To contain the spread of the COVID-19, governments have designed and implemented a large range of exceptional measures. Yet, the restrictive nature of the policy options chosen and the severity of their enforcement mechanisms considerably vary across countries. Focusing on the case of the European Union—a group of closely connected nations which develop some forms of supranational policy coordination to manage the pandemic—, we first map the diversity of policy responses taken using two original indicators: the stringency and scope of freedom limitations and the depth of control used in their enforcement. Second, we elaborate three theoretical scenarios to explain cross-national variation in pandemic policy-making. Our exploratory results—based on bivariate statistical associations—reveal that structural determinants (the level of political and interpersonal trust, a country’s overall resources, democratic experience and, to a lesser extent, political check and balances) shape crisis policy-making more than crisis-related factors such as the magnitude of the crisis at stake. These results call for further research into the determinants of crisis policy-making that we propose to address with a new research project focusing on the modalities, determinants and impacts of exceptional decision making in times of COVID-19.

<p>The globalization of jihad has taken various patterns ranging from the lone involvement in deadly attacks at home, violence as an affiliated terrorist or joining a foreign insurgency. Yet, the likelihood of violent engagement and the patterns it takes considerably vary across countries. This article aims to explain such cross-national variation. We emphasize how the level of perpetrator’s agency over two decisions - mobilization and target selection – is reflected in socio-economic conditions and foreign military interventionism that differ across countries. Consistently with our hypotheses, our analysis – focusing on global jihadism in support of ISIS (2014-2016) - shows that differences in the socio-economic conditions of Sunni Muslims explain the variation in jihadist mobilization, while varying levels of anti-ISIS foreign military interventionism explains variation in the selection of lone and affiliated terrorists targets. We further generalize these findings for non-ISIS jihadist domestic attacks (1992-2006). </p>

It has often been noted that French politicians frequently hold local and national offices concurrently (the cumul des mandats). Traditionally, this phenomenon is explained by the political culture (a patriarchal conception of authority), territorial centralization and the weakness of party organizations that characterize France. In order to test the latter two hypotheses, we propose analysing the cumul des mandats at the level of individual parliamentarians. In this way, we circumvent the classic n ¼ 1 problem without engaging in a comparison with other countries. Based on a Logit analysis with the dependent variable equal to the number of local offices held by the members of the National Assembly under the present term (XII e le´gislature), the study partially confirms our hypotheses. Other variables, such as age and gender, are also considered.