In the age of post-neoliberal globalization, complex interdependence has resulted in the integration of many economies and the industries within them and led to varied national and subnational political and economic responses. These forces have enabled the rise of a new political economy that requires the contextualized comparative sector approach (CCSA). This article advances a research agenda that contends theoretical and empirical leverage for explaining heterogeneity and assessing generalizability is gained by taking contextualized comparisons to the sector level of analysis. The CCSA identifies the multidimensional effects of sectors, uncovering new sites of inquiry connected to sectoral structural attributes, context-specific sectoral organization of institutions, and social and political constructions of sectors. Sectors are thus contexts that are embedded in multilevel contexts involving state and nonstate actors alike. Scholarship on industrial policy, technology and innovation, environmental transition, and regulation and governance demonstrates the analytical power and theoretical value of combining contextualized comparisons and sectoral analysis, which have been overlooked by the overly macro- or micro-level studies dominant in international and comparative political economy. The various strategies of the approach and a stepwise discussion of a research design underscore the possibilities for theory development and testing, adjudication of competing explanations, and case-specific discoveries.

Since the inception of the United States, religion has long permeated its politics, so much so that racial construction cannot be fully understood without first dissecting America’s cosmological underpinnings. This article maps the founding of ethnic democracy within European modernity and its centrality to the development of the American nation-state. I contend that American ethnic democracy emerges when ethno-racial tyranny expresses itself as white supremacy that is built and sustained through a cosmological justification for its political existence. The political ramifications reveal an unfolding of transhistorical racial terror against the Black as a precondition for ethno-democratic continuity. Nevertheless, contestations against the US ethno-democratic state emerge via the heretical praxis of Black rebels who, through a commitment to subversive belief systems, struggle for Black freedom as a recovery of abolition–democracy.

This article proposes the creation of constituency juries to enhance accountability and check oligarchy in representative governments. Constituency juries would be made up of randomly selected citizens from an electoral constituency who exercise oversight over that constituency’s elected representative. Elected representatives would be required to give a regular account of their actions to the constituency jury, and the jury would have the power to sanction the representative. In addition to this general model of constituency juries, I offer a more specific institutional design that shows how the general model can be operationalized and realistically incorporated into existing representative governments. In contrast to lottocratic proposals that replace elections with sortition, constituency juries are a promising way to combine the two to address the oligarchic tendencies of elections in representative government.

Despite constituting around 16% of the world’s population, we know little about the extent to which political parties encourage people with disabilities to participate in political parties. This article aims to fill that gap by providing a comparative analysis of political parties in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The research develops a framework for assessing the accessibility of political parties. The research finds evidence of activity in a small number of parties but finds relatively little evidence to suggest that parties are prioritizing this issue, especially when compared with the participation of other social groups. The article argues that we need greater research into the relationship between disability and political parties, concluding with a future research agenda.

Calls to defund the police gained prominence with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and take various forms. Depending on what will be defunded, the idea has attracted support from different parts of the political spectrum. The politicized nature of the debate often cuts short reflection on how best to assess proposals to defund the police. This article takes up that task. It begins by developing a typology of defund measures: abolitionist cuts, abolitionist reallocation, disaggregative cuts, and disaggregative reallocation. It then outlines a framework to evaluate policing and defund measures, drawing on criteria from the ethics of defensive force. Since policing relies on force, it faces a high justificatory bar and must satisfy the principles of just aim, proportionality, and necessity. The state should not fund unjustified forms of policing that violate those principles. Different violations, though, demand different policy responses.

In recent years, analysts have raised concerns about the threat misinformation poses to democracy, yet efforts to counter misinformation have been met with charges of bias and censorship, predominantly from the political right. This article asks who sets the terms of debate over misinformation: what it is, how much there is, whether it is a problem, and what to do about it. It frames the past decade’s controversies around misinformation as an implicit struggle for authority and offers a framework to interpret the arguments of the actors involved. It identifies three coalitions with distinct institutional and ideological profiles that have articulated consistent stances on misinformation. The analysis demonstrates how contestation among competing coalitions plays out in five distinct domains of misinformation: content, attribution, scale, consequences, and policy. Viewing the misinformation debate as part of broader political and cultural struggles within democracies at a time of low trust in institutions helps explain why (mis)information is so fiercely contested. The issue takes on outsize proportions because whoever prevails in shaping the discourse surrounding misinformation stands to gain authority over the rules governing the public sphere, with implications for the future of free speech and democratic participation.

Counterterrorism is both a reaction to and an anticipation of the activities of those who wield terror for political purposes. Counterterrorism pits itself against terrorism, aimed at ending or at least limiting its operations, spread, and damage. As Richard English has acknowledged, non-state terrorism has much less impact on the world than the counterterrorism it elicits. The vast powers at the disposal of states and their reactive tendency to military methods, such as after 9/11, make this entirely predictable. Fiona de Londras’ examination of transnational counterterrorism ably documents how states acting in concert have reshaped the world, particularly in the post 9/11 era. Guendalina Simoncini’s book on Tunisia clearly illustrates how counterterrorism can be used to enable the establishment of an authoritarian regime in Tunisia and the resultant disastrous consequences for that society.