Nationalism and orthodoxy: Nichifor Crainic and the political culture of the extreme right in 1930s Romania

This article explores the interplay of religion, anti-Semitism, and personal rivalries in building the ultra-nationalist movement in 1930s Romania, using the career of Nichifor Crainic as a case study. As a theologian, Crainic created and taught a synthesis of nationalism and Romanian Orthodoxy which was broadly accepted by most ultra-nationalists in interwar Romania. As a journalist, Crainic directed several newspapers which spearheaded acrimonious attacks on democratic and ultra-nationalist politicians alike. As a politician, he joined and left both Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Legion of the Archangel Michael and A.C. Cuza's National Christian Defense League before attempting to form his own Christian Workers' Party. Crainic's writings ultimately earned him a place as a minister in two governments and membership of the Romanian Academy. His career reveals an ultra-nationalist movement rife with division and bickering but united around a vaguely defined ideology of religious nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism.     

Tracking the War of Ideas: A Poll of Ottawa Muslims

A 2008 poll of 430 Ottawa Muslims found predominantly negative views of the U.S. war on terrorism, including the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. This poll also assessed approval of Western powers (U.S., Canada, Israel, United Nations) and challengers of Western power (Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, government of Iran). Surprisingly, attitudes of Ottawa Muslims toward militant Muslim groups were unrelated to their attitudes toward Western governments. Discussion suggests that this pattern, if confirmed in other Muslim polls, would mean that the war of ideas against radical Islam must address not one target but two: favorable opinions of militants and unfavorable opinions of the U.S. Muslims who come to like the West more may not like Muslim militants any less.     

Europeanisation and Its Discontents

Europeanisation is now a very prolific area of scholarly research in the social sciences, encompassing among other aspects examination of change in the polities, public policies and animating politics of states arising from engagement with the meta-organisation of the European Union. However, we argue that mainstream social science portrayals of categories of territory, identity and power remain comparatively neglected in existing analyses and the interrelations between these categories is undertheorised, preventing clarification of Europeanisation's underlying processes. We contend that a promising starting-point for resolving these discontents can be found in recent debates in geography focusing upon space and scale.     

Learning by doing in contests

We introduce learning by doing in a dynamic contest. Contestants compete in an early round and can use the experience gained to reduce effort cost in a subsequent contest. A contest designer can decide how much of the prize mass to distribute in the early contest and how much to leave for the later one in order to maximize total efforts. We show how this division affects effort at each stage, and present conditions that characterize the optimal split. There is a trade off here, since a large early prize increases first period efforts leading to a substantial reduction in second round effort cost; on the other hand, there is less of the prize mass to fight over in the second round, reducing effort at that stage. The results are indicative of the fact that the designer often prefers to leave most of the prize mass for the second contest to reap the gains from the learning by doing effect.     

Public service reform: A comparative west European perspective

This article compares recent public service reforms in Britain, France and Germany in terms of reform origins, the trade‐off between managerial and administrative values in the overall reform orientation and the balance within managerial reform between public choice and business management strands. An explanation is advanced of variations in national reform profiles which draws on elements of both political economy and historical institutionalist approaches. Particular importance is attributed to the composition of French and German administrative reform policy communities, and to the resilience of collectivist ideals of public service within the respective memberships, as compared with Britain.     

Non-random Study Attrition: Assessing Correction Techniques and the Magnitude of Bias in a Longitudinal Study of Reentry from Prison

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Longitudinal data offer many advantages to criminological research yet suffer from attrition, namely in the form of sample selection bias. Attrition may...     

Designing property rights for water: mediating market,government, and corporation failures

Recent decades have seen an acceleration in public concern about the allocation of increasingly scarce water supplies. There are many reasons for this concern, such as growth in urban populations. In this article, we focus on how surface water’s special qualities (the combination of spillovers, rent-seeking behavior, and common pool resources) complicate the assignment of property rights in any legal framework. These characteristics make specific market structures necessary in order to efficiently allocate rights. The state usually designs those structures. Yet, just like markets can fail, so can governments fail to effectively allocate those rights. So designers often turn to quasi-judicial conservancy boards as a second-best solution. We argue that those boards may themselves fail through a form of “corporation failure.” We address these three types of failures, and offer an analysis of two cases that suggests that the likelihood conservancy boards will suffer from corporate failure depends on the actions of the boards and outside stakeholders (like governments).