This article focuses on the populist strategy of the Turkish Justice and Development Party between the 2007 presidential election, when Turkish politics experienced an impasse, and the 2010 referendum over the constitutional amendments. As a means of analysing populism, the symptomatic approach is preferred over other theoretical perspectives, including empiricism and historicism. An analysis of the discourse articulated by Prime Minister Erdoğan leads us to the conclusion that he has continually appealed to the masses with an anti-institutional rhetoric that divides society into ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, thereby fulfilling the criteria of populism according to the symptomatic approach.

This article examines the nature of political opposition in the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) to give us an understanding of its role in and approach to political reform in the territory. It explores the emergence of the pro-democracy opposition in Macao since the end of the colonial era and the self-perception of pro-democratic opposition groups in the MSAR regime, and argues that the majority of opposition groups perceive themselves as ‘loyal’ opponents to the current regime. The groups aim at checking the authorities in the scope of the constitution as loyal constituents. Their assumption of this role is the result of several environmental factors, including a relatively weak civil society, a lack of resources and a pro-government media.

The international community has many reasons to promote compromise between the parties to internal conflicts. Yet to do so effectively, the international community ought to treat principled rather than strategic compromise as its default position. To make this case, we begin by defining ‘compromise’ and by distinguishing principled from strategic compromise. We then defend the idea of principled compromise against the realist who thinks that that idea is implausible. We conclude by offering a number of practical reasons why principled compromise ought to be preferred. Our argument does not deny that strategic compromise will sometimes be the only option. But, unlike principled compromise, strategic compromise does not provide the parties with any particular reason to look beyond their own particular concerns or to give any ground beyond what is absolutely necessary.

The role of compromise in EU politics has been widely recognized by scholars and practitioners alike. At the same time, the systematic conceptual, analytical and normative study of compromise has remained an exception. This is surprising, given that the study of compromise can be linked to three broader questions at the heart of integration: (1) How does the EU accommodate diversity? (2) What makes supranational rule normatively justifiable? (3) Who or what defines the limits of cooperation? Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on the concept of compromise, on the role of compromise in legitimizing supranational governance and on the limits to compromise in the European polity. I argue that the EU – a divided, multilevel and functionally restricted polity – is highly dependent on the legitimizing force of ‘inclusive compromise’, which is characterized by the recognition of difference. This is true for horizontal or micro-level relations between political actors (where compromise works through concessions as well as justification, perspective-taking and empathic concern in a process of ‘procedural accommodation’), and for vertical or macro-level relations between systems of governance (where compromise works through ‘constitutional compatibility’). Given the legitimizing force of inclusive compromise, I subsequently identify the limits to such agreements and, thus, to supranational cooperation; I argue that these limits are issue specific and depend on where the costs of cooperation are borne. The article concludes by outlining routes for follow-up empirical research.

Coalitions are often condemned as undemocratic and unprincipled because of the compromises they involve. Politicians are accused of betraying the commitments they made during the election. Paradoxically, proponents of this view suggest that if compromises are to be made they should be pragmatic and based on policy rather than principle. This article disputes this thesis and defends compromise as both principled and democratic. The first section distinguishes a shallow compromise based on the maximal satisfaction of exogenously defined preferences from a deep compromise resulting from reasoning on principle, and argues it proves impossible to avoid the latter. The second section suggests that the obligation to compromise forms part of the ethos of democracy, whereby citizens must agree despite their disagreements. The third section concludes by showing that while representatives will almost certainly betray their electoral mandate if obliged to make only shallow compromises, they can legitimately engage in deep compromises for their voters when they reason as they do.

A compromise is an agreement that involves mutual concessions. Each party gets less than it feels entitled to, but agrees to it because the situation it anticipates under the deal is better than the one it expects in the absence of a deal: conflict, exit or arbitration by a third party. Some compromises, however, are bad, and others are good. This article discusses three conjectures about what it is that makes a compromise good. Is a good compromise an honourable compromise, one that enables each party to save face? Is it rather a fair compromise, one that contributes to the progress of justice independently defined? Or is it a Pareto-improving compromise, one that changes things in such a way that it ends up making everyone better off than under the status quo? A compromise is never as good as a consensus, but it is generally better than nothing, and often achievable when a consensus is not. And when it is, trying to make it as good as possible in each of the three ways described is always worthwhile.