Oil Communities and Political Violence: The Case of Ethnic Ijaws in Nigeria's Delta Region

The popular expectation that the oil-rich but underdeveloped Niger Delta of Nigeria would become more stable and less volatile with the inauguration of civilian democratic rule has proved erroneous. This development calls for a fundamental rethinking of existing assumptions about community-based anomie and the political violence embarked upon by nascent community-based movements in the region. This is particularly true regarding the struggle by Ijaw ethnic oil communities against environmental degradation, socio-economic and cultural strangulation, and political marginalization by the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies. Much of the existing literature has focused on the high-profile Ogoni struggles to the neglect of those embarked upon by the Ijaws, reputed to be the fourth largest ethnic group in Nigeria and spread over six states along the country's Atlantic seaboard.     

A Leap of Faith: When and How Ex-Combatants Resort to Violence

Previous research has given scant attention to the issue of how and when ex-combatants resort to organized violence. This article fills this research gap by comparing ex-fighters in the Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. It holds that ex-combatant violence is the result of interaction between entrepreneurs of violence, military affinities, intermediaries, and selective incentives. Ex-combatants take to arms when they have access to entrepreneurs of violence. By offering selective incentives and utilizing existing military affinities, entrepreneurs can generate the enticements and trust needed to convince ex-combatants to resort to arms. However, as entrepreneurs have limited contact with ex-fighters, they are dependent on intermediaries to do the actual recruiting for them. Contrary to previous assumptions, this article finds that ex-fighters are largely risk-averse individuals and that ex-combatant violence is seldom triggered by the mere presence of small arms, lack of economic opportunities, or experiences of insecurity.     

Online Political Debate,Unbounded Citizenship,and the Problematic Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere

Citizenship has always been a dynamic notion, subject to change and permanent struggle over its precise content and meaning. Recent technological, economic, and political transformations have led to the development of alternative notions of citizenship that go beyond the classic understanding of its relationship to nation states and rights. Civil society actors play an important role in this process by organizing themselves at a transnational level, engaging with issues that transcend the boundaries of the nation state and questioning the democratic legitimacy of other transnational actors such as international and corporate organizations. They also allow citizens to engage with “unbounded” issues and to construct a transnational public sphere where such issues can be debated. It is often assumed that the Internet plays a crucial role in enabling this transnational public sphere to take shape. Empirical analysis of discussion forums and mailing lists developed by transnational civil society actors shows, however, that the construction of such a transnational public sphere is paved with constraints. To speak of a unified transnational public sphere is therefore deemed to be problematic. It cannot be seen or construed without taking into account the local, the national, and enforceable rights in order to materialize the ideas and hopes being voiced through civil society.     

Differential Online Exposure to Extremist Content and Political Violence: Testing the Relative Strength of Social Learning and Competing Perspectives

The present study applies Social Learning (Differential Association) Theory to the explanation of political violence, focusing on exposure to extremist content through new social media (NSM) and controlling for key variables derived from rival theories. Data are gathered using (a) a paper-and-pencil study among high school students, and (b) a web survey targeting youths between 16 and 24 years old. A total of 6020 respondents form the dataset. Binary logistic regression is used to analyze the data. Results show that even when controlling for background variables, strain variables, personality characteristics, moral values, and peer influences, the statistical association between measures of extremism through NSM (ENSM) and self-reported political violence remains significant and fairly constant. The most persistent effects are found for those measures where individuals actively seek out extremist content on the Internet, as opposed to passive and accidental encounters using NSM. Furthermore, offline differential associations with racist and delinquent peers are also strongly and directly related to self-reported political violence, as are some mechanisms from rival perspectives. This indicates that political violence can only partially be explained by social learning and suggests that the impact of ENSM is mediated by real-world associations and that the offline world has to be taken into account.     

有同情心的保守主义:布什政治哲学探析

有同情心的保守主义是美国现任总统乔治@W@布什所信奉的政治哲学,它有一套完整独特的逻辑体系.在社会生活中,有同情心的保守主义以对同情心的积极实践和对个人责任、宗教信仰的强调而区别于传统保守主义和传统自由主义.当前,有同情心的保守主义因布什的推崇而大行其道,它正在从多方面影响着美国的内政外交.     

Retaliation in Rebellion: The Missing Link to Explaining Insurgent Violence in Dagestan

This article posits that the remnants of archaic sociocultural norms, particularly the honour-imposed custom of retaliation, play a crucial role in the process of insurgent engagement in Russia's autonomous republic of Dagestan. Through a series of interviews with former insurgents, this study outlines two retaliation-centred mechanisms: “individual retaliation” and “spiritual retaliation” in order to explain the microcosm of motives behind insurgent activity in Dagestan. In doing so, this study problematizes the role of Salafi/Jihadist ideology as the main impetus for insurgent violence. Reversing the traditional causal link between violence and religion, this study also demonstrates that the development of Jihadist ideology is a by-product of insurgent mobilization rather than its cause.     

A New Typology of Electoral Violence: Insights from Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Existing literature on election violence has focused on how violence suppresses voter participation or shapes their preferences. Yet, there are other targets of election violence beyond voters who have so far received little attention: candidates and government agencies. By intimidating rival candidates into dropping out of the race, political hopefuls can literally reduce the number of competitors and increase their likelihood of winning. Likewise, aspiring candidates can target government agencies perceived to be responsible for holding elections to push for electorally beneficial decisions. In this paper, we introduce a new typology of electoral violence and utilize new data of election violence that occur around executive elections in Indonesia from 2005 through 2012. The types of violence we identified differ in these ways: a) Of all cases of electoral violence observed in this article, most incidents were targeted towards candidates and government bodies; b) candidates are generally targeted before elections, whereas voter-targeting incidents are spread out evenly before and after elections and government-targeted violence tends to occur afterwards; c) pre-election violence is concentrated in formerly separatist areas, but post-election violence is more common in districts with prior ethnocommunal violence. These distinctions stress the importance of examining when and why different strategies are adopted.     

智利养老保险制度早期发展脉络的政治经济学分析

作为国际上养老保险制度私有化改革的先驱,智利的经验值得借鉴。智利养老保险制度的建立是由于工业化背景下欧美资本和移民的推动所致;由于复杂的种族构成、社会等级的利益差异,以及由考迪罗主义强权政治导致养老保险特权大众化等原因,智利养老保险制度陷于财务收支失衡危机;智利养老保险制度私有化改革是出于欧美国家反对拉美地区排斥外国势力的结构主义的需要。智利养老保险制度私有化改革的成功之处在于,在自由市场机制的培育、国有企业私有化改革、国家财政收支均衡化之间形成了良好的互动关系;改革的模式适应了智利国内社会政治形势的特点。     

Making Room at the Negotiating Table: The Growth of Diplomacy between Nation-State Governments and Non-State Economic Entities

The study of diplomacy has traditionally focused on relationships and interactions between the governments of nation-states, empires, principalities, and similar politicies. This state-centric view has been challenged in recent times by scholars who have sought to take into account the proliferation of different types of actors in the international arena. This paper address diplomacy between governments and non-state economic entities, a broad category of bodies extending from multilateral economic institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and GATT/World Trade Organization to consultative and knowledge-generating bodies such as the World Economic Forum and International Chamber of Commerce.     

英国学派多元主义与社会连带主义论争——一种比较视角

在国际关系理论的英国学派中,存在着两种主要的概念和研究方法取向,即多元主义与社会连带主义.本文主要探讨两者的异同及其本质.它们的共同点在于,以马丁·怀特的三大思想传统作为自己的理论立场,坚持理性主义的国际社会观、关怀人权等道德价值.然而,它们之间也有很大分歧,主要是两者对国际社会赖以存在的基础--国际法有不同认知,即国际社会是以自然法还是实在法为基础;在人权以及与其有着密切关联的人道主义干涉和西方对第三世界的责任问题上,看法也大相径庭.多元--连带之争实质上探讨的是国际社会的本质、潜能和规模,以及国际社会成员对于规则、规范、价值、制度的分享程度.双方的论争不仅是国际关系理论一个新的理论增长点,而且加深了人们对于国际社会与世界社会的理解.