The Court-martial of Corporal Payne and Others and the Future Landscape of International Criminal Justice

The court-martial of Corporal Payne and others involved thefirst charges brought under the International Criminal Court(ICC) Act in the United Kingdom, and led to the first Britishsoldier ever to be convicted for a war crime under internationallaw. But the significance of the case extends far beyond itsnational implications; it represents an important illustrationof the national-level accountability heralded by the ICC regime.This article critically examines the court-martial of CorporalPayne and others, and uses this analysis as the basis of a broaderexploration of the contrast between domestic courts-martialand international courts as fora for trying international crimes.The final part of the article explores the potential significanceof that dichotomy for the future landscape of internationalcriminal justice.     

Dual Arrest and Other Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Arrest in New York City: A Brief Report

In jurisdictions across the United States, the mandated arrest of individuals perpetrating domestic violence crimes termed “mandatory arrest” or “pro-arrest” policies has become a key policy solution to the issue of domestic violence. The purposes of the policies are to standardize the police response to, and increase the number of, arrests stemming from domestic violence incidents by removing or reducing police discretion to arrest. In 1994, the New York state legislature passed the Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act, which contained provisions enacting a mandatory arrest statute. Using information from 183 callers to a telephone helpline for victims of domestic violence, we describe four unintended consequences of the policy: “unwanted,” “dual,” “retaliatory,” and “no” arrest. Bi- and multivariate analyses are used to identify victim and perpetrator sociodemographic, situational, and legal factors associated with each arrest type. Results are discussed in the context of the effects of mandatory arrest policies and minimizing problems associated with it in the future.

A ‘nation of intent’ in Burma: Karen ethno-nationalism,nationalism and narrations of nation

Fully-formed nationalisms do not emerge from nothing. Nor are they inextinguishable expressions of pre-modern forms of identity and political aspirations. The argument in this paper is that if they are fully formed, they have to emerge from ethno -nationalism; that is, out of ethnic identification-writ-large, where ethnic identification becomes ‘mapped’ onto that larger thing called a ‘nation’. Ethnic identification, however, requires a transformation in modes of consciousness and atavistic ethno-histories before ethno-nationalism and then full-blooded nationalisms can come into being. The argument is made in relation to the Karen nationalist movement in Burma. Karen nationalism emerged out of ethno-nationalism that was fostered by Christian missionary interest and ethnological attempts to set out a Karen ethno-history. Missionary writings offered Christian-educated Karen, in colonial times, the basis for a ‘narration of nation’ and for viewing themselves not merely as an ethnic group but a ‘nation’. This paper sets out the ceaseless unfolding of this ‘narration of nation’ that began in the nineteenth century and now tragically occurs in refugee camps in Thailand because of drastically altered politico-military conditions in Burma since the late 1980s. These narrations can only be understood in terms of their discursive history and how this history has been shaped. These narrations are examined with a view to addressing some key theoretical issues contained in more recent studies of nationalism and nation-state-making as modern phenomena and how ethno-nationalism is transformed into nationalism.     

Globalization and private capital movements

This paper examines the power topography of international private capital movements with specific reference to FDI and portfolio equity flows. A number of important development conclusions emerge from the paper. There exists little relationship between incomes and levels of FDI participation, although developed and resource-endowed economies have received greater inflows. While greater liberalization from the mid-1980s has stimulated the explosive growth of portfolio equity capital flows, it has also exposed developing economies to serious systemic risks. Contrary to neoliberal arguments, developing economies that have managed to utilize FDI effectively and to prevent systemic volatility generated from portfolio capital movements from seriously destabilizing them, have generally relied on effective governments. Inter-country economic development has become increasingly unequal in the period 1980-97. While the material conditions of the majority of developing economies have improved, those located in Africa and South Asia in particular have remained seriously disadvantaged.     

Southeast Asia and the Asian and Global Financial Crises

Despite the deleterious impact of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, which seriously undermined mainstream economists’ claims that the world economy has matured enough to prevent the return of a global depression, policymakers are still grappling with unchartered territory to insulate their economies from debilitating regional and global contagions. This article provides the introduction to a special issue targeted at dissecting the experience of the Southeast Asian market economies in confronting comparatively the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 and the global financial crisis of 2008–09.