​On June 1, 2025, the Politics and Society Institute held a closed session with Professor Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Honorary Professor at the University of Jordan. The session focused on examining the features of U.S. policy during Trump’s second term. The discussion also raised a highly significant dimension concerning the growing presence of religious groups and non-state actors in the global political sphere, reflecting a profound transformation in the nature of authority and influence. The state is no longer the sole central actor in shaping policies or regulating the public domain; rather, organized religious groups and transnational societal movements have emerged, wielding direct pressure on decision-makers through ideological influence as well as cohesive social and economic networks. This shift has contributed to the erosion of traditional institutional frameworks in favour of new forms of symbolic and organisational power, whereby these actors have acquired increasing capacity to shape policies, obstruct them, or even impose informal alternatives to political legitimacy.​