Journals
2026 EN
Shepkaru Shmuel
This essay examines the development of a recurring topos in Israeli cinema that embodies a central cultural myth and its transformations over time. Although this myth does not originate within Israeli culture, it interacts dynamically with national and patriotic mythologies prevalent in Western national cultures, as well as with specific Middle Eastern societies that demand altruistic sacrifice for religion and nationality. In a Middle Eastern context marked by ongoing national and religious conflicts – where the call for self-sacrifice persists alongside unrelenting threats to peace, stability, and life – the evolution and transformation of the myth of individual altruistic sacrifice for the nation’s revival and survival takes on particular significance. The essay sheds light on the processes that inspire individuals to mobilize for war, as well as the growing inclination to refuse sacrifice in favor of peace. By tracing this distinct Israeli myth and ethos as depicted in Israeli cinema, and by exploring its historical and contextual evolution, this essay offers critical reflections in the wake of the October 7, 2023, massacres, confronting both the renewed challenges to peaceful coexistence and the existential threats facing individuals and communities.
Journals
2026 EN
Zaporozhchenko Ruslan
This article defines bellumocracy as a transversal form of political power in which war becomes a permanent and institutionalized norm, shaping governance, social relations, and collective identities. Unlike dictatorship, authoritarianism, or democracy in their classical forms, bellumocracy permeates diverse regimes, reorienting them toward constant mobilization, militarization, and securitization. Drawing on social theory and biopolitics, the study conceptualizes war not as an exceptional event but as an enduring organizing principle embedded in legal, administrative, and symbolic structures. The concept offers a new analytical framework for examining how contemporary states normalize conflict, legitimize power, and integrate the logic of war.
Journals
2026 EN
Rabinovych Maryna · Brik Tymofii · Piddubnyi Igor
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Russia’s war against Ukraine constitutes a severe multi-aspect challenge for Ukraine’s economy. Existing studies stress the positive role the 2014 decentralisation reform in Ukraine has had in combating war-related shocks. The paper contributes to this literature by exploring the factors behind the budget robustness (an ability to return to the pre-war levels of revenues) of Ukraine’s “hromadas” (self-governed municipalities). Our analysis shows that budget robustness positively correlates with some war-related factors (lesser exposure to fighting and occupation), administrative and demographic ones (population size) and social ones (higher voter turnout, higher numbers of cooperation agreements between hromadas).
Resource
2026 EN
Roberts Andrew
The reviewed books attempt systematic evaluations of the transition from communism but come to very different conclusions, ranging from catastrophe to success. They tend to lay blame for the problems of the transition and the current wave of populism at the feet of neoliberalism. However, there is considerable diversity among these countries and success in fact correlates with market reform. Moreover, many of the problems in the region can be attributed to war, state collapse, oil prices, and, most importantly, the structure of the communist economy. It is thus not so clear that neoliberalism is the main villain.
Journals
2026 EN
Nychyk Alina · D'Anieri Paul
A central question in the Russo-Ukrainian war is under what circumstances Ukraine will make territorial concessions in order to end the war. Ukrainian public opinion will be a crucial factor. Initially, Ukrainian public opinion rejected territorial concessions, but as costs have risen, Ukrainians have expressed more willingness to accept territorial losses in return for peace. This war helps us reassess the influence of casualties on public opinion and of public opinion on bargaining over peace. The article offers important insights both about this case and about the broader relationship between casualties and public support for war.
Journals
2026 EN
Onuch Olga · Mateo Emma
When a society comes under attack, what distinguishes citizens who engage in the war effort from those who do not? Moreover, recognising the multi-dimensionality of citizen wartime engagement, what explains variation in participation? Employing five waves of original survey data from Ukraine (2022–2024), we operationalise mode, type and degree of civilian wartime engagement, proposing a theory of a “commitment to the cause” and “duty to defend it”. Regression analyses show that opposing territorial compromise is associated with combatant engagement, whilst support for democracy, and reporting a strong sense of civic duty, are strongly associated with civilian and particularly direct action engagement. Panel analysis suggests that when their civic duty increases citizens are also more likely to begin new action.
Journals
2026 EN
Mateo Emma · Onuch Olga
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted concern about the country’s capacity to resist a more powerful adversary. Yet today, Ukraine continues to sustain resistance to Russian aggression whilst also pursuing far-reaching domestic reforms, including those linked to European Union accession. This symposium examines this conjunction of wartime resistance and reform. Bringing together contributions that analyse the perceptions, strategies, and behaviours of diverse public and private actors, this collection investigates how Ukrainians navigate the parallel demands of fighting a war, maintaining governance, and planning for the future. This symposium contributes substantively– by advancing understanding of resistance, resilience and reform in wartime – and methodologically, by reflecting on the challenges of researching politics as war unfolds.
Journals
2026 EN
Muñoz Luz · Rodilla Andreu
To date, intergovernmental relations have been analysed from a variety of different perspectives, the constitutionality of the laws passed by different levels of government being one of them. Here, drawing on a unique database containing all the regional laws passed in Spain between 1980 and 2021, we examine the strategic dimension of their judicialisation by the party in government at the central level. The results show that partisan preferences along left-right and centre-periphery axes have played an important role in this regard. In addition, we show that the central government has often engaged in a game of tug-of-war with the Constitutional Court depending on its composition, with a more favourable court typically leading to greater litigiousness.
Journals
2026 EN
Womack Chase Anderson · Johnson Corey M.
In the late 1970s, a West German private aerospace firm founded by Lutz Kayser wanted to be the first private company in the world to launch rockets into outer space. Kayser was an entrepreneurial and idiosyncratic rocketeer who was trained and mentored by ex-Nazi rocket scientists. More than four decades before Elon Musk, Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos sought to commercialise space flight, Kayser nearly succeeded in his desire to send ‘ Billigraketen’ (cheap rockets) into space. Ultimately, OTRAG ( Orbital Transport- und Raketen- Aktiengesellschaft GmbH ), Kayser’s company, was derailed as much by growing opposition from the governments of West Germany, East Germany, the USA and the Soviet Union, than any technological shortcomings. Cheap commercial rockets would have broken the superpowers’ oligopoly on space flight, but there were also geopolitical implications of Kayser’s activities in what was then the country of Zaire under the brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko that caused OTRAG to become enmeshed in Cold War wrangling. What unfolded in the jungles of southeastern Zaire is a remarkable tale of neocolonialism, geopolitical propaganda, corporate sovereignty and, ultimately, Kayser’s abandonment of his dream in the face of state-based opposition. This paper seeks to understand the origins and legacies of Lutz Kayser’s rocketry dream and examine what it means for contemporary space geopolitics.
Journals
2026 EN
Partis-Jennings Hannah · Redwood Henry
This article examines the relationship between war art and community formation. Building on scholarship around trauma, visuality and community formation, we are concerned with how the subject position of the war artist, and their traumatic encounter with war, might disrupt understandings of community that underpin liberal war making. Focusing on Mark Neville’s Battle Against Stigma, we show that making visible the embedded constraint and complicity and the traumatic experiences of the war artist can constitute a form of imminent critique; both rendering intelligible and destabilising the martial gaze and liberal military meaning making. This offers contributions to IR by interrogating the processes through which war visuals both make and unmake communities in relation to war trauma.