Accumulating meaning,purpose and opportunities to change ‘drip by drip’: the impact of being a listener in prison

Established in 1991, the Listener scheme, regulated by the Samaritans, is currently the best-established peer support scheme in place to help reduce suicide in prisons. Each prison Listener team is comprised of a group of inmate volunteers who provide face-to-face emotional support to their peers. Although the scheme has been in operation for over 20 years, empirical research on the scheme is limited. A deeper understanding of how being a Listener affects prisoners' attitudes, beliefs, emotions and experiences of imprisonment is needed. The present study is a qualitative analysis on the experience of being a Listener and the impact it has on individuals and their prison experience. Interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The analysis revealed two main superordinate themes: ‘Listening and Personal Transformation’ and ‘Countering Negative Prison Emotions’. These themes are unpacked and the analysis focuses on their implications for desistance and offender reform. Results suggest that prisoners who adopt Listener roles experience profound internal changes, shifts in self-identity and gain meaning and purpose from prison. Implications for how such schemes may be utilised in the future and suggestions for further research are offered.     

Early Danish census taking

Census taking in its modern form started in Denmark in 1769, and the next two censuses were taken in 1787 and 1801. Problems that arose during the implementation and tabulation of the first census demonstrate the difficulties in establishing an efficient administration of population statistics from scratch. By trial and error during the course of the first three censuses, the administration learned how to carry out and tabulate a census so that by 1801 census taking had reached a form that could be used for the rest of the 19th century with only minor changes and additions.     

Generational discourse in urban youth images

The history of generations is often researched in the light of ego-documents, including diaries or letters. These sources of communication between young and old require methods of literary criticism, as this article suggests in exemplary cases. Popular (and in some cases popular forms of learned) literature show how stereotypes dominated letters between Nuremberg fathers and sons fom the 16th century. Reading these letters as witnesses of direct emotional expression, as has been done so far, would be problematic on a theoretical level of the concept of autobiography (according the Ricoeur ‘an other’ of the self), but also an empirical level. Letters were cultural artefacts that were considered well-formed only when they met the standards set by the urban youth image. This included a conglomerate of religious discourses, psychological assumption about the nature of emotions, the urban system of values and honour relating to merchant education more specifically. In letters of this intergenerational context, even information could be put into the context of a situational self-representation of the person writing. Writing a letter as an apprentice or a student was not at all confined to convey factual information. Rather than that, writing letters meant to participate in the generation of norms and to act on a meta-level of communication, as well. Negative images of youth were rhetorically implemented in letters to maintain and reaffirm the hierarchy within the family. Letter exchanges secured economic stability of family firms and the subsequent social rise.     

Europol and EU Counterterrorism: International Security Actorness in the External Dimension

This article offers an analysis of Europol's security actorness in the external dimension of EU counterterrorism. While Europol has attracted some scholarly attention, not so much work has focused on the meaning of its international agreements in counterterrorism. This article aims to investigate the international actorness of Europol at the international level in relation to the fight against international terrorism. It offers original conceptual insights based on empirical case studies of international agreements: Europol agreements with U.S. law enforcement, as well as Europol agreements with countries in the European Neighbourhood policy.     

Enlargement as a factor accelerating the transformation of the European community

Think tanks

Think tank traditions policy research and the Politics oj ideas / edited by Diane Stone and Andrew Denham. ‐ Manchester : Manchester University Press, c2004. ‐xiv, 322 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7190–6479–1 (pbk)

International finance

Democratizing Global Governance / edited by Esref Aksu and Joseph A. Camilleri. ‐Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, c2002. ‐ xx, 306 p. ‐ ISBN 0–333–97123‐X (pbk)

Financial stability and growth in emerging economies : the role of the financial sector / edited by Jan Joost Teunissen and Mark Teunissen. ‐ The Hague : FON‐DAD, c2003. ‐ xvi, 281 p. ‐ ISBN 90–74208–21–5

Foreign direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe / edited by Svetla Trifonova Marinova, Marin Alexandrov Marinov.‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2003. ‐ xii, 339 p. ‐ (Transition and development). ‐ ISBN 0–7546–3026–9

Restructuring sovereign debt the case of ad hoc machinery / Lex Rieffel. ‐ Washington D.C. : Brookings Institutution Press, c2003

Sustaining global growth and development : G 7 and IMF governance / edited by Michele Fratianni, Paolo Savona, John J. Kirton. ‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2003. ‐ xxiv, 339 p. ‐ (Gobal finance series). ‐ ISBN 0–7546–3529–5

Turbulent waters : cross‐border finance and international governance / Ralph C. Bryant. ‐ Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, c2003. ‐xvi, 503 p. ‐ ISBN 0–8157–0071–7

European Union

L'Europa e il mondo : la politico estera, di sicurezza e di difesa europea / Marco Clementi. ‐ Bologna : il Mulino, c2004. ‐ 222 p. ‐ (Contemporanea ; 148). ‐ISBN 88–15–09620–5

L'Europe des commissaires : réflexions sur l'identité européenne des Traités de Rome au Traité d'Amsterdam / par Bertrand Rochard. ‐Bruxelles : Etablissements Emile Bruylant, 2003. ‐ xiv, 503 p. ‐(Organisation internationale et relations internationales ; 55 ).‐ ISBN 2–8027–1723–5

The European finality debate and its national dimensions / edited by Simon Serfaty. ‐Washington: The CSIS Press, c2003. ‐xiv, 297 p. ‐ (Significant issues series).‐ ISBN 0–89206–427–7

The European Union, Mercosul and the new world order / editors Helio Jaguaribe, Alvaro de Vasconcelos. ‐ London : Frank Cass, c2003. ‐ xx, 247 p. ‐ ISBN 0–7146–8338–8

Multi‐level governance and institutional change : the Europeanization of regional policy in Italy / Enrico Gualini. ‐ Aldershot : Ashgate, c2004. ‐ (Urban and regional planning and development). ‐ ISBN 0–7546–3626–7     

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.     

A New Barometer for the Evolution of Multilateral Counterterrorism: Introduction to the Materials,Methods, and Results of the UN Security Council and Terrorism Dataset (UNSC-TDS)

There is a general tendency among analysts to treat the activity of the United Nations Security Council as a barometer for measuring the evolution of global security issues. However, despite the Council's central role in multilateral counterterrorism since 9/11, there exists no comprehensive and coherent empirical measurement of its activity on terrorism. This research gap has resulted in contradictory assessments concerning the beginning, the regularity, and the consistency of the Council's activity on terrorism. In an effort to introduce more academic rigor to terrorism studies, researchers need to systematically address this deficit. This article makes a fundamental contribution by introducing a new dataset, the UN Security Council and Terrorism Dataset. It outlines the problems of previously available data and specifies the materials and methods used for the creation of the dataset. It continues by presenting key results from this unprecedented data collection effort and illustrates general trends in the Council's activity on terrorism. Based on this extensive empirical research, it finds that the UN Security Council's activity on terrorism has evolved more regularly and consistently since 1946 than previously thought. This conclusion indicates new directions for future research.     

In search of reliable results: Socialist values and political trust in unified Germany – A comment on Campbell's analyses and conclusions

In a recently published article in this journal, Ross Campbell argues that adherence to socialist values establishes a hitherto neglected factor when it comes to the explanation of differences in East and West German citizens’ political trust. As the results of his study indicate, adherence to socialist values impacts negatively on citizens’ political trust, this effect is more pronounced and more stable over time for East German as compared to West German citizens and is sufficiently strong to eliminate aggregate‐level differences in political trust between East and West Germany. However, this research note suggests that Campbell's article contains several substantial inconsistencies and obscurities that question the reliability and validity of the empirical findings presented. It provides a re‐analysis of Campbell's main arguments and shows to what extent his initial conclusions can be upheld after the shortcomings have been remedied. The results of this re‐analysis suggest that socialist values indeed exhibit a negative impact on German citizens’ political trust, which is relatively stronger for East as compared to West German citizens. However, contrary to Campbell's initial results, the negative effect of socialist values on political trust is robust over time for both East and West German citizens. What is more, there is no empirical evidence confirming that differences in adherence to socialist values between East and West German citizens are sufficiently strong to account for aggregate‐level differences in political trust. In light of these findings, two of Campbell's three main conclusions are dubious and call for further examination.