Policy change is not an instantaneous or linear process. In fact, change includes several mechanisms working in tandem and even against one another. This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on homelessness policy in Canada. In a sector that is already plagued with emergency responses – rather than long-term solutions – the pandemic has initiated a critical juncture where policy change is possible, but not guaranteed. Although the existing failures to alleviate homelessness in Canada make policy failings even more obvious, aspects of the pre-existing Canadian response to homelessness negate change. The pandemic, however, has led to temporary solutions and created a setting where long-term change is possible. Using over 150 primary sources, this article analyses mechanisms of change and path dependence in the pandemic response to homelessness. The presence of such mechanisms is tested in three major Canadian cities.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 is widely framed as an outside-in process, not only enabled but also enacted by the Kremlin. Prevailing accounts privilege geopolitical analysis and place those developments in a broader narrative of tension and competition between the West and Russia. Such a narrative downplays the involvement of local actors and the importance of the choices they made prior to and during those events. This article revisits the period leading up to March 2014 through a focus on critical junctures, critical antecedents, a near miss, and the path not taken. It argues that a full account of Crimea’s incorporation into Russia – while acknowledging Moscow’s role – cannot ignore the local contingencies that preceded and shaped it. We understand the region’s annexation as a key moment of institutional change in Ukraine and focus our attention on explaining how that outcome was determined, identifying the path to such a political outcome. Yanukovych’s decision to “catapult” political-economic interest groups from Makeevka and Donetsk into the peninsula led to the marginalization of the local elite. Regime change in Kyiv and a slow and cumbersome response from the new authorities in February-March 2014 triggered, but did not cause, Crimea’s exit option.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards the Communist Youth League (CYL) as a critical and distinctive mass organization that acts as an “assistant” and “reserve army” for the Party. This article uses the analytical concepts of historical institutionalism and critical junctures to discuss the changes in the CYL during the post-Mao period. We focus on two critical junctures: 1982, when the CYL became a route to rapid promotion for cadres, and 2016, after which its cadres had fewer opportunities for promotion and the CYL was pushed back to its original role in youth United Front work. We also find that the CYL has refined its United Front methods to attract talented young people by offering them services. This reflects the efforts of the CCP regime to adapt to circumstances and ensure its survival.

Republican support for the 1982 Voting Rights Act (VRA) extension is a puzzle for scholars of racial policy coalitions. The extension contained provisions that were manifestly antithetical to core principles of the “color-blind” policy alliance said to dominate the GOP. Recent scholarship has explained this puzzling decision by arguing that conservatives were confident that the VRA's most objectionable provisions could be undone by the federal bureaucracy and judiciary, while absolving Republicans of the blame of being against voting rights. This article suggests that the picture is more complicated. Applying the concept of “critical junctures” to the 1982 VRA extension, the article highlights the importance of actors’ contingent decisions and reveals a wider range of choices available to political entrepreneurs than has been conventionally understood. Highlighting differing views within the Reagan administration, this article also identifies a wider range of reasons why Republicans supported the act's extension, including career ambition, party-building, policy agenda advancement, and genuine commitment, rather than simply a defensive stance as implied by recent histories.

After World War II, the US-led international security order exhibited substantial regional variation. Explaining this variation has been central to the debate over why is there no nato in Asia. But this debate overlooks the emergence of multilateral security arrangements between the United States and Latin American countries during the same critical juncture. These inter-American institutions are puzzling considering the three factors most commonly used to explain divergence between nato and Asia: burden-sharing, external threats, and collective identity. These conditions fail to explain contemporaneous emergence of inter-American security multilateralism. Although the postwar inter-American system has been characterized as the solidification of US dominance, at the time of its framing, Latin American leaders judged the inter-American system as their best bet for maintaining beneficial US involvement in the Western Hemisphere while reinforcing voice opportunities for weaker states and imposing institutional constraints on US unilateralism. Drawing on multinational archival research, the author advances a historical institutionalist account. Shared historical antecedents of regionalism shaped the range of choices for Latin American and US leaders regarding the desirability and nature of new regional institutions while facilitating institutional change through mechanisms of layering and conversion during this critical juncture.