sociology-and-political-science

Senior lawyers call on prime minister to request Indian prosecutors drop charges that would breach double jeopardy rule Four senior lawyers, including the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, have written to Keir Starmer urging him to request that Indian prosecutors drop charges against the British national Jagtar Singh Johal on the basis that continued prosecution would be in manifest breach …

This monograph develops a unified theoretical framework within the Equilibrium Ledger Research Programme for understanding the institutional processing of cognitively divergent individuals whose output exceeds what surrounding institutional systems can stably accommodate. Through a sustained parallel analysis of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Alan Mathison Turing, the work argues that inst…

This monograph examines how elite institutions convert inequality into procedural architecture through administrative processing systems rather than explicit exclusion. Drawing on institutional sociology, disability studies, legal analysis, and empirical institutional documentation, the work introduces the Turing Theory of institutional cognition and the concept of institutional bifurcation, desc…

Netanyahu’s joint war with the US began with talk of regime change in Tehran but may leave him with few strategic gains Middle East live – latest updates When Donald Trump launched a pre-emptive war on Iran with Israel in February, many in the country hailed the campaign as the crowning triumph of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and diplomatic career. Three months on the regime is still in power i…

BackgroundThe Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities emphasizes individual rights and autonomy. However, certain restrictive practices in support services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) may limit these rights and undermine autonomy. Structural practices are a type of restrictive practice usually defined as blanket rules or prohibitions that affect…

Rehabilitation of young offenders is vital. But victims should not leave court wondering why they bothered The decision to review the sentences of two teenage boys convicted of raping two girls, aged 15 and 14, in separate incidents in November 2024 and January 2025, and a third boy who took part in the second rape, is correct. A knife was used to threaten the second victim, and the attacks were …

India’s Digital Future Is Moving Faster Than Its Laws Artificial Intelligence can now generate art, clone voices, imitate personalities, and create highly convincing deepfakes within seconds. Yet, many of these emerging issues are still being governed through legal interpretation of statutes enacted long before the AI era. India currently has: no dedicated AI legislation, no standalone deepfake r…

Modern democracy does not usually collapse in a single revolutionary moment. More often, it erodes recursively: institution by institution, exception by exception, tolerated compromise by tolerated compromise. The danger begins not merely when corruption exists, but when corruption becomes structurally expected, selectively ignored, and psychologically normalized. A democracy may survive constitu…

Civilizational Constraints are the sixth primitive of Generative Worlds Architecture. They specify the structural conditions that regulate large scale coordination among observers. Civilizational constraints are not social norms, not cultural rules, and not institutional policies. They are structural regulators that determine which civilizational architectures are admissible, which can stabilize,…

Fifa approached Mexico after US declined to host Iran squad despite it playing group games in the United States Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum , said on Monday her government agreed to allow the Iranian national football team to stay in Mexico during the World Cup , adding that the United States did not want to host the team. Sheinbaum said football’s governing body Fifa approached her gov…

Vociferously anti-Turkish party doubles its number of seats although mainstream parties didn’t see vote crumble as predicted An anti-immigrant far-right party, inspired by Greece’s defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, has made the biggest gains in parliamentary elections in Cyprus. The group, which has pushed for the closure of checkpoints on the ethnically split island and is vociferously anti-Turkish,…

Ciaran Martin says Reform UK leader’s allegation over Guardian report on £5m gift ‘entirely unsubstantiated’ Nigel Farage’s claim that a Russian hack was behind a Guardian report on the £5m gift he received from a crypto billionaire has been described as “without any merit” by a former head of the National Cyber Security Centre. Ciaran Martin, founding chief executive of the agency, which is part…

Nick Moss , Derrick Joad and John Wilkinson respond to an article by Sacha Hilhorst on why voters are turning to the party Sacha Hilhorst is right to highlight the fact that many Reform UK voters are disillusioned with the political status quo because their lives are ever less secure ( I’ve interviewed Reform UK voters – and they’re much more progressive than you might think, 18 May ). The issue …

Prof Mark R Sanderson says the council is Britain’s most effective instrument of soft power and should be funded properly, not hollowed out The hollowing out of the British Council across Europe should alarm anyone who cares about the UK’s standing in the world ( Soft power sell-off: anger as British Council announces sale of historic Madrid building, 22 May ). For decades, it has been one of Bri…

Region adapting to diminished US power after Washington fails to land knockout blow on Tehran or safeguard allies Middle East crisis – live updates The shock of the Iran war and its fallout has driven rivals in the Middle East to get behind a peace deal, pushing the Trump administration to accept a tentative agreement in the face of furious opposition from Israel and its supporters in Washington.…

AI may increase the technical capacity of complex societies without increasing human freedom. If AI becomes core infrastructure for production, allocation, administration, and knowledge work, then the central political question is not simply how powerful the technology becomes, but who owns and governs it. Under concentrated ownership, automation may weaken labor’s bargaining power while preservi…

The Cost of Safetyism What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard. When I was 11 and 12, I’d ride my bike to meet friends at the local sandlot baseball field 1.5 miles away, or to a friends house to go play pickup football in the street. When I was 14, I’d go on 10+ mile runs, exploring every bit of road, sidewalk, and path I could find. Exploration was a rite of passage. Today…

The twists and turns in this saga are bewildering, but Donald Trump appears to have the cards stacked against him For those following the crisis between the US and Iran, the past few days have been bewildering. On Friday, the six-week-old ceasefire seemed doomed. Donald Trump skipped his son’s wedding to remain in the White House and was reportedly contemplating renewed military strikes on Iran. …

Alan Milburn, who is leading review commissioned by government, says current strategy ‘going in wrong direction’ Labour has failed to tackle soaring youth unemployment and must launch a “system reset” involving a fresh attempt to overhaul health and disability benefits, a report commissioned by the government is to warn. Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into why almost a million young people…

IntroductionThis article presents an in-depth single-case study of Kazakhstan and examines the latent negative effects that may accompany the expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public sector. The central premise is that such risks arise less from isolated technical performance indicators of particular AI systems than from the broader architecture of legal regulation, institution…