Welfare as Warfare: How Violent Non-State Groups Use Social Services to Attack the State

Several violent non-state groups also administer social services. Although earlier works stress the effects of social service provision on support and sympathy for violent groups, this article emphasizes a broader challenge. Namely, social welfare organizations threaten to rob the state of the legitimacy it derives through the social contract. Abolishing these organizations can cause humanitarian crises, radicalize populations, and erode domestic and international policy support. Ignoring them invites the continued erosion of state power. The way out of this dilemma is through a strategy of “displacement,” whereby the state eradicates non-state social services while concurrently extending its own welfare capacity.     

Violent Crime and Capital Market Punishment: How Violent Crime Affects the Supply of Debt to Municipal Mexico

Research shows that violent and organized crime reduces foreign direct investment and that armed conflict lowers sovereign credit ratings. Building on these insights, I argue that violent crime reduces financial institutions’ confidence in the capacity of governments to repay loans, raising the costs attached to loans, and reducing government debt through a “supply-side” logic. Yet, this logic is difficult to test. Governments can render lenders indifferent to violent crime by accepting higher borrowing costs, resulting in no observed relationship between them. It is for this reason that analysis of the effect of violent crime on government credit ratings alone cannot tell us much about its effect on actual government debt. In this study, I explain how analysis of subnational debt from welfare-minded public banks and profit-minded private lenders can distinguish the supply-side logic from the null hypothesis. Cross-sectional time-series analysis of homicide rates and municipal debt in Mexico demonstrates support for the supply-side logic. Evidence of the supply-side logic reveals that those governments most in need of cost-efficient financing are most likely to be charged higher prices for it or priced out of capital markets altogether, signaling the need for market intervention in these cases.     

政党在美国政治生活中的作用和影响

美国宪法没有明确规定政党的地位和作用,但政党在．美国政治生活中发挥了重要作用。美国民主、共和两党长期以来轮流执政,控制着各级政府和立法机构大权,在制定国家和社会政策时具有重要影响。     

When Terrorism as Strategy Fails: Dissident Irish Republicans and the Threat to British Security

The use of terrorism as a strategy for obtaining political goals by non-state actors persists in the international system, despite attempts by states to counter the phenomenon. This article explores the resurgent threat posed to British security by dissident Irish republicans in order to illustrate the limited utility of terrorism as a strategy in the current sociopolitical context. Therefore, it has three objectives: First, it explains how strategic theory can aid in constructing a conceptual framework for explaining the persistence of terrorism, in general, and dissident republican violence, in particular. Second, it examines the dissident threat in light of the general failure of “armed struggle” to achieve republican goals in Irish politics. It is argued here that dissident republicans have confused “means” with “ends” and that this, ultimately, demonstrates the futility of their violence. Finally, the article suggests ways of tackling the dissident republican variant of terrorism.     

发展中国家政党如何在多党民主制体制内实现长期执政？

发展中国家实行政党政治的时间相对较短,经过自主探索和外部作用,目前绝大多数发展中国家仿照西方的政党运作模式,在本国建立了多党民主制。多党民主制的一个重要特点是竞争性民主,即代表不同阶层和利益集团的政党通过竞争获取政权。大部分发展中国家盲目引进多党民主制,出现消化不良的情况,政党无序竞争,     

The Portrayal of Female Terrorists in the Media: Similar Framing Patterns in the News Coverage of Women in Politics and in Terrorism

Abstract

Although women have been among the leaders and followers of terrorist organizations throughout the history of modern terrorism, the mass media typically depict women terrorists as interlopers in an utterly male domain. A comparison of the framing patterns in the news about women in politics and the entrenched stereotypes in the coverage of female terrorists demonstrates similarities in the depiction of these legitimate (women in politics) and illegitimate political actors (women in terrorism). Just like the managers of election campaigns are cognizant of the electorate's stereotypical gender perceptions, terrorist organizations know about and exploit cultural gender clichés that are reinforced by the media. The argument here is that the implementation of anti- and counterterrorist policies must not be influenced by the mass-mediated images of female terrorists because they do not reflect reality.     

Democratization and Political Change as Threats to Collective Sentiments: Testing Durkheim in Russia

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim's work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions (N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union.     

Mentoring in Relation to Violent Extremism: A Study of Role,Purpose, and Outcomes

This article presents the key findings of an evaluation of a mentoring scheme being implemented for individuals deemed vulnerable to violent extremism in the West Midlands region in the United Kingdom. The key findings of this study are, firstly, that mentoring around violent extremism carries distinctive features, and can be distinguished from mentoring in other areas of criminal behavior or in drug/alcohol use. Secondly, there is ongoing debate around what the purposes of mentoring are; crystallizing around the key question of whether mentoring in the area of violent extremism is about changing beliefs or changing behavior, or both; therefore, how to measure success? The article examines the different theoretical fields in relation to de-radicalization, disengagement, desistance, and debiasing in order to situate the article's findings in a broader body of work. This article also links individual mentoring to the notion of community, for it is important to consider the individual who is being mentored in relation to the broader set of communities that they belong to or associate with. Here, it is stressed that in the United Kingdom there are significant tensions between approaches that emphasize community cohesion, and those that emphasze liberal freedoms associated with liberal democracy, particularly in relation to Al Qaeda–linked extremism.     

The Hijab and Work: Female Entrepreneurship in Response to Islamophobia

This article focuses on the emerging phenomenon of Muslim women’s entrepreneurial networks in France. It seeks to illustrate a causal relationship between a sociopolitical context where state secularism (laïcité) has been abusively interpreted as a blank check to enforce religious neutrality in France, which has therefore inadvertently encouraged these entrepreneurial networks. As such, this article positions these networks as form of empowerment to overcome the sense of humiliation, isolation, and exclusion produced by the current context of state secularism in France, rather than solely an illustration of an independent entrepreneurial spirit. The labor market appears as a field in which social and political practices regulating religious visibility have been enacted within a context of religious tensions in French society rising since the late 1980s (Baubérot 2000). This occurs between the pre-eminence of individual freedoms in secularism and the anticlerical tendencies that can be inferred from recent decisions made by French courts. Based on observations of participants in two women’s entrepreneurship networks made as part of my doctoral research on the impact of la nouvelle laïcité on the lives of Muslim women in France, this article also draws on qualitative interviews with over 30 Muslim women entrepreneurs and dozens of participants involved in professional network initiatives. Because these networks are rapidly evolving and relatively new, my fieldwork data addresses a significant gap in the literature concerning this particular aspect of the debate concerning laïcité. This study makes it possible to observe how in a key part of the private sector—that of entrepreneurial self-employment—the question of the place of religion and its expression in society is a consequence of a particularly French shift away from a common-sense duty of religious neutrality, the result of mounting layers of political debate over the hijab at schools, universities, and hospitals. The Baby Loup case legally confirms the gradual prohibition of public displays of religion outside of the public-sector work environment.     

Psychological Boundaries and Ethnic Conflict: How Identity Constrained Choice and Worked to Turn Ordinary People into Perpetrators of Ethnic Violence During the Lebanese Civil War

Why do ordinary people commit ethnic atrocities? To understand the psychology of ethnic violence we constructed a pilot project based on narrative interviews with five ordinary people who participated in acts of ethnic violence during the Lebanese Civil War. The interviews present striking evidence that identity constrains choice for all individuals, regardless of their particular ideological or socioeconomic demographic background. Our findings challenge both the rationalist approaches of realistic conflict theory and rational choice and the institutional claims of consociational democracy and suggest the tremendous power of identity and perceptions of self in relation to others to constrain political actions.     

相知无远近 万里尚为邻——中共中央政治局常委李长春访问欧亚四国侧记

2010年9月21—30日,从细雨霏霏、海风轻拂的爱沙尼亚,到山岚叠嶂、碧波万顷的黑山;从晴空朗朗、秋意薄现的爱尔兰,到异域传奇、风采独具的伊朗,无处不洋溢着期待与欣喜,无处不洒满着友谊与真诚。中共中央政治局常委李长春应爱沙尼亚、黑山、爱尔兰、伊朗政府邀请,作为增进互信、扩大共识、深化合作、共谋发展的友好使者和贵宾,对上述四国进行正式友好访问。     

Social Immobility,Ethno-politics,and Sectarian Violence: Obstacles to Post-conflict Reconstruction in Northern Ireland

Through analysis of interviews with community leaders and newspaper reports and police data on sectarian violence, this study identifies dynamics and conditions which underscore fluctuations in ethno-political tensions and violence in Northern Ireland. Findings suggest that political provocations which promote such tensions are facilitated by the economic marginalization of communities historically susceptible to violence, ongoing community influence of paramilitary factions and disjuncture between the political priorities of upper- and lower-classes within each ethno-political community. More generally, the research highlights how a lack of investment in social and economic modes of reconstruction undermines the development of new political forms of cross-community cooperation and contributes to the reconstitution of intergroup division.     

From Words to Action: Exploring the Relationship between a Group's Value References and Its Likelihood of Engaging in Terrorism

This study explored the dynamics of terrorism through a content analysis of terrorist and nonterrorist groups' documents. Thirteen terrorist groups were matched with nonterrorist controls, and their documents were coded for the values they attributed to their opponents and their own group. Relative to controls, terrorist groups attributed higher dominance values to their opponents and higher dominance, morality, and culture values to themselves in the full sample and in a predictive sample of documents issued before terrorism. These findings indicate that the values groups express in their documents--and particularly the values they attribute to themselves--may predict whether they will engage in terrorism.‐     

Armed Groups as Political Parties and Their Role in Electoral Politics: The Case of Hizballah

In recent decades, armed groups have shown an increased interest in creating political parties to take part in institutional politics. By using these political wings to participate in elections and win public office, some of them have gained enormous political power. However, despite the important real-world implications of this trend, the existing literature on the topic is still underdeveloped. This article contributes to a better understanding of this subject by examining the factors that motivate armed groups to set up a political wing and compete in elections and by assessing how political participation affects an armed group's strategic outlook. The hypotheses on political wing formation and development are tested by analyzing the decision-making patterns of Hizballah. The findings suggest that the political involvement of armed groups does not follow a linear development process from armed to political organization, but instead assumes cyclical patterns: political accommodation and armed struggle are chosen in turn in response to shifts in the relation and the internal balance of power between a given group's political and armed wings.     

NGOs as Incubator of Participative Democracy in South Korea: Political,Voluntary, and Policy Participation

Abstract

This article is designed to examine the roles of Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in South Korea as an incubator of participative democracy and to review the evolution of their relationship with governments. The study is comprised of four parts. First, related literature on NGOs will be examined from three different perspectives: state‐civil society perspective, voluntary social service perspective, and policy perspective. Second, this essay will survey emerging roles of NGOs in promoting organized citizen participation in the three areas: political participation, voluntary social service participation, and policy participation. Third, recent governments' institutional efforts to support NGOs will be reviewed briefly. Finally, this paper will conclude with the implications for the future of government‐NGOs relationship in policy‐making processes.     

结交一言重相期千里至——中共中央政治局委员、中央书记处书记、中组部部长李源潮访问柬埔寨并出席亚洲政党国际会议第六届大会纪行

12月的柬埔寨,气候温和宜人,景色优美。亚洲政党国际会议第六届大会在美丽的金边召开。     

How to Counter Radical Narratives: Dutch Deradicalization Policy in the Case of Moluccan and Islamic Radicals

This article deals with the role of government in encouraging the decline of radical movements. The question posed is: “Which story can the government tell to encourage the decline of radical groups and the disengagement of their members?” The article makes use of the survey of factors promoting decline and disengagement drawn up by Demant, Slootman, Buijs (? ^?Deceased. ) and Tillie in 2008, as well as the factor “official policy strategies” based on concepts taken from discourse analysis, adapted to counterterrorism and deradicalization strategies by De Graaf in 2009. The article will therefore not address the different practical measures in this field, but focus instead on the perception of these official measures by the radicals. It will illustrate this with two case studies: the deradicalization of South Moluccan youths in the 1970s and of jihadist radicals after 2001, both in the Netherlands.     

Globalization and Prison Privatization: Why Are Most of the World's For-Profit Adult Prisons to Be Found in the American South?

For a generation, students of comparative public policy and international politics have argued that global market discipline and the increasing mobility of international "best practices" have given rise to policy convergence at the global level. This paper uses the American case to investigate some of the forces thought to have given rise to the spread of private prisons. It finds that while there are prisons in a number of countries, the evidence of convergence is thin and seems to suggest that the core of the prison privatization is in the American South. It then examines several theories—the political economy of the prison boom and overcrowding, globalization theory, the politics of the new right and the idea of a "prison-industrial complex"—that have been used to explain prison privatization and the extent to which they are consistent with the empirical pattern. Each takes us some way to understanding that pattern, but none can provide a clear theoretical mapping.