CSR and social conflict in the Brazilian extractive sector

ABSTRACT

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important means to address conflicts, support local development and build trust between businesses and civil society. Yet CSR often fails to live up to its ambitions and can even exacerbate conflicts between companies and communities. In this article we consider how changing CSR strategies over the past four decades between Brazilian company Vale to Norwegian company Hydro have fomented or mitigated company–community conflicts in Northern Brazil. We find that paternalistic and philanthropic approaches of Vale over time led to deep resentment and mistrust due to underdevelopment and environmental damages. Moreover, while Hydro’s more modern CSR strategies sought to deepen community engagement and build legitimacy, the company has struggled in addressing the legacies inherited from Vale and past and current civil society grievances. The case suggests that even forward-thinking CSR approaches are vulnerable to failure where they prioritise business risk over community engagement, neglect to account for past legacies in areas of operation, and fail to create a shared vision of future development. It suggests that EI companies should both understand and engage with their social and environmental impacts in the past, present, and future and create shared economic benefits in the short and long term in order to address social conflicts.     

The impact of campaign expenditures on political competition in the French legislative elections of 1993

We use regression analysis to estimate the effect that campaign money had on the votes of challengers and incumbents in the 1993 elections to the French legislative assembly. Incumbent candidates can at best expect to win 1.01% of the popular vote for each extra franc they spend per registered voter in their district. Challengers can expect to win at least twice as much as this. Simulations show that if campaign spending ceilings were halved, incumbents would have gained an extra ten percent of the popular vote over their closest challenging rivals. The regression analysis also suggests that voters react negatively to candidates who rely heavily on their own money for their outlays and reward candidates who rely on contributions from private individuals. These results suggest that campaign spending ceilings may inhibit political competition, and that voters may resist a candidate who relies on narrow sources of funding.     

War and Peace in Space and Time: The Role of Democratization

Democratization reduces the risk of war, but uneven transitions toward democracy can increase the probability of war. Using country-level data on democratization and international war from the period 1875–1996, we develop a general additive statistical model reassessing this claim in light of temporal and spatial dependence. We also develop a new geopolitical database of contiguities and demonstrate new statistical techniques for probing the extent of spatial clustering and its impact on the relationship between democratization and war. Our findings reaffirm that democratization generally does reduce the risk of war, but that large swings back and forth between democracy and autocracy can increase war proneness. We show that the historical context of peace diminishes the risk of war, while a regional context plagued by conflict greatly magnifies it.     

Windows of Opportunity: Window Subseries Empirical Variance Estimators in International Relations

We show that temporal, spatial, and dyadic dependencies amongobservations complicate the estimation of covariance structuresin panel databases. Ignoring these dependencies results in covarianceestimates that are often too small and inferences that may bemore confident about empirical patterns than is justified bythe data. In this article, we detail the development of a nonparametricapproach, window subseries empirical variance estimators (WSEV),that can more fully capture the impact of these dependencieson the covariance structure. We illustrate this approach ina simulation as well as with a statistical model of internationalconflict similar to many applications in the international relationsliterature.     

Development of a finger printing device for use on a mobile robot

In this paper, we describe the development of a device for fuming fingerprints with cyanoacrylate (Super Glue) to enable police tactical units to obtain fingerprint evidence from suspicious packages using a remote-controlled robot. Through a series of initial experiments and preliminary designs, we show that effective cyanoacylate fuming requires sufficient heat, humidity, and airflow. This work led to the development of a final working prototype, called robot accessory for fuming fingerprint evidence (RAFFE), which is currently being field tested by the Calgary Police Service.     

The Political Rights of Anti-Liberal-Democratic Groups

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether it is permissible for a liberal democratic state to deny anti-liberal-democratic citizens and groups the right to run for parliament. My answer to this question is twofold. On the one hand, I will argue that it is, in principle, permissible for liberal democratic states to deny anti-liberal-democratic citizens and groups the right to run for parliament. On the other hand, I will argue that it is rarely wise (or prudent) for ripe democracies to exclude anti-liberal-democrats from parliamentary elections. There are at least two reasons for this. The first is related to the inherent stability of just institutions. The second is that exclusion can lead to group polarization and enclave deliberation that can engender political extremism and impair processes of interpersonal and intrapersonal deliberation in liberal democracies.     

A concept study on identification and attribution profiling of chemical threat agents using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry applied to Amanita toxins in food

Accidental or deliberate poisoning of food is of great national and international concern. Detecting and identifying potentially toxic agents in food is challenging due to their large chemical diversity and the complexity range of food matrices. A methodology is presented whereby toxic agents are identified and further characterized using a two-step approach. First, generic screening is performed by LC/MS/MS to detect toxins based on a list of selected potential chemical threat agents (CTAs). After identifying the CTAs, a second LC/MS analysis is performed applying accurate mass determination and the generation of an attribution profile. To demonstrate the potential of the methodology, toxins from the mushrooms Amanita phalloides and Amanita virosa were analyzed. These mushrooms are known to produce cyclic peptide toxins, which can be grouped into amatoxins, phallotoxins and virotoxins, where α-amanitin and β-amanitin are regarded as the most potent. To represent a typical complex food sample, mushroom stews containing either A. phalloides or A. virosa were prepared. By combining the screening method with accurate mass analysis, the attribution profile for the identified toxins and related components in each stew was established and used to identify the mushroom species in question. In addition, the analytical data was consistent with the fact that the A. virosa specimens used in this study were of European origin. This adds an important piece of information that enables geographic attribution and strengthens the attribution profile.