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This study investigates (1) whether democratization drives sovereign credit ratings (SCR) changes (the “democratic advantage”) or whether SCR changes affect democratization, (2) whether the degree of democratization in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries affects the associations and (3) whether the associations are significantly affected by resource dependence.

This study investigates the effects of SCR changes on democracy in 22 SSA countries over the period of 2000–2020 VEC Granger causality/block exogeneity Wald tests, and impulse responses and variance decomposition analyses with Cholesky ordering and Monte Carlo standard errors in a panel VECM framework.

The full sample impulse responses find that a SCR shock has a long-run detrimental effect on the democracy and political rights but only a short-run positive impact on civil liberties. Among the sub-samples, it is found that the extent of natural resource dependence does not affect the magnitude of SCR shocks on democratization mentioned above but it is found that a SCR shock affects long-run democracy in SSA countries that are relatively more democratic but is more likely to drive democratic deepening in less democratic SSA countries. The full sample variance decompositions further finds that the variance of SCR to a political rights shock outweighs the effects of all the macroeconomic factors, whereas in more diversified SSA countries, the variances of SCR are much greater for democracy and political rights shocks, which suggests that democratization and political rights in diversified SSA economies are severely affected by SCR changes. In the case of the high and low democracy sub-samples, it is found that the variance of SCR in the relatively higher democracy sub-sample is greater than in the low democracy sub-sample.

These results have three implications for democratization in SSA. First, the effect of a SCR change is not a democratically agnostic and impacts political rights to a greater extent than civil liberties. Second, SCR changes have the potential to spark a negative cycle in SSA countries whereby a downgrade leads to a deterioration in socio-political stability coupled with increased financial economic constraints that in turn drive further downgrades and macroeconomic hardship. Finally, SCR changes are potentially detrimental for democracy in more democratic SSA countries but democratically supportive in less democratic SSA countries. Thus, SSA countries that are relatively politically sophisticated are more exposed to the effects of SCR changes, whereas less politically sophisticated SSA countries can proactively shape their SCRs by undertaking political reforms.

This study is the first to examine the associations between SCR and democracy in SSA. This is critical literature for the Africa’s scholarly work given that the debate on unfair rating actions and claims of subjective rating methods is ongoing.

This study is motivated to provide a theoretically informed, data-driven assessment of the consequences associated with the participation of non-human bots in social accountability movements; specifically, the anti-inequality/anti-corporate #OccupyWallStreet conversation stream on Twitter.

A latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling approach as well as XGBoost machine learning algorithms are applied to a dataset of 9.2 million #OccupyWallStreet tweets in order to analyze not only how the speech patterns of bots differ from other participants but also how bot participation impacts the trajectory of the aggregate social accountability conversation stream. The authors consider two research questions: (1) do bots speak differently than non-bots and (2) does bot participation influence the conversation stream.

The results indicate that bots do speak differently than non-bots and that bots exert both weak form and strong form influence. Bots also steadily become more prevalent. At the same time, the results show that bots also learn from and adapt their speaking patterns to emphasize the topics that are important to non-bots and that non-bots continue to speak about their initial topics.

These findings help improve understanding of the consequences of bot participation within social media-based democratic dialogic processes. The analyses also raise important questions about the increasing importance of apparently nonhuman actors within different spheres of social life.

The current study is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, that uses a theoretically informed Big Data approach to simultaneously consider the micro details and aggregate consequences of bot participation within social media-based dialogic social accountability processes.

The aim of this research is to understand the relationship between cultural buildings, economic powers and social justice and equality in architecture and how this relationship has evolved over the last hundred years. This research seeks to identify architectural and urban elements that enhance social justice and equality to inform architectural and urban designs and public policies.

The author explores the relationship between case studies of museums, cultural centers and libraries, and economic powers between 1920 and 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden. The author conducts a historical analysis and combines it with statistical and geographically referenced information in a Geographic Information System, archival data and in situ observations of selected buildings in the city. The author leverages the median income of household data from Statistics Sweden, with the geographical location of main public buildings and the headquarters of main companies operating in Sweden.

This analysis presents a gradual commercialization of cultural buildings in terms of location, inner layout and management, and the parallel filtering and transforming of the role of users. The author assesses how these cultural buildings gradually conformed to a system in the city and engaged with the market from a more local and national level to global networks. Findings show a cluster of large public buildings in the center of Stockholm, the largest global companies' headquarters and high-income median households. Results show that large shares of the low-income population now live far away from these buildings and the increasing commercialization of cultural space and inequalities.

This research provides a novel image of urban inequalities in Stockholm focusing on cultural buildings and their relationship with economic powers over the last hundred years. Cultural buildings could be a tool to support equality and stronger democracy beyond their primary use. Public cultural buildings offer a compromise between generating revenue for the private sector while catering to the needs and interests of large numbers of people. Therefore, policymakers should consider emphasizing the construction of more engaging public cultural buildings in more distributed locations.

This paper highlights an assignment in a combination upper-division undergraduate and graduate civic leadership class at a Midwestern state comprehensive university. The three-part assignment challenges students’ critical thinking skills and research capabilities while simultaneously necessitating the exploration of contrasting viewpoints on contentious issues.

Intentionally exposing students to diverse perspectives in a controlled environment.

We posit that the severity and frequency of these issues can be mitigated through focused efforts.

Students are better prepared to engage in civil debate on controversial topics, which continuously divide our communities, after completing a class using this pedagogical strategy.

In this study the authors aim to comprehensively investigate the determinants of voting behavior in Turkey, with a specific focus on the dynamics of the center-periphery debate. Mainly, the authors focus on regional voting patterns during the period that is dominated by the Justice and Development Party (JDP/AKP) in the elections. The authors apply the random effects generalized least squares (GLS) methodology, and analyze electoral data covering four pivotal parliamentary elections (2007, 2011, 2015 and 2018) across all 81 provinces (NUTS III regions). The authors individually examine voting dynamics of the four major parties in parliament: the JDP/AKP, the Republican People's Party (RPP/CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (NMP/MHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP/HDP). The authors contribute to a comprehensive understanding of how socioeconomic cleavages, economic performance, party alignment and social dynamics shape voter preferences in the Turkish context, thereby addressing gaps in the existing literature.

This research employs an ecological study of Turkish NUTS III sub-regions, covering national elections from 2007 to 2018. The authors utilize the random effects GLS method to account for heteroscedasticity and time effects. The inclusion of the June and November 2015 elections enables a comprehensive analysis of the evolving dynamics in Turkish voting behavior. The results remain robust when applying pooled OLS and fixed effect OLS techniques for control.

The study's findings reveal that economic performance, specifically economic growth, plays a pivotal role in the sustained dominance of the JDP/AKP party. Voters closely associate JDP preference with economic growth, resulting in higher voting shares during periods of economic prosperity. Along with economic growth; share of agriculture in regions' GDP, female illiteracy rate, old population rate, net domestic migration, terrorism and party alignment are also influential factors in the Turkish case. Furthermore, differences among sociocultural groups, and East–West dichotomy seem to be important factors that reveal the impact of social cleavages to understand electoral choice in Turkey.

This study contributes to the existing literature by offering a comprehensive multidimensional analysis of electoral behavior in Turkey, focusing on the JDP/AKP dominance period. The main contribution of this study is its multidimensional perspective on the power bases of all main parties, considering key voter choice theories (cleavages, party alignment and retrospective economic performance voting) that have not been systematically analyzed in prior research. The main research question of this study is to examine which factors affect voting behavior in Turkey and how the dynamics of center-periphery or eastern-western region voting behavior under the JDP hegemony can be explained. The contribution of this study consists not only in its empirical testing of panel data approaches but also in its comprehensive analysis of four major political parties. Building upon existing studies in the literature, this research seeks to extend the understanding of voting dynamics for the four main parties in the parliament — JDP/AKP, RPP/CHP, NMP/MHP and PPDP/HDP — by delving into their dynamics individually, thereby expanding the scope of previous studies. This study aims to make a contribution by not only empirically testing panel data approaches but also conducting a comprehensive analysis of four major political parties. Furthermore, the separate inclusion of the 2015 elections and utilization of a panel data approach enrich the analysis by capturing the evolving dynamics of Turkish voting behavior. The study underscores the significance of socioeconomic factors, economic performance and social cleavages for voters' choices within the context of a dominant party rule.

This study aims to analyse the differences between professional interaction mediated by video conferencing and direct professional interaction. The research identifies diverging interests of office workers for the purpose of addressing work ethical and business ethical issues of professional collaboration, competition, and power in future hybrid work models.

Based on 28 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, and through the theoretical lens of phenomenology, the study develops explanatory hypotheses conceptualising four basic intentions of professional interaction and their corresponding preferences for video conferences and working on site.

The four intentions developed on the basis of the interviews are: the need for physical proximity; the challenge of collective creativity; the will to influence; and control of communication. This conceptual framework qualifies a moral ambivalence of professional interaction. The authors identify a connectivity paradox of professional interaction where the personal dimension remains unarticulated for the purpose of maintaining professionality. This tacit human connectivity is intertwined with latent power relations. This plasticity of both connectivity and power in direct interaction can be diminished by transferring the interaction to video conferencing.

The application of phenomenology to a collection of qualitative interviews has enabled the identification of underlying intention structures and the system in which they affect each other. This research identifies conflicts of interests between workers relative to their different self-perceived abilities to persevere in competitive professional interaction. It is therefore able to address consequences of future hybrid work models at an existential and societal level.

Studies on the work integration of persons with disabilities (PwD) and the role of social dialogue therein are scarce. The study examines how the different systems of workers’ representation and industrial relations in Slovakia and Norway facilitate PwD work integration. Taking a social ecosystem perspective, we acknowledge the role of various stakeholders and their interactions in supporting PwD work integration. The paper’s conceptual contribution lies in including social dialogue actors in this ecosystem.

Evidence was collected via desk research, 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with 51 respondents and stakeholder workshops in 2019–2020.

The findings from Norway confirm the expected coordination of unions and employers in PwD work integration. Evidence from Slovakia shows that in decentralised industrial relations systems, institutional constraints beyond the workplace determine employers’ and worker representatives’ approaches in PwD integration. Most policy-level outcomes are contested, as integration occurs predominantly via sheltered workplaces without interest representation.

This paper identifies the primary sources of variation in the work integration of PwD. It also highlights opportunities for social partners across both situations to exercise agency and engagement to improve PwD work integration.

By integrating two streams of literature – social policy and welfare state and industrial relations – this paper examines PwD work integration from a social ecosystem perspective. Empirically, it offers novel qualitative comparative evidence on trade unions’ and employers’ roles in Slovakia and Norway.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests.

This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation.

By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic.

The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.

The study investigates factors like media, tribal, religious and party politics' influence on Nigerias’ 2023 presidential election choice. It confirms dominant social media platforms and examines their influence on election polls, e-participation and political candidate choice. The main objectives of this study are to: investigate if tribal, religious and party politics affect the respondent’s choice of a presidential candidate, ascertain the respondent's most used social media platform for political engagement and determine how social media platforms influenced the election polls during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election.

A sample size of 384 registered voters was used to survey three states in Southeast Nigeria hinged on the technological acceptance model, the instrumentalist theory of ethnicity and the theory of reasoned action.

The study found that tribal politics did not influence political candidates during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. However, religious and party politics influenced their choices as well as X (Twitter), found as the most used and most influential social media platform vital for enhancing participatory democracy and informing people at real-time.

The researchers experienced challenges such as ensuring that the respondents filled the questions appropriately to reduce the number of void questionnaires and a funding problem since they had yet to receive any grant to enhance the study.

The study commends improved Internet connectivity and accessibility among the citizens for increased political engagement on social media. It also recommends that the Nigerian government enforce the rule of law in politics to enable diverse tribes and religions to experience democratic e-participation and development without marginalisation or subjugation by incumbent power. The findings affirm that social media is apt in political communication during the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria. The study is a contribution to knowledge, timely and original.