http://hdl.handle.net/10174/20 Thu, 30 Jul 2026 02:37:50 GMT 2026-07-30T02:37:50Z http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42414 Title: Unpacking regional development in the EU: The interplay of cohesion, institutions, and sustainability Authors: Borrega, Alexandre; Rego, Conceição; Rocha de Sousa, Miguel Abstract: This paper examines regional development in the European Union from a multidimensional and dynamic perspective, addressing the limited understanding of how economic, social, institutional, and environmental dimensions interact over time. While existing research often treats these dimensions separately or relies on static indicators, less attention has been paid to their temporal interdependencies and adjustment dynamics. Using a panel vector autoregressive model with common correlated effects (PVAR-CCE) applied to 233 NUTS-2 regions over the period 2000–2022, the analysis identifies the dynamic interactions linking these dimensions while accounting for cross-sectional dependence and regional heterogeneity. The results provide evidence of a structured system of interdependencies governing regional development. They reveal a dual adjustment structure characterised by a fast-moving economic–social cycle linking employment, income, and youth exclusion, and a slower structural dynamic driven by institutional quality, human capital, and environmental conditions. These dynamics vary across regions and income levels, highlighting persistent structural constraints in lagging regions and more integrated development trajectories in advanced regions. Environmental sustainability emerges as a constitutive component of regional development rather than a peripheral outcome, extending place-based approaches beyond income-based frameworks. Overall, the findings contribute to a more integrated understanding of regional development and provide an empirical basis for assessing the feasibility of EU policy objectives related to cohesion, sustainability, and balanced territorial development. Tue, 30 Jun 2026 23:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42414 2026-06-30T23:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42062 Title: Women’s mobilization and antifeminist discursive framings in Portugal’s far right Authors: Roque, Sílvia; Santos, Rita; Garraio, Júlia Abstract: Antifeminist and antigender rhetoric and campaigns have grown over the last decade, especially, but not exclusively, voiced by ultraconservative and far-right parties, movements and actors, and have prompted political and societal repercussions, with an increasingly visible participation of women in these attacks on feminism. These mobilizations are frequently articulated also through racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic discourses, in which feminism and gender equality are framed as external threats to the nation, the family, or “Western values.” From an intersectional perspective, such narratives reinforce and reproduce multiple overlapping systems of domination, simultaneously targeting gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality, while legitimizing exclusionary and hierarchical social orders. These features are globally shared and have proliferated across a wide range of contexts with some degree of similarities and coordination; however, conceptualizing them only as a singular transnational movement is unwarranted. Understanding how these campaigns are articulated differently in specific contexts and mobilized toward a range of goals is key to grasp both the similarities and the uniqueness of these narratives, agendas and campaigns in specific contexts. Portugal remains an under-researched case study primarily due to the slightly later emergence of far-right movements and parties with political significance. Based on the analysis of published materials and online content produced by the far-right party CHEGA (CH) from 2022 to the 2024 national legislative election, namely news, op-eds and interviews with women from CH, and their social networks content, this article reflects on how the success of CH in mobilizing women to antifeminist agendas has been key to normalizing undemocratic antifeminist, antigender agendas in the public sphere. Through the critical analysis of CH’s discursive positions on feminism and gender, it will also examine the instrumentalization of “women’s rights” in order to put forward homophobic, transphobic, anti-immigration, racist and xenophobic agendas, namely through the participation of women in leading roles in the antifeminist campaigns. Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42062 2026-04-23T23:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42061 Title: Editorial: Facing contemporary antifeminism: a call for intersectionality Authors: Roque, Sílvia; Santos, Rita; Garraio, Júlia Abstract: We live in a paradoxical political moment: feminist movements across the globe have achieved landmark legal and institutional advances over the past several decades, yet mobilizations against feminism and gender equality and justice are simultaneously intensifying, diversifying, and going transnational. Anti-gender campaigns led mostly but not exclusively by far-right populist parties, reactionary religious movements and online misogyny networks no longer operate at the political margins. They have entered parliaments and governments, shaped laws, and influenced public policy all over the world. The question confronting those interested in gender, social movements and political science is no longer whether antifeminism is a serious political force but how to analyse it with adequate complexity, and how feminist theory and practice should respond to it. This Research Topic was conceived precisely out of that urgency. Its animating conviction is straightforward: antifeminism cannot be understood in single-axis terms. It is not merely a backlash against women's rights, nor simply a product of far-right extremism, nor reducible to toxic masculinity, though it implicates all three. Contemporary antifeminism is an ideologically intersectional phenomenon entangled with racism, nationalism, neocapitalism, religious orthodoxy, classism, ableism, and cis-heteronormativity in ways that both amplify its reach and obscure its workings. Meeting it requires analytical tools of comparable complexity. The seven articles gathered in this Research Topic make precisely that case, from multiple disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts. Wed, 27 May 2026 23:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10174/42061 2026-05-27T23:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10174/41194 Title: Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Happiness in the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa: A Fixed Effect Instrumental Variable Analysis Authors: Chao, Li-Wei; Leite, Rui; Farias, Ana Rita; Ramlagan, Shandir; Peltzer, Karl Abstract: BACKGROUND: Fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption has been linked to better physical health. Recent studies also link FV consumption to better mental health. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended consuming at least five servings of FV per day, but recent statistics find most populations (in both developed and developing countries) achieve far below the target, despite knowing “FV is good for health”. Two recent studies using large survey data from Australia and from the U.K. using fixed effect (FE) regression found significant and large positive associations between FV consumption and life satisfaction; the authors caution that fixed effect regression cannot show causality. METHOD AND RESULTS: Using data from the U.K., Australia, and South Africa, we apply FE and instrumental variables (IV) regressions to show that the effect of FV on life satisfaction is plausibly causal. We use the consumer price index (CPI) of FV as the instrument (F statistic > 16). We test whether controlling for individual time invariant effects was necessary, by using correlated random effects as control functions; we find that controlling for time invariant effects is not necessary for the relationship between FV and life satisfaction. We further test whether the FV variable is endogenous after controlling for FE; we find FV remains endogenous even with FE. We calculate the elasticities of FV’s effect on life satisfaction and find similar elasticities across the three countries; the increase in life satisfaction from increasing average daily FV intake by one serving would more than offset the negative effect on mental health from becoming unemployed or developing a chronic illness. To explore whether the large effect size from IV estimates is due to heterogeneous treatment effect, we apply marginal treatment effect (MTE) estimation on WHO’s five-a-day recommendation. We find that the MTE curve is downward sloped: Although some may derive large gains in marginal utility by switching from not-meeting to meeting five-a-day, others may derive little gain. Examining the potential outcomes of meeting versus not meeting five-a-day (conditioning on the individual differences in observed and unobserved resistance to meeting WHO’s guideline), we find that anyone who meets the five-a-day derives a potential high life satisfaction -- regardless of the level of resistance to eating FV. The key difference lies in the individual differences in the potential outcomes when people consume low amounts of FV. Individuals with high resistance in achieving five-a-day still have relatively high life satisfaction despite not consuming five-a-day. However, individuals with low resistance in meeting five-a-day derive very low life satisfaction had they not consumed enough FV. DISCUSSION: A public information campaign to “educate” that people will be “happy” with more FV will likely be ineffective. This is because those who derive greater happiness with more FV consumption already have low resistance to treatment and thus already consume their five-a-day. Those who do not consume five-a-day also know they are just as happy eating versus not eating five FV servings a day, so the campaign to them is irrelevant. Mon, 10 Jul 2023 23:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10174/41194 2023-07-10T23:00:00Z