In a late October 2022 international YouGov public opinion poll, findings indicated that more Indians attributed responsibility for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to ‘the West’ rather than Russia (28% compared to 27%, while 45% indicated both were accountable or expressed uncertainty). This study seeks to elucidate why such perceptions prevail, drawing upon the longstanding strategic partnership between the former Soviet Union and, subsequently, Russia, with India dating back to the 1950s and the portrayal of the Russian invasion within Indian broadcast news media. We argue that the media coverage of the conflict exhibits three main frames: the invasion as an attack by Russia on Ukrainian sovereignty, an anti-West pro-Russia frame, and a perspective aligning with Indian national interests. Both international and domestic proponents of these frames actively seek to shape the narrative presented, with media organizations deciding which frames to prioritize and which political actors to endorse. Consequently, we argue that the news media plays a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions of the conflict, influencing the Indian government's approach toward the war.

The lecture looks at the problem of democratic legitimacy. It concentrates on the eroding reliability of contemporary, democratic policymaking, which is involved in a conflict between two different formulas of legitimacy – the logic of self-regulation, originating in the notion of the market and the idea of public judgment, and the logic of public debate. It begins by posing the following question: is democratic policymaking based on reliable ‘truths’ that can ensure a sense of purpose and security, or is it involved in a drama of contingent, petty manoeuvring? However, the focus of this lecture is not on day-to-day practical matters. It is intended to embrace the cultural and philosophical premises of current political dilemmas. Political matters are connected to more fundamental questions, referring to the predicament of late modernity.

‘Is political science out of step with the world?’ This question, raised by John E. Trent in a recent issue, is part of a recurring debate about the development of our discipline. In that article, and in a subsequent book with his colleague Michael Stein, John Trent blames adherents of the ‘scientific method’ for political science’s growing irrelevance. We challenge this claim by arguing that Trent falls back on outdated polarities between ‘objective and normative’, and ‘explanation and interpretation’, in order to justify his allegation. We argue for the need to review our methods continuously, rather than dig up a fruitless and biased division between qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Discourse analysts are often accused of two things, namely, that Discourse Analysis leads to a vicious relativism, and that it lapses into philosophical idealism.

The charge of relativism contends that since, according to Discourse Analysis, there are no ultimate foundations and so everything is discursive, discourse analysts end up in a situation where everything is equally true, right and good. This supposedly makes it impossible to defend any particular set of claims or values.

The premise of the argument is correct. Discourse Analysis claims that there is no extra-discursive truth, morals or ethics. However, the conclusion is wrong, since discourse analysts never arrive at a situation where everything is equally valid. Discourse analysts always find themselves located within a particular discourse, which necessarily provides a set of historically contingent criteria for determining what is true, right and good. Only God is capable of transcending all discursivity. We mortals are always placed within discursive frameworks that define our criteria of validity. These frameworks are constantly renegotiated through processes of disintegration, mutual exchange, or antagonistic conflict.

Hayek regards the liberal democratic model of public opinion as totalitarian. This aggregated majority opinion is, he claims, a disposition to change others’ behaviour. It operates directly or indirectly through the state’s coercive power. To resist totalitarianism Hayek proposes to replace public opinion by an alternative type of aggregate opinion: general opinion. I argue that his shift from public opinion to general opinion transforms the state into a problematic locus for the shaping and disseminating of opinions and thereby turns the content of general opinion into irrefutable dogma. Both consequences are, contra Hayek, more rather than less likely to encourage totalitarianism. In justifying this analysis, I challenge the assumptions, framework, and claims of Hayek’s political theory, offering fresh ways to understand Hayek’s questionable conception of the state and demonstrate that, in replacing public opinion with general opinion, Hayek departs from the liberal political tradition he purports to defend.

Political science has embraced institutional analysis to the degree that it has become a truism to say that we are ‘all institutionalists now’. Yet, despite this turn towards institutional analysis, most studies have focussed on the political as opposed to the policy implications of institutions. As a result, the direct and indirect effects of institutions on concrete policy output have received scarce attention. This article outlines the developments to date and presents the overall findings of the articles in this volume.

The literature discussing the European Union foreign policies and external actorness has comprehensively analysed the EU abilities, successes and challenges when trying to diffuse its norms, policy practices and institutional solutions to other actors around the world. However, we are missing an independent research agenda discussing how EU external actorness evolves because of such interactions. A reinforced EU external actorness agenda should look at how EU norms and policy practices get to interact with each other. Moreover, it should account for how the agency of non-EU actors contributes to the evolving EU external actorness. This analytical approach has the potential to unpack the EU learning journey when translating norms into new policy practices. The current article showcases the importance of this agenda while proposing an exploratory pilot quantitative methodology based on an EU aid budgets analysis. It hypothesises instances of EU policy interpretation and discusses the case of interregionalism and delegated cooperation as examples of interacting EU policy practices.

Democracies in Europe fail to take adequate climate mitigation measures. In response, not only legal, but also illegal acts of climate protesters are multiplying in Europe. This paper examines the criminalisation of climate protests in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. Against the overarching concept of dissensus to which this special issue is dedicated, this contribution reflects on the role of judges who deprive the disobedient from the opportunity to communicate about their motives. The paper pays particular attention to the case of David Nixon in the UK, in which the judge prohibited Mr. Nixon from sharing his motivation or mentioning climate change in the court room. This demeans civil disobedience to an ordinary criminal act and deprives democracy of its self-correcting potential.

This research note introduces a dataset on the career paths of 754 Flemish ministerial advisors (MAs) spanning from 1999 to 2020. The dataset offers comprehensive insights into variables such as gender and age distribution, educational backgrounds, and career trajectories of MAs. To develop this dataset, we employed a suite of software tools designed for data collection, cleaning, and coding. This note details both the tools used and the resulting dataset, while also addressing potential biases and the robustness of the findings. We believe that both the data collection methodology and the dataset itself provide valuable opportunities for further research in elite career studies.

The deconstruction of the Constitution is an expression of extra-systemic dissensus directed against the current political order and strongly antagonising political actors within the state and in relations with the EU. In the article, we argue that the political changes in Poland do not herald a new type of constitutionalism, but rather constitute its deconstruction. The main actor subject to deconstruction is the Constitutional Tribunal (CT). Consequently, the deconstructed CT became an important instrument for further deconstruction of the Constitution, notably evident in the dispute over the primacy of the Constitution over European law. The deconstruction of the Constitution has its roots in the lack of sociological legitimacy of the Polish Constitution and its portrayal by certain right-wing political parties as failing to establish a level playing field in the political game.

The text identifies the main issues that undermine the position of the Czech Political Science and International Relations journals. We argue that structural factors such as the delayed start of the discipline, lack of contact with the international environment, the transfer of inadequate theoretical and methodological knowledge has significantly affected the functioning and development of professional journals in the Czech Republic. The authoritarian regime limited the development of the social sciences, and Czech (Slovak) Political Science endured an extremely negative attitude from the authorities. Thus, journals in the field of Political Science and International Relations were founded without deeper insight into Western practice. Furthermore, their strive to move from the scientific periphery has also been limited by the lack of human capital and financial constraints. To close the gap, which persists even today, the authors came up with a series of recommendations, such as the language of publication, topic specialisation, insisting on scientific rigour, and emphasising communication with the academic community, both domestic and international. By discussing the practice and the meaning of ‘catching up with the West,’ the paper contributes to understanding hierarchies and dependencies between the global Political Science and International Relations core and CEE as a scientific semiperiphery.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, opposition parties found themselves in a dilemma: either to cooperate with the government for the nation’s sake or to take advantage of the situation for political purposes. However, the extant research has not yet fully uncovered the patterns of opposition behaviour during this recent and rather intense crisis. In this article, we examine the case of Portugal, exploring possible differences between opposition parties on this regard and taking into consideration the role of time and focus of COVID-19-related legislation. We do so by investigating the behaviour of opposition parties in parliament, through an analysis of their voting behaviour, enriched by party leader statements, between March 2020 and January 2022. Our results show a different pattern to the right of the incumbent, with the main opposition party being more collaborative (framing its behaviour as responsible and patriotic) than the newer right-wing opposition parties, both populist and not populist. Pandemic gravity and focus of the legislation under vote are also relevant factors of opposition behaviour.