Clientelism is a type of nonprogrammatic linkage strategy that political parties deploy to win elections. Specifically, the concept refers to the personalized and discretionary exchange of goods or favors for political support. Scholars of comparative politics investigate variation in the prevalence of clientelism across countries, as well as the organizations that parties create to distribute personalized gifts and favors. A large body of work also studies the types of voters more commonly targeted by machines.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are presently the focus of a dangerous contest between the People’s Republic of China and Japan, one that even now has the potential to spark a military conflict that could draw in the United States. How has this come about? Whether seen from a strategic, economic, or historical perspective, the value of the islands does not appear to merit the risks of such a contest.

The announcement by Facebook that Libra will "deliver on the promise of 'the internet of money'" has drawn the attention of the financial world. Regulators, institutions, and users of financial products have all been prompted to react and, so far, no one managed to convince the association behind Libra to apply the brakes or to convince regulators to stop the project altogether.

Many technologically-developed countries view the current lack of cybersecurity professionals in the labor market – the so-called “cybersecurity skills shortage (CSSS)” – as a threat to their cybersecurity. Difficulties in matching cybersecurity supply with demand have been reported in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; these countries have also been among the most active in mitigating the shortage through comprehensive po-licy strategies.

Recent research has shown an increasing interest in the historical evolution of legislative institutions. The development of the UK Parliament has received particularly extensive attention. In this article, Dr Zubek, Mr Fleming, and Dr Goet contribute to this literature in three important ways. First, they introduce a complete, machine‐readable data set of all the Standing Orders of the UK House of Commons between 1811 and 2015. Second, they demonstrate how this data set can be used to construct innovative measures of procedural change.

The perception that a high court's decision is binding and final is a crucial prerequisite for its ability to settle political conflicts. Under what conditions are citizens more likely to accept controversial judicial rulings? Mass acceptance is determined, in part, by how rulings are framed during public debate. This article takes a broad view of the strategies and actors that influence the discursive environment surrounding judgments, calling attention to hitherto unexamined determinants of mass acceptance.

The naming of violence in feminist political campaigns and in the context of feminist theory has rhetorical and political effects. Feminist contention about the scope and meaning of ‘Violence against Women' (VAW) and ‘Sex and Gender-Based Violence' (SGBV), and about the concepts of gender and of violence itself, are fundamentally debates about the politics of feminist contestation, and the goals, strategies and tactics of feminist organisation, campaigns and action.

The article investigates a grassroots Chinese movement called the New Rural Reconstruction Movement (NRRM). Drawing on field visits, surveys, interviews and social media posts regarding a NRRM project and relevant literature, Mr Alcock links the NRRM to the degrowth movement. This is likely the first research analysing a Chinese grass-roots movement from a degrowth theoretical perspective.