Hedonists and husbands: piracy narratives,gender demands,and local political economic realities in Somalia

The grand narrative of piracy has been instrumental in shaping how piracy off the coast of Somalia is understood and responded to. Self-proclaimed pirates, suspected pirates, and convicted piracy prisoners continue to tell the story of taking up arms against foreign illegal fishers to protect their personal livelihoods as well as Somalia’s natural resources. Although the grand narrative remains the most popular piracy narrative, this paper introduces and examines two newly emergent narratives of Somali piracy – the Somali women’s narrative and the piracy prisoner self-narrative. I explore how these narratives reveal a central paradox surrounding piracy and social reproduction in Somalia that, until now, has been absent from discussions about piracy narratives and the issue of Somali piracy. Whereas the grand narrative of piracy fails to address gender demands and local political economic realities in Somalia, the new narratives present piracy as a gendered experienced that is situated within the broader, evolving context of courtship and marriage in Somalia. I argue the new narratives can help push beyond over-simplistic understandings of piracy off the coast of Somalia as a ‘man’s crime’ that should be addressed by men.     

Practice,Pirates and Coast Guards: the grand narrative of Somali piracy

In this article I develop a practice–theoretical account to provide the first systematic investigation of the justification of Somali piracy. Arguing for an understanding of piracy as a ‘community of practice’, I show how this community is organised by a ‘grand narrative’ that projects piracy as a quasi-state practice of the protection of sovereignty against foreign intruders. Paying attention to narrative provides an explanation for the persistence of piracy and assists us in understanding the phenomenon. Relying on publicly available interviews with pirates, I deconstruct this grand narrative and detail the different functions of the narrative in the light of situations in which it is told. The article develops an alternative perspective on piracy based on the study of practice, narrative and situation that provides new avenues for the study of clandestine, illicit or violent practices.     

The Forgotten Pirates: Iraqi and Iranian Pirates in the Arabian Gulf Who Have Never Been Reported to the International Maritime Bureau

If piracy attacks are unreported, a misleading impression is given of piracy situations in regions where there could be serious consequences for ships traveling in waterways on the assumption that they are piracy-free waters. However, sometimes not reporting piracy attacks could help to contain piracy before it expands, because reporting can lead to the media over-focusing on piratical incidents, and armed guards being deployed on ships, which causes pirates to use heavier arms and escalates the level of conflict. Piracy that took place during 2003–2012 in the north and the center of the Arabian Gulf has never been reported to the International Maritime Bureau. The present article examines this case of unreporting, and discusses its causes and consequences.     

European Union anti-piracy initiatives in the Horn of Africa: linking land-based counter-piracy with maritime security and regional development

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has resulted in a steady decline in trade through the Arabian Sea and higher costs of doing business for multiple world regions. The EU has responded to the threat with a large-scale anti-piracy operation in the Horn of Africa, which constitutes the first free-standing Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) military operation that is not entirely dependent on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) planning and assets. The operation is designed to interdict Somali piracy operations across the Gulf of Aden and to keep some of the world’s busiest sea lanes open for reasons of world trade. This article argues that the EU preoccupation with military solutions to the piracy problem, based on interventions through the Somali federal government with an emphasis on security, is insufficient because it fails to address the underlying causes of piracy and misunderstands the Somali socio-cultural-security nexus and the need for practical longer term land-based approaches to development. The reduction of Somali piracy activities can be linked to this increased military response capacity as well as to increased security precautions undertaken by shipping companies, but none of these strategies has succeeded in dismantling piracy networks. They therefore offer only a temporary and costly stopgap measure.     

马六甲海峡海盗活动的趋势与特征——一项统计分析

海盗活动被认为是影响马六甲航运安全的一大因素。1998年马六甲海盗活动快速增加的主要原因是1997年的东南亚金融危机,而2004年以后减少的主要原因是针对马六甲海盗活动建立起了一整套应对机制。马六甲海盗作案的目的主要是为了钱财而非出于政治目的。现有的反海盗措施是有效的,马六甲海盗活动已得到有效控制,海盗活动反弹的可能性不大。在沿岸国领海以外水域中发生的案件,各国都有权进行管制。中国船只受袭击的情况不常见,但在马六甲海峡与新加坡海峡的安全管理上中国应加大参与力度。     

The Pirates' Curse: Economic Impacts of the Maritime Piracy

During the last decades, the activities of pirates have increased exponentially in Eastern Africa, with their attacks becoming considerably more violent. In addition to the intrastate and interstate conflicts, the lack of state capacity and the presence of terrorist groups, maritime piracy represents a serious and sustained threat to economic security. Indeed, from an economic point of view, pirates affect international trade through an increasing insecurity related to the prompt delivery of the goods transported. The aim of this work is to explore the main works on maritime piracy analyzed in quantitative economics.     

Economic Factors for Piracy: The Effect of Commodity Price Shocks

This study treats piracy as a civil conflict event where participants are substituting from legal work to illegal activity in response to lower commodity prices (opportunity cost effect). The analysis exploits exogenous variation in nine different commodity prices across seventeen countries around the globe. Results show that as commodity prices decrease maritime piracy attacks increase, which is consistent with results found in civil conflict literature. In the context of actual commodity shocks these piracy attacks represent increases ranging from .452 to 2.59 more attacks per year in the ordinary least squares and .495 to 20.71 attacks per year in the Poisson specification.     

The Gender Gap and Cybercrime: An Examination of College Students’ Online Offending

Abstract

As computer and Internet technologies have continued to advance over the last few decades, a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to exploring online behavior. Criminologists, in particular, have been interested in examining cybercrime and online deviance. Contributing to this growing body of scholarship, the current research investigated the effects of gender on cybercrime and whether socialization can account for the gender gap in online offending. Data were collected from a sample of 522 college students and three cybercrime categories were examined: digital piracy, cyberharassment, and hacking offenses. The findings revealed that men were more likely to engage in online offending and that this gender gap was fairly persistent across the socialization variables of self-control and immersion into the cyberenvironment. Specifically, only three gender-invariant findings emerged: men and women commit statistically similar rates of digital piracy when self-control levels are low, and they also engage in similar rates of digital piracy and hacking offenses when Internet use is high. Detailed results, implications for theory and policy, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Terrorism and piracy: A legal view

Abstract

Terrorist attacks on persons or property on the high seas or in the newly designated “exclusive economic zones” bear analogy closer to the traditional international law of “piracy” than most observers suspect. In traditional practice “private ends” in the usual sense was not an essential element of the offense; the label and its legal results were attached to unrecognized belligerents too. The latest codifications of the international law relating to piracy, principally those deriving from the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas, are patently defective. A new formulation is proposed, with a commentary that, among other things, points out how international criminal law and universal jurisdiction can be coordinated with the generally accepted international law of armed conflict to clarify what is currently a chaotic legal situation.     

Explaining Young People’s Involvement in Online Piracy: An Empirical Assessment Using the Offending Crime and Justice Survey in England and Wales

Abstract

The Internet has been widely acknowledged as facilitating many forms of youth offending. Existing research has identified important drivers of young people’s involvement in online crime, yet this has overwhelmingly relied on school or college samples. As such, it tells us little about those young people that have left the formal education system—a group who are more likely perpetrators of juvenile crime more generally. Focusing on young people’s involvement in online piracy offenses, our analysis draws on data from a nationally representative survey of England and Wales to better understand the dynamics of involvement in online crime across the population. We assess the potential overlaps between online and offline offending, the role of differential association and deviancy neutralization techniques in shaping offending behavior, as well as the protective effect of strong family support networks in reducing involvement in piracy. We find that illegal downloaders tend to be young, male, and have a higher number of delinquent friends. We also find that many of these offenders do not confine their offending to online spaces, with involvement in offline property offenses also high among this group.     

The operation failed,but the patient survived. Varying assessments of the Soviet Union's last anti-alcohol campaign

From the mid 1980s mortality levels have fluctuated greatly in the former Soviet Union. After dropping substantially during the late 1980s, mortality rose to unprecedented levels during the early 1990s. The sharp fluctuations in mortality are commonly linked to variations in alcohol consumption in connection with the anti-alcohol campaign launched in 1985. This large-scale natural alcohol policy experiment has produced very mixed appraisal and this article provides a systematic review of the wide variety of judgments, focusing on goals, implementation, and effects on life expectancy, alcohol consumption, mortality, crime, etc. Deviant evaluations are in part ascribable to a general schism between narrowly focused epidemiological perspectives on public health interventions and broader social science approaches to political reform.     

The final triumph of the Pax Americana? Western intervention in Yugoslavia and Russia's debate on the post-Cold War order

This paper addresses the question of world order by considering how Western military actions in Yugoslavia were perceived from a different cultural perspective. It traces how the NATO-led bombing campaign during March–June of 1999 affected various visions of world order that had existed in Russia before the campaign and describes the discursive change this campaign produced. The argument is made that Russia's foreign policy elites, from Westernizers to Neo-Communists and Expansionists, perceived Western goals in Yugoslavia differently from their counterparts in the West. However, they differed in their recommendations regarding Russia's response and lessons to be drawn from the Kosovo crisis. The paper also identifies several points where the different perspectives can converge. More specifically, all Russian schools of thought viewed the NATO campaign as a dangerous precedent potentially destabilizing the existing world order. They also shared the conviction that Russia should play a larger role in world affairs and that without Russia's involvement there could be no peace and stability in the Balkans and in Europe. They point to the United Nations as the only forum for debating the legitimacy of military interventions and for preventing interventions carried out without the approval of the UN.     

Countering piracy through private security in the Horn of Africa: prospects and pitfalls

Employing secondary research and semi-structured interviews, this article examines the use of private maritime security companies (PMSC) in providing maritime security services in the Horn of Africa. It consists of four parts. The first part explains the origins and development of the use of PMSC in the Horn of Africa. The second section discusses the regulation of the private security industry, paying particular attention to the maritime context. Part three examines the challenges associated with the use of maritime PMSC in the Horn of Africa, including negative human rights implications, compromising the innocent passage of commercial ships, and creating confusion in the hierarchical control of ships. Finally, the paper analyses the findings and concludes that PMSC, despite their apparent short-term effectiveness, cannot be regarded as a long-term solution to the piracy phenomenon in the Horn of Africa.     

A ‘synchronised attack’ on life: the Saudi-led coalition’s ‘hidden and holistic’ genocide in Yemen and the shared responsibility of the US and UK

Abstract

Since the Saudi-led coalition (Coalition) began its military campaign in Yemen in March 2015, upwards of 13,000 Yemen civilians have been killed, including nearly 2000 women and 3000 children. Additionally, Coalition aerial attacks have intentionally targeted Yemen’s civilian infrastructure, economic infrastructure, medical facilities and cultural heritage. Combined with the ongoing air and naval blockade, which has impeded the ability of Yemenis to access clean water, food, fuel and health services, the violence visited upon Yemen has created near-famine conditions. Furthermore, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) predicts another imminent outbreak of cholera, with the potential to be as deadly as last year’s which infected more than one million children and killed a child every 10?minutes. Through engagement with genocide studies literature, this article applies a holistic conception of genocide to the Coalition military campaign. It finds that the Coalition is conducting an ongoing campaign of genocide by a ‘synchronised attack’ on all aspects of life in Yemen, one that is only possible with the complicity of the United States and United Kingdom.     

开启“奥弗顿之窗”:美国桑德斯竞选运动的四个政治遗产

桑德斯竞选运动反映了2008年金融危机爆发后西方世界争取激进变革的新生群众运动对经济不平等现象蔓延的不满情绪,是“占领华尔街”运动爆发之后扭转经济不平等核心诉求重新进入美国政治议程的选举体现。通过重塑政治话语,桑德斯竞选运动成功推动“社会主义”从美国社会中的负面政治标签变成时代思潮,促使左翼政策纲领从边缘主张变成主流议题,激发了年轻人和激进左翼的选举热情,并唤醒了工人的阶级意识,催生美国激进左翼选举联合的可能性,其政治遗产对美国“民主社会主义”的进一步发展发挥了关键的助推作用,并深刻影响了民主党和激进左翼的政策取向和选举策略,将为若干年后“另一个桑德斯”的选举成功开启了“奥弗顿之窗”。桑德斯竞选运动是“占领华尔街”运动爆发之后美国激进左翼政治的重大进展,虽然较难引发美国政治机制的革命性变化,但却可以从推动形成和实施左翼政策纲领的层面促进美国国内政治领域的改良。     

Campaign Finances and Provincial Elections in Ontario,Canada

This study analyses the relationship between provincial election outcomes and campaign spending. This study is novel as it utilizes only those expenses that should have a causal link with election success. OLS regression controlled for candidate quality, incumbency, and economic conditions reveals a positive (negative) relationship between campaign (challenger) spending and election succession, while logistic regression results in a 93% correct prediction rate. Two-staged least-square regression corroborates the findings. The results suggest that although campaign spending is useful, incumbency status and experience are more important. Additionally, campaign spending is less important during close elections and has a diminishing marginal return.     

Transferring emotional capital as coerced discretion: Street‐level bureaucrats reconciling structural deficiencies

The discretion of street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs) plays a key role in policy implementation. This study offers a new perspective on the meaning of discretion under social policy reforms, which created new structural deficiencies in the work of SLBs and have raised expectations of policy implementation without offering sufficient policy responses. Under such conditions, the discretion of SLBs should be understood as coerced, more so than as a positive element of freedom and choice. As such, SLBs are forced to employ informal practices and provide alternative resources for their clients. Findings indicate a transference of emotional resources from SLBs to clients, aimed at achieving policy outcomes of economically independent citizens, paradoxically accompanied by an awareness of powerful barriers to such conversion. The study contributes both to the understanding of discretion in policy implementation, in the context of an expanding public service gap, and to theories of emotion manifestation in public administration.     

Information Reduces Corruption and Improves Enrolment (But Not Schooling): A Replication Study of a Newspaper Campaign in Uganda

In the mid-1990s, Ugandan primary schools received only one-fifth of intended government capitation grants. A seminal study shows that a grassroots newspaper campaign substantially reduced grant capture and improved educational outcomes. We replicate these results, confirming that the campaign reduced corruption and increased enrolment. The latter outcome is only robust with an improved enrolment measure introduced in later work by the authors of the original study. We cannot, however, support the authors’ conclusion that lower capture enhanced learning. Finally, we show that the newspaper campaign allowed for a fairer allocation of teachers across schools, a result absent in the original papers.     

Bandera: memorialization and commemoration

This article examines the current heroization of Ukrainian nationalist leader, Stepan Bandera, as manifested in monuments and commemorative practices. It offers a topographic survey that reveals the extent and variety of modes of Bandera heroization. It examines the esthetic and historical controversies that surround Bandera memorialization. It enquires into the personal motivations and political strategies that underlie the effort to project the chosen image of Bandera upon the public space in highly visible terms. It suggests that the campaign in favor of memorializing Bandera can best be understood in performative terms. It is in depicting Bandera as a hero of Ukraine that Bandera becomes a hero of Ukraine.     

Accounts and accountability: Theoretical implications of the right-to-information movement in India

The work of a small and unusual activist group in the north Indian state of Rajasthan has raised a series of practical and theoretical issues concerning the best means for combating specific instances of corruption, and for promoting accountability more generally. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS)-literally-:Workers' and Farmers' Power Organisation-has waged a campaign to secure the right of ordinary people to gain access to information held by government officials. In the process of experimenting with methods of compiling, sharing and verifying expenditure data at very local levels-thus far, in the absence of a statutory entitlement to such informationthe MKSS has developed a radical interpretation of the notion that citizens have a right both to know how they are governed and to participate actively in the process of auditing their representatives. This article examines the process by which this campaign emerged and the means by which it pursues its goals. It then analyses the implications of the MKSS experience, and the larger movement it has spawned, for contemporary debates in three areas: human rights, participatory development and, of course, anti-corruption.