International organizations (IOs) are considered ideal scapegoats for opportunistic member state governments. Yet we know surprisingly little about whether and when governments indeed shift blame onto IOs. We argue that IO scapegoating is not as pervasive as commonly assumed because blaming IOs is costly. Blaming IOs undermines governments’ credibility and threatens their cooperation gains. To reap cooperation gains, governments can instead defend the IO and bear public discontent. We theorize a Cooperation-Contestation Trade-Off that explains when governments blame or defend IOs: governments that rely heavily on international cooperation are more likely to defend IOs while governments that expect costly domestic contestation are more likely to blame them. We assess our theory by examining governments’ communication about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – an IO commonly assumed to be a perfect scapegoat. With an originally collected dataset of more than 800 statements referring to the IMF made by heads of governments in major IMF borrower countries, we find supportive evidence for our expectations. Crucially, we observe that whilst governments do frequently blame the IMF, they in fact defend the Fund more than they blame it. Our findings yield important implications for international cooperation in times of heightened politicization of IOs.

A formal model reveals how the information environment affects international races to implement a powerful, dangerous new military technology, which may cause a “disaster” affecting all states. States implementing the technology face a tradeoff between the safety of the technology and performance in the race. States face unknown, private, and public information about capabilities. More decisive races, in which small performance leads produce larger probabilities of victory, are usually more dangerous. In addition, revealing information about rivals’ capabilities has two opposing effects on risk: states discover either that they are far apart in capability and compete less or that they are close in capability and drastically reduce safety to win. Therefore, the public information scenario is less risky than the private information scenario except under high decisiveness. Finally, regardless of information, the larger the eventual loser’s impact on safety relative to the eventual winner’s, the more dangerous is the race.

This article investigates the existence and extent of a gender gap in satisfaction with the Bank of England’s performance in controlling inflation. Descriptive data and previous research report gender gaps in attitudes towards monetary institutions and outcomes. Much of this research, however, disregards potential biases arising from women’s lower propensity to express an opinion, and to answer ‘don’t know’ instead. Using the Bank of England’s Inflation Attitudes survey (2001–2025), and modelling selection into substantive answers, I find a statistically significant – yet, substantively small and not persistent – gender gap in satisfaction with the Bank of England. This gender gap remains after controlling for inflation perception and monetary knowledge. I also find that women do not overestimate inflation, and they do not seem to ‘punish’ more harshly the Bank for high inflation or deflation. Therefore, variance in this gender gap can be attributed to a different propensity to report ‘extreme’ opinions, and to different reactions to high inflation or deflation. These findings highlight gendered dimensions for the understanding of monetary institutions and finance, contributing to the literature on satisfaction with the performance of institutions.

How do economic crises harm political trust? And can their impact be mitigated? Using data from Eurofound’s Living, working, and COVID-19 survey conducted across the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic, I find that economic performance and social protection are strongly correlated with political trust in such contexts, however independently from each other. While deteriorating economic conditions severely harm trust, social protection can subsequently temper this negative impact. More specifically, in the case of the COVID-19 crisis, the deferral of debt and taxes, followed by support from public services and wage support mitigated the most the negative impact of the crisis on political trust. However, I find this mitigating effect to be only moderate as trust attitudes are likely to be affected by a negativity bias. In other words, the positive effect of receiving state support on political trust is systematically inferior to the negative effect of the crisis. Because of this bias, governments are more likely to be punished by citizens for what the crisis has done to them than to be rewarded for what they have done for them.

Non-institutional political participation (NiPP) is rising in Southern Europe. However, how the relationship between health and NiPP is conditioned by age and education remains underexplored. To address this gap, this study analyses data from 8944 participants in the European Social Survey (wave 10) across Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Results showed that as subjective general health (SGH) increases, the likelihood of NiPP decreases. Both age and education moderated this relationship. For younger individuals and those with higher education, increased SGH led to reduced NiPP. Conversely, for older individuals and those with lower education, the decline in NiPP participation was less pronounced as SGH increased. Future research should examine specific forms of participation and specific health conditions, as well whether age and education continue to moderate NiPP involvement.

We analyse the rise of ‘Singapore on Thames’ and ‘Nordic Scotland’ discourses in post-Brexit UK as reflective of invented national models constructed with global policy scripts and rankings. The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union led the country to search for its new global identity and place in the global economy. Addressing the uncertain future, political actors referred to Singapore as a potential model for post-Brexit UK, idealising the Southeast Asian City State’s competitive institutional arrangements. Brexit also gave momentum for aspirations of Scottish independence with Nordic countries and welfare state acting as a starkly contrasting model for independent Scotland. Our article critically analyses the cognitive and normative aspects of the Singapore on Thames and Nordic Scotland discourses. We identify two modalities for referencing numerically constructed policy models, as means of anticipation or politicisation, blurring the communicative and coordinative variants of the analysed policy discourses and contributing to their failure.

While we know the personality traits of leaders matter in politics, political analysis often struggles to capture such traits beyond qualitative and ad hoc evaluations of character, often resulting in disjuncture between assessment and behaviour. This is evident in the contrast between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s reputation as a risk-averse and detail-oriented technocrat and the record of his first year, which suggests a tougher, more decisive and more uncompromising persona. This article explains this discrepancy by presenting a comprehensive Leadership Trait Analysis of Starmer, using automated content analysis of spontaneous speech during his premiership. Our findings show Starmer exhibits higher than average positions on his belief in his ability to control events, distrust towards others, need for power, and self-confidence, a profile associated with leaders who challenge constraints, eschew compromise, and personalise decision-making.

Central banks form a global policy community with a historically high degree of convergence around the norms of central bank independence. However, in recent years, climate change has emerged as a topic of clear-cut divergence – most strikingly between the historically similar European Central Bank (ECB) and US Federal Reserve (Fed). We develop a theoretical framework that allows us to explore not only factors pushing towards central bank convergence, but also divergence. We show that in an initial stage of emergence, a largely autonomous process of internal deliberation led the ECB to endorse new climate-related norms, where this dynamic was absent in the United States. In a second phase of cascade, marked by the founding of the Network for Greening the Financial System and a growing body of research on climate impacts and central bank objectives, climate-related norms began to exert limited pressure towards convergence. However, the Fed’s perceptions of political risk constrained its adoption of climate-related policies, and eventually led to a retreat from climate following the re-election of President Donald Trump at the end of 2024.

In extended deterrence, a nuclear patron assumes a dual role: reassuring its clients while deterring adversaries. Policymakers and scholars widely recognise that for a patron, reassurance is more challenging than deterrence. Why? What makes reassurance harder? I argue that a patron’s deliberate introduction of ambiguity into its extended deterrence commitments – designed to reduce the risk of entrapment – makes reassurance more difficult. This ambiguity makes a patron’s security umbrella appear unreliable to clients, thereby producing uniformly negative effects on reassurance. Conversely, a patron’s ambiguous commitments have a net-neutral effect on adversaries, sustaining a consistent deterrent effect. Ultimately, this dual effect of ambiguity renders reassurance a more difficult task than deterrence. I illustrate the plausibility of this argument by examining how ambiguities in US extended deterrence have been perceived by South Korea and North Korea.

This article presents the first systematic analysis of British press coverage regarding the legitimacy of the European Convention on Human Rights and European Court of Human Rights over 25 years (1997–2022). It finds that coverage undermining legitimacy falls into three main areas: limiting or eroding national sovereignty, inadequate performance or effectiveness and disrupting the ‘natural order’. Coverage supporting or defending legitimacy is about providing a safety net, maintaining the international human rights system, and protecting freedoms and liberties. These are distributed unevenly across the six newspapers included in the sample. Critical coverage maps closely to legal scholarship on challenges for legitimacy associated with the identity of the United Kingdom as a political constitutionalist state. Supportive coverage, however, does not fully reflect the broad range of arguments in favour of the legitimacy of the European Convention on Human Rights as identified by human rights campaigners; it is also less abundant, narrower and more tactically defensive.

Why do leaders of weaker states employ overt impoliteness in their highest-level engagements with dominant counterparts? Despite growing interest in impoliteness in international relations, little is known about its use by weaker states against stronger ones. This article addresses this gap by conceptualising impoliteness as a pragmatic bargaining resource in asymmetric relations, focusing on encounters between US leaders and their Middle Eastern counterparts. We argue that smaller states resort to impoliteness when political gains outweigh potential costs, particularly under conditions that reduce the risks of retaliation. In such moments, impoliteness serves to consolidate domestic legitimacy, project autonomy, express dissatisfaction with unequal partnerships, and signal aspirations for higher status. Drawing on case studies of US leaders’ receptions in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, we show that overt impoliteness is not a breakdown of diplomacy but a strategic instrument through which weaker states exercise agency and reframe hierarchy.

When do suspensions of member states by international organisations terminate due to target state compliance, international organisation capitulation, or draws? While existing research analysed the imposition of multilateral sanctions and the success of economic sanctions, this question has not been systematically addressed. I develop a theoretical framework based on research on cooperation and sanctions, which I test through quantitative analysis based on an original dataset of suspension episodes in regional international organisations (1990–2024), as well as two qualitative comparative case studies of suspension terminations in the Economic Community of West African States and the Council of Europe. The paper finds that suspensions end through target state compliance if the regional international organisation is united, the target state is vulnerable to the international organisation’s pressure, and the international organisation perceives the transgression as a severe violation of its community norms – and through international organisation capitulation if otherwise. If these factors point into different directions, this increases the chance for suspensions to be terminated as draws.

The Global Gateway represents a strategic adaptation of the EU’s role enactment amid an increasingly fragmented international order. Confronted with the challenges posed by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and a weakened Liberal International Order, the EU recalibrated its external action to preserve liberal norms and institutions. Drawing on role theory, this article interprets the Global Gateway as a manifestation of role adaptation, enabling the EU to assert itself geopolitically while promoting a development model grounded in liberal principles and values. This initiative underscores the EU’s evolving self-conception as a defender of the Liberal International Order in a competitive global landscape.