Society & Politics

In recent years, right-wing populist parties have experienced significant political success across nearly all Western democracies. With their increasing political establishment, xenophobic attitudes have become normalized. While previous studies have primarily examined the effects of this development on voting behavior, little is known about the wider social consequences.... Read more

Globalization, migration, climate change and war—nation states are currently under huge pressure on many fronts. Understanding the forces that initially drove the emergence of states across the world may help explain why.... Read more

How do opinions form and change in large groups of people? That's not just a sociological question, it's a mathematical one. Ph.D. candidate Federico Capannoli studied opinion dynamics. He defended his thesis on November 19.... Read more

If people do not observe inequality, they are less likely to favor policies that redistribute wealth, such as taxation—but they are also more satisfied with their lot, according to online experiments involving 1,440 US-based participants.... Read more

The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) has released a report detailing the extent of illicit drug and alcohol involvement in crime.... Read more

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European Union (EU) strengthened controls in the timber sector to prevent sanctioned raw materials from entering the market from Russia and Belarus. Yet recent studies reveal that a significant amount of this timber still reaches the EU—often through intermediary countries.... Read more

A new study from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and Public Agenda finds that Americans are deeply concerned about the state of U.S. democracy and that growing divisions within the Republican Party deepen partisan divides over how the Constitution should guide presidential authority and the balance of... Read more

As the Trump administration carries out what many observers say are illegal military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean allegedly smuggling drugs, six Democratic members of Congress issued a video on Nov. 18, 2025, telling the military "You can refuse illegal orders" and "You must refuse illegal orders."... Read more

WeChat is best known as China's all-purpose "super-app." It is used for everything from messaging and mobile payments to shopping and government services.... Read more

A study on the legal history of printing press regulation in early modern England yields insights relevant to contemporary debates on the regulation of emerging technologies like AI and virtual reality, a McGill researcher says.... Read more

Few workers face more scrutiny than professional athletes. Every movement is measured, every outcome quantified, and every performance evaluated against objective standards. So when UC Berkeley Haas researcher Tim Sels wondered how America's deepening political polarization was affecting workers' performance, he turned to one of the most comprehensive data sets... Read more

Since President Donald Trump took office for the second time, many researchers across academic disciplines have had their funding cut because of their purported ideological bias. These funding cuts were further exacerbated by the extensive 2025 government shutdown.... Read more

Violations of national airspace by drones are on the rise in Europe. When European leaders discussed these events at a meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in October 2025, they responded by announcing plans for a defensive "drone wall."... Read more

A study published in Strategic Management Journal sheds light on the subtle yet significant role that unelected officials play in helping corporations secure successful contract bids.... Read more

A research team led by Associate Professor Tomoko Matsumoto from the Institute of Arts and Sciences at Tokyo University of Science, Japan, along with Associate Professor Daiki Kishishita and Associate Professor Atsushi Yamagishi, both from Hitotsubashi University, Japan, has demonstrated that providing people with information about the universal benefits of... Read more