When Terrorism Hits Home: Domestic Newspaper Coverage of the 1998 and 2002 Terror Attacks in Kenya

Analyzing newspaper coverage of the 1998 Nairobi and 2002 Mombasa terrorist attacks by the Nairobi Daily Nation and East African Standard finds that generalizations from Western sources, such as newsworthiness criteria and coverage of government officials and terrorists, appear similar in Kenyan media, although interpretation of the attacks were colored by a “developing world” perspective in some respects. Terrorists also ironically are more prominent in subsequent attacks, although perhaps only when they fail to inflict heavy damage and casualties. The second attack also brought far more criticism on the Kenyan government, which may have implications for similar events in other countries.

Adhabu ya kaburi aijau maiti (The corpse knows the torment of the grave).

—Swahili proverb     

Missing the Third Wave: Islam,Institutions, and Democracy in the Middle East

This article explores why some societies witnessed less political liberalization during the Third Wave of democratization than others, and importantly, the conditions under which opposition forces may refrain from pressing for political reform. Focusing on the Muslim world, it also presents a more complete understanding of when and how political Islam hinders democratization. Specifically, historical experiences with Islamists in the 1970s and institutional structures established by the 1980s created a condition of uncertainty that enabled some incumbents to thwart liberalization during the Third Wave. Incumbents exploited the fear of political Islam, convincing many secularist opponents that they were better off with the current regime than with Islamist rule. The extent to which incumbents could succeed varied, depending on whether or not Islamist movements had been allowed to mobilize openly and the extent that the regime based its legitimacy on Islam. The argument extends beyond the Muslim world. What is fundamentally at stake is not whether Islam exists as a mobilizing ideology, but whether democratically-minded opponents believe that non-democratic opposition groups exist that would potentially subvert a democratic opening.     

China: From Democracy Wall to the Shopping Mall and Back

Who would have thought that tainted pet food and toys would threaten to unravel the authoritarian export model of Chinese growth that the brutal Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 was meant to secure?     

Vital Democracy: A Theory of Democracy in Action

Scottish citizens benefit from 19 per cent more public spending per head than English citizens. The ‘Barnett formula’ is slowly reducing the gap, but very little is known about the countries' relative needs and hence about how far the present gap is defensible: the aim of this paper is to throw some light on the countries' relative needs. We begin with the complex formulae that the Westminster government uses to assess the spending needs of English local authorities, and we use these English formulae to assess the needs of Scottish local authorities for three major blocks of local services. These formulae suggest that Scotland needs 6.4 per cent more per head than England for environmental, protective and cultural services, 8.1 per cent more for highway maintenance, and between 24.3 per cent and 35.3 per cent more for fire services. We also combine these results with those of two other papers concerned with local education and social services to show that these English formulae put Scotland's per capita needs for local government services as a whole at about 6 per cent above England's. However, we then compare the relative needs of Scottish local authorities as assessed by the English formulae with their relative needs as assessed by the Scottish needs formulae that are currently used by Holyrood, and we find major differences. This suggests either that at least one country uses seriously flawed formulae to assess needs, or that the two countries have different conceptions of need.     

Political Islam,Clash of Civilizations,U.S. Dominance and Arab Support of Attacks on America: A Test of a Hierarchical Model

This study examines two theses used to explain Arab support of the 11 September attacks on the United States: clash of civilizations and anti-dominance reaction to perceived American hegemony in the Middle East. Huntington's clash-of-civilizations thesis has been widely challenged, but rarely tested on the basis of individual-level data. In this study data were obtained from a random sample consisting of 805 male and female respondents representing 7 Arab nations: Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Results from structural equation modeling show strong support for the anti-dominance thesis and essentially no support for the clash-of-civilizations thesis. These findings suggest a lack of fit between “civilization” and political values contrary to what Huntington had originally posited.     

A Genealogy of Radical Islam

A genealogy of the radical ideas that underline al-Qaeda"s justification for violence shows that the development of jihadi thought over the past several decades is characterized by the erosion of critical constraints used to limit warfare and violence in classical Islam. This erosion is illustrated by the evolution of jihadi arguments related to apostasy and waging jihad at home, global jihad, civilian targeting, and suicide bombings.