. Adem & aacute;s, cuando los refrigerios se reintrodujeron de forma limitada, se interpretaron negativamente debido a la suposici & oacute;n de que su naturaleza preenvasada implicaba falta de cuidado, lo que demuestra simult & aacute;neamente la importancia social y familiar de los refrigerios en el espacio de la sala de visitas de la prisi & oacute;n.

Prison is a space of deprivation of liberty with multiple 'pains of imprisonment' inflicted on those serving time. One component of the prison experience seldom discussed is the impact of food, particularly the ways in which food communicates broader issues about penal legitimacy. Penal legitimacy - how the penal regime operates in ways which command authority and willingness to comply - has been understood through a multitude of prison regime elements, but rarely in the context of food. We reflect on the outcomes of these experiences and perceptions of food from the perspectives of women in prison, highlighting how these perceptions can impact on the legitimacy of the prison establishment and overall quality of life in prison. Data is drawn from fieldwork in four women's prisons in England, comprising 108 study participants.

Studies of public confidence in the police have enabled important insights into the factors responsible for achieving public support. Empirically tested in overwhelmingly democratic nations, there remain questions about the generalizability of this work to different types of political regimes, especially authoritarian nations. Using Wave 7 of the World Values Survey (n = 38,838) we assess whether predictors of police confidence operate in similar or different ways within the most democratic and authoritarian nations. Both regimes share similar underpinnings of confidence (corruption, religious identity, neighborhood trust, and government performance). Yet, key differences exist (i.e., country-level differences measuring insecurity and instability, press freedom and corruption).

Infrastructures are central to processes of state formation. The revival of materialism in International Relations has made an important contribution to our understanding of states through careful analysis of the politics of infrastructure and state building. Yet, to date, engagement with the state-theoretical tradition associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Bob Jessop has been absent. Through comparison with the external-relational ontology of Bruno Latour and actor-network theory (ANT), this article argues that state theory and its internal-relational ontology avoids reifying the state while providing an analysis of infrastructure and state formation sensitive to the historical reproduction of social orders over time. Developing Gramsci’s concept of the ‘integral state’, it emphasises the necessary interpenetration between civil society, the state apparatus, and the creation of infrastructure. These conceptual arguments are illustrated through an analysis of the United States’ development of nuclear infrastructures during the early Cold War period, in the internal relations between infrastructure and the integral state are explored through Civil Defense Education programmes. Clarifying the internal relations of past, present, and potential future forms of socio-technical order is an important task for rethinking the politics of technological design in International Relations.

This paper offers a reflective account of delivering art workshops in women’s prisons in England, as one method in a larger, qualitative study around the role of food in prisons. We present reflections around the role of art workshops in building relationships and community between the researcher and the participants, and the participants themselves. We found that building connection through art workshops, in a hostile and challenging environment like prison, enabled us to gather richer and deeper data during the qualitive interviews that succeeded the art workshops. We propose that attention from researchers to the ‘unintended consequences’ can contribute to research projects which are impactful for both the participants and researchers. This paper addresses gaps in literature around the use of visual art as method in women’s prisons and the role of arts-based methods in larger qualitative research projects in secure settings.

Research on public attitudes to the death penalty has been predominantly understood through single nation-states, especially within the USA. Examinations of international differences in citizens’ support for the death penalty have been scarce, particularly among continents with a high volume of retentionist nations (e.g. Asia). In this paper, we draw on a dataset of 135,000 people from across 81 nations to examine differences in death penalty support. We find that residents of retentionist nations are generally more supportive of the death penalty than those from abolitionist nations. But this general difference masks important differences both within and between countries. At the country-level, residents of abolitionist nations with autocratic political systems and those with higher homicide levels were more likely to support the death penalty than residents of other abolitionist nations. At the individual level, greater support for a strong dictatorial-type leader and perceptions of political corruption are associated with increased support for the death penalty, but only in abolitionist nations. By contrast, more frequent religious worship, perceived egalitarianism in a nation, and support for the political performance of government reduced death penalty support in abolitionist nations but increased support in retentionist nations, while belief in individual responsibility and critical views towards ethnic minorities increased support for the death penalty across both abolitionist and retentionist nations.

The Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) has a tradition for being among the most respected national police organisations globally. More recent political events in Hong Kong have however placed the HKPF in highly visible public order situations. A wide array of political factions have emerged as a consequence of the handover of control in Hong Kong, many of which have involved young people protesting the curtailment of democratic rights. In this paper, we utilise Wave 7 of the World Values Survey (n = 2075). We utilise Inglehart's (1971. The silent revolution in Europe: intergenerational change in post-industrial societies. American political science review, 65 (4), 991-1017) concept of postmaterialism to examine how far young people's more negative attitudes to the police can be underpinned by cohort-based (or generational) explanations. Our findings identify associations between postmaterialist values and lower confidence in the police. Those that favoured stricter immigration controls, experienced higher fear of crime, perceived drug selling in their area, and consumed certain types of media (notably television and new media) were also less likely to have confidence in the HKPF.

The persisting challenge of COVID-19 is urging states to respond with evolving strategies via policing systems. Policing systems are now mandated with new tasks beyond daily maintenance of law and order. First, states rely largely on empowering the public police officers as sovereign enforcers against COVID-19. Yet, the enforcement of COVID-19 displays considerable variation across nations, despite the existence of specific laws designed to curtail behaviour. This study seeks to analyse and explain the diverged pattern of policing during the pandemic via the experiences of Hong Kong and England. Different severity of quarantine, social distancing, and lockdown orders have been imposed in both Hong Kong and England since March 2020, but with different levels of engagement in pandemic policing. Our paper explains how and why England (de-centralized and comparatively light policing) and Hong Kong (aggressive, re-centralized policing response) have experienced such divergences in policing response.

Andrew Feenberg is a pioneer in the development of the philosophy of technology. Before his retirement, he was the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he also directed the Applied Communication and Technology Laboratory (ACTL). He is the author or editor of thirteen books on Critical Theory, Western Marxism, and the philosophy of technology, including Lukács, Marx, and the Sources of Critical Theory (1981), Critical Theory of Technology (1991), Technology and the Politics of Knowledge (ed with Alastair Hannay) (1995), Questioning Technology (1999), (Re)Inventing the Internet: Critical Case Studies (ed with Norm Friesen) (2012) and Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason (2017).

Abstract The Socio-Technical Imaginaries (STI) approach in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has illuminated the central role of social imaginaries in shaping the politics of technology. Its emphasis on the multilinear forms of socio-technical development is a useful corrective to universalist explanations of technological change. However, STI lacks a clear account of how inter-societal interaction shapes the imaginaries of any given political community. Synthesizing STI with the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) can correct this shortcoming. UCD offers an ontology of universals and accompanying methodology of incorporated comparison, enabling STI to integrate inter-societal causality into its theoretical framework. A combined UCD and STI framework is examined in this paper through a focus on imaginaries of technological innovation in contemporary American foreign policy. Responding to the ‘whip of external necessity’, US foreign policy seeks to upend technological diffusion and impose global regulatory evenness on national forms of technological innovation.

In US national security policy the protection of technological innovation is of signal importance. US policy stresses, on the one hand, the need to protect technological innovation to ensure its global economic and military predominance. This reflects the classic view of innovation articulated in security studies: technological innovation is the foundation of economic and military power. Yet this account captures only one aspect of technological innovation in US national security thinking. Drawing on a combination of socio-technical imaginaries frameworks and critical theories of technology, this article argues that technological innovation is not merely a means to the end of American national security. Rather, a series of sociological and normative ideas disclosed by US policy frame market-led innovation as necessary, just, and central to the reproduction of American national identity. A specific way of creating technological systems and artefacts is the object of security in American national security policy. The security of technological innovation is central to securing the American way of life.

The stigma and disruption caused by a close relative’s offending and imprisonment can impact heavily on the informal support networks that caregivers commonly utilise to cope with the aftermath of such events. In the study of family–prisoner relationships, scarce research has examined how caregivers draw on informal support networks and the extent to which these networks can facilitate various modes of support. This article focuses exclusively on mothers ( n = 37) related to adolescent/young adult men in prison. We analyse who caregivers turn to after the offence, and the extent to which these networks operate as a means of delivering emotional (and sometimes material) support. Our conclusions raise questions about the informal support offered by family and friends, and offer suggestions on service responses to these issues.