When a non-violent resistance campaign does not have leverage to challenge powerful opponents, third-party intervention has been shown to assist. While the role of external third-party interveners – foreign activists – has been documented, less attention has been given to intervention from members of the dominant population. Drawing from the literature on civil resistance and through the study of Israeli Jews who intervene in Palestinian resistance campaigns against the Israeli military occupation, I argue that intervention from members of the dominant population is strategically desirable. Through an analysis of three Palestinian campaigns, this article identifies that the physical presence of Israeli Jews was needed to ensure the Palestinians could maintain their resistance efforts and presence on the land, despite the repression they faced. Furthermore, the skills and knowledge of the Israelis were needed to help the Palestinians achieve some of their goals, at least in the short term.

This article examines how challenger parties enter the political arena and the effect of this entry by looking at the Italian 5 Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle – M5S). We explain the M5S's entry strategy in 2013 using the spatial approach to party competition and employing expert survey data collected for each national election between 2008 and 2018. These data allow us to analyse the changing spatial configuration of Italian politics due to the increasing salience of pro/anti-EU and pro/anti-immigration dimensions. We then apply the theoretical notion of the uncovered set (UCS) to trace how the M5S's entry reshaped the overall space of party competition, causing a realignment of existing parties. This work contributes to the ongoing debate on the electoral success of challenger parties and the emerging cleavages and polarization of party systems in Western European countries.

A voluminous literature documents that citizens' perceptions of democracy are shaped by electoral victories and defeats, but what reasoning do citizens use to evaluate parties as winners or losers? Drawing on research on partisan-motivated reasoning, I propose an own-party bias in winner–loser evaluations according to which voters evaluate the electoral fate of their party more favourably than that of other parties. Data gathered in the aftermath of the Danish parliamentary election in 2015 support this expectation. Citizens are more inclined to interpret the election outcome as successful for their preferred party, regardless of the actual election result. This is more pronounced the stronger their partisan attachment and among the less politically knowledgeable, who also assign less importance to objective indicators of electoral success. The findings have implications for our understanding of electoral winners and losers and of how electoral results shape party support and polarization.

Many opposition parties in electoral-authoritarian regimes identify as democracy movements. I ask: what ideologies do they publicly express? The first-glance answer is ‘democratic ones’, but there are many theories of liberal democracy, and they say little about living under or indeed confronting authoritarian regimes. I analyse the public messages of two such democracy movements: Chadema (Tanzania) and the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC, in Zimbabwe). I argue that they each articulate a homegrown vision of democracy in which they adapt democratic theory to make sense of their electoral-authoritarian circumstances. They do so by articulating that theory through the ‘populist logic’ conceptualized in the discourse-theoretic perspective. I call them anti-authoritarian (and democratic) populisms. Previous research has overlooked the distinctiveness of these ideologies because it has adopted concept configurations which invisibilize them. I argue that there are reasons to expect there to be a wider body of anti-authoritarian populisms articulated by democracy movements in electoral-authoritarian regimes in Africa, and indeed, worldwide.

Inspired by the famous Prisoner's Dilemma game theory model, Karin Marie Fierke introduced the Warden's Dilemma to explain self-sacrifice and compromise in asymmetric interactions and to show that such an explanation requires a social ontology. She applied her model to Irish Republican Army hunger strikes in 1980–1981. Her model, however, closely resembles what game theorists call a ‘nested game’. This article (re)introduces the nested Warden's Dilemma, focuses on the tripartite relationship inherent to the model and examines hunger strikes as part of a strategy potentially informed by instrumental rationality and knowledge of the Warden's Dilemma dynamic. After briefly discussing the implications of approaching self-sacrificial behaviour from a rationalist perspective, a case study of strategic non-violence in Myanmar (Burma) demonstrates how third parties can both diffuse instrumental rationality regarding political self-sacrifice and facilitate patterns of resistance that appear to capitalize on the Warden's Dilemma dynamic.

NOTHING FAILS LIKE FAILURE; THE LESS ANARCHISTS ARE READ, THE less they write, and the less they are written about. The anarchist movement has risen and fallen in turn for more than a century, and in the trough just before the current wave there was probably less new literature concerning anarchism than ever before. My object here is to examine the situation in this country at that time, roughly between 1941 and 1960, and then to see how it has changed during the last ten years. (I have excluded articles in periodicals in order to avoid over-complication,)

EVENTS CONSTANTLY DRAW ATTENTION TO APPARENT IDEOlogical differences among the African states. Yet the precise nature of these differences is not always easy to discern, and still less obvious is the degree to which particular policies, internal or external, are grounded in some underlying articles of political faith. There are, however, occasions when the connexion is explicitly made, notably when there is a change of regime or a constitutional consolidation. A number of African countries have recently provided themselves with new constitutions. Unless one takes the view that this is pure ‘window-dressing’, the activity merits the attention not merely of the constitutional lawyer for whom constitutions are his daily bread but also of the political scientist who has other fish to fry. I propose therefore to look at four of the African countries: Madagascar and Algeria, where new constitutions have been in operation from 1976, and Nigeria and Ghana, where new constitutions are due to come into force in the second half of 1979. In the case of Ghana, I shall be referring to a draft still under consideration but also to an earlier Constitution, that of 1969. Although it was abrogated in 1972, when the military reintervened, many of its provisions and its underlying philosophy are being reasserted in the 1979 draft. My comments are concentrated on three matters: i) the basic character of the constitution; ii) the provisions relating to parties; iii) control over those in authority.

DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITISH POLITICS BETWEEN JULY AND NOVember 1981 - Roy Jenkins's near-win in the Warrington byelection, the capture of Croydon North-West by the Liberal/SDP Alliance and Shirley Williams's triumph in Crosby - strongly suggest that the British party-system may never be the same again. Although it was possible to argue that the Warrington result reflected no more than the impact of a famous candidate on a situation of public hostility towards the two major parties in a working-class constituency, the Croydon result, which gave victory to a Liberal candidate with a long record of earlier failures, and which gave the Alliance 40 per cent of the votes in a seat where the Liberal Party's organization had been almost as non-existent as the SDP's, cannot be dismissed so easily. These by-election results, together with an impressive run of local election successes for the Alliance, and continuing evidence from the opinion polls, strongly suggest that British politics, as the SDP's leaders have proclaimed, must be entering a new phase.

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER MORAL VALUES CAN OR SHOULD BE taught has caused controversy and divided opinion almost since the beginning of time, and certainly since the very earliest days of philosophy. As is well-known, Socrates was condemned to death on charges of impiety and of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth. Although the latter accusation was never fully spelled out, it was certainly connected with the perceived moral subversiveness of his philosophy and, in particular, with his denial that those who purported to teach moral values were qualified to do any such thing. This denial was construed by many as dangerous and as an attack on the moral foundations of Athenian society for which, famously, Socrates paid a high price.

THE MEDITERRANEAN POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY FORMS an important part of its general external policy. Since this paper can, therefore, be considered as a case study, it is worth trying to define at the outset the concept of ‘external policy’. The Treaties did not delegate to the common European institutions any of the powers of foreign policy-making traditionally exercised by the nation state, but the granting of wholesale economic competences and the consequential obligation of evolving a common commercial policy ensured that the Community would come into direct contact with non-member states. Through its diplomatic relations with other countries, the Community has become an actor on the international stage, whilst the scope of its external relations has frequently exceeded that of purely commercial policy. It is both meaningful and useful to consider the Community as exercising an external policy – a kind of half-way house to full foreign policy.

IN ONE OF MY BOOKS I HAVE ARGUED THAT ‘MODERNIZATION’ is a process whereby a society becomes increasingly aware of itself, its identity and aspirations, and seeks to make concrete its awareness in terms of seeking equivalence with other nations. The argument of this essay is that while the process of change in India has general characteristics common to other societies, it can never be the same in totality because the initial conditions are so different.

Over a quarter of a century ago i was privileged to receive an invitation to contribute an article on South African politics to the first number of this journal. I recall dismissing the thesis that ‘economic forces, together with the emergence of an African middle class, will provide a long term solution to the country's problems…’ I argued that

In our current troubled times, terrorism and the threat of attacks on liberal states preoccupies both policymakers and much of the scholarly community. Four important books are reviewed here. These works represent the evolution of thinking on terrorism over the last three turbulent decades. Revisiting earlier thinking and bringing debates up to date about how to understand and respond to violent threats allows us to ponder what we ‘now know’ and may not know about terrorism and liberal states.

AFTER MORE THAN A DECADE IN WHICH DOMESTIC POLICY PROVIDED the major issues for party debate in West Germany, the determination of the Brandt government on taking office to engage itself in activities designed to ‘normalize’ relations with the Eastern Bloc has had notable effects on the West German parties. The political climate has altered; partisanship has been intensified; the Basic Law has been tested in novel circumstances; and the governing coalition and the apprentice opposition have both faced trials and tensions in terms of their party base.

The new Ostpolitik has had its effects on the political climate in terms of the first use of the constructive vote of no confidence, the erosion of the coalition majority, the pressures for a premature general election; but the short-term and longer-term effects on the West German parties are likely to be of greater significance. This article seeks to assess the significance of the Ostpolitik for the government and opposition parties. For, whatever the benefits or disadvantages which the Ostpolitik may bring to the Federal Republic in intrinsic terms, it is already clear that it has modified considerably the pre-1969 pattern of party politics.