East Asia is increasingly at the centre of debates among International Relations (IR) scholars. China's political, economic, and military ascendency is increasingly considered as a crucial test case for main approaches to IR. Despite this renewed attention, mainstream theories employed to analyse contemporary Asia are still remarkably Euro-centric. A wave of studies has argued in favour of a broad ‘decolonization’ of theoretical concepts used to analyse East Asia as well as other regions. These efforts have produced several distinct research agendas. Firstly, critical and post-colonial theorists have worked on the par destruens, highlighting the inherent Euro-centrism of many IR concepts and theories. Secondly, scholars such as Buzan and Acharya have promoted the idea of Global IR, seeking to advance a ‘non-Western’ and non-Euro-centric research agenda. This agenda has found fertile ground especially in China, where several scholars have tried to promote a Chinese School of IR. This article has three main purposes. Firstly, it briefly explores the issue of Eurocentrism in IR studies dedicated to East Asia. Secondly, it maps the theoretical debates aimed at overcoming it, looking in particular at the ‘Global IR’ research programme and the so-called Chinese School. Finally, it sketches a few other possible avenues of research for a very much needed cooperation between Global IR and area studies.

In the last few years, a wave of Islamist-related terrorist attacks took place in Western Europe, mainly in France and Belgium but with relevant episodes also in the United Kingdom whereas so far Italy did not suffer any attack of this kind. Each of these countries hosts a large number of Muslim immigrants and communities, participated in military missions in the Middle East, and has been repeatedly threatened by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or other Islamist-related radical groups. What then explains the difference in the number and intensity of Islamist-related terrorist attacks in Western European countries? Using qualitative cross-case comparison case studies and relying on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and the Association of Religion Data Archive (ARDA), I argue that countries directly discriminating toward Islamic communities are more likely to suffer these kinds of attacks because this discrimination causes grievances against the host state within the discriminated minority. This effect is higher in the presence of religious and cultural networks where these grievances can be brought at the center of the public debate and be connected together because of the presence of large audiences, resulting in the possible development of more radicalized positions of small portions of the discriminated community. This is particularly true for highly secular states like France, where the interpretation of secularism makes accommodation for religious minorities extremely challenging, also resulting in laws that regulate religious behavior of minorities, therefore increasing outrage and frustration of the minority group.

The effects of news coverage on political attitudes in election campaigns have been widely studied in academic research. In particular, a fertile branch of the literature investigated the impact of news media negativity on turnout. To date, however, findings are mixed, precluding to state a clear relationship. This paper aims to shed a light on this topic by testing whether negative coverage may affect voters' turnout and to what extent. It approaches this research question by accounting for two different dimensions, controlling whether the interplay of media negativity (press and TV coverage) with the type of election (first- vs. second-order elections) has an impact on citizens' propensity to turnout. We test our hypotheses by taking Italy as a case study because it offers a combination of systemic and media characteristics that allows addressing properly the topic. We rely on four datasets covering the 2018 Italian general elections and the 2019 European Parliament Elections in Italy, respectively, with opinion data (2018 ITANES survey and 2019 ITANES-University of Milan survey) and two datasets measuring media negativity by means of a human content analysis carried out on media coverage during the 7 weeks before the election days (2018 and 2019 ITEM data). Our findings show that individual exposure to negative coverage leads to an increase in turnout mainly to the detriment of indecision. This pattern holds both in first- and second-order elections.

This article reviews three books that offer thought-provoking insights on a central political science question, namely the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. First, ‘Democracy and Prosperity’ by Iversen and Soskice posits a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and democracy. Advanced capital thrives on nationally rooted institutions, hence it needs democratic politics. A majority of voters ask for pro-advanced-capital reforms, hence democratic politics needs advanced capital. Second, ‘Capitalism, Alone’ by Milanovic depicts a troubled coexistence between capitalism and democracy. The former's tendency to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few is the main reason why democratic politics is under pressure. Third, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by Zuboff suggests a negative relationship between digital capitalism and democracy. Surveillance capitalism increasingly acts as a control means of individuals' behaviour, which undermines democracy at its roots. The last section brings the three contributions together. It maintains that a mutually beneficial coexistence between capitalism and democracy currently faces both internal (from within) and external (from without) challenges. In line with Milanovic and Zuboff, it argues that the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few is the most apparent from-within challenge. Drawing on Milanovic, it contends that rise of China as a global power combining capitalism with non-democracy challenges the relationship between capitalism and democracy from without. Finally, it contends that the environmental question and the pandemic represent two windows of opportunity for democracy to recover lost ground and re-establish a more balanced relationship with capitalism.

International observers have not been kind to Italy during the past two decades. The International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2016) wrote about the country's two lost decades, the Economist (19 May 2005) described it as the real sick man of Europe and eminent economists, such as Bruno Pellegrino and Luigi Zingales (Pellegrino and Zingales, 2017), tried to diagnose the Italian disease. Italy's GDP has barely grown since the mid-1990s and the past decade was the worst in the history of its economy, world wars included.

Over the past 10 years, feminist scholarship has made important contributions to the new institutionalism in political science. This literature has developed into two directions. Some scholars have sought to gender existing approaches, resulting in feminist historical institutionalism, feminist sociological institutionalism, feminist discursive institutionalism, and even feminist rational choice institutionalism. Others have tried to sketch a feminist institutionalism on a par with, and as an alternative to, the classic approaches. Through an analysis of eight recent books, this review asks which direction shows the most promise.