![[LAP] Dismantling or Drifting? The Politics of Bolsa Família's Transformation under Brazil's Far-Right Government](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-lap.svg)
This article analyses the politics of Bolsa Família under the Bolsonaro government, showing how the program survived through administrative degradation and electoral expansion rather than formal dismantling, illustrating a pattern of 'drift with expansion' in social policy retrenchment.
Read more →![[NK Watch] Inter-Korean Sports & Culture Exchange — April 28, 2026](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-nk-watch.svg)
IOCSS monitors North Korean sports and cultural exchange developments. Weekly digest of inter-Korean engagement across sports, culture, and humanitarian channels.
Read more →![[ROAPE] Economic Instrument or Political Tool? Socioeconomic Outcomes of Nigeria's 2022 Currency Redesign and Cashless Policy](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-roape.svg)
Paul Ani Onuh examines how Nigeria's 2022 naira redesign and cash withdrawal limit policy — ostensibly aimed at price stability and financial inclusion — became a weapon in elite political competition ahead of the 2023 election, with the costs of its chaotic implementation falling overwhelmingly on
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Victor Iwuoha and Martin Doevenspeck introduce the concept of 'biometric coloniality' to explain how digital ID systems in Nigeria reproduce colonial relations of domination through a 'digital consensus' among the EU, US, China, World Bank, and major foundations. The biometric state is complicit in
Read more →![[JCA] What Has Happened to the Poster Child: Is South Korean Democracy Backsliding?](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-jca.svg)
Soo Hyun Lee and Timo Fleckenstein challenge the 'democratic backsliding' framing for South Korea, proposing instead the concept of a 'democratic rollercoaster' — significant advances under progressive administrations followed by sharp regression under right-wing governments. The root cause, they ar
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Moch Faisal Karim and Muhammad Kholid argue that Joko Widodo's authoritarian tendencies were not driven by personal power ambition but by the functional requirements of implementing a neo-liberal economic agenda. Through recentralisation of regulatory authority and weakening of legislative oversight
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Trissia Wijaya applies Poulantzas's concept of 'authoritarian statism' and introduces the 'politics of disincorporation' to explain Indonesia's democratic turn under Jokowi. She argues that authoritarian statism — masked as technocratic populism — emerged as the state's response to crises of capital
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A book review by Geoffrey C. Chen (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University) of Alex Y. Lo and Chen Xiang's Edward Elgar monograph on China's climate governance. The review highlights the book's framework — deploying authoritarian environmentalism, the centralised developmental state, and ecological civi
Read more →![[FOCUS_GLOBAL] Against the Tides: Uprisings and Protests in Troubled Waters](https://iocss.org/content/images/2026/03/journal-feature-focus-global.svg)
This article analyses the global wave of uprisings and social protests between 2019 and 2025 as a conjunctural phenomenon reflecting converging structural crises, examining why mass mobilization has produced disruption without durable political transformation.
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This article examines strategies available to states and non-state actors for resisting weaponized interdependence — the use of asymmetric economic dependencies as coercive instruments — identifying diversification, coalition-building, and norm entrepreneurship as complementary resistance strategies
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