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What qualifies as a political event is a core question for social and historical research. This article argues that the use of temporal structures in narratives of political and social developments contributes significantly to the making and unmaking of events. We show how arguments that draw upon history play a particularly important role in transforming the everyday unfolding of politics into discernable events with a clear time bracket. Through this lens, we investigate the 2016 Brexit referendum as an event that has triggered extensive debates about both Europe’s experiences of the past and political expectations for its future. Conflicting assessments of history are crucial for understanding how and when Brexit became an event of European significance and why it then ceased to be so. This case also enables us to distinguish more clearly between the agent-centered focus on the event itself, and the analytical ex-post assessment as a critical juncture. Methodologically, the article demonstrates the value of a multi-perspective approach for qualitative analyses with a focus on Brexit narratives articulated across several EU countries and the United Kingdom.

In 1939 an earthquake destroyed south-central Chile, especially the city of Chillán. This event was arguably the most catastrophic socio-natural disaster in Chilean history, yet it has been mostly ignored in historical research. This article shows that the earthquake triggered a critical juncture for the Chilean state and was a determining factor in some of the most important institutional developments of the period. Using primary sources, the article describes this juncture, focusing on the destabilizing effect of the earthquake and linking it to the creation of two new state institutions, the Production Development Corporation (CORFO) and the Reconstruction and Assistantship Corporation (CRA), together with other important changes in state capacities. It concludes that the disaster is crucial in understanding the Chilean transition from an exporting economy to an import-substituting one after 1940, and to account for the strength of the Chilean state in the decades to come. En 1939 un terremoto destruyó el centro-sur de Chile, especialmente la ciudad de Chillán. Este evento es probablemente el desastre socio-natural más catastrófico de la historia de Chile. En este artículo, se muestra que el terremoto de 1939 fue un factor determinante para algunos de los desarrollos institucionales más importantes del período, generando una coyuntura crítica para el Estado chileno. Mediante el uso de fuentes primarias, se describe esta coyuntura, mostrando el efecto desestabilizador del terremoto y vinculándolo a la creación de dos nuevas instituciones públicas, la Corporación de Fomento de la Producción (CORFO) y la Corporación de Reconstrucción y Auxilio (CRA), junto con otros cambios importantes en términos de capacidad estatal. Se concluye que la catástrofe es crucial para entender la transición chilena desde una economía exportadora a una de sustitución de importaciones después de 1940, y para dar cuenta de la fortaleza del Estado chileno en las décadas siguientes.

This article presents a formal model of path dependence inspired by England’s history. The introduction of feudalism after the Norman Conquest – the critical juncture – created a large elite that rebelled frequently. The king fought these revolts with the help of collaborators he recruited from the masses. In compensation, he made these collaborators members of the elite. This was a cost-effective form of compensation: rents were only partly rival, and so new elite members only partially diluted the rents received by the king. The dilution from adding new members decreased as the elite grew in size, generating positive feedback and path dependence. This mechanism can account for the extension of rights in England in the early stages of its journey towards democracy.

The aim of this article is to explore the nature of policy change in the domain of public finance (fiscal policy) in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic as well as for a post-Covid era. It draws upon the literatures of path dependency and ideational change in public policy to consider three broad questions: (1) whether the pandemic really is a critical juncture for policy change; (2) whether the extant neoliberal austerity paradigm has faced lasting ideational displacement by Keynesianism; and (3) whether Covid-19 has really punctuated the existing fiscal policy equilibrium or rather served as a path-clearing accelerator of public finance trends that were already underway. The article then suggests three potential future trajectories: Keynesian, neoliberal, and mixed/other to consider how the path of policy change might materialize in the fiscal realm in the post-Covid era.

Is the COVID-19 pandemic a critical juncture? An emerging social scientific scholarship on the COVID-19 pandemic has set out to study its effects on a range of social, political, and economic phenomena. Some of this scholarship theorizes that the COVID-19 pandemic is one of those rarest and most impactful moments in time, what historical institutionalists would call a “critical juncture”. This article tests a COVID-19 critical juncture hypothesis by conducting a theory-infirming case study of recent multilingual developments in the United States. Process tracing of federal and state multilingual trajectories reveal that two of the hypothesis’ observable implications are absent: there is no evidence of radical institutional change and ostensibly “new” multilingual pathways were in fact established prior to the pandemic. In light of this evidence, the article concludes by discussing alternative understandings of COVID-19’s effects and this might mean for the study of the pandemic moving forward. La pandémie de COVID-19 constitue-t-elle un tournant critique ? Plusieurs recherches émergentes en sciences sociales ont entrepris d’étudier les effets de la pandémie de COVID-19 sur une série de phénomènes sociaux, politiques et économiques. Certains de ces travaux théorisent la pandémie de COVID-19 comme un des moments les plus rares et les plus marquants de l’histoire; un moment qui peut être qualifié de « tournant critique » selon les institutionnalistes historiques. Cet article teste l’hypothèse selon laquelle la COVID-19 constitue un tournant critique en menant une étude de cas sur les récents développements multilingues aux États-Unis. À travers cette étude de cas infirmant la théorie, le suivi des trajectoires multilingues au niveau fédéral et au niveau des États révèle que deux des critères observables de l’hypothèse sont absents, soit 1) qu’il n’y a aucune preuve d’un changement institutionnel radical et 2) que les trajectoires multilingues supposément nouvelles avaient au contraire été établies avant la pandémie. À la lumière de ces analyses, l’article conclut en discutant des autres interprétations possibles des effets de la COVID-19 et en montrant ce que ces analyses signifient pour les études futures sur la pandémie.

This article seeks to unearth why change in Japanese security policy tradition prevails over continuity. Japan's recent change, evident in security objectives, military capabilities, defense expenditure, and institutional and legal transformations, connotes a departure from the original principles of the peace constitution and Japan's defense-oriented policies, transforming Japan from a \"peace nation\" to a \"normal power.\" Moreover, Japanese political elites have willingly tried to exploit the opportunity structure to change Japanese security policy. I argue that the multivariate approach, incorporating structural, motivational, cognitive, and temporal dimensions, can serve as a 'tool kit' to understand this change in Japanese pacifist tradition and elites' willingness to seize the opportunity structure.

This article analyses democracy in post-communist Croatia 1990–1999 and 2000–2011. During the first decade, political stagnation occurred under a competitive authoritarian regime. This ended abruptly and there was a critical juncture, during which a free and fair election marked the start of Croatian democracy in 2000. I first propose a causal chain to explain the election results, suggesting that the occurrence of the election, combined with other necessary factors, revealed the population’s underlying preference for democracy. Internally, this preference then served as a positive feedback mechanism throughout Croatia’s rapid increase in democracy as it became a candidate for European Union membership and finalized accession negotiations. Externally, the European Union influenced democratic progress, particularly via conditionality policies. This historical comparative analysis aims to explain which factors allowed for a rapid increase in democratic quality, positioning the 2000 election results as the main influence.

While previous research has explored Hong Kong’s place branding, it focused on data prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and did not fully address the shifting geoeconomic and political contexts that define Hong Kong. The present paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive longitudinal analysis from 1997 to 2024. Applying discourse analysis on a corpus of official documents and policy addresses, our study uses a two-pronged framework that integrates place branding and critical juncture to comprehend the practices, politics, and consequences of Hong Kong’s branding strategy. It argues that Hong Kong’s current branding strategies are at a critical juncture, reflecting a devolution from an ambitious and holistic approach in the 2000s to consumption-driven promotional campaigns in the 2020s. The authors underscore the urgency and complexity of redefining a dynamic and adaptative branding strategy that can effectively showcase Hong Kong’s strengths and values to the international community.

In the contemporary world order, one of the most attention-getting issues is the recent consolidation of defense and strategic engagement between China and Russia, specifically since the early 2010s. Throughout a critical juncture angle, this study attempts to explain what led to the reinforcement of these China–Russia relations, and how their strategic ties have evolved. This study argues that the three critical junctures driven by the USA – the US Pivot to Asia, the Ukraine Crisis and the US-led sanctions against Russia, and the US THAAD deployment to Korea – aggravated China and Russia's perception of threat from the USA, which contributed to the incremental China–Russia strategic and defense ties.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse how austerity has impacted to date upon European Union (EU) financial reporting developments and how this might influence future reforms. It considers how a critical juncture in EU financial reporting might be recognized and factors which might prevent or delay such a juncture being realized. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the theoretical conceptualization of the territorializing, mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles of accounting (Miller and Power, 2013), linked to document analysis and interviews with members of the relevant policy communities. In technical terms, austerity makes accounting subject to greater demands for consistency and uniformity. In political terms, accounting is implicated in increasing external fiscal surveillance of sovereign states. Findings – The authors have shown how the Miller-Power framework illuminates these developments. The territorializing role of accounting in sovereign states creates an environment which facilitates the mediating, adjudicating and subjectivizing roles. Austerity promotes re-territorializing, yet also creates incentives for governments to hide risks and guarantees: the comparability of financial reports and national accounts may be achieved only at a rhetorical level. Evidence for a critical juncture would be termination of national traditions of financial reporting, greater harmonization of accounting across tiers of government, weakening of the linkages to private sector accounting, and stronger alignment of government financial reporting with statistical accounting. Originality/value – The paper provides a theoretically based analysis of how austerity influences government financial reporting and statistical accounting and brings them into closer contact. This analysis is located within broader tensions between technocracy and democracy that are institutionalized in EU fiscal surveillance.