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Many blame the ongoing polarization of Congress on the system of primary election that often rewards the most extreme candidates on either side. But are “open” primaries, where more than just regular partisans can participate the solution to this polarization? Using data from two decades of state-level experimentation with primary laws, Eric McGhee finds that primary races that are “pure closed” can actually result in candidates that are slightly closer together ideologically than those that are “pure open”. Despite this, California has found some success with open primaries increasing moderation among party nominees, and it may well signal the conditions for success.

The Presidency of the Council of the European Union is held on a rotational basis by EU member states for six month terms. Andreas Warntjen writes that the frequent change of the Presidency sometimes causes disruption in EU legislative decision-making. He notes that during the negotiation of the Lisbon Treaty the principle of increasing the term from six months up to a year was rejected in favour of creating a permanent President of the European Council, which is held by an individual for terms of two and a half years. Despite this change, however, the limited role of the European Council in legislative negotiations has ensured that continuity in Council decision-making still presents a challenge.

In Uranium, Anthony Burke offers a short, digestible survey of the global nuclear landscape that positions uranium as an actant in the world whose agency cannot be fully determined by or reduced to human intention, will or control. The book succeeds in being a valuable teaching resource, an accessible entry point into critical nuclear politics and an impassioned call for fundamental change in how we think about our world’s most volatile natural assets, writes Tom Vaughan .

The UK has been close to the Netherlands for centuries, and the EU has made the two countries even closer. The UK’s Minister for Europe, David Lidington, shares his thoughts on the strong relationship between the UK and the Netherlands as well as the challenges facing the Eurozone.

One of the core aims of the government’s big society programme is to devolve power and the provision of public services to groups of citizens and voluntary groups. David Lewis finds that more support and capacity building for the voluntary sector is needed if it is to be able to contribute to big society plans.

Public support for the EU rose after the referendum, while Jean-Claude Juncker has painted a starry picture of the Union's prospects without Britain. In effect, writes Catherine E De Vries, the UK is a guinea pig for Eurosceptics on the rest of the continent. Consequently, national leaders have every incentive to make Brexit as arduous as possible for the UK. Parties like the AfD are watching.

While the US is in the midst of economic recovery, 16 million children still live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, and that number is increasing. How can we explain and tackle these growing levels of child poverty? In new research Maia Call looks at the role of time and geography in child poverty, finding that despite the massive social and economic changes of the past two decades, child poverty is linked to poor employment opportunities and certain types of extractive industries in specific places. Her results, she argues, show that place-based policies designed to encourage job creation and tackle unemployment remain an important part of the policy mix.

Since the summer of 2015, Turkey has been the victim of a wave of violent attacks perpetrated by both Islamists and separatist Kurdish groups. The beginning of this period of violence coincided with the collapse of the peace process between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the resumption of their 30-year-old conflict. Within this context of violence and creeping civil war, another Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), has made its comeback. The TAK claimed responsibility for a series of major attacks against Turkish civilians and security forces throughout 2016, attracting the attention of the media and generating a great deal of confusion on the nature of its relationship with the PKK. International media outlets have been so far unable to distinguish between the two groups, which reinforces Ankara’s position that the TAK is a mere extension of the PKK.

Since he became President, Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the media, calling them “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”. Porismita Borah takes a close look at Trump’s relationship with the media, writing that despite his adversarial stance, he was and has been able to capture the news cycle. With coverage during the campaign amounting to essentially $2 billion in free advertising, the media played a large role in helping him to win the election.