The İsmailağa community and its relationship with the AK party

This article aims to demonstrate the importance of the relationship between the Naqshbandi Ismaila?a community and the AK Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, “Justice and Development Party”) government. As one of the most widespread Sufi brotherhoods in the world, the strength of the Naqshbandiyya lies in its characteristic combination of strict adherence to religious law and active involvement in social and political affairs. The ?smaila?a community, one of five main Naqshbandi communities in Turkey, is highly conservative and traditional, historically dominated by elders who have remained aloof from any power struggles within the Turkish government. While the AK Party has developed ties with religious orders in recent years, including the Ismaila?a, some voices within the Ismaila?a community have become critical of this relationship, leading to a rift within the community. In addition, since 2013, and especially after the attempted coup of July 2016, the AK Party has lost the support of its old ally, the Fethullah Gülen movement. This article examines the relationship between the AK Party and religious movements in Turkey as reflected via its relationship with Ismaila?a, and assesses whether the Fethullah Gülen movement can be replaced as a party ally by the Ismaila?a community.     

Unequal Laws and the Disempowerment of Women in the Labour Market: Evidence from Firm-Level Data

Institutions are defined as the set of rules that govern human interactions. When these rules are discriminatory, they may disempower segments of a population in the economic spheres of activity. In this study, we explore whether laws that discriminate against women influence their engagement in the economy. We adopt a holistic approach where we explore an overall measure of unequal laws also known as legal gender disparities and relate it to several labour market outcomes for women. Using data for over 59,000 firms across 94 economies, we find that unequal laws not only discourage women’s participation in the private sector workforce, but also their likelihood to become top managers and owners of firms. Suggestive evidence indicates that access to finance, property ownership, business registration, and labour market constraints are pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women in the private sector.     

Gender, traditionalism, and attitudes toward domestic violence within a closed community

This research was aimed at examining the attitudes toward domestic violence of people living in communal secular and religious kibbutzim. The findings, disregarding gender or traditionalism, indicate that most of the kibbutz members examined view the kibbutz as almost totally lacking any problem of violence toward women by their partners. The belief that the kibbutz home is a secure place for women within the family framework appears, surprisingly, at a higher frequency among women than among men. There are two possible theoretical explanations for this finding. First, the kibbutz lifestyle has indeed brought about equal power relationships, which explains why domestic violence is not viewed as a social problem, mostly by secular women. Second, women, who play a relatively minor role in constructing the public agenda in the kibbutz, have not become aware of the existence of this issue in the closed community.     

Police legitimacy and support for vigilante violence in Pakistan

Bottoms and Tankebe recently analysed the multidimensional nature of police legitimacy and made an argument for its relevance to social order. Using survey data from three communities of varying socioeconomic conditions in Pakistan, this paper examines the links between the multiple dimensions of the Bottoms-Tankebe model of police legitimacy and support for vigilante violence. The findings show overall high levels of support for vigilantism. Regression analysis shows that experiences of police illegality consistently predict support for vigilantism across the three communities. Perceived quality of police decision-making predicts support for vigilantism in some conditions but not others. Contrary to expectations, quality of interpersonal treatment by police and police effectiveness do not explain support for vigilantism. We also found no evidence to show that feelings of obligation to obey the police mediate the influence of police legitimacy on vigilante support. The implications of these findings are discussed in this paper.     

Divulging data: Domestic determinants of international information sharing

Information is a core input of governance that is often disrupted by the processes associated with globalization. To mitigate potential governance failures, states turn to information sharing – the exchange of sensitive data between governments. Such exchanges, however, come with considerable risks. Building on work in International Relations and organizational sociology stressing the importance of institutional similarity, we argue that states commit to information sharing based on their beliefs as to the reliability and predictability of potential partners – an assessment that involves a relative evaluation of domestic institutions. We test our argument on institutional similarity with a new dataset of mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs) – a critical example of information-sharing agreements. The empirical analysis finds substantial support for our argument: states with similar legal institutions are much more likely to sign MLATs. The article contributes to a range of research concerned with the politics of globalization, especially as it relates to enforcement cooperation, the role of domestic institutions, and information flows.     

Communal response to criminal behavior in the kibbutz during periods of crisis

This research examines whether the situation of crisis which has been developing in the majority of secular kibbutzim since the eighties has influenced the attitudes of kibbutz members towards criminal behavior. Previously, the kibbutzim were accustomed to dealing with any deviant behavior in their midst, with the exception of serious crime, by means of their own internal control institutions. Our assumption is that there would be a greater tendency among members of kibbutzim in crisis, as compared to those in a situation of stability, to see criminal behavior as a disturbing, even threatening, social phenomenon, and to turn to outside agencies, such as the police. In order to examine this hypothesis, we selected 230 kibbutz members from six well-established secular kibbutzim in the center of the country, which differ from each other with regard to levels of crisis which in turn determined by means of specific economic and social criteria. Our findings show that criminal behavior is more prevalent in the kibbutz than the members themselves believe. The more stable the kibbutz, the more the members continue to rely on their own conventional methods of dealing with criminal behavior, while the more severe the crisis situation, the greater the tendency to pass the responsibility for the offender to outside agencies.