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Social movements, justice campaigns and civil activism have gained recent scholarly attention among non-Western democracies since the end of the Cold War. Yet the meaning and practical implications of civil activism remain contested especially in contexts linked to militarised democracy and the criminalisation of civil activism. Importantly, the broader political terrain within which militarised democracy is situated is increasingly changing, bringing new challenges to its understanding. This chapter builds on liberal democratic theory and discusses militarised democracy in Nigeria to critique state-centric notion of criminology. It draws on two case examples, namely the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2017 by the federal government against its organised protests for self-determination and the state repressive response to the nation-wide protest against police brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) known as the #End SARS protest in 2020. Both provide on-the-ground evidence of the criminalisation of civil activism. In the alternative, this chapter reflects on how transforming democracy can redress state repression and offer a better understanding of civil activism, which can strengthen developing democracies, including addressing questions of political marginalisation, distributive justice, police brutality, inequality, repressive state response and unequal state structure accounting for organised protests.

This study investigated the moderating role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment. The purpose of this study is to understand whether corruption has different effects on the location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) depending on the regime type.

This study explored how institutional context influenced the impacts of corruption on the location decisions of MNEs, specifically using a sample of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions between 2000 and 2020.

This study assessed the role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and the location decisions of Chinese MNEs. In general, this study found that Chinese MNEs were hindered by host country corruption, but that these detrimental effects were weaker in the presence of more effective democratic institutions.

This study contributes to the literature on institutional factors in international business through its simultaneous investigation of the effects of both democracy and corruption on the location decisions of MNEs. Moreover, there is a prevailing view that Chinese MNEs are willing to enter countries with high corruption, but the results of this study indicate that they are risk-averse in ways similar to their Western counterparts.

Democratic renewal in Sri Lanka as well as a cross the Global South depends on strengthening democratic social movements within varieties of patrimonial capitalism. Patrimonial capitalism, emphasising patron–client relations, coincide with weakening democratic institutional cultures and practices. The dominant corruption/anti-corruption narrative is bracketed with elite class strategies aimed at negotiating a ‘managed corruption’. The realm of representative politics creating consent for patrimonial capitalism is shaped by: ethnic and class relations; the weakening of working-class parties; patriarchal cultures within parties; links with criminal networks; opaque finances and the integration of mainstream media with party patronage.

Democratising the realm of representative politics points towards democratic social movements. The internal dynamics of social movements, their relationships with political parties and collective learning are significant factors that shapes the strategic orientation of social movements. State repression of social movements highlights the need for demilitarisation and the abolition of prisons. The global sense of this local struggle relates to transforming financial markets and platform economies towards notions of financial and digital commons. The integration of different realms of politics, such as representative, movement, life and emancipatory politics, is vital for reinforcing solidarity as the basis for counter-hegemonic struggles.

The popular uprising, the Aragalaya, was a response to a debt crisis as well as a catharsis of accumulated public discontent, which overlapped with the pandemic. A key lesson from the pandemic was the need to strengthen state social provisioning capacities to protect the health status of citizens. In addition, enhancing local economies and sustainable livelihoods is central to avoiding the vulnerabilities of international migrant labour and tourism. The limitations of representative politics highlight the need to strengthen democratic social movement politics. Along with cross cultural alliances, building multi-class alliances is central for strengthening politics of redistribution. In a context of integration of party politics with criminal networks, demilitarisation as well as the abolition of prisons is indispensable for democratisation. In a global scale, democratising financial markets and platform economies suggests regulation and regional experiments not simply by the state but also multiple publics. In demanding participation in representative institutions, the Aragalaya combined a protest movement with a sense of commons. In turn, it pointed towards the possibilities of a public-driven economy based on the democratisation of the state as well as markets. In framing this movement as a ‘struggle of love’, it revitalised the realm of life politics and alternative pleasures of life.

Building on the steps to war model, this paper seeks to examine the impact that territorial Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) have on the time it takes a dyad to go to war after it experiences its first MID.

A model common to epidemiological research, the hazard model, is employed to examine the dyadic relationship from the time of the first MID forward. This is an improvement to dyadic analysis, as most research examines the characteristics of individual MIDs in isolation.

Dyads with a history of territorial MIDs go to war much more quickly than dyads without a history of territorial MIDs. Future research should explore the relationship between territory, war, and power status to test the assertion that minor power states engage in power politics behavior less frequently.

Conflict resolution measures need to be employed more quickly when states have unresolved territorial issues. Mediation generally does not occur quickly, which may explain why territorial issues are less likely to be referred to mediators and less successfully mediated. The results presented herein highlight the need for flexible, quick responses to certain crises and the need to settle borders and other territorial disputes permanently to avoid war.

The paper tests a critical component of the steps to war model and examines the assertion that the historical relationship between states affects conflict decisions.

Purpose – This chapter aims to position regional integration in the Kantian peace tripod and to test whether regional economic integration has a significant effect in reducing militarised interstate disputes.

Methodology – It uses logistic regression on cross-sectional–time-series data and a generalised estimating equation.

Findings – The analysis shows that regional integration had a significant impact in reducing militarised interstate disputes between 1950 and 2000.

Practical implications – This chapter may provide a new dimension to the academic discussion on the Kantian peace proposition, and encourage policy makers in less integrated regions to integrate with their neighbouring states in a bid to minimise political tensions.

Originality – The chapter is based on original data on regional integration collected by the author.

This chapter proposes a sociological reconstruction of the emergence of citizenship as a source of legitimacy for political institutions, and it focuses on examining the historical processes that first gave rise to this concept. It explains how citizenship has its origins in the transformation of feudal law, a process that culminated in patterns of military organization that characterized the rise of the early modern state in Europe. On this basis, it describes how the growth of constitutional democracy was integrally marked by the militarization of society and explains that military pressures have remained palpable in constitutional constructions of citizenship. In particular, it argues that, through the early growth of democracy, national citizenship practices were closely linked to global conflicts, and they tended to replicate such conflicts in national contexts. It concludes by showing how more recent processes of constitutional norm formation, based largely in international human rights law, have acted to soften the military dimensions of citizenship.

The peoples’ movement was a movement to deepen citizenship and democracy by demanding actual participation in representative politics. It was a non-violent democratic movement based on independence from political parties, collective informal leadership and multi-level horizontal networking and coordination. It was strengthened by the activists from the student movement, trade unions and working-class parties. It foregrounded issues related to debt and development, Global North–South dynamics, narrowing of representative politics and the role of democratic social movements. The peoples’ movement, ‘Aragalaya’, illustrated that solidarity, cultivated across multiple cultural, economic and political differences, while engaging locally with a global sense, can influence authoritarian militarised governments. In effect, the struggle for democracy and citizenship aimed at transforming representative politics also accompanied alternative notions of well-being and pleasures involving ‘living well together with others’ in harmony with nature.