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Rising political polarization in recent decades has hampered and gridlocked policymaking, as well as weakened trust in democratic institutions. These developments have been linked to the idea that new media technology fosters extreme views and political conflict by facilitating self-segregation into “echo chambers” where opinions are isolated and reinforced. This opinion-centered picture has recently been challenged by an emerging political science literature on “affective polarization”, which suggests that current polarization is better understood as driven by partisanship emerging as a strong social identity. Through this lens, politics has become a question of competing social groups rather than differences in policy position. Contrary to the opinion-centered view, this identity-centered perspective has not been subject to dynamical formal modeling, which generally permits hypotheses about micro-level explanations for macro-level phenomena to be systematically tested and explored. We here propose a formal model that links new information technology to affective polarization via social psychological mechanisms of social identity. Our results suggest that new information technology catalyzes affective polarization by lowering search and interaction costs, which shifts the balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces of social identity. We find that the macro-dynamics of social identity is characterized by two stable regimes on the societal level: one fluid regime , in which identities are weak and social connections heterogeneous, and one solid regime in which identities are strong and groups homogeneous. We also find evidence of hysteresis, meaning that a transition into a fragmented state is not readily reversed by again increasing those costs. This suggests that, due to systemic feedback effects, if polarization passes certain tipping points, we may experience run-away political polarization that is highly difficult to reverse.

Wars within states have become much more common than wars between them. A dominant approach to understanding civil war assumes that opposition movements are unitary, when empirically, most of them are not. I develop a theory for how internal divisions within opposition movements affect their ability to bargain with the state and avoid conflict. I argue that more divided movements generate greater commitment and information problems, thus making civil war more likely. I test this expectation using new annual data on the internal structure of opposition movements seeking self-determination. I find that more divided movements are much more likely to experience civil war onset and incidence. This analysis suggests that the assumption that these movements are unitary has severely limited our understanding of when these disputes degenerate into civil wars.

The origin of the uneven distribution of ethnic and cultural fragmentation across countries has been underexplored, despite the importance attributed to the effects of diversity on the stability and prosperity of nations. Building on the role of deeply-rooted biogeographical forces in comparative development, this research empirically demonstrates that genetic diversity, predominantly determined during the prehistoric “out of Africa” migration of humans, is an underlying cause of various existing manifestations of ethnolinguistic heterogeneity. Further research may revolutionize our understanding of how economic development and the composition of human capital across the globe are affected by these deeply-rooted factors.

The starting point for many analyses of European state development is the historical fragmentation of territorial authority. The dominant bellicist explanation for state formation argues that this fragmentation was an unintended consequence of imperial collapse, and that warfare in the early modern era overcame fragmentation by winnowing out small polities and consolidating strong states. Using new data on papal conflict and religious institutions, I show instead that political fragmentation was the outcome of deliberate choices, that it is closely associated with papal conflict, and that political fragmentation persisted for longer than the bellicist explanations would predict. The medieval Catholic Church deliberately and effectively splintered political power in Europe by forming temporal alliances, funding proxy wars, launching crusades, and advancing ideology to ensure its autonomy and power. The roots of European state formation are thus more religious, older, and intentional than often assumed.

At its core, integrated tourism is a public governance issue. The current fragmented state of local government organizational functions and public governance in China, coupled with the inherent complexity in tourism management, has led to fragmented governance subjects, fragmented resource allocation, and fragmented governance mechanisms in tourism practices. These existing governance challenges increase the cost of governance and, to some extent, hinder the development of the tourism industry. The emphasis on collaboration, co-governance, and sharing in \"integrated tourism\" aligns seamlessly with the principles of integration, public responsibility, and citizen demands proposed by the theory of integrated governance. It provides a new path for addressing the fragmented governance in the tourism industry. From the perspective of integrated governance, the diversification and comprehensiveness advocated by integrated tourism, along with the coordination and integration of tourism with other industries, and the innovation in operational mechanisms, represent novel approaches to overcoming the challenges of fragmented governance in the tourism industry.

Conflicts in Africa have brought the fragmentation of the monopoly of violence to the fore. In conflicts such as those that occurred in Sudan and Sierra Leone, militias play a significant role in the state’s strategy against the rebels. In the literature on civil wars, little attention is paid to groups fighting alongside the state and their effects on conflict outcomes. While all militias share the ability to use organized violence, some of them can also be a source of security for local communities. However, the relationship between states and pro-government militias can affect the stability of the state. This study focuses on militia groups acting alongside the state and examines the extent to which the dynamics of collaboration between the states and militias affect state fragmentation.

The Horn of Africa comprises some of the most fragile and fragmented states in the world. This poses a persistent challenge to the dominant realist international relations discourse that is used to explain the dynamics of foreign relations in the Horn of Africa mainly from the perspective of extra-African powers. Discussing Big Man politics and state fragmentation as key characteristics of political dynamics in the Horn of Africa, the article points out the epistemological inapplicability of the mainstream realist international relations discourse to understand power in African politics and international affairs. The paper asserts that the role and dynamics of domestic power contestation among Big Men and how it relates to state fragmentation should be understood to improve international relations discourse and its ability to make sense of politics in the Horn of Africa. Explaining the contrasting realities of Big Man political competition in Djibouti and Eritrea, and Ethiopia and Somalia, the article emphasizes the need to improve our understanding of the local power of the Big Men and their international connections in the context of fragmentation of state power as a way to improve the analysis of politics and international relations in the Horn of Africa.

Semi-peripheral economies are reliant on foreign capital for innovation and upgrading into higher-value-added economic activities. This characteristic of dependent development is coupled with unreliable government support for domestic businesses, resulting in fragmented state-business ties. How then did a local electrical vehicle (EV) battery startup InoBat manage to build an upgrading alliance in Slovakia and capitalise on the accelerating automotive shift to electromobility despite these barriers being present in the semi-peripheral economy of Slovakia? By developing a network-based analytical approach and using the unlikely case study of InoBat, this paper argues that developmental entrepreneurship, the mobilisation of private sector resources by venture capital or a large domestic firm, and support by private-public institutions were key determinants for the emergence of the InoBat upgrading alliance. The findings underline that local firms can also be the drivers of upgrading efforts even in the absence of consistent government support and the heavy presence of large transnational corporations.

Neoliberalism has entrenched itself as a dominant global political and economic paradigm shaping societies through market-driven policies. Like many developing nations, Zimbabwe has not escaped the influence of neoliberalism, as successive governments have adopted development models based on IMF and World Bank prescriptions. This paper analyses the resilience of neoliberalism in Zimbabwe despite apparent resistance, addressing a critical gap in literature that underestimates neoliberalism’s capacity to co-opt counter-movements. Using a systematic desktop methodology, synthesising academic literature, policy documents and historical records, the paper employs Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and Polanyi’s double movement as dual theoretical frameworks. The paper demonstrates how neoliberalism maintains dominance through ideological consent, elite capture and adaptive policy mechanisms, even amid transformative initiatives like land reform. It revealed that resistance efforts like the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme and trade unionism are undermined by cronyism and policy reversals such as indigenisation repeal and white farmer compensation. The societal pushback triggered only fragmented state protections such as BEAM and cash transfers, failing to rupture neoliberal structures due to fiscal constraints and authoritarian governance. In general, the paper highlights that the resilience of neoliberal structures in Zimbabwe reveals the complexities of post-colonial development and the limitations of resistance in the face of dystopian global economic forces.

This article maps China’s emerging governance regime of big tech firms in the 2020s through the case of Alibaba. Contesting dominant media narratives that frame the Chinese state as either clashing with or aligning with private platforms, it provides an alternative perspective rooted in Chinese political traditions, based on long-term ethnographic observations and industry analysis, and informed by changing global sociotechnical and geopolitical conditions. In this hybrid model, the pragmatic Leninist central state both leverages and controls private tech giants to balance economic growth, social stability, and national security amid geopolitical tensions and a slowing economy. Local governments, meanwhile, maintain a fragile symbiosis with platforms like Alibaba to advance their own political and economic goals. This “market in the fragmented state” contrasts with the current oligarchical U.S. model, where big tech firms often capture state power to serve corporate interests. Despite their monopolistic and infrastructural tendencies, Chinese platforms operate within a fragmented, state-dominated system that both enables and restrains their growth, depending on shifting political dynamics. Understanding this emerging governance regime diversifies the current conceptualization of state market relations globally and state governance of big techs beyond Silicon Valley. It also sheds light on China’s ongoing techno-driven restructuring and global expansion and prompts questions about the influence of geopolitical competition on China’s governance approach and its global implications.