UN involvement and civil war peace agreement implementation

Many studies argue that third-party guarantees, such as those of the United Nations, increase the chances that belligerents will sign peace agreements, but it is unclear how third-party involvement affects the implementation of such agreements. We unpack the relationship between UN involvement and peace agreement success by focusing on the risk of defections during the peace accord implementation phase. We argue that two types of commitment problems, namely involuntary and voluntary defections, emerge from the characteristics of the peace process itself as well as from new opportunities available to rebel groups. We expect that shifts in relative power and polarized voting lead to lower implementation scores overall, but that the deployment of UN troops has a mitigating effect, thereby increasing the prospects of sustainable peace agreements. Using data from the Peace Accords Matrix Implementation Dataset from 1989 to 2010 and personnel commitments to UN peacekeeping operations, we find evidence that large UN missions are better placed to support the implementation and longevity of the peace process.

     

Constructing alternatives to globalisation: strengthening tradition through innovation

With the inability of international economic integration to create opportunities for important segments of society, many Mexicans are searching for ways to forge their own alternatives. These strategies are the concrete manifestations of the realisation that the ‘mainstream’ path of the search for proletarian employment is no longer viable and that a return to traditional forms of cooperation, organised around mechanisms for ecosystem management, might offer greater security and a better quality of life. People are finding ways to strengthen their communities, to ensure that their families can remain in the rural areas as part of dynamic communities searching for a new relationship to their regions, as well as to the nation of which they wish to continue to be a part. This article illustrates this process with an analysis of a project that focuses on creating a new product—low-fat pork—that can command a premium price in the market, and in the process contribute to strengthening a community, providing new opportunities for women, and improving environmental management.     

The Effect of Media on Charitable Giving and Volunteering: Evidence from the “Give Five” Campaign

Fundraising campaigns advertised via mass media are common. To what extent such campaigns affect charitable behavior is mostly unknown, however. Using giving and volunteering surveys conducted biennially from 1988 to 1996, I investigate the effect of a national fundraising campaign, “Give Five,” on charitable giving and volunteering patterns. The widely advertised Give Five campaign was aimed to encourage people to give 5 percent of their income and volunteer 5 hours a week. After controlling for selection into being informed about the Give Five, I find that people who were informed about the campaign increased their weekly volunteering activity on average by almost half an hour, but their giving behavior was not significantly affected. I discuss the policy implications associated with this result and argue that although the Give Five campaign did not achieve its goal, its impact on volunteering was considerable. © 2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Improved estimation of postmortem interval based on differential behaviour of vitreous potassium and hypoxantine in death by hanging

Many formulae are available to estimate the relation between the potassium ([K+]) and hypoxantine ([Hx]) concentration in the vitreous humour and the postmortem interval (PMI). Typically these have been based on a correlation test and linear regression using the postmortal interval as the independent variable and [K+] or [Hx] as the dependent variable in order to estimate the confidence interval. However, a recent study has shown that a more precise measurement of PMI can be obtained if [K+] is used as the independent variable. The regression lines obtained from the most recent deceased subjects with forensic relevance received for autopsy in the Institute of Legal Medicine are [K+] = 5.589 + 0.174PMI and [Hx] = 26.459 + 3.017PMI, by changing the variables, we obtain PMI=3.967[K+] - 19.186 (R2 = 0.688, P < 0.001) and PMI = 0.172 [Hx] + 0.170 (R2 = 0.518, P < 0.001). In this paper we propose the cause of death as an extra factor which modifies the relationship and gives even greater precision in estimating PMI. In cases of death by hanging the results are considerably improved with [K+] = 5.224 + 0.225PMI and [Hx] = 15.161+4.957PMI, respectively, and consequently, PMI = 3.631[K+] - 17.334 (R2 = 0.818, P< 0.001) and PMI = 0.153[Hx] - 0.368 (R2 = 0.757, P < 0.001): the slope is less and the precision is obviously enhanced.