The friend of my enemy is my enemy: International alliances and international terrorism

Terrorism is an instrument for groups that cannot achieve their political goals legally. One important strategic function of terrorism is to weaken the government – either directly by attacking representatives or supporters of the government or indirectly by causing a political response that is unpopular among the population. Often, however, political stability of the home government is buttressed by foreign powers. In this case, the terrorists can have a strategic interest in attacking nationals of these foreign countries. This article analyses this logic by looking at international alliances as a proxy for international support. If the friend of my enemy is my enemy, then terror entrepreneurs, which seek to overthrow their home country's government (the enemy), may find it attractive to target nationals of the foreign allies of their country (the friends of the enemy). The theory in this article predicts that attacking nationals of a foreign ally is particularly attractive if this ally is militarily more powerful than the home country. Moreover, the combined effect of alliance and relative power differentials becomes stronger the more democratic the ally and becomes weaker the more democratic the terrorists' home country. Empirical support for the hypotheses in this article is found in an analysis of a directed country dyad sample of international terrorism.     

This is not your parents' retirement: comparing retirement income across generations

This article examines how retirement income at age 67 is likely to change for baby boomers and persons born in generation X (GenX) compared with current retirees. We use the Social Security Administration's Modeling Income in the Near Term (MINT) model to project retirement income and assets, poverty rates, and replacement rates for current and future retirees at age 67. We find that, in absolute terms, retirement incomes offuture cohorts will increase over time, and poverty rates will fall. However, projected income gains are larger for higher than for lower socioeconomic groups, leading to increased income inequality among future retirees. Finally, because postretirement incomes are not expected to rise as much as preretirement incomes, baby boomers and GenXers are less likely to have enough postretirement income to maintain their preretirement standard of living compared with current retirees.     

Aid to the enemy: linking development and peacebuilding on the Korean peninsula

This article discusses the link between development and peacebuilding to analyze South Korean aid activities in North Korea in the context of the Korean conflict, where there are deep-rooted cycles of conflict episodes, and to explore the possibility of aid for peace on the Korean peninsula in the future. The Korean conflict is a large part of what makes South Korean aid to North Korea ineffective. For the past 20 years, South Korean aid to North Korea has fluctuated greatly, due to the context of the Korean conflict. The Korean conflict, once seemingly on the way to resolution, appears to have reverted to a time before the end of the Cold War. Many people in both the North and the South still see each other as the enemy. Most of the South Korean aid projects in North Korea have been suspended indefinitely and the fluctuation of aid to North Korea caused serious debates within South Korean society. At one point, the debates grew so heated that they were called the ‘South–South conflict’. Building on the conceptual framework of conflict sensitive development and strategic peacebuilding, this article argues that, to overcome the current impasse, all stakeholders must better understand the context of the Korean conflict and the interaction between the context and themselves, and develop a comprehensive strategy together, to encompass the multiple issues raised by the Korean conflict, as strategic peacebuilding proposes.     

Enter at your own risk: free movement of EU citizens in practice

The citizenship jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has raised hopes for a more social Europe and triggered fierce debates about ‘social tourism’. The article analyses how this case law is applied by EU member state administrations and argues that they are actively containing the Court’s influence. As a result, rather than reconciling the logics of ‘opening’ and ‘closure’, they are heading towards an uneasy coexistence between free movement and exclusive welfare states. The argument here is illustrated with empirical evidence from Austria and Germany. Although both countries have taken different approaches to EU migrants’ residency and social rights, they produce similar effects in practice: increasingly, EU migrants are being tolerated as residents with precarious status without access to minimum subsistence benefits. Ironically, attempts to restrict residency rights have resulted in a temporary extension of EU migrants’ access to welfare in some instances.