Innovations in deliberative and participatory democracy have been rapidly adopted by policy makers. Long-term success of democratic reform hinges on developing research through open, reproducible, and ethical standards that secure trust in findings. This study examines how Democratic Innovations (DI) scholars implement open science practices (OSP). We analyze empirical research published in English-language peer-reviewed journals between 1970 and 2021. Our analysis reveals limited OSP use: less than 1% of research articles involve replication and approximately 3.5% provide full data access, despite an increase in the past decade to almost 8% of articles published in 2020. Open publishing has increased, reaching almost 50% of publications in recent years. The article concludes by discussing how OSP can contribute to improving the practice of DI and the policy effects of institutional design. Researchers who understand institutional design for inclusive collective action are best placed to make the changes required to promote open science.

The thought that intellectual arrogance consists in, roughly, overconfident resilience in one’s beliefs has been influential in philosophy and psychology. This thought is in the background of much of the philosophical literature on disagreement as well as some leading psychological scales of intellectual humility. It is not true, however. This paper highlights cases (of “stubborn fools” and the “arrogantly open-minded”) that cause trouble for equating intellectual arrogance with overconfident belief resilience. These cases are much better accommodated if we see intellectual arrogance as, instead, a form of vicious intellectual distraction by the ego.

This study analyses international scientific approaches to illicit enrichment within forensic and criminalistics frameworks, aiming to identify ways to enhance these methods in combatting financial crime. A comparative analysis was conducted of legal practices and scientific methods in Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland – countries facing challenges in addressing illicit enrichment. Special attention was given to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and cryptocurrencies due to their promising role in detecting financial crimes. The research methodology combined an analysis of international experience with a review of relevant legal frameworks and initiatives. Findings indicate that integrating advanced technologies into the detection of illicit assets, including cryptocurrency transactions, significantly strengthens financial crime prevention. However, legal constraints and evolving criminal tactics necessitate better international coordination and regulatory refinement. While the legislative systems of the examined countries generally align with global standards, they require improvements in asset recovery and financial monitoring mechanisms. The study recommends enhancing analytical tools, deploying cutting-edge technologies, fostering international cooperation and certifying experts in financial forensics. Overall, the results underscore the need for modernized legal and technical approaches to ensure more effective surveillance and control of financial flows at the international level.

Edward MacDowell held a liminal position in the late nineteenth century, well-known and active in Europe but also championed as a leading figure of US musical identity. In the first concert of his 1887 American Festival, conductor Frank Van der Stucken programmed MacDowell’s Hamlet, positioning MacDowell and his composition as important components of American music. However, MacDowell’s symphonic poem holds layers of cultural meaning in its various associations with European artistic, dramatic and musical figures.

MacDowell composed Hamlet. Ophelia. Zwei Gedichte für grosses Orchester in Frankfurt in 1884, shortly after he and his wife returned from their honeymoon in London, a city imbued with cultural Wagnerism. The style and motivic material of MacDowell’s symphonic poem are reminiscent of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, suggesting an aesthetic and thematic connection. Furthermore, MacDowell dedicated his composition to the famous Shakespearean actors, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, indicating their impact on his work.

These rich cultural layers of MacDowell’s Hamlet implicate issues of national identity and aesthetic value, issues that clarify the competing positions of the composer: as a nuanced cosmopolitan composer exhibiting English, French and Germanic elements in his work; as a US composer valorized to promote national identity; and as a proponent of aesthetic value transcending national origin. This article explores each cultural layer of MacDowell’s Hamlet and Ophelia to position the symphonic poem as a microcosm of the rich cultural landscape of the United States at the close of the nineteenth century.

Over the last 15 years, scholars, universities, and foundations have promoted numerous efforts to link the scholarly and policy communities of international relations. Increasing evidence suggests that scholars are succeeding in getting their ideas and findings in the press, and their success bodes well for their ability to influence public and elite opinion. Despite these strides, we know little about when journalists may pick up on academic ideas and evidence or how they will report it in their stories. We seek to fill this gap. To explore the role of media as a conduit for academic knowledge, we surveyed more than 1,000 foreign policy journalists about their views on IR experts and expertise. We asked when, how, and how often respondents seek out IR scholars and scholarship in the course of their reporting. We also asked about the barriers to consuming peer-reviewed, scholarly research, if and how journalists interact with IR scholars on social media, and how IR scholars’ influence compares to that of scholars in other disciplines. Finally, we asked whether respondents cover a story differently if there is consensus among experts than if there is little agreement. In addition to providing empirical answers to these questions, we used our first-of-its-kind survey of foreign policy journalists to test several arguments from literature on the media and experts, including that journalists rely heavily on experts and expertise in developing and writing their stories, they rely more heavily on social science experts than other specialists, and they tend to inaccurately portray the level of consensus among the relevant experts. Our findings largely support these claims. First, foreign policy journalists often seek out IR experts and expertise for use in their stories, suggesting that the media acts as an important conveyor belt for academic knowledge. These journalists use academic expertise at several key stages, especially when researching background information. Second, foreign policy journalists, like journalists more generally, favor social science experts and expertise over experts from other disciplines. Finally, foreign policy journalists are no different than journalists overall in their tendency to create “false balance;” they underrepresent the degree of consensus among experts and oversample dissenters when scholars overwhelmingly favor a particular policy or interpretation of events.

Although numerous clinical studies suggest that ginseng supplementation may benefit cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, results remain inconclusive. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the effects of ginseng supplementation on CVD-related risk factors. Relevant studies were identified through electronic searches in Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and CENTRAL up to August 2024. Statistical analyses, including a random-effects model, meta-regression, and non-linear modeling, were used to assess heterogeneity, dose-response relationships, and the overall effects of ginseng supplementation. A total of 70 studies, published between 1998 and 2024 and involving 4,506 participants, were included. Ginseng supplementation significantly affected several biochemical markers, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) (SMD: -0.23; 95% CI: -0.38, -0.08; P = 0.002), gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT) (SMD: -0.20; 95% CI: -0.36, -0.04; P = 0.015), glutathione reductase (GSH-Rd) (SMD: 0.90; 95% CI: 0.38, 1.42; P = 0.001), reactive oxygen species (ROS) (SMD: -0.94; 95% CI: -1.27, -0.60; P < 0.001), and superoxide dismutase (SOD) (SMD: 0.48; 95% CI: 0.10, 0.87; P = 0.014). Meta-regression analysis showed significant linear associations between ginseng dosage and Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) (P = 0.044), and between supplementation duration and malondialdehyde (MDA) (P = 0.007). Dose-response analysis revealed significant associations between ginseng dose and fasting blood glucose (FBG) (P < 0.001), hs-CRP (P = 0.043), Interleukin-6 (IL-6) (P = 0.041), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (P = 0.022), Interleukin-10 (IL-10) (P = 0.048), fasting insulin (P = 0.012), and total protein (P = 0.010). Supplementation duration was positively associated with MDA levels (P = 0.008). Ginseng supplementation was associated with improvements in inflammatory markers, liver function, and oxidative stress parameters. No significant effects were observed on anthropometric indices, blood pressure, glycemic profile, lipid profile, adipokines, or heart rate.

This article investigates whether campaign contributions and lobbying are complementary, substitutive, or distinct forms of organizational political engagement. Our study reveals minimal overlap between organizations that engage in lobbying and those that make campaign contributions despite the perception that these activities are interchangeable forms of “money in politics.” Using comprehensive contribution and lobbying report data from 1998 to 2018, we find that most politically active organizations focus exclusively on either lobbying or making campaign contributions. Only a small percentage of organizations engage in both activities. This finding challenges the assumption that these forms of political activity are inherently linked. The majority of organizations engaged in political activity do so exclusively through lobbying. However, the top lobbying groups spend the most money and almost always have affiliated political action committees (PACs). Most lobbying money is spent by a small number of big spenders—organizations that also have affiliated PACs. Organizations that both lobby and make campaign contributions tend to be well resourced and rare.

We consider an optimal stopping problem of a linear diffusion under Poisson constraint where the agent can adjust the arrival rate of new stopping opportunities. We assume that the agent may switch the rate of the Poisson process between two values. Maintaining the lower rate incurs no cost, whereas the higher rate requires effort that is captured by a cost function c. We study a broad class of payoff functions, cost functions and diffusion dynamics, for which we explicitly characterize the solution to the constrained stopping problem. We also characterize the case where switching to the higher rate is always suboptimal. The results are illustrated with two examples.

Our politics are increasingly polarised. Polarisation takes many forms. One is increasing clustering, whereby people hold down-the-line liberal or conservative views on a wide range of orthogonal issues. Some philosophers think that such clustering is indicative of irrationality, and so finding yourself in one of several clusters gives you evidence that not all your political beliefs are true. I argue that the reverse is true, presenting a simple model of belief-formation in which finding yourself in one of several clusters of opinion on orthogonal issues should increase, rather than decrease, your confidence that all your beliefs are true.

Although the harm-reduction approach to policy is most familiar from debates over public health and drug abuse, it provides a perfectly general framework for thinking about normative aspects of policy in non-ideal contexts. This paper seeks to apply a generalized harm reduction approach to the problem of attitudinal racism. Psychological research suggests that racism is unlikely to be completely eradicated, as a result of which a zero-tolerance approach risks becoming both counterproductive and overly punitive. Harm reduction recommends minimization of prevalence with respect to the primary phenomenon combined with attenuation of impact for the ineliminable portion.

Asymptotic dimension and Assouad–Nagata dimension are measures of the large-scale shape of a class of graphs. Bonamy, Bousquet, Esperet, Groenland, Liu, Pirot, and Scott [J. Eur. Math. Society] showed that any proper minor-closed class has asymptotic dimension 2, dropping to 1 only if the treewidth is bounded. We improve this result by showing it also holds for the stricter Assouad–Nagata dimension. We also characterise when subdivision-closed classes of graphs have bounded Assouad–Nagata dimension.

This article examines the food culture of the Iranian diaspora in the United States to emphasize how politics intruded on the lives of Iranians (rather than the ways in which Iranians engaged in political activism). The immigrant experience is defined by an effort to assimilate, dissimulate, and exert one's unique character onto the landscape of a host society. In the United States, Iranians struggled with competing impulses, which presented unique challenges in the food industry. In an effort to formulate and offer an “authentic” dining experience against the backdrop of an alternatively hostile and orientalizing Anglo-American clientele, Iranians nimbly accommodated both the political pressures from Iran and the transforming demographics of their restaurant patrons and cookbook readers.

Le régime québécois d’encadrement du lobbyisme exclut actuellement de son champ d’application les lobbyistes travaillant au sein d’organismes à but non lucratif (OBNL). Cette exception fait l’objet de critiques de la part de plusieurs acteurs du milieu. Le Commissaire au lobbyisme du Québec suggère d’ailleurs au législateur de modifier la loi afin d’inclure plus de lobbyistes dans son champ d’application, ce à quoi s’opposent plusieurs OBNL. La récente initiative médiatique du Commissaire au lobbyisme visant à promouvoir le droit à la transparence et à proposer une réforme de l’encadrement du lobbyisme au Québec constitue une occasion propice pour analyser l’idée d’assujettir tous les OBNL à la Loi sur la transparence et l’éthique en matière de lobbyisme. Pour éclairer cet enjeu, l’analyse vise à déterminer les impacts potentiels d’une modification législative sur la légitimité des OBNL en tant que groupes d’intérêt. L’article offre ainsi une nouvelle perspective sur le débat relatif à l’inclusion des lobbyistes travaillant au sein d’OBNL dans le champ d’application du régime québécois d’encadrement du lobbyisme.

In this paper, we prove the existence of minimizers for the sharp stability constant of Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequality near the new curve $b^*_{\mathrm{FS}}(a)$ (which lies above the well-known Felli–Schneider curve $b_{\mathrm{FS}}(a)$), extending the work of Wei and Wu [Math. Z., 2024] to a slightly larger region. Moreover, we provide an upper bound for the Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequality with an explicit sharp constant, which may have its own interest.

This paper traces the way(s) Republican political leaders have infused a right-wing populist ideology at the heart of Republican Party programs over thirty years. It does so through analysis of the institutional supports and historical factions that have shaped the evolution of the Republican Party over the last century. A change in coalition forces that control the Republican Party has encouraged the emergence of a Republican Party that holds, among other things, that some radical political actions (such as the 6 January insurrection) are legitimate, while other radical political action (such as the George Floyd protests) is not. For many Republicans in the newly dominant Trump coalition, some seemingly anti-state action is in fact legitimate when undertaken in defense of a “true” US Constitution, while other action, even when clearly legal, is inherently a threat to the “true” US Constitution.

This article demonstrates how international human rights treaties have the potential to fill the gaps in constitutional provisions and constitute therefore the extension of the constitutional bill of rights. Since human rights are formulated in approximately the same way in both the Francophone countries’ constitutions and in regional and international human rights treaties, through a casuistic approach, the article argues that the decisions of the human rights treaty bodies should serve as a guide to the interpretation of constitutional provisions by the Beninese constitutional judges. By being reluctant and disinterested in the decisions of its treaty monitoring bodies, the Beninese Constitutional Court deprives itself of an interpretation technique that is susceptible to strengthening the court’s legitimacy and independence. Hence, the article posits a dialogue between the Constitutional Court and the regional and international human rights treaty bodies. If at the global level, the use of UN treaties in constitutional adjudication is an essential step towards judicial globalization in human rights adjudication, at the regional level, the use of African Union treaties in constitutional adjudication is a strong signal of African “judicial” integration and therefore of Pan-Africanism.

This paper reevaluates Friedrich Max Müller’s interactions with his British detractors from the early 1860s to the early 1890s. By offering a re-examination of their disputes concerning language and mind, it first and foremost illuminates a transformation in the research methods, standards of evidence, and forms of explanation that were seen as scientifically legitimate in the human sciences in late Victorian Britain. To use Müller’s language, this entailed a shift in the balance of power between “historical” and “theoretical” schools of thought, which came to privilege the latter over the former. No less importantly, this paper also demonstrates how the history of philology can contribute to the history of science by revealing the extent to which Müller and his opponents were ultimately searching for the same thing – knowledge about human origins and development. Additionally, by taking seriously Müller’s arguments as a philologist, this paper refutes the pernicious view that his objections to Darwin’s account of languages were motivated by his religious beliefs.