Frontiers in Political Science

Introduction The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) represents a global landmark in digital governance, yet the underlying political rationale structuring its provisions—securitization versus liberalization—remains underexplored. This study examines whether the AI Act constructs AI as an existential threat requiring exceptional measures or embeds it within the Union’s liberal regulatory trad…

This article examines the dominant modes of conceptualising populism and critically engages with the ahistorical tendencies that have come to characterise much of the recent research in this field. Despite the robust historical reasoning and conceptual tools developed within comparative politics, populism research has largely avoided engaging with them. The article proposes an alternative analyti…

Introduction Although almost entirely privately owned, submarine fiber-optic cables form the critical infrastructure of the global digital economy. This background of private ownership now intersects with the contemporary reality of geopolitical competition, where infrastructure is increasingly targeted through hybrid warfare and ‘grey-zone’ operations with diverse asymmetrical actors involved. M…

The Thucydides Trap describes the tendency for power transitions to culminate in war. The dominant power’s fear of displacement prompts defensive buildups which can spiral into armed conflict. The historical recurrence of this pattern has raised concerns about the US-China rivalry today. This article suggests that contemporary realities make the classic Thucydides Trap less likely, but instead se…

The Paris Agreement of 2015 represented a landmark achievement in international climate governance, yet scholarly assessment reveals significant structural shortcomings that have necessitated progressive elaboration through subsequent Conferences of the Parties (COPs). Existing literature has assessed UNFCCC effectiveness either chronologically or by isolated policy area, with no study having sys…

This study examines how Kazakhstani social media influencers negotiate tensions between traditional Kazakh norms and Western liberal value repertoires in their digital content. It asks: (1) what discursive strategies influencers use to navigate competing value systems; (2) in which domains (gender roles, sexuality, consumption, and religiosity) value conflict is most visible; and (3) how audience…

Antifeminist and antigender rhetoric and campaigns have grown over the last decade, especially, but not exclusively, voiced by ultraconservative and far-right parties, movements and actors, and have prompted political and societal repercussions, with an increasingly visible participation of women in these attacks on feminism. These mobilizations are frequently articulated also through racist, xen…

Introduction When Indonesia formally joined BRICS in early 2025, it entered a contested global narrative. This paper examines how that narrative was constructed across three distinct media environments: Indonesian domestic outlets, BRICS-affiliated media (Russia and China), and Western outlets (United States, United Kingdom, and France). Methods Drawing on 1,583 English and Indonesian news articl…

Education for Democracy (EfD) requires confronting complex social issues, contested histories, and potentially traumatic topics that often generate discomfort. This paper argues that such discomfort is not incidental but central to democratic learning, as it opens space for emotional engagement, ethical awareness, and critical reflection. We conceptualize emotional work as an embodied, relational…

This exploratory cross-sectional survey study examines the relationship between social media use and political engagement among digitally-active Greeks aged 18–39 ( N = 310). Drawing on a convenience sample collected in late 2022–early 2023, we propose a conceptual distinction between “transformative” influence (social media's capacity to shape political beliefs and opinions) and “causative” infl…

Introduction This article examines three decades of electoral behaviour in Rome (1993–2023) across four arenas: munimobilisationnal, national (Chamber of Deputies), and European elections. Holding the same territorial unit constant makes it possible to observe how participation, party competition, volatility, and personalization evolve under changing electoral rules, party-system configurations, …

Introduction In Peru, in recent decades, the State has shown efforts to increase public investment in education and reduce levels of monetary poverty; However, the illiteracy rate persists as a structural problem that especially affects rural populations, women, children and the elderly. The objective was to determine the influence of public investment in education and monetary poverty on the lit…

Global climate governance is shaped by NDCs and LT-LEDS that embed benchmarking norms, yet implications for polycentric diversity remain unclear. This study integrates polycentric governance, governmentality, path dependence, and structural reproduction to examine how discursively coded strategies, motives, and incentives relate to institutional responses across 73 countries. A two-stage design c…

This paper investigates the international sports boycott imposed on Russia following the 2022 Russia–Ukraine war, focusing on its legal legitimacy, political implications, and media framing. It aims to assess the boycott's impact on Russia's soft power, its alignment with international sports law and public international law, and the extent to which it redefined the principle of neutrality in glo…

Jordan’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2000 marked a turning point in its economic history, necessitating a massive overhaul of its domestic legal framework. This paper provides a 25-year retrospective on how WTO-mandated legislative transformations, specifically in intellectual property (TRIPS), investment law, and customs, redefined Jordan’s industrial landscape. Using the …

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in a deep crisis because its dispute settlement system has been disabled by consecutive U.S. governments which refused to agree to the appointment of judges for the Appellate Body (AB) of that system. Without the possibility of an appeal there is no guaranteed way to resolve trade disputes once and for all in court. As the data presented by this study show, t…

The European Union's (EU) green hydrogen policy has evolved significantly over recent years as a central component of its commitment to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. It includes a strategic focus on external partnerships with third countries outside Europe to meet its ambitious import targets and promote global hydrogen production. In Africa, South Africa with its renewable energy potenti…

Under China's One Belt, One Road initiative, Central Asia plays a pivotal role in linking Europe and East Asia, with Beijing initially prioritizing economic interests. However, there is still no comprehensive assessment of how China's growing security role in the region reshapes existing security arrangements and what forms future cooperation might take. This study addresses that problem by exami…

Introduction This article proposes the concept of migratory crisification as an analytical framework to understand how certain dynamics of human mobility are systematically framed as social, political, and media crises. While the notion of a “migration crisis” has become pervasive in public discourse, it is rarely interrogated as a socially constructed category. We argue that crisification operat…