New Issue of IPSR Published (Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2025)

IPSA’s flagship journal, the International Political Science Review (IPSR), kicks off the year with a new issue (Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2025) featuring articles on some of the most important contemporary issues in politics. “The deepest foundation of our democratic crisis” by Jane Mansbridge addresses the age-old question of public goods and the tragedy of the commons in a new light, arguing that democratic mechanisms for dealing with free-rider problems were not designed for a modern world of interdependence. Mansbridge goes on to suggest several potential ways of adjusting them.

Miklós Sebök, Sven-Oliver Proksch, Christian Raug, Péter Visnovitz, Gergö Balázs, and Jan Schwalbach address advances in data access and data analysis in their piece “Comparative European legislative research in the age of large-scale computational text analysis: A review article.” In this article, the authors provide an overview of existing research on big data, identifying gaps in the literature along with data availability issues and shortcomings in analysis.

Irene Witting, Charlotte Wagenaar, and Frank Hendriks survey the current literature on referenda and deliberative democratic processes in their piece “Improving referendums with deliberative democracy: A systemic literature review.” By surveying the combined literature on referenda deficits and the strengthening effects of the deliberative process, they show that there is an obvious overlap between what they call “the perceived shortcomings of referendums and the added value of deliberation.”

With a narrower focus on the local and municipal level of government and governance, Øystein Solvang, Jo Saglie, and Marte Winsvold explore the effects of large-scale municipal amalgamation in Norway. More specifically, their article “Does municipal amalgamation affect trust in local politicians? The case of Norway” studies the impact of such amalgamation efforts on citizens’ trust in their elected representatives at the local and national levels. In contrast to the Danish case, they find no negative impact of municipal amalgamation on public trust in institutions.

Antonino Castaldo and Luca Verzichelli look at the effects associated with technocrats in contemporary Italy in their piece “Behind the technocratic challenge: Old and new alternatives to party government in Italy.” They create an updated typology of minister profiles in the Italian government, allowing them to identify hitherto unexplored dynamics.

Comparing old and new democracies, Jaemin Shim and Mahmoud Farag identify blind spots across the existing literature on democratic representation in their article “Blind spots in the study of democratic representation: Masses and elites in old and new democracies”. They argue that the literature on the phenomenon of mass-elite congruence has focused mainly on established democracies. In addition to identifying these blind spots, they examine how they may affect the way democratic representation is measured.

Writing about the German context, Anna-Sophie Heinze explores right-wing party youth organizations in her article “Drivers of radicalization? The development and role of the far-right youth organization ‘Young Alternative’ in Germany.” She finds that youth party wings represent a vital part of broader right-wing party organizations. Also addressing the subject of political parties, Jasmien Luypaert compares the platforms of mainstream and niche parties in her article “Navigating new realities: Explaining programmatic transitions of mainstream and niche parties.” Niche parties tend to focus more on secondary issues, Luypaert concludes, and the degree and duration of niche party competition exerts an impact on the program-related transitions initiated by mainstream parties.

Finally, Laura Jacobs, Caroline Close, and Jean-Benoit Pilet assess the impact of emotions on political choices in their article “The angry voter? The role of emotions in voting for the radical left and right in the 2019 Belgian elections.” They find that, on the radical left and on the right, negative emotions such as anger had a significant and positive impact on people’s voting intentions. Conversely, they did not find a greater correlation between fear and positive feelings, such as political trust or populism, and the vote for radical parties over other, more mainstream parties.

IPSA members can access all issues of the journal, including the IPSR archive dating back to 1980, through the My IPSA menu.