Party competition in the Middle East: spatial competition in the post-Arab Spring era

This paper charts the nature of political cleavage between major parties in post-Arab Spring elections in five Mediterranean region countries, with data from online opt-in surveys. We compare the Moroccan elections, held under a consolidated authoritarian regime, with the transitional cases of Tunisia and Egypt as well as the more mature democracies of Turkey and Israel. Voter opinions are obtained on 30 salient issues, and parties and voters are aligned along two dimensions. We trace country-specific cleavage patterns and reflections of party system maturity in these five countries. The cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco reveal that in less settled cleavage structures there is little congruence between vote propensities for parties and agreement levels with policy positions compared to the more institutionalized democracies of Israel and Turkey where voters exhibit a higher likelihood to vote for a party as the distance between the voter and the party in the policy space gets smaller.     

American culpability: the Bush Administration and the Iranian nuclear impasse

Drawing on the memoirs of Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator (2003–2005) and newly elected president, this paper considers the impact of the Bush Administration's Iran policy on the internal politics of the Islamic Republic and the dynamics of its nuclear negotiation strategy. It argues that the administration had a detrimental effect on international nuclear negotiations with Iran and should be considered at least partially responsible for the current nuclear impasse. Identifying three key areas, it focuses on the administration's rejection of constructive engagement with the relatively moderate government of President Mohammad Khatami; the negative influence of the USA during Iran's nuclear negotiations with the EU3; and the administration's refusal to provide the Iranians with confidence-building incentives, or countenance unconditional nuclear talks, despite a policy change in Washington that was ostensibly multilateralist and gave the impression of directly engaging with the Iranians.     

Rape Victim Blaming as System Justification: The Role of Gender and Activation of Complementary Stereotypes

This research examined reactions towards female rape victims from a system justification perspective. Study 1 demonstrated that gender-related system justification motivation (Modern Sexism) predicted the propensity to blame a female rape victim among men, but not among women. Modern sexism predicted rape victim blaming among men even when statistically controlling for a general antipathy towards women, and the results were unaffected by social desirability concerns. Consistent with previous study on system justification theory, we demonstrated in Study 2 that system justification motivation can predict victim blaming also among women, provided that complementary stereotypes about women have been activated. By contrast, system justification motivation predicted men’s propensity to blame a rape victim irrespective of whether complementary stereotypes about women had been experimentally activated.     

Justice Judgments of Physical Abuse and Theft: The Importance of Outcome and Procedure

The perceived justice of a situation is frequently a function of both outcome and procedure, but the importance of each may vary when making justice judgments. This study investigated the impact of type and severity of offence, social relationship and status on the perceived importance of the outcome and procedure for justice judgments. The outcome was considered more important than the procedure for judgments of both theft and physical abuse, regardless of offence severity, status of the offender and the victim–perpetrator social relationship. Both outcome and procedure were viewed as more important for judgments of physical abuse than theft. Data obtained for exploratory purposes yielded no correlation between ratings of justice and importance, indicating that the two are not aspects of the same construct. Integrations with work within criminology are discussed.     

“The ‘New’ Malaysian Criminal Procedure: Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act 2006”

This paper explores the reform process surrounding the recent changes to the Malaysian Code of Criminal Procedure concerning statements made to police officers, discovery, body searches, rights to legal advice and detention. The Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act 2006 was the first major piece of legislation to reform the criminal process in Malaysia for 20 years and represented an attempt not only to deal with specific problems relating to police practice and the pre-trial process, but also to single out Malaysia as a progressive state within Asia committed to the Rule of Law. The problem which this paper seeks to address, however, is that while many of the reforms appear to be a welcome attempt to protect suspects in police custody from abuse (a startling contrast to the recent legislative measures introduced in the UK as part of the “war on terror”), to better regulate police investigations and to improve the overall quality of justice administered pre-trial, a doubt lingers as to the direction of that reform and of the values guiding the criminal process. It will be argued that, without clear cultural markers, implementation of the new measures is likely to be piecemeal and previous cultural practices will continue to undermine even the best of legislative intentions.     

Crimes of Terrorism on Innocent Iraqis from (2014) to (2016): A Semiotic Study

Terrorist organisations have increased and widened in Iraq in particular and the world in general in recent years. People have suffered a lot from these terrorist organisations due to their thirst for killing innocent civilians. The study aims to convey the suffering of innocent Iraqis caused by terrorist acts to the world. In order to achieve the aim, the research adopted Barthes’s (1964) framework to analyse the selected photographs. The researchers have selected (13) iconic photographs for the analysis. The photographs are taken from the main websites of the local, Arabic, and foreign media. The study found out that terrorism is the brutal enemy of all Iraqi societies including Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, Christians, and Yazidis. This research is a clear example that shows the world the extent of the suffering, pain, and fear Iraqi people are facing because of terrorism.

     

Interpretation and mutability: socio-legal texts of the Quran; three accounts from contemporary Iran

Since the advent of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, radical changes have taken place in the views of many Iranian scholars regarding the nature of religious belief. In particular, the issue of the compatibility or incompatibility of Islam's socio-legal precepts and the challenges of time and space have become a crucial matter for numerous Iranian intellectuals. This paper discusses how three prominent Iranian intellectuals of the post-revolutionary era, namely Mostafa Malekian, Mohsen Kadivar and Hasan Yousefi-Eshkevari, have put forward arguments in favor of the contingent nature of the Quran's socio-legal passages. The paper argues that these scholars challenge the notion of the immutability of the Quran's socio-legal texts, claiming that they could be applied differently depending on the specific time and place. In this sense, the paper establishes the groundwork for showing how these scholars have re-examined traditional understandings of religion in light of the new challenges that are arising in the modern world.     

Retraction Note to: Economic and legal regulation of the use and development of renewable energy sources

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics -