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Between promise and practice: a scoping review of the democratic outcomes of youth participation in local governance
Full text linkYouth participation in governance is widely endorsed by international institutions and scholars alike, yet its democratic outcomes remain poorly understood. This article presents a scoping review of 48 empirical studies on youth participation in local governance across 24 countries, using a structured framework to analyse individual, community, and government-level outcomes. The analysis identifies a range of rationales behind youth participation, including normative (e.g., upholding rights), instrumental (e.g., policy improvement), and substantive (e.g., competence development, civic participation, and empowerment) rationales, which often overlap within individual studies. Most studies report both positive and negative outcomes, underscoring how the design of participatory processes shapes both experiences and impacts. Rather than treating participation as an inherently democratic good, the article advocates for a closer examination of institutional design logics, gatekeeping dynamics, and the conditional nature of positive outcomes. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on democratic innovation and public governance and opens new directions for theory-building and comparative research
When (collective) losses loom larger than voice pains: the effect of loss framing on willingness to speak up at work
Full text linkPrevious research indicates that employees often believe that it is too risky to voice their concerns about organizational problems; however, prospect theory suggests that people are more willing to take risks when problems are framed in terms of potential losses rather than potential gains. To reconcile these perspectives, we draw on prospect theory and the principle of loss aversion to explain why loss framing (compared to gain framing) will increase employees’ willingness to engage in voice behavior. In Study 1, we used a scenario experiment and found that participants who considered potential losses (compared to gains) after writing about a problem at work were more willing to speak up. Further, integrating prospect theory with the research on other orientation, we extended these findings in Study 2, by hypothesizing an interaction between loss (compared to gain) framing and collective (compared to self) framing. Using experimental vignette methodology, we found the most voice behavior with framing that highlights potential for collective losses. In Study 3, we conducted a multi-wave, multi-source survey study using three organizational samples from different industries – healthcare, consulting, and auditing – and again found that employees were more willing to engage in voice when framing made collective losses salient. Altogether, our three studies integrate prospect theory and research on other orientation to show that framing, particularly in terms of losses and collective outcomes, is an important tool for eliciting employee voice. Theoretical and practical implications of our work, as well as ideas for future research, are also discusse
The aspirational politics of global net zero
No full textGlobal Net Zero refers to a scientifically informed target of balancing greenhouse gas emissions globally to limit the adverse impacts of climate change, as well as to a politically determined international goal with a 2050 deadline. Amid a proliferation of state and non-state commitments, research on the politics of net zero remains limited. Numerous scholars have conceptualized this goal as international norm. This article challenges this conceptualization, arguing that net zero is more appropriately understood as an aspiration. The distinction matters for accurate theory generation and policy analysis. I argue that conceptualizing net zero as an aspiration enables clear sighted analysis of the risks of greenwashing and the futility of certain compliance strategies that are more suited to international norms. This conceptualization points to the urgent need to consolidate and promote uptake of more robust standards for net zero-aligned behavior. I also show that net zero meets the criteria of an aspiration while frustrating certain theorized expectations in the extant literature on aspirational politics, forcing a reconsideration of assumptions in a burgeoning area of international relations theory
How to align accounting controls with blockchain technology systems
No full textWhen large firms deploy blockchain applications to record transactions on digital ledgers to enhance transparency and speed of transactions, lower control risks, and reduce transaction costs, their accounting systems are affected. We explore equilibrium conditions under which a unit in a firm will align its accounting controls (ACs) to adhere to blockchain technology (BT) standards to which other firm units adhere. Specifically, we investigate the conditions under which a unit within a firm integrates with a BT platform used by other units and standardizes its ACs to enable compatibility with the BT system standards in operation. We assess conditions under which units of firms that do not utilize BT link up with those that have adopted BT. We compare different sequential scenarios where choices are made by the firm units to adopt BT before or after standardizing their ACs. Our findings indicate that the proportion of BT adopting units affects the continued integration of ACs across a firm. The likelihood of a firm unit standardizing its ACs to align with the firm’s BT standards increases where the firm’s units show more diversity of operations. This is particularly so if the firm unit adopting BT and harmonizing its ACs makes only a small impact on the existing BT-using units within the firm. We discuss the practical implications of our findings and identify research possibilities to further extend knowledge in this emerging domain
Interaction between skew-representability, tensor products, extension properties, and rank inequalities
No full textSkew-representable matroids form a fundamental class in matroid theory, bridging combinatorics and linear algebra. They play an important role in areas such as coding theory, optimization, and combinatorial geometry, where linear structure is crucial for both theoretical insights and algorithmic applications. Since deciding skew-representability is computationally intractable, much effort has been focused on identifying necessary or sufficient conditions for a matroid to be skew-representable. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to studying skew-representability and structural properties of matroids and polymatroid functions via tensor products. We provide a characterization of skew-representable matroids, as well as of those representable over skew fields of a given prime characteristic, in terms of tensr products. As an algorithmic consequence, we show that deciding skew-representability, or representability over a skew field of fixed prime characteristic, is co-recursively enumerable: that is, certificates of non-skewrepresentability – in general or over a fixed prime characteristic – can be verified. Finally, as an application of the tensor product framework, we derive the first known linear rank inequality for folded skew-representable matroids that does not follow from the common information property
Inequality, not regulation, drives America's housing affordability crisis
Full text linkA popular view holds that declining housing affordability stems from regulations that restrict new supply, and that deregulation will spur sufficient market-rate construction to meaningfully improve affordability. We argue that this ‘deregulationist’ view rests upon flawed assumptions. Through empirical simulation, we show that even a dramatic, deregulation-driven supply expansion would take decades to generate widespread affordability in high-cost U.S. markets. We advance an alternative explanation of declining affordability grounded in demand structure and geography: uneven demand growth – driven by rising interpersonal and interregional inequality – is the primary driver of declining affordability in recent decades. For cost-burdened households, trickle-down benefits from deregulation will be insufficient and too slow
Estimating the causal effects of cognitive effort and policy information on party cue influence
Full text linkParty cues can influence public opinion, but the extent to which they do so varies dramatically from context to context. Why? The long-standing theory that party cues function as “heuristics” provides an answer, predicting that variation in exposure to policy information, a propensity for effortful thinking, or both causally affects the influence of party cues. However, this prediction has escaped decisive empirical testing to date, leaving in its wake a string of mixed results. Here we characterize the challenges that limit previous tests, and report on two large-scale experiments designed to overcome them. We find that exposure to policy information causally attenuates the influence of party cues, but engagement in effortful thinking per se does not. Our results advance understanding of the “when” and “why” of party cue influence; clarify a number of previously ambiguous findings; and have broad theoretical, methodological, and normative implications for understanding the influence of party cues
The effects on inequality and mobility of exposure to Soviet Communism in Eastern Europe
No full textWe compare inequality and social mobility trends in European countries exposed to Soviet Communist (SC) regimes with those not exposed, using similar welfare measures. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes including information on living space and self-reported health, and relevant inequality and mobility indices for ordinal and categorical data. Our results suggest evidence of comparable welfare inequality trends in countries exposed to SC and those unexposed. Although individuals exposed to SC enjoyed higher levels of social mobility, differences in inequality across countries exposed to different regimes were negligible. A plausible explanation lies in the countervailing role of the welfare state in countries not exposed to SC and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic allocation of private goods aimed at reducing inequality in countries exposed to SC
Addressing controversial ideas in philosophy class: a critical-hermeneutical lens
No full textThe history of political philosophy is certainly not without its share of morally objectionable ideas. Aristotle’s notion of natural slavery, the subordination of women in Rousseau, and Kant’s hierarchy of the races are just a few examples from a long list of morally problematic concepts encountered in the study of political thought. In this article, I argue that our moral discomfort is a pedagogically valuable starting point for critically engaging with political theories that contain controversial ideas. By developing a “critical-hermeneutical” framework that fosters a nuanced understanding of theories as both enablers of emancipation and solidifiers of domination, I aim to demonstrate how philosophy educators can design their courses in a socially responsible manner by transforming adverse or affirmative reactions to morally objectionable ideas into opportunities for engaging critically with a text
