Conflict Avoidance and Gender Gaps in Political Engagement

Political Behavior - Why are women less likely to engage with politics as compared to men? I explore whether women avoid politics because of their lower levels of tolerance for conflict and...     

Community forest concessionaires: resisting green grabs and producing political subjects in Guatemala

In 2005, Guatemalan community forest concessionaires achieved a remarkable legislative victory that reversed a green land grab in the Maya Biosphere. The fight over this space, the Mirador Basin, provides valuable contributions to analyses of global land grabs, grassroots politics and power relations underpinning environmental governance. First, the fight for the Mirador Basin illustrates how green land grabs create new natures, rather than simply enclosing existing green spaces. Second, it contributes to recent scholarship detailing land-grabbing practices of resistance, acquiescence and incorporation ‘from below’ by describing how Maya Biosphere community forest concessionaires were able to reverse a green grab. Lastly, I argue this successful reversal largely rests on the articulation and mobilization of a new rights-bearing subject – the forest concessionaire. Struggles for land in the Maya Biosphere illustrate that practices and relations of green governance do not always create disciplined, neo-liberal, green subjects. Rather, community forestry has provided a political platform turning reserve residents into influential actors participating in the re-territorialization of power in contemporary Guatemala.     

The New Panopticon? Examining the Effect of Home Confinement on Criminal Recidivism

Due to its versatility within the criminal justice system, home confinement has broad appeal as a sentencing option. This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of house arrest and electronic monitoring on the recidivism of adult offenders. Fourteen effect sizes (from 11 studies) that present recidivistic outcomes were quantitatively pooled, and separate meta-analyses were conducted on varying categories of recidivism severity to assess the differing impact of home confinement. The findings suggest that home confinement helps adult offenders successfully reintegrate into the community upon release from closed custody and deters future offending. Implications for correctional policies and practices toward home confinement as a community-based prevention strategy to supervise offenders are discussed.     

The Lure of New Jobs: How Framing Impacts Perceptions of Local Subsidies for Sports Teams

Municipalities often use public funds to support private projects in pursuit of economic growth or improved quality of life. How does the framing of municipal subsidies impact public support for such funding? We examine the case of government-funded minor league baseball stadiums to address this question. Using nationally representative survey data, we find respondents are much more likely to support funding for stadiums when told that baseball will bring jobs and improve the local economy, compared to other frames. Local governments may therefore rely on positive, economic frames to gain public support, despite a lack of evidence that sports stadiums deliver net economic benefits.     

Vicarious Annihilation: The Effect of Mortality Salience on Perceptions of Hate Crimes

Previous research has found that reminding participants of their mortality creates a need for individuals to maintain and defend subjective cultural worldviews. As a result, mortality salient participants typically strive to uphold legal sanctions and also react negatively to individuals who espouse alternative worldview beliefs, exhibiting behaviors toward those targets ranging from verbal derogation to physical aggression. This paper extends this line of research by examining perceptions of hate crimes. Hate crimes represent a unique class of crime where both the perpetrator and victim may be viewed as worldview violators. Study 1 revealed that mortality salient participants were more supportive of hate crime legislation than were control participants when hate crimes were described in abstract terms and no specific victim was mentioned. In Study 2, a specific victim who posed a potential worldview threat was identified. In this case, mortality salient participants were less punitive toward offenders who attacked these specific worldview-threatening victims.     

The Clinical Utility of Batterer Typologies

Domestic violence research has increasingly focused on the identification of batterer subgroups. Although typologies have been proposed using the utility of both empirical and theoretical methodologies, studies comparing empirically derived and theoretically based typology solutions have not been conducted. To what degree mental health practitioners can successfully classify batterers into subgroups is also not known. To address these questions, data were gathered from 49 male batterers who were treated for domestic violence in an outpatient mental health facility. A preliminary comparison of an empirically derived and a theoretically based typology solution revealed that many batterers were classified differently by the two strategies, although the overall grouping strategies were similar in content. Further, mental health professionals had substantial difficulty choosing which of the cluster analytically created subgroups into which to sort individual batterer's MMPI profile. Finally, different treatment efficacy indicators differentiated among the men in the two subtyping systems, suggesting that each system offers unique clinical information.The second author was supported as a predoctoral fellow by a NIMH Training grant     

Extension of the portfolio allocation model to surplus majority governments: a fuzzy approach

Scholars have long studied the conditions under which the cabinet making process will result in minority, surplus majority, or minimum-winning governing coalitions in parliamentary systems. Since Riker, a good number of these attempts have been based on rational choice assumptions. Among formal approaches in this vein, Laver and Shepsle’s (Making and breaking governments: Cabinets and legislatures in parliamentary governments, 1996) portfolio allocation model argues that parties centrally located in policy space have a greater potential for being part of any governing coalition and that parties located at the issue-by-issue median have a high likelihood of forming a minority government. However, the model predicts that surplus majority coalitions will only form when the number of salient policy dimensions in the political system is greater than two. We incorporate fuzzy set theory in the portfolio allocation model, permitting us to model ambiguity in parties’ policy preferences. The reformulated model accounts for the formation of surplus majority coalitions in two-dimensional policy space. We illustrate the model’s conclusions with a case study of the 1996 surplus majority coalition in the Lithuanian Seimas.     

Partnering to beckon them home: public‐sector innovation for diaspora foreign investment promotion

This article examines a little‐studied component of public administration existing in most countries around the world and particularly important for developing countries: national investment promotion agencies (IPAs). Diasporas are an increasingly important and relatively untapped resource for development and many homeland governments view diaspora foreign investment as key to their economic development. In addition to being generally under‐resourced, many IPAs struggle to identify ways to effectively target, cultivate and facilitate diaspora homeland investment (DHI). To accomplish these goals, these public‐sector entities are beginning to identify and leverage key partnerships in the NGO sector. We describe the services IPAs offer and enumerate the challenges they face associated with DHI. Drawing on three illustrations of IPA–NGO partnerships, we develop preliminary tools for identifying and designing partnerships for the purpose of promoting DHI based on their scope, function and degree of formality. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The trade-ification of the food sustainability agenda

This contribution argues that the food sustainability agenda in global food governance arrangements is becoming ‘trade-ified’. It shows that international trade has become normalized in these settings not only as being compatible with, but also as a key delivery mechanism for, food system sustainability. The paper first explains the rationale for this dominant narrative, which revolves around the efficiency gains from trade. Second, it outlines two important critiques of this approach – one that stresses the need to look beyond food as an economic commodity, and one that reveals the internal flaws of trade theory – which together provide important counterpoints to this dominant narrative. Third, the paper offers three interrelated explanations for why trade continues to be presented as a key ingredient to food sustainability despite the weaknesses of the dominant approach: institutional fragmentation in global food governance; the carryover of previous normative compromises regarding trade and the environment in other governance settings; and the influence of powerful interests.     

Characteristics of Drug Vendors on the Tor Network: A Cryptomarket Comparison

Abstract

Past research on drug-related vendors on Tor marketplaces indicate that sellers are motivated by the greater anonymity afforded by the Tor Network. Limited research has even posited that some drug-related vendors on cryptomarkets sell to other dealers, adding another dimension to existing literature that highlights the retail nature (dealer-to-customer transactions) of these Tor-based drug markets. Yet these past studies have been largely qualitative in nature. This study conducted a quantitative analysis of vendor accounts on Evolution and Agora to determine characteristics predictive of vendors advertising controlled substances, and to determine whether any statistically significant differences among drug vendor characteristics existed between the two sites.