Does Participation Lead to Ongoing Infrastructure Maintenance? Evidence from Caribbean Landslide Mitigation Projects

Donor-funded infrastructure projects may focus on construction and neglect longer-term sustainability. Engaging local communities has been proposed as way of inducing ongoing maintenance by facilitating coordination and a sense of ownership, but there is little evidence on its effectiveness in practice. We analyse data from inspections of 103 landslide hazard mitigation drains in Saint Lucia several years after construction. We conclude that community participation at the beginning of the project, by accessing local knowledge, is associated with improved construction quality, but appears to have no impact on subsequent maintenance, suggesting that contractual provision for maintenance may be required.     

When men fight with women (versus other men): Limited offending during disputes

What transpires in a dispute, even a violent dispute, is affected by the tendency for adversaries to engage in “limited offending.” We focus on one restraint: the tendency of men to limit their aggression in their disputes with women. Analyses are based on an incident-level survey about interpersonal disputes administered to 503 men who are incarcerated and 220 men who had never been incarcerated. Using multinomial and logistic regression models, we examined the extent to which an adversary's gender predicted dispute-related behaviors. The evidence suggests that the chivalry norm has pervasive effects on the behavior of men during their disputes with women. Men are more likely to engage in remedial actions (e.g., apologies) when their adversary is a woman, as opposed to another man. In addition, men are less likely to make violent threats and engage in physical attacks when their adversary is a woman, even after they have themselves been physically attacked. When men are violent, they are less likely to injure a woman than a man. However, the chivalry norm does not inhibit verbal aggression in these disputes: men are just as likely to engage in verbal attacks and nonviolent threats when the adversary is a woman.     

When aid builds states: party dominance and the effects of foreign aid on tax collection after civil war

ABSTRACT

Does foreign aid strengthen or weaken post-conflict states? We examine the effects of aid on tax collection after civil war, an important dimension of state effectiveness. While the literature emphasizes aid’s perverse effects, the relationship between aid dependence and the growth of tax collection is unclear. We argue that the impact of aid reflects its political utility for ruling elites in consolidating their authority after civil war. While dominant parties subvert tax strengthening reforms to solidify their political base, elites in more fractionalized settings rely on external political backing to manage internal challenges to their authority, and are more likely to comply with donor conditions. We test this argument through a Latent Curve Analysis of tax collection rate growth in post-civil war countries from 1978 to 2012. We find that aid is associated with slower growth in tax collection in dominant party settings, and more rapid tax growth in politically fractionalized settings. The findings highlight the need for attention to internal political dynamics to explain aid effectiveness after civil war, and point to opportunities to strengthen institutions in some post-conflict countries.     

Loan Officers’ Gender and Microfinance Repayment Rates

This study examines the impact of loan officer characteristics on repayment rates of microfinance borrowers in Mexico applying multilevel analyses, with special attention to the impact of the gender of the loan officer on default rates. The results strongly suggest that loan officers play a crucial role in improving repayment rates in microfinance and that male loan officers are better able to induce borrowers to repay than female loan officers. This may be because men exert authority over women and face fewer problems working late, travelling through unsafe places, and combining a position as counsellor with enforcing repayment.     

Humanitarian mine action and peace building: exploring the relationship

Focusing on the humanitarian mine action (hma) sector, this article argues that rooting peace building in concrete activities carries considerable promise, diversifying the repertoire and enhancing the robustness of peace building. However, the assumption that mine action necessarily contributes to building peace is problematic and permits the neglect of harmful effects and a failure to capitalise fully on the potential for positive ones. If peace building is seen in terms of three major domains—security, development and politics—the current tendency is to emphasise security primarily, development secondarily, and the political only marginally when addressing the impact of hma on peace building. Several examples indicate that mine action may have a significant impact on the political aspects of peace building, including confidence building, conflict resolution and reconciliation. At the same time, linking mine action to peace building creates certain dilemmas, and a rigid subordination of mine action initiatives to a centrally directed peace building strategy is unlikely to be productive. Ultimately, a focus on the peace building role of mine action carries a dual promise for the sector: it documents impacts that are currently unacknowledged, while encouraging new and refined practices.     

Examining Power-sharing in Persistent Conflicts: De Facto Pseudo-statehood versus de JureQuasi-federalism

The reasons that explain the failures in power-sharing lie in the notions of sovereignty and territoriality and their applications in the (post-)modern world. While territory is largely perceived as indivisible, sovereignty is seen as something that could be shared. Power-sharing schemes tend to fail because of the incompatibility of these two principles. Although enduring compromises between facts and norms may allow talks about diffused power and fuzzy identities and are therefore an asset, they do not offer a recipe of how to end zero-sum games and provide communal security. The aim of this paper is to examine comparatively recent attempts to resolve persistent conflicts through power-sharing in Cyprus, Moldova and Bosnia & Herzegovina. It concludes that although power-sharing is compatible with the normative categories stipulated in international law, solving modern conflicts necessitates a rethinking of the concepts over which these conflicts are taking place.     

Examining Interobserver Reliability of Metric and Morphoscopic Characteristics of the Mandible

Mandibular metric and morphological characteristics have long been used for sex and ancestry estimation. Currently, there are no large‐scale studies examining interobserver agreement, particularly examining the role of observer experience. This study examines the interobserver agreement of six morphoscopic and eleven metric mandibular variables. Four observers with varied levels of experience scored 183 mandibles from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection. Absolute agreement and consistency were evaluated with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Additionally, technical error of measurement (TEM) and relative TEM (%TEM) were calculated for each metric variable. All analyses were conducted twice—once with all observers and again with only experienced observers. Results show mean morphoscopic agreement of 0.543 among all observers and 0.615 for experienced observers, and mean metric agreement of 0.886 among all observers and 0.911 for experienced observers. Further, no TEM exceeded 2 mm. All results were significant (p < 0.001).