How can the poor have their say in agencies working to solve poverty? Social work practice, religion and governance inclusion

Administration and governance remain critical to good social work practices. However, debates about low-income persons’ involvement in nonprofit corporations’ decision-making remain muffled. As we celebrate the 60th anniversary year of the War on Poverty (1964–2024), what are some lessons learned from the one-time priority of low-income voices engaged in the governance and planning of anti-poverty nonprofits to today’s insights from the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEI&B) literature regarding the incentives and obstacles to low-income and marginalized persons’ participation in the governance of the organizations created to serve them? Lessons learned specifically from Catholic-funded organizations, which play a significant role in this research, serve as a focal point on how religion impacts social welfare institutional practices. This paper shares learnings about how various organizations engaged low-income and marginalized persons in their governance through a case study of the community development corporations (CDCs) – some funded by the Catholic Church – and community service agency (CSA) network in Youngstown, Ohio, USA. The Delphi process involving CEOs and board members, along with social network theory, provides further insights into the salient factors affecting the access and barriers to low-income persons’ participation in corporate governance.

From scarcity to sufficiency: lessons from British World War II textile rationing for degrowth policies

British textile rationing during World War II demonstrates that rapid and equitable material contraction is institutionally possible. Calculation in kind through rationing enforced strict resource-consumption ceilings; non-tradable quotas and price controls protected fair access to garments; the Utility Clothing Scheme, combined with rationing, guaranteed quality and slowed household turnover of garments; sufficiency-oriented communication countered garment-demand stimulation; and repair cultures, mutual-aid networks, and home production enhanced material autonomy in garment production and consumption. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that sustainability demands respecting biophysical limits, justice requires the fair distribution of these limits, and autonomy entails democratic control over both the setting of limits and the reorganization of production within those limits. At the same time, the rationing system displayed structural tensions that constrain its long-term viability and relevance for degrowth. Its technocratic, expertocratic governance undermined political autonomy; its lack of democratic decision-making constrained justice; wartime capital-intensive consolidation of clothing production marginalized small artisanal firms and weakened technical autonomy; its lack of economic and cultural transformation made it unsustainable in the long run and vulnerable to postwar growth pressures, political contestation, and cultural expectations of rising consumption. Rather than evidence of degrowth’s feasibility, this article reveals the structural, cultural, and democratic challenges any ecological democratic rationing system must address today and highlights what would be required to shift from past rationing experiences to ecological and democratic rationing: durable cultural norms of sufficiency, economic transformation of modes of production and consumption, strong public institutions, and mechanisms for collective decision-making over resource use.

Perpetration, Liberation, Witness, and Prevention: A Case Study of Veteran-Led Genocide Education

This article presents a case study of U.S. Military and Genocide: Perpetration, Liberation, Witness, and Prevention, an undergraduate course co-taught by faculty and veteran student partners at a private STEM university. Developed through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, the course integrates humanities artifacts—poetry, art, oral history—with historical readings to examine the varied role of the U.S. Military in genocidal conflicts. By adopting four thematic lenses—perpetration, liberation, witness, and prevention—students engaged with legal, ethical, and emotional dimensions of genocide. Veteran facilitators employed their military-acquired leadership and instructional skills, offering firsthand perspectives that enriched discussions and reflections. In turn, students—many of whom were ROTC cadets or aspiring to military-adjacent careers—found that exploring genocide through music, poetry, and eyewitness accounts fostered empathy, critical thinking, and a deeper appreciation for the moral complexities of military involvement. Course assessments and midterm feedback highlighted the effectiveness of collaborative teaching, the value of small-group discussions, and the impact of humanities-based engagement in a predominantly STEM context. This instructional approach tested in this case study offers a replicable model for bridging theoretical knowledge and ethical considerations, preparing students to confront the complexities of war and genocide with greater awareness.

Popcorn and Politics: A Course on American Foreign Policy and Film

Integrating film into traditional political science courses can provide powerful benefits. Most notably, it can increase student excitement about and thus engagement with a course. This paper offers an in-depth guide for how to construct a rigorous, but engaging, course on American foreign policy through the lens of film. Each week of the course includes one class session on a key American foreign policy event, along with a theory and/or debate associated with it. These sessions are organized chronologically so that students learn about the historical development of American foreign policy over time, in addition to theory. The second class session in any given week pairs the American foreign policy event/debate with a germane film that—either directly or metaphorically—relates to the foreign policy substance and can help students learn about it at a deeper level. I select a wide range of different types of movies—from musicals and satirical comedies to war dramas and science-fiction films—to interest different types of students. Empirical evidence suggests the structure and content of the course was highly effective at better engaging students than a conventional political science class and teaching them about the interlinked relationship between film and foreign policy.

Assessment of the impact of supply and demand shocks on sustained price increases: Evidence from the wholesale electricity market in Portugal

This study examines the persistent effects of external shocks on electricity markets, particularly in response to major global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The Portuguese market's structural dependence on fossil fuels and imports makes it vulnerable to supply chain instability. By analyzing hourly data from January 2015 to September 2024 using a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) with Blanchard–Quah long-run restrictions and Fry–Pagan F-Triangular identification, this study isolates the distinct short- and long-run effects of supply- and demand-side shocks—particularly those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Our results provide robust empirical evidence that sustained electricity price increases during 2021–2024 were predominantly driven by supply-side shocks (e.g., natural gas shortages, infrastructure bottlenecks, and intermittent renewable underperformance), which exerted long-lasting upward pressure on prices. In contrast, demand-side shocks—such as those from pandemic lockdowns—induce only temporary deviations, with limited persistence in price levels. The slow adjustment of electricity prices (0.24% per hour) relative to the rapid corrections in generation (34.4% per hour) and demand (14.5% per hour) further underscores the structural inflexibility on the supply side and the dominance of supply constraints in shaping price dynamics.

Beauty for Ashes: Understanding the Israel-Hamas War. Volume One Judith Mendelsohn Rood, Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press. 470 pp. $30.99 softcover.

Justice After War: Jus Post Bellum in the 21st Century David Chiwon Kwon, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023. 294 pp. $29.95 softcover.

Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon, New York, Doubleday, 2008, also on Brilliance Audio Compact Disc ©2010 and the basis for Slavery by Another Name TPT National Production/PBS, 2012, US $15.21 (Paperback) ISBN-13 978-0385506250, ISBN-10 0385506252

Trumpism, fascism and neoliberalism

The recent US presidential election has re-energised a debate about Trumpism and fascism that has been percolating since 2015. This debate has unfolded in stark binary terms of presence or absence. Alarmists argue that Trumpism bears all of the hallmarks of fascism and should therefore be labelled as such. Sceptics suggest that this conclusion is premised on shallow historical analogizing that mistakes form for substance. These differences are part of broader debates about Trump’s policies and whether they conform to or challenge neoliberalism, and whether neoliberalism is even compatible with fascism. This article makes an intervention into these debates, interrogating Trumpism through the prism of two literatures whose relationship has only recently come into sharper focus – one on fascism and one on neoliberalism. We draw evidence from the recent presidential campaign to argue that although Trumpism does not conform to inter-war European iterations of fascism, and while the conditions under which they emerged are strikingly different, Trumpism nonetheless exhibits fascistic tendencies that have intensified in recent years. We refer to this as ‘proto-fascism’, and suggest that neoliberal capitalism has been centrally implicated in its emergence.

Between neoliberalism and fascism: Louis Rougier, race, and the ends of neoliberal ideology

This paper argues that a shared investment in racial hierarchy has historically formed a key point of convergence between neoliberal and far-right ideologies. To make this argument, the paper develops a close analysis of the career and works of Louis Rougier (1889–1982). Known principally as a prominent early free-market advocate who helped to organize the neoliberal movement in the interwar period, Rougier stands out from many other neoliberals by his lifelong connections to the French far right. The paper maps out these connections, focusing in particular on Rougier’s links, first, to neo-fascist circles during and after the Second World War and, second, to the Nouvelle Droite as it emerged in the late 1960s. It then reconstructs Rougier’s views on race, showing that he saw racial variables as a decisive factor in the historical ascendancy of Western civilization. Late in his life he took a keen interest in a body of racialist pseudo-science to support this view. The final section of the paper explores the ideological affinity between far-right and neoliberal ideology, arguing that Rougier’s signally racialised conception of Western civilization was so closely aligned with both worldviews it was able to serve as a conceptual bridge. The paper concludes that this ideological affinity positions the far right as a more or less organic ally to neoliberalism.