Understanding ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional minority participation and representation in Africa is both empirically and normatively fraught. Who counts as a minority? Which minority identities are politically salient? Answering these questions is essential to the study of minority political participation, yet doing so requires making challenging decisions about how to describe the identities of individuals and groups, as well as how to regard the claims of leaders seeking to speak on behalf of group interests. It is also critical to explore whose interests are served by “minority” discourses. Given the centrality of identity politics on the continent the answers to these questions are pertinent to political scientists studying a range of phenomena, from conflict, to voting, to public goods provision or legislator behavior. Historically speaking, ethnic identities, most often defined on the basis of linguistic difference (with other cultural differences serving as secondary identity markers) have received the most scholarly attention. Scholars have understood minority participation in terms of citizens’ relation to state power. However, regional and religious identities that either cut across or reinforce ethnic boundaries have also been salient in certain contexts. For example, ethno-regional identities have been the basis for political party competition, civil conflict, and even secession movements. Of course, the salience of broader regional identities that cross national borders has been somewhat mitigated by the persistence of the borders imposed on African states during colonialism. While religion is essential to the identities of many Africans, its political role varies across the continent. While in some areas, religious identities may diffuse political differences and contribute to democratic peacebuilding, in others, they may be deployed to mobilize collective action from voter turnout to social protest or even civil war. Often, in these latter contexts, religious identities overlap with significant ethnic divisions or subnational inequalities between regions. Finally, the policies of African states toward the treatment of minority identities is as varied as the issues that they face, with states adopting a range of policies, including the conscious affirmation of minority identities; the suppression of identities in the name of liberal, inclusive citizenship norms; and the active persecution of certain identities. Transnational actors such as international donors, multinational corporations, intergovernmental organizations, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also play an increasingly significant role in responding to minority group issues or putting pressure on states to modify their policies toward certain groups.

Spain became a full democracy in 1977 after nearly four decades of Franco’s dictatorship. Since then, the scientific production on different topics related to Spanish democracy, politics, and government has been extensive, in both Spanish and English language. This article collects some of the major and most influential contributions of this rather broad area of study. We assume that many of those interested in this bibliographic revision may probably be scholars with limited knowledge of the Spanish language. Therefore, this article has prioritized, when possible, the selection of references in English. This article starts by providing some of the most useful overviews on Spanish politics. These essays and edited handbooks represent a good starting point for researchers new to any relevant topic about Spanish politics. Next, we focus on the main political institutions in Spain. We put the focus especially on the executive power, which is the most researched institution by political science scholars in Spain. One of the main defining characteristics of the Spanish political system is its multilevel governance. We dedicate two sections to this topic: the former takes a more institutional approach (multilevel governance) and the latter focuses on the center-periphery political conflict. The subsequent sections delve into the Spanish party system, the main political parties, and the nature and consequences of the electoral system. The Great Recession and Debt Crisis (2008–2014) had notorious consequences on Spanish politics, especially on the party system. New statewide parties emerged, such as Podemos, Ciudadanos and Vox. We dedicate a separate section to this topic, summarizing the extensive production on the political crisis and the rise of new parties since the Great Recession. The final two sections cover relevant research on public opinion and elections at the national, regional, and local levels.

ABSTRACT As with other settler colonies, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen a long-running conflict between a Euro-centric ‘master narrative’ of the historical past and Indigenous counter-narratives. Previous research on these narrative struggles adopts the ‘top-down’ perspective on collective remembering, focusing primarily on how memory entrepreneurs deploy cultural texts and practices to construct particular representations of history. To broaden the methodological scope, the analysis developed in this paper follows the ‘bottom-up’ approach, which makes it possible to map the distribution of collective memories across individuals and investigate their attitudinal effects. By means of a rigorous survey study (N = 1,066), the paper reveals three key findings about collective remembering in Aotearoa New Zealand. First, individuals in the ‘critical years’ of adolescence are more open to weaving Indigenous Māori perspectives into their understandings of history than older generations. Second, when compared to the monocultural master narrative, historical reconstructions that reflect Māori experiences promote a more inclusive understanding of national identity and generate public support for redressing historical injustices against Māori. Third, the empirical analysis finds no evidence for claims made by conservative political actors that creating space for the articulation of Māori histories perpetuates social division and weakens popular identification with the nation.

Starting with perception of the widespread discontent with the United States war in Vietnam, scholars and politicians have presumed that war and military action are not maintainable without citizen support. Accordingly, scholars have devoted extensive effort to uncover what factors influence popular support for war. Thus there is a large literature studying both major and minor wars as well as other types of military interventions. These studies of attitudes toward war fit into two categories. The first addresses the aggregate, national level of support for wars or military interventions. These studies focus on specific characteristics of wars and interventions, including the purpose for which they are fought, the types of military actions or tactics that are planned or executed, the number of casualties anticipated or actually suffered, and the anticipated or actual success or failure of the war. Many of these studies focus on popular support for actions taken by the United States, but there are also studies of opinion in Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. A second category of scholarship addresses the correlates of individuals’ support for wars and military interventions. Much of this research begins with the hypothesis that individuals’ ideology and partisanship are important correlates of support for war, but additional studies have investigated the importance of gender, race, and the impact of the media on citizen support. In addition to the research summarized here, readers should consult the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science article, “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy” by Joshua D. Kertzer, especially the section on “Public Opinion and the Use of Force.”

Organized criminal groups (OCGs), ranging from local gangs to powerful drug cartels that operate across national boundaries, represent the single most important security threat in Mexico and Central America. A growing body of research in political science and other disciplines has examined the political and socioeconomic roots of these organizations, as well as the mechanisms underlying the production of organized criminal violence. The unprecedented wave of organized criminal violence that has been affecting the region in recent years can be traced back to political transformations and policy changes that disrupted the social and political order at the local level, redefining the organization of illicit markets, and undermining the rule of law. On these issues there is a particularly rich literature that focuses on understanding the outbreak of violence and criminal rivalry in Mexico. Several studies have emphasized the role of state-criminal group relationships as a key factor to understand the challenges that organized crime poses in terms of peacebuilding and democratic rule. Within this framework, the existing literature has identified various forms of criminal governance prevalent in Mexico and Central America, and shed light on how communities respond to crime and violence in contexts of low state capacity. Some of these responses include social mobilization, vigilantism, and support for extralegal violence. The use of violence by OCGs in electoral contexts has also received particular attention in the literature, since they often target candidates or intimidate voters, affecting political preferences and patterns of political participation. Finally, a series of studies has rigorously investigated the impact of organized criminal violence on a number of outcomes, including political attitudes and behavior, trust in institutions, and health and education, among others.

While consensus on what should be included under the label of political participation is far from having been reached, the latter can broadly be defined as activities by ordinary citizens addressed to the political authorities or the general public and directed toward influencing some political outcomes. The literature then distinguishes between a range of distinct modes of participation. Protest is one of them. Protest participation refers to involvement in different sorts of political activities. The specific kinds of political activities that define this mode of participation may vary to some extent from author to author, from study to study, making the field hard to delimit. Most often, however, this includes attending a street demonstration, taking part in a strike, and other more radical forms such as blockades, occupations, sit-ins, and the like. Protest activities can be studied from two angles or levels of analysis: as aggregate-level collective phenomena or as individual-level expressions of political will. This bibliography focuses on individual protest participation. Moreover, in order to further delimit the field, works are prioritized that refer explicitly to protest participation, therefore overlooking proximate terms and phenomena such as activism or participation in social movements. A number of works have examined protest participation in a broader perspective, as one among several modes of political participation. Others have discussed how protest participation can be studied from a methodological point of view. From a more substantive point of view, scholars are interested in knowing who takes part in protest activities as well as why and how they do so. When it comes to explaining protest participation, we may roughly distinguish between three main perspectives, based on the key explanatory factors examined: Microstructural Accounts focus on social embeddedness as well as the role of preexisting networks and ties to explain involvement in protest activities; Social-Psychological Accounts focus on the role of grievances, identity, and emotions; Predispositional Accounts focus on political attitudes, values, and norms. The present bibliography follows this threefold categorization and is inevitably selective in the choice of references to be included. Often, however, research includes predictors from more than one single perspective. Furthermore, while most existing works focus exclusively on the individual level, scholars have started to examine the role of the broader context for explaining patterns of individual participation in protest activities. Finally, early-21st-century scholars are paying increasing attention to online forms of protest participation, hence complementing the traditional focus on offline forms.

ABSTRACT This study examines the role played by the Hong Kong crisis in the outcome of the 2020 Taiwanese presidential election. Using the original data from a two-wave panel survey, we present solid evidence showing that the effect of cross-strait relations on voting behaviour in Taiwan is certainly complex and intricate. This study finds that greater optimism about Taiwan’s future is conducive to the Democratic Progressive Party’s chance of winning the election. However, when Taiwanese voters takes into consideration the Hong Kong crisis, it is found that greater optimism about Taiwan’s future helps relatively more the Kuomintang. Thus, this study deepens our understanding of the role of the cross-strait relations in shaping electoral behaviour in Taiwan for presidential elections.

Emigrant voting rights can be broadly defined as the right to vote in elections granted to citizens who reside outside their country of citizenship. States offer different ways for emigrants to cast their vote, such as voting via post, in person in diplomatic missions, or upon physical return to the country. That said, research on emigrant enfranchisement has mainly focused on the voting practices that allow citizens to cast their ballot from abroad. Voting from abroad is not a new phenomenon. Several countries had already granted external voting rights by the beginning of the 20th century. However, these countries tended to restrict such voting rights to temporarily absent citizens with specific professions, such as diplomatic staff, soldiers, or seafarers. Only after the 1950s, states began to develop a more inclusive approach toward granting electoral rights to their nonresident citizens. Currently, more than two-thirds of all countries in the world allow voting from abroad. The majority of these countries have adopted external voting only during the last thirty years. Since the early/mid-2000s, the issue of external voting has attracted more intense scholarly attention. From a theoretical perspective, external voting rights challenge the traditional link between citizenship and territoriality and raise questions about how the relationship between states and nonresident citizens changes in times of mass migration and globalization. Today, the research on emigrant voting rights is a research field in its own right and informs related lines of scholarly inquiry on sending state policies, the political behavior of mobile citizens, the impact of the extraterritorial vote on domestic politics, and the cross-border outreach of political parties. In this article, the main contributions to the field of emigrant enfranchisement are divided into four main sections based on the chief four waves of research. It begins with the normative debate, followed by studies of why states grant emigrant voting rights. Third, studies on the creation of special emigrant representation systems are presented. Finally, works that move beyond the state as the main unit of analysis are reviewed by unpacking the role political parties play in the enfranchisement process. Overall, studies have drawn most prominently on the concepts of citizenship and transnationalism for theory building and their research designs. The rapidly growing literature on the consequences of emigrant enfranchisement, notably emigrant electoral participation and its impact on homeland politics, has not been included here.

ABSTRACT The ongoing shifts in the global distribution of material and normative powers, particularly between the United States and China, have significant repercussions on the foreign policy strategies of smaller, weaker actors in the international system. Due to their limited capacity for dictating international politics in ways that could guarantee their survival, many in IR have argued that they usually prefer to operate within the prevailing status quo rather than attempting to revise it. Nevertheless, the Philippines, under the leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte, seems to disprove this observation by dramatically pivoting towards Beijing and away from Washington, at least rhetorically. This paper moves beyond the commonly cited systemic factors and domestic intervening variables affecting the states’ foreign policies by examining the neglected emotions and emotional beliefs that help shape these instruments. My investigation of these unseen, albeit existing mechanisms, reveals the centrality of Duterte’s emotionally constituted and strengthened beliefs in providing a more complete and realistic explanation to his China-centric (as opposed to US-centric) foreign policy stance. As I argue and demonstrate throughout the paper, because emotions and emotional beliefs are powerful engines of human behaviour, they exert enormous influence on any state leader’s foreign policy motivations, decisions, and actions.

Civil society in East Asia emerged from two community-generated needs: Rural villages relying primarily on rice farming had to work together to manage collective water supplies, and urban residents in densely packed housing similarly required neighborhood-based associations to fight fire, promote public health, and alleviate intense poverty. Mutual aid organizations rooted in these premodern traditions have not died off and continue to thrive across the region in the form of neighborhood associations, volunteer fire departments, and the like. With the introduction of Christian churches, democratic thought, and the increasingly diverse and complex lifestyles associated with capitalist development, the region has also seen the introduction of other forms of civil society organizations emerge, such as charity groups, reading circles, hobby groups, nonprofit welfare service organizations, ethnic and identity-based mutual aid groups, and advocacy organizations. Because East Asia did not experience the European Enlightenment, with its ideas of separating the public sphere from private interests, and has continued to be strongly influenced by Confucian traditions that emphasize the importance of self-cultivation and social order, civil society in East Asia has tended to be less confrontational toward the state than in other parts of the world. Laws across the region often require that nonprofit organizations register with a “supervising” government ministry, there are strict limits on political lobbying, and personal and corporate donations are often not tax-free. As with other parts of the world, individual citizens and communities do organize and engage in protests, demanding government accountability after corruption scandals, cleaner air and water, and increased protection for ethnic and social minorities, as well as organizing to promote specific policy outcomes. These grassroots movements have sometimes been successful, and both South Korea and Taiwan experienced peaceful transitions to democracy directly as a result of democratic social movements. In East Asia today, we find the same range of civil society organizations that exist across all advanced capitalist societies. As with counterparts elsewhere, civil society in the region is constantly evolving, combining the unique culture of the place in which it operates with influences from abroad.