Public Goods,Club Goods,and Private Interests:

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the question of how domestic elite preferences drive states’ foreign policies by studying British efforts to suppress maritime piracy in the South China Sea in the 1920s and 1930s. The archival record shows that the British conducted military interventions, which included destroying entire Chinese villages, principally to serve the private aims of London business elites. Absent these parochial interests Britain ignored pirate attacks, including attacks on British-flagged ships. This finding challenges the standard structural explanation, put forward by global public goods scholars, that powerful maritime states suppress piracy to protect universal access to the global maritime commons. It does so through a detailed examination of the principal example cited by this argument’s supporters: historical British counter-piracy efforts. Understanding why states pursue their foreign policies also provides a greater understanding of why powerful states choose to serve as global public goods providers in some instances but not in others.     

General

The Arab Awakening. By George Antonius. 8¾” × 5?”. Pp. 472. Five maps. Hamish Hamilton. 1938. 15s.

Freedom of conscience in the new near east. Some Aspects of Religious Liberty of Nationals in the Near East. A Collection of Documents. By Helen Clarkson Davis. Pp. xviii + 182 and two maps. New York and London: Harper and Brothers. 1938.

Palestine of the Crusades. A Map of the Country on scale 1: 350,000, with Historical Introduction and Gazetteer. Jerusalem : Survey of Palestine. Price 5s.     

Literature from the Periphery of São Paulo at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair

This article analyzes the participation of São Paulo as guest of honor at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair (2014). We will examine why the event's curators opted to take writers from the saraus, poetry readings on the city's outskirts, to the Fair, as well as the political arrangements that made the participation of those writers possible. We also discuss why participation in Buenos Aires was so different from that promoted by the federal government for other events, like the Frankfurt Book Fair (2013), where curators prioritized authors with greater prestige or international exposure.     

Precision of estimating time of death by vitreous potassium--comparison of various equations.

This paper is a study of the precision of estimating the time since death comparing the equations developed by different authors. Our aim is to determine with the maximum degree of accuracy the exact time of death of the individual. We consider that the study has been fully justified by the observed differences in the results obtained from the different equations under study when the concentration of potassium in the vitreous humour was identical.     

Amid Political Spin and Online Misinformation,Fact Checking Adapts

After more than a decade of rapid growth, the worldwide fact-checking movement has surged since 2016, fuelled by rising concern about the political and social influence of online misinformation. This movement is also changing in ways that deserve close attention, as understanding and mitigating the spread of false information across digital networks has become an urgent priority for governments, charitable foundations, academic researchers, and technology companies. This research brief presents a snapshot of the field based on a mid-2019 survey designed to reveal how fact-checking organisations understood their mission, where they were directing their resources, and how their focus had shifted in the last several years. We found evidence of diverging missions in the fact-checking world, as a focus on combatting online misinformation began to supersede one on checking rhetoric from public figures.     

A. Chechi,The Settlement of International Cultural Heritage Disputes,Oxford University Press,Nex York,NY 2014, xxx + 343 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-870399-0.

Netherlands International Law Review -