This general issue includes five articles: a comparative study of political participation, two case studies related to elections and party politics (Romania and Poland), as well as two case studies dealing with issues related to decentralization processes (Chile and Turkey).

The first one, by Oan Lup, studies the relationship between people’s embeddedness in social networks and their likelihood to participate in elections, depending on the strength of the social networks and the democratic tradition of the country of residence.

The second paper, by Daniel Buti and Alexandru Radu, analyzes the performance of the Romanian electoral system in the 2020 local elections by focusing on two characteristics – proportionality and concentration – and argues that given local contexts the local elections should not be interpreted as a unitary electoral process but rather as a set of 42 distinct elections.

The third paper, by Przemysław Żukiewicz, Mateusz Zieliński, and Michał Banaś, argues for a refinement of legislative party-switching analyses developed in the context of consolidated democracies to account for different mechanisms that might function in newer democracies. They propose a broader concept of intra-parliamentary volatility, which considers not only party switching but also replacements of parliamentary mandates.

The fourth paper, by Nicolás Soto, uses the case of Chile to discuss issues of decentralization of the subnational government, especially with respect to its possible effects on corruption. The author recommends for the Chilean case a process of asymmetric decentralization that will account for the significant economic and social differences that characterize municipalities in Chile.

The last paper in the issue, by Önder Kutlu, analyzes the effects of the administrative reform in Turkey, using the Konya province as a case study, especially from the perspective of the trade-off between efficiency and democracy that seems to characterize decentralization initiatives.