Nations hospitable to organized crime and terrorism

This report assesses conditions that contribute to or are potentially hospitable to transnational criminal activity and terrorist activity in selected regions of the world during the period 1999–2002. Although the focus of the report is on transnational activity, domestic criminal activity is recognized as a key foundation for transnational crime, especially as the forces of globalization intensify. The report has been arranged geographically into the following major headings: Africa, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. Within the geographical headings, the report addresses individual countries with particularly salient conditions. Cases such as the Triborder Area (TBA) of South America and East and West Africa, where conditions largely overlap national borders, have been treated as regions rather than by imposing an artificial delineation by country. The bibliography has been divided into the same geographical headings as the text. The major sources for this report are recent periodical reports from Western and regional sources, Internet sites offering credible recent information, selected recent monographs, and personal communications with regional experts. Treatment of individual countries varies according to the extent and seriousness of conditions under study. Thus some countries in a region are not discussed, and others are discussed only from the perspective of one or two pertinent activities or conditions. Because they border the United States, Canada and Mexico have received especially extensive treatment.     

Implicit and Explicit Stereotyping of Adolescents

Although adolescents are commonly assumed to be rebellious, risky and moody, two experiments demonstrate for the first time that these beliefs operate both explicitly and implicitly as stereotypes. In Experiment 1, participants (a) explicitly endorsed adolescent stereotypes and (b) implicitly associated adolescent stereotyped words more rapidly with the adolescent than the adult social category. Individual differences in the explicit endorsement of adolescent stereotypes predicted explicit perceptions of the rebelliousness of a 17-year-old but not a 71-year-old, although individual differences in implicit stereotyping did not. Identification with adults was associated with greater implicit stereotyping but not explicit stereotyping. In Experiment 2, subliminal exposure to adolescent stereotyped words increased subsequent perceptions of the rebelliousness of a 17-year-old but not a 71-year-old. Although individual differences in implicit adolescent stereotyping did not predict explicit evaluations of adolescents, stereotypes of adolescents nevertheless influenced explicit evaluations unconsciously and unintentionally.

In Times of Crisis: The Conditions of Pocketbook Effects

When and how will personal financial (aka “pocketbook”) concerns drive citizens’ political decisions? Scholars remain puzzled by the mismatch between the expectation that pocketbook voting should occur and the reality that, according to most findings, it usually does not. Using original survey data collected immediately after Iceland’s second “Icesave” referendum (2011), I first report the results of an embedded experiment that successfully evokes greater pocketbook concern. Next, I analyze the determinants of retrospective pocketbook evaluations, showing that priming effects are conditioned by political sophistication such that high sophisticates are among the most likely to report negative economic assessments. I then turn to the consequences of these egocentric views for government approval. Mediation analysis confirms a significant indirect effect, suggesting that subjective pocketbook evaluations exert a strong influence on political attitudes that has been hidden in prior work. Results illuminate the contextual, cognitive, and causal circumstances under which pocketbook effects transpire and suggest new ways in which self-interest might matter for attitudes toward international political economy issues.     

Global Cities as Market Civilisation

Building upon interdisciplinary efforts to understand the origins, logic and significance of global cities, this article argues that global cities should be seen as a critical component and outcome of a political project to generate a global market society. Global cities should be seen as the successful implementation of free-market political philosophy, constructed and defended by a particular historical configuration of international society. The historical transformation of urban form signalled by the "global city" concept is tightly bound to the neoliberal restructuring of the world economy in the 1970s, underpinned by US hegemonic power. The first part of this article argues that the distinctive historical origin of global cities has shaped their current trajectories and draws the horizon of their future prospects. Having established the connection between liberal world order and global cities, the second part of the article argues that the contemporary form of the global city is under threat from two sources. The first threat is internal to the global city form itself. Global cities have internalised the contradictory forces of market liberalism. They have registered astonishing economic growth over the last four decades, and generated vast material and intellectual resources. But, at the same time, they have become deeply divided and polarised in ways that threaten the urban fabric. The second source of threat comes from the possible weakening or collapse of liberal world order, with the accelerating decline of US hegemony. Drawing on aspects of Karl Polanyi's analysis of the nineteenth-century "great transformation", the article argues that a number of future trajectories for the global city can be identified in the contemporary moment.     

Welfare Reform in Delaware: "A Better Chance" for Whom?

Does welfare reform provide "A Better Chance"(ABC) for Delaware'swelfare recipients? Not in terms of meeting the program's objectives.The employment and earnings impacts are modest. ABC had relativelylittle impact on recipients with three to five years of previouswelfare experience. ABC recipients had some understanding ofthe broad parameters of the new rules, but not of many of thecritical details. Nearly one-half of the ABC participants werefinancially penalized for violating the rules. Sanctions didnot necessarily change their behavior, as only about 25 percentcured their sanction within six months. There is little evidencethat the state has moved forward on encouraging two-parent familiesand discouraging teenage pregnancy and unwed motherhood.