Legislation and Maintenance of Public Order and Civil Life by Occupying Powers

Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations is a key provisionof the law of belligerent occupation. This essay examines howit has been understood by states and scholars, how it was developedby the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and whether and howit was respected by the US and the UK during their recent occupationof Iraq. Under Article 43, an occupying power must restore andmaintain public order and civil life, including public welfare,in an occupied territory. Local legislation and institutionsbased upon such legislation must be respected by an occupyingpower and by any local authorities acting under the global controlof the occupying power. This general prohibition to change thelocal legislation also applies to post-conflict reconstructionefforts, including constitutional reforms, and changes of economicand social policies. The author examines the exceptions to theprohibition and assesses whether the widespread legislativeactivities by the occupying powers in Iraq fall under theseexceptions. He then analyses the question of whether the lawof military occupation ceased to apply in Iraq on 30 June 2004.It is also suggested that Article 43 applies to some peace operationsand provides a useful framework even for those peace operationsto which it does not formally apply.     

Threats of Armed Force and Contemporary International Law

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Public debt stabilization: the relevance of policymakers’ time horizons

Policymakers are stuck in time. Political short-termism, policy myopia, policy short-sightedness, and similar words have been coined to emphasize the present-centric policy thinking. Politics tends to produce short time horizons, and as a result, policymakers often fail to use present opportunities to mitigate future harms. Focusing on fiscal and monetary strategic interactions, given different separate decision makers, our paper aims to explore the effects of policymakers’ time horizons on debt stabilization. To formalize our ideas, we use the novel concept of Nonlinear-model-predictive-control Feedback Nash Equilibrium (NFNE) and find that present-centric policy thinking and decision horizons matters under several dimensions.     

Mental Strategies for Fighting the IS: A Field Study of the Peshmerga Soldiers in Northern Iraq

This study analyzes the war against the Islamic State (IS), specifically on the front in northern Iraq, and the mental strategies that the Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers use to maintain their combat motivation. For this field study, dozens of soldiers of various ranks were interviewed and observed on three fronts outside of Mosul, Erbil, and Kirkuk in February 2014. While some mental strategies are nearly universal, others depend on the characteristics of the fighting force and the threat that they face. The article identifies five distinct mental strategies for dealing with the stress of fighting the IS: simultaneous dehumanization and humanization of the enemy, seeing a larger cause, use of humor, religious identity, and martyrdom. The findings suggest that factors beyond primary group cohesion, on which much previous research has focused, can play an important role in increasing soldiers’ fighting power.     

Silence of the Innocents: Undocumented Immigrants’ Underreporting of Crime and their Victimization

Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.     

To Elect or Not to Elect: Leaders,Alternation in Power and Social Welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates whether and how multiparty elections, introduced in many African countries since the early 1990s, affect a government’s commitment to welfare policies. We hypothesise that contested multiparty elections and turnovers between different leaders and political forces in government – even when democratic standards are not met – positively impact the promotion of social welfare. We test these hypotheses through a cross-sectional and time-series research design, making use of our new, comprehensive ‘Africa Leadership Change’ (ALC) dataset. Empirical results confirm that leaders elected through multiparty elections and countries that experience political alternations in government are associated with higher levels of social welfare.     

The Islamic State: A Clash within the Muslim Civilization for the New Caliphate

This study analyzes the political reasons that allowed the Islamic State to expand successfully in Syria and Iraq, by enabling to “franchise” worldwide, and the role of the regional governments in this issue. The article provides a different explanation from the classic approach of the “clash of civilizations” theorized by Samuel P. Huntington, ascribing responsibility for the growth and expansion of the Islamic State to the complex framework of geopolitical alliances within the Muslim civilization and the Arab world. The article highlights the attempt by Turkey to establish itself as a regional power and guidance of the Islamic world, by resurrecting the Caliphate, and, based on this, explains the contrast with the Islamic State, whose goal is the foundation of a globalized Caliphate. The plans of the Turkish President Erdo?an for a Great Turkey, allied with Egypt, have foundered with the coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The study relates the connection of Ankara with the Kurds, regarding the management of the crisis in Syria and Iraq, and the Turkish liaison with regional powers (Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel) and other powers (Russia, China, and the United States).