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Quantifying the role of self-declared obstacles to unachieved fertility: proposing a new method
No full textThe discrepancies between desired and actual fertility rates are one of the key topics in fertility studies. This paper aims to explore the fertility gap—the difference between desired fertility size and actual fertility outcomes, and how this gap can be decomposed according to the importance of various perceived barriers to fertility. This article introduces an innovative approach to quantify the impact of removing obstacles that individuals report prevent them from having a child (or another child) on the total fertility rate (TFR). On the one hand, this method offers an alternative perspective on the relationship between the desired number of children and observed fertility outcomes. Unlike conventional analyses that begin with the differences between desired and actual fertility levels, this approach considers that the sum of the fertility gap—defined by the reported reasons that hinder individuals from having children—and the observed fertility level represents the obstacle-removed TFR. On the other hand, this method provides a cause-deleted analysis for fertility, addressing a gap in formal demographic analysis which has historically focussed on mortality research. Although this approach introduces some assumptions, the results offer insights into the relative importance of reported obstacles to fertility
Simulating democratic reform in the EU: self-legitimation through participatory innovation
No full textThe European Commission has increasingly invested in forms of direct citizen engagement, recently establishing European Citizens' Panels as part of its ‘new push for European Democracy’. While such processes have usually been explained as efforts at institutional legitimation, participatory innovations in the EU prove theoretically puzzling: Their strategic and functional value for the Commission remains elusive. This paper develops an alternative theoretical proposition: Rather than legitimating the Commission to an external audience, participatory innovation functions as a simulation of democratic reform that addresses a need for self-legitimation. The analysis demonstrates that participatory innovation can provide the means of self-legitimation precisely because it does not realise democratic participation but enacts a performance of democratic reform. This performance should be understood as a simulation of reform that is both produced by the Commission with a field of advocates, experts, and participation professionals, and designed primarily for this same field of actors. In this way, the instrumental value of participatory innovation lies in how it justifies the work and authority of the Commission to itself. The theoretical proposition is grounded in an empirical study that draws on document analysis of institutional discourse, data on affiliations between actors in the field, and elite interviews
Assessing public support for degrowth: survey-based experimental and predictive studies
No full textBACKGROUND: Degrowth argues that high-income economies should reduce harmful production and prioritise wellbeing. Although degrowth is increasingly seen as essential to tackling climate change, the extent of public support for this economic approach remains unclear. In this study, we aimed to investigate public support for the full degrowth proposal in the UK and USA-high-income, growth-oriented nations with substantial climate responsibility and political resistance to degrowth. Our objectives were to distinguish support for the proposal itself from perceptions of the degrowth label and to examine the role of participants' individual differences. METHODS: Our objectives were examined in two studies, Study 1 and Study 2, administered online via Qualtrics. For both studies, participants in the USA and UK were recruited via Prolific (an online pool of participants) to be representative of the respective populations in age, gender, and ethnicity. Participants had to pass several attention and quality checks to qualify for analyses. Study 1 used a within-subjects design whereby all participants rated their support for the full degrowth proposal (summarising the key ideas, practices, and goals of degrowth) without any label and for eight economic approaches presented by label only (ie, degrowth, ecomodernism, ecosocialism, green capitalism, green growth, green market economy, post growth, and wellbeing economy) on a 7-point scale (from 1 [strongly oppose] to 7 [strongly support]). Study 2 used a between-subjects design whereby participants were randomly assigned using the randomiser function in Qualtrics, to one of seven economic approaches (the full degrowth proposal; a label referring to either degrowth, ecosocialism, or wellbeing economy without a description; or a combination of the full degrowth proposal with one of these three labels), for which they rated their support on the same 7-point scale. Mean support for each approach was classified on the basis of 95% CIs, meaning that similar means could be classified differently across studies and samples due to variations in these intervals. To identify key predictors of support, we also measured 74 individual differences, including various psychological and socioeconomic characteristics, and analysed them using an approach combining widely used machine learning models with multiple linear regression analyses; a variable was considered a key predictor only if it ranked among the most predictive in the machine learning models and was also statistically significant in the regression analyses. FINDINGS: Data were collected from study participants between Oct 10, 2023, and Dec 1, 2023. 6228 participants from the UK and USA were initially recruited, of whom 5454 were eligible for analyses. When presented without a label, in the UK, the full degrowth proposal received support from 736 (81%) of 910 participants in Study 1 and 210 (82%) of 255 in Study 2. In the USA, it received support from 683 (73%) of 941 participants in Study 1 and 187 (72%) of 260 in Study 2. On the 7-point scale, in Study 1, support was 5·37 in the UK and 5·07 in the USA (both corresponding to somewhat support), whereas, in Study 2, support was 5·34 in the UK (corresponding to somewhat support to support) and 4·97 in the USA (corresponding to somewhat support). When degrowth was presented as a label alone, it received support from 237 (26%) of 910 participants in Study 1 and 50 (20%) of 250 participants in Study 2 in the UK and 266 (28%) of 941 participants in Study 1 and 34 (13%) of 270 participants in Study 2 in the USA. In Study 2, the degrowth label accompanied by the full proposal was supported by 184 (74%) of 248 participants in the UK and 177 (68%) of 260 participants in the USA. In addition, 188 (75%) of 250 participants in the UK and 176 (67%) of 264 participants in the USA supported the full degrowth proposal plus ecosocialism label, and 209 (84%) of 250 participants in the UK and 179 (72%) of 249 participants in the USA supported the full degrowth proposal plus wellbeing economy label. Key individual difference predictors of support were people's drive to address global challenges and belief in ecosystem integrity. INTERPRETATION: Contrary to concerns from politicians and commentators that degrowth is broadly unpopular, the core degrowth proposal received substantial support from UK and US participants in this study, regardless of whether the full proposal was accompanied by the degrowth label. Therefore, negative perceptions of the degrowth label appear surmountable once people learn about the main principles behind degrowth. Fostering proactive engagement with global challenges and awareness of nature's fragility could further enhance the public's acceptance of degrowth
Exploring the interactions between nature loss drivers, vulnerabilities and economic impacts
No full textNature loss presents significant economic and financial risks by disrupting the ecosystem services essential for economic stability and societal wellbeing. Its impacts vary widely across regions and sectors, often exacerbated by vulnerabilities such as supply chain interdependencies and resource dependence. We analyse 14 case studies to understand recurring patterns from historical nature loss events and create insights for developing proactive and integrated strategies to address these multifaceted challenges. Incidences of olive tree disease, harmful algal blooms and cod species demise stand out in particular for the diverse and ongoing challenges they present. These examples underscore how the same drivers can yield vastly different macroeconomic outcomes depending on the vulnerabilities present. Nature loss reduces total factor productivity, a fundamental driver of GDP growth, while also disrupting labour dynamics and population growth. Weak institutions, limited economic diversification, and overdependence on natural resources amplify these effects, creating cascading risks. The heterogeneity of nature loss impacts, both regionally and across agents, complicates economic recovery and risk management. To address these challenges, we recommend: 1) adopting advanced multi-agent economic models to better capture the heterogeneity of impacts; 2) implementing targeted financial and fiscal interventions to enhance resilience; 3) strengthening prudential regulation to manage nature-related financial risks; and 4) integrating ecosystem services into risk assessments and economic planning to anticipate and mitigate potential crise
Routledge handbook of public policy in the Global South
No full textThis important new handbook provides a comprehensive assessment of contemporary public policy and governance in the Global South. It offers incisive comparative analyses and presents policy-specific case studies from across Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa. The aim is to inform future governance research, policy, and practice in these regions. This book is timely as it responds to how governments in the Global South are dealing with recent complex series of challenges and crises of the 21st Century. These range from the pressures of a global pandemic to the impacts of climate change, democratic backsliding, deteriorating public services, and the realignments in the international political economy following the rise of China. In doing so, it reflects on the political transformations, global convergences, and underlying regional, as well as national, trajectories that have taken place recently, focusing on among others: Democratic governance and institutional trust ublic service delivery, motivation, and governance outcomes Policy crises, disaster management, and climate change Policy successes and failures Policy innovations, digitalisation, and policy research in the Global South Different authors bring together varied and specialised perspectives and experiences, which are important for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers wishing to understand emerging governance models, innovations, and challenges within the Global South
Is social connectedness still in decline after the Covid-19 pandemic? Cohort trends in secondary school students in Finland between 2017 and 2023
No full textSeveral previous cohort studies suggest declining social connectedness in young people since 2000, the pattern accelerated during the covid-19 pandemic. Little is known whether social connectedness had recovered to the pre-pandemic levels. We investigated whether the declining pattern in experienced social connectedness in secondary school students between 2017 and 2021 changed in 2023. We also investigated the role of individual and school characteristics in these trends. We used nationally representative Finnish data of students in lower and upper secondary education (analytic n = 556,424–557,391). Social connectedness was measured by number of close friends, feelings of loneliness and sense of belonging at school. Regression analyses included the fixed effects and the interactions of year, gender, school level, parental education, immigration status of the student and urban-rural location. The results showed that the overall declining trend of social connectedness between 2017 and 2021 slowed down between 2021 and 2023: number of close friends further declined at a slower rate (1% decline), while there was no change in sense of belonging at school and a slight recovery (2% reduction) in feelings of loneliness. In some subgroups, such as students in general upper secondary schools and students with immigration background had a faster recovery than other student groups. The results point to little overall improvement in social connectedness in secondary school students in Finland after the pandemic
Nationally representative, locally misaligned: the biases of generative artificial intelligence in neighborhood perception
No full textResearchers across disciplines increasingly use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to label text and images or as pseudo-respondents in surveys. But of which populations are GenAI models most representative? We use an image classification task—assessing crowd-sourced street view images of urban neighborhoods in an American city—to compare assessments generated by GenAI models with those from a nationally representative survey and a locally representative survey of city residents. While GenAI responses, on average, correlate strongly with the perceptions of a nationally representative survey sample, the models poorly approximate the perceptions of those actually living in the city. Examining perceptions of neighborhood safety, wealth, and disorder reveals a clear bias in GenAI toward national averages over local perspectives. GenAI is also better at recovering relative distributions of ratings, rather than mimicking absolute human assessments. Our results provide evidence that GenAI performs particularly poorly in reflecting the opinions of hard-to-reach populations. Tailoring prompts to encourage alignment with subgroup perceptions generally does not improve accuracy and can lead to greater divergence from actual subgroup views. These results underscore the limitations of using GenAI to study or inform decisions in local communities but also highlight its potential for approximating “average” responses to certain types of questions. Finally, our study emphasizes the importance of carefully considering the identity and representativeness of human raters or labelers—a principle that applies broadly, whether GenAI tools are used or not
Civilising the Hindu ‘Rashtra’: decoloniality’s tryst with nativist palingenesis
No full textAs the Constitution marks 75 years as the founding text of independent India, some have argued for it to be repudiated because of its ‘foreign’ influences. Tarun Khaitan discusses why such arguments do not work in the context of India’s Constitution, and provides an analytical reading of a recent hypothesis
The misogyny paradox: the more it spreads, the less we can talk about it
No full textProfessor Joanna Lewis, historian, writer and, feminista makes the case for bringing misogyny centre stage in strategies to combat rising levels of gender-based violence and a feminist ‘backlash’
Jordan’s path to a climate resilient future
No full textJordan faces escalating climate change challenges that exacerbate drought risks while simultaneously heightening the country’s vulnerability to flash floods and heatwaves. In response, Jordan has taken important steps to address climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). This policy brief presents key findings from Mercy Corps’ in-depth assessment of Jordan’s CCA and DRR policies, providing five recommendations to enhance climate resilience and disaster preparedness. These findings can inform policy and programmatic decisions by the government of Jordan, United Nations agencies, donors, and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs)