From clouds of chemical warfare to blue skies of peace: the Tehran Peace Museum,Iran

Despite the limited number of peace museums around the world, there exists an essential role for existing peace museums to promote a culture of peace and peace education. The purpose of this article was to introduce the origins, rationale, scope and work of the Tehran Peace Museum in Iran. The concept of the museum is to facilitate peace education and develop peaceful environments drawn from the personal experiences of war survivors. The museum encompasses exhibitions about the horrors of chemical and nuclear warfare and is balanced with awareness programmes, bridge-building dialogues, connections with other peace museums and a comprehensive peace education programme catering for younger and older members of society. It offers the space and opportunity for a community of learning within the museum and welcomes fresh ideas and initiatives from visitors and volunteers. The Tehran Peace Museum is unique in its body of volunteers, men and women who have been directly affected by chemical weapons. They are involved in the Veterans Voices of Peace Oral History Project and actively voice the need for creating peaceful societies in today’s world.     

The “Minsk Phenomenon:” demographic development in the Republic of Belarus

This paper returns to a topic the author dealt with in a more basic form some years ago. But it also makes an attempt to conceptualize the development of independent Belarus through its population migration to urban centers and especially its capital city, a development that dates exclusively from the post-1945 period, but that paradoxically has prevented this republic from experiencing the sort of modernization processes evident elsewhere in Europe. It takes as its starting point the pioneering work by the German historian Thomas Bohn titled The Minsk Phenomenon and develops it further by linking it to demographic issues, current health concerns, and problems in industrial development.     

The peasants in turmoil: Khmer Rouge,state formation and the control of land in northwest Cambodia

Over the past 15 years, northwest Cambodia has seen dramatic agrarian expansion away from the central rice plain into the peripheral uplands fuelled by peasant in-migration. Against this background, we examine the nature of relations between the peasantry and the state. We first show the historical continuities of land control processes and how the use of violence in a post-conflict neoliberal context has legitimised ex-Khmer Rouge in controlling land distribution. Three case studies show the heterogeneity of local level sovereignties, which engage the peasants in different relations with authority. We examine how these processes result in the construction of different rural territories along the agricultural frontier and argue that, in this region of Cambodia, the struggles between Khmer Rouge and neoliberal modes of land control are central to state formation processes.     

Nothing Special? Propaganda and Women's Roles in Late First World War Britain

Women's roles and work did not dramatically change during the First World War; their contributions as citizens simply received greater recognition. This article explores women's roles as subjects, objects and producers of National War Aims Committee propaganda in Britain during 1917–18. It examines differing representations of, and outlines the production of, ‘special’ propaganda for women, discussing women's interactions with and employment by the Committee. Finally, it analyses a series of articles which mixed patriotic rhetoric, practical domestic tips and observations on women's ‘new’ work. Far from uncritically accepting their ‘special’, separate place, the evidence suggests that women, as both objects and producers of propaganda, engaged with it on their own terms as British citizens.     

The Effects of Blaming Others for Legislative Inaction on Individual and Collective Evaluations

Legislators commonly blame others for gridlock. We posit that legislators may engage in this type of rhetoric to minimize the individual reputational risks associated with legislative inaction or to boost the relative standing of their party. In a series of six survey experiments, we find that blaming others for inaction undermines voters’ evaluations of individual legislators who engage in this rhetorical strategy. This effect is particularly pronounced among out-partisans and independents. However, blaming rhetoric can also enhance the standing of the blamer’s party relative to the opposing party across all groups (including out-partisans), in large part by undermining the reputations of these other actors. Ultimately, we show that when an individual legislator engages in blaming rhetoric, the immediate net electoral effects are null. This suggests that coordinated efforts by a party to blame opponents may improve the party’s relative standing, while imposing few costs on those engaged in blaming.     

Patterns of Young Adult Social Roles Transitions Across 24 Months and Subsequent Substance Use and Mental Health

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Young adults experience social role transitions across multiple life domains, and a deeper understanding of the ways in which these simultaneous transition...     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

Varieties of consumer credit data regimes: A regulatory governance approach

Credit markets are expanding, and with them also the automated, large‐scale commercialization of personal credit data. The increasing use of data and scores for commodified decision making lends greater urgency to the study of credit data regulatory regimes. This article promotes a comparative regulatory governance perspective as the basis for theory‐driven, multidimensional measurement. In order to measure consumer protection, we distinguish three different subregimes (collection, profiling, and use) and construct a two‐dimensional index of consumer protection (market restriction and user empowerment). We then assess the index and demonstrate its applicability and validity, building on empirical analysis of the regulatory regimes in the United States, France, Sweden, and Israel for the year 2019. Our approach points to a new direction in researching and measuring regulatory regimes in a comparative manner, which looks beyond national analysis toward an in‐depth understanding of other, equally important, levels of variation.