The Lockean Case for Religious Tolerance: The Social Contract and the Irrationality of Persecution

John Locke's non-religious arguments for tolerance are often seen as inadequate. He is criticized for: (1) failing to give reasons in support of a strict separation between the roles of church and state; and (2) wrongly insisting that the coercion of belief is irrational. I argue that once we understand Locke's arguments for tolerance within the context of his social contract framework, his non-sectarian arguments can circumvent such criticisms. Lockean arguments for tolerance are thus stronger than typically supposed.     

The development of interest groups in the Balkans: Background and contemporary characteristics

Understanding the political development of the Balkans can be challenging even for historians and social scientists. This is particularly the case with the region's past and present interest group systems as virtually no research is available on the subject. With this in mind, this article provides basic background on the region and its fledgling interest group system as a foundation for approaching the analysis in the 7 country articles that follow. The topics considered include an overview of the common elements of the 7 group systems and their differences, developments that shaped these systems, and an initial look at the role of interest groups in consolidating the region's pluralist political systems.     

JISB Interview: The European Union and Statebuilding in the Western Balkans

Christopher Bickerton and David Chandler interviewed Paddy Ashdown, international High Representative and EU Special Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina, May 2002–January 2006, at the House of Lords, 5 July 2006. He is currently working on a book distilling the lessons of his experience of statebuilding in the region.     

Intersecting Inequalities: Reflecting on the Subjects and Objects of Equality

The creation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) brings together equality strands that have previously been conceived in a discrete manner, politically, legally and institutionally. Its establishment raises the possibility that UK equality institutions might be better able to engage with issues of 'intersectionality'. This article considers whether this potential is likely to be realised. It suggests that two distinct approaches are emerging in response to the challenge of multiple inequalities. One entails the EHRC retaining a separate strands approach to equality, with its notion of structural inequality and discrete, frequently competing, groups; a second entails the embrace of a diversity agenda in which we are all complex individuals seeking an equal opportunity to thrive in the market-place. Given the potential limitations of these approaches - the first may not be sufficiently flexible to allow for a joined-up approach to multiple inequalities, while the second may subordinate equality considerations to those of greater economy productivity - the article asks whether others way of negotiating the demands intersectionality might be open to the EHRC.     

Interest groups and public affairs in the contemporary Balkans: Project overview and preliminary explanations

This comprehensive coverage of public affairs and interest group activity in the Balkans has 2 objectives. One is to produce the first study focusing solely on interest groups in each of the 7 countries of the former socialist Yugoslavia. The second is to compare developments across the region to assess the extent to which this study reflects existing research and what it can add to this knowledge. To achieve these objectives, this article explains several aspects of the methodology used by all contributors. These include common use of terms, an explanation of the topics covered, and the survey instrument.     

Comparing the Democratization of Intelligence Governance in East Central Europe and the Balkans

This article discusses the reform of intelligence governance in two sub-regional groupings of former communist states: East Central Europe and the Balkans. These two sub-regions are delineated according to the pace and nature of transformations that they have undergone since the collapse of communist rule and their relations with respect to the European Union, the key political and economic organization in Europe. A number of lessons are drawn from comparing experiences in the two sub-regions relating to democratic reform of the security apparatus, and in particular the intelligence sector. Significant factors in the consolidation of democratic governance of intelligence include the nature of precursor communist-era regimes and the legacies they created, whether armed conflict has occurred during the transition, the extent and character of external (especially EU) assistance, and the strength of media and civil society. These factors appear to have influenced how transitional regimes have sought to introduce institutional reforms to constrain the powers of those services and their susceptibility to arbitrary use. They also have influenced measures taken to redress abuses by intelligence services under the preceding communist regime and the legitimation of the post-authoritarian state.     

Work Sharing Policy: Power Sharing and Stalemate in American Federalism

Work sharing benefits are partial unemployment benefits, andfederal policy related to them is in an administrative muddle.A lack of leadership by the federal government has stalled stateimplementation. During economic downturns when political voltageis high, policy makers look to work sharing as one way to managejob loss. Conversely, work sharing is often forgotten duringprosperous times. This article describes how federalism sometimesfacilitates state initiation of work sharing policy and at othertimes impedes it. The authors discuss work sharing through sixpolicy phases during a thirty-year era of devolving federalauthority to states for employment services and job training,and they make observations about the stalemate in federal policy.     

Affordability After Subsidies: Understanding the Trajectories of Former Assisted Housing in Florida

Each year, thousands of units are lost from the assisted rental housing inventory through deterioration and default, subsidy expiration, and market-rate conversion. While a good deal of research and data collection has focused on identifying at-risk developments, less is known about what happens to former assisted developments after they exit income and rent restrictions. This article uses a survey of former assisted properties in Florida to identify their postsubsidy trajectories—that is, as to whether developments continue as rental housing, are converted to condominiums, or leave the housing stock through vacancy and demolition; and for those that continue as rental housing, whether they continue to offer affordable rents. Using logistic regression models, the article examines the property, housing market, and neighborhood characteristics that determine these trajectories. The results show that smaller properties, those that have been out of subsidy programs longer, and those in stronger neighborhood housing markets are more likely to be converted to condominiums. Among developments that continue as rental housing, those that previously had more stringent rent restrictions, those in strong rental submarkets, and those with better transit access tend to become unaffordable compared with previous rent limits.     

Campus Religious Life in America: Revitalization and Renewal

What role does organized religion play in the life of the American campus? Among both scholarly and popular observers, the university has long been regarded as secular territory. Contrary to the .cphsecularization thesis, the history of campus religion is not a declension narrative. This essay provides an overview of the student religious landscape in America, focusing most of its attention on schools that are not affiliated with a religious tradition. It identifies six signs of religious vitality on campus: 1) the expansion of evangelicalism; 2) the revitalization of Catholic student organizations; 3) the reinvention of campus Judaism; 4) the growth of new immigrant and alternative religions; 5) the beginnings of renewal in mainline Protestant campus ministries; 6) the embrace of spirituality by student affairs professionals. Noting several recent studies on education and religiosity, it concludes that college is not especially damaging to religious commitment.     

Tolerance and growth: modeling the empirical relationship

We showed, in Berggren and Elinder (2012), that tolerance toward homosexuals is negatively and quite robustly related to economic growth. In a comment, Bornhoff and Lee (this issue) question this finding on model-specification grounds. By undertaking three changes, they purport to show that our main result does not hold. In this article, we demonstrate that one of these changes is inconsequential (replacing GDP per capita by its logarithm in controlling for conditional convergence) and argue that two of them are questionable. First, the removal of certain central control variable risks introducing omitted variable bias and inconsistent estimates. Second, regional dummy variables are added on arbitrary grounds. For example, by using regional dummy variables that are just as reasonable as the Baltic dummy used by Bornhoff and Lee, we find that significance for tolerance toward homosexuals reappears in our empirical model. In all, this implies that there are good grounds for considering the negative relationship between tolerance towards homosexuals and growth valid, Bornhoff and Lee??s claims notwithstanding.     

Self-Regulatory Trajectories in the Shadow of Public Power: Resolving Digital Dilemmas in Europe and the United States

Although industry self-regulation has developed into a preferred regulatory strategy for the digital economy, self-regulatory solutions adopted in the U.S. and the European Union differ considerably. We argue that variation in the shadow of public power—the public sector tools employed to induce industry collective action—sets the two on distinct self-regulatory trajectories. Legalistic self-regulation dominates in the U.S. and coordinated self-regulation in Europe. Expectations derived from the model are evaluated in case studies of online content regulation and personal data privacy protection.     

Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions,Timing and Choices in France and Spain

The influence of national administrative institutions on contemporary reforms has often been noted but insufficiently tested. This article enriches the comparative perspective of administrative reform policies by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: the choices of reformers, institutional constraints, timing and sequencing and long-term trajectories. This article tries to determine whether most similar administrative systems exhibit analogous contemporary reform trajectories in content, timing and sequence. By comparing the administrative reform policies of two ‘most similar’ Napoleonic countries, France and Spain, this article analyses the commonalities and divergences of decentralisation, territorial state reorganisation, civil service reforms and policies that focus on performance management and organisational design. The article identifies the ‘causal mechanisms’ that characterise the specific role of institutions and considers both the role of context and the importance of policy intersections.     

Explaining Different Trajectories in Immigrant Political Integration: Moroccans and Turks in Amsterdam

This article examines why the political integration and representation of ethnic minority groups may develop along different paths. Taking Amsterdam as a case study, it compares two of the city’s most predominant immigrant groups: Turks, who have taken a group-based incorporation strategy – visible in this group’s dense organisational infrastructure – and Moroccans, who have followed a more individualist assimilation strategy. The distinct trajectories have produced a relatively high proportion of Turkish-origin elected officials, while individuals of Moroccan origin feature more prominently in executive office, exercising power over day-to-day decisions. The article proposes that whereas features of the electoral system determine which opportunities exist for immigrants to participate in the political process, it is the structure of an immigrant group that affects the ability of members to seize such opportunities. Furthermore, it shows how political parties and party elites act as gatekeepers and facilitators of immigrants’ political participation.     

共享经济中供需双方的信用风险管理研究——以知识技能共享为例

共享经济正在成为“双创”的重要切入点。较之实物商品,知识技能更容易通过互联网平台分享,但也更容易因为供需双方的信息不对称而引发各种纠纷,进而导致共享平台难以为继。解决这些问题的根本在于强化市场经济有效运行的基础——信用风险管理体系,包括对供需双方身份、交易和评价内容的信息审核机制,充分反映双方交易历史、交易能力和信用现状的信用评价体系,动态保证金、第三方资金托管和商业保险相结合的信用保障机制,有第三方参与仲裁的在线争议处理机制,及平台、政府和行业协会协调运行的三方联合监管等五个方面。这些内容,也构成了共享平台风险管理和控制的重要内容。     

Objects and Spaces of Aid: An Introduction

ABSTRACT

Lisa Smirl (1975–2013) was a scholar of international relations and former aid worker who brought a deep understanding of the business and practice of aid alongside a rich appreciation of theories and concepts to make sense of them. Her life was ended by cancer a few years after completing her PhD and taking up a lectureship at the University of Sussex (UK). Despite the brevity of her academic career, she had acquired a burgeoning reputation amongst colleagues studying humanitarian aid, conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Lisa was fascinated by the social world of aid and how its objects and spaces shaped humanitarian and development practice. Many of the questions which Lisa addressed in her academic work are now the subject of lively inter-disciplinary debate across anthropology, sociology, development studies and political science. This set of papers by contributors to a workshop as part of the International Studies Association annual convention held in Toronto in March 2014 is a direct engagement with Lisa's work and constitutes a series of studies of the objects and spaces of international aid. One of the papers is a posthumously published paper of Lisa's whilst the other three papers are written by peers who worked with and knew Lisa during her career.     

The Religious State in the Sudan: A Preliminary Characterization of the Debacle

The performance of the Islamist state in the Sudan shows clear signs of disintegration. Its totalitarian grip over the country and its population is dramatically restrained by internal and external factors that have been working together since the regime's formative years. Despite the religious nature of the regime's ideology, religion has played a key role in the discourse of its opponents. The paper outlines some of the factors that have contributed to the regime's disintegration.