Strategic Value of African Tribal Art: Auction Sales Trends as Cultural Intelligence

Military engagement of insurgents risks destruction of religious monuments and historic structures, and political and economic instability that follows armed conflict enables looting of antiquities. In combination, threats to cultural structures and movable cultural patrimony compromise cultural security. This article explores the potential of the art market for open-source intelligence assessments of cultural security. A comparison of the market value of artifacts of different ethnic origins provides a measure of the risk of looting of cultural patrimony by geographic region. Intelligence assessments of the relative desirability of cultural artifacts by region of origin can inform strategic planning to mitigate looting in conflict zones and to alert security services to emerging threats of trafficking in cultural patrimony.     

Regional and technological dualism: A dual‐dual development framework applied to Puerto Rico

A ‘dual‐dual’ framework is proposed which captures the prevailing regional dualism (between rural and urban areas) and technological dualism (between traditional and modern techniques). Six interdependent sectors are specified: 1) urban formal, 2) urban informal, 3) rural non‐farm formal, 4) rural non‐farm informal, 5) rural farm formal, and 6) rural farm informal. The framework is applied to the case of Puerto Rico and its experience with an ‘industrialisation‐first’ development strategy between 1950 and 1970. It is shown that this framework lends itself well to the analysis of such issues as the pattern of employment, migration, and income distribution among regions and sectors.     

Distributive Politics and Regional Development: Assessing the Territorial Distribution of Turkey’s Public Investment

Turkey is often perceived as a country with low bureaucratic capacity and prone to political manipulation and ‘pork-barrel’. This article tests whether this is the case, by analysing the extent to which politics, rather than equity and efficiency criteria, have determined the geographical allocation of public investment across the 81 provinces of Turkey between 2005 and 2012. The results show that although the Turkish government has indeed channelled public expenditures to reward its core constituencies, socioeconomic factors remained the most relevant predictors of investment. Moreover, in contrast to official regional development policy principles, we uncover the concentration of public investment in areas with comparatively higher levels of development. We interpret this as the state bureaucracy’s intentional strategy of focussing on efficiency by concentrating resources on ‘the better off among the most in need’.     

Forensic determination of hair deposition time in crime scenes using electron paramagnetic resonance

Several types of biological samples, including hair strands, are found at crime scenes. Apart from the identification of the value and the contributor of the probative evidence, it is important to prove that the time of shedding of hair belonging to a suspect or victim matches the crime window. To this end, to estimate the ex vivo aging of hair, we evaluated time‐dependent changes in melanin‐derived free radicals in blond, brown, and black hairs by using electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR). Hair strands aged under controlled conditions (humidity 40%, temperature 20–22°C, indirect light, with 12/12 hour of light/darkness cycles) showed a time‐dependent decay of melanin‐derived radicals. The half‐life of eumelanin‐derived radicals in hair under our experimental settings was estimated at 22 ± 2 days whereas that of pheomelanin was about 2 days suggesting better stabilization of unpaired electrons by eumelanin. Taken together, this study provides a reference for future forensic studies on determination of degradation of shed hair in a crime scene by following eumelanin radicals by utilizing the non‐invasive, non‐destructive, and highly specific EPR technique.     

The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement

Anders Behring Breivik, a lone wolf terrorist, killed 77 people in two terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. This study uses framing theory from social movement studies to compare his Manifesto with the rhetoric of the anti-Islamic movement that inspired him. The anti-Islamic movement has a dual, and sometimes inconsistent, collective action framing. On the one hand, they portray Islam as an existential threat to the West and a warlike enemy; on the other, they promote peaceful and democratic opposition. The potential for radicalization is thus immanent. This case study reveals the importance of seeing lone wolf terrorists as acting from rhetoric embedded in larger social movements. It further demonstrates, in detail, the subtle and complex ways in which political narratives rejecting terrorism and political violence still end up inspiring such acts.     

Affective Polarization in Multiparty Systems? Comparing Affective Polarization Towards Voters and Parties in Norway and the United States

A growing body of comparative studies on partisan hostility – a phenomenon known as affective polarization – is providing evidence that partisan affective polarization is generally no greater in the United States than it is in many European multiparty systems. This article takes the comparative literature on affective polarization one step further by presenting the first comparative study on affective polarization that simultaneously uses, compares and combines a direct measure of affective polarization towards voters (using the inter‐party marriage measure) and an indirect measure of affective polarization towards parties (using the like/dislike of party measure) while accounting for the fact that multiparty systems have numerous political parties. This is done by comparing the levels of affective polarization in the United States and Norway. The results show greater affective polarization in the United States relating to parties, but the differences between these two countries are indistinguishable from chance when focusing on the affect relating to voters. This provides empirical evidence that comparative evidence of negative affect towards parties cannot necessarily be generalized to suggest that there is comparative evidence of negative affect towards voters. Yet the results also suggest that negative feelings towards out‐parties move to some extent to the personal level in terms of negative feelings towards voters of these out‐parties.     

Democratization and Violent Conflict: Is There A Scandinavian Exception?

The notion that the paths to democracy in Scandinavia were exceptionally peaceful remains a popular argument, but an equally large number of studies opposes this view. This research note provides the first systematic attempt to compare records of violence during democratization in Scandinavia with other regions and countries. By using Varieties of Democracy data, I construct novel measures of democratization and violent conflict that align with extant propositions on Scandinavian exceptionalism and conflict‐democratization research while appreciating multiple dimensions of democratization for a global sample of countries from 1789 to 2018. The results show stable support for a substantial Scandinavian exception of peaceful democratization, but only evidently so for moves toward greater executive constraints and civil and political liberties. The exception is less clear for democratization considering competitive elections and suffrage. On this basis, I propose that we may improve the understanding of the causes of Scandinavian democratic exceptionalism and democratic sustainability more generally by studying the origins of peaceful democratization in Scandinavia compared with Western Europe in the ‘age of liberalization’ from approx. the mid‐eighteenth to the mid‐nineteenth century.     

Psychiatric disorders and personality characteristics of prisoners at regular prison wards

BackgroundDutch correctional officers are trained to observe prisoners with severe mental disorder. This ‘behavioural’ approach is assumed to detect psychiatrically disordered prisoners with striking symptoms. On the basis of this screening procedure about 10% of the Dutch prison population is classified as needing special care or control. In the current study, what psychopathology can still be found among the remaining 90% prisoners residing at regular wards is investigated and which personality traits characterize them. When the prevalence of major mental illness would still turn out to be high in this group, the question arises whether the current, rather unstandardized, way of screening prisoners is sufficient.AimsTo assess the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among adult Dutch prisoners on regular wards, and to determine the concurrent and convergent validity of self-report measures and their screening characteristics in such a sample.Method191 randomly selected prisoners admitted to the general wards were administered a number of tests (SCL-90, NEO-PI-R, MINI) during the first weeks of their incarceration.ResultsIncluding substance abuse, 57% of the participants suffered from one or more Axis I disorders. About seven out of ten detainees with psychopathology as assessed with the MINI did not receive professional help. The concurrent and convergent validity of the SCL-90 and the NEO-PI-R turned out to be reasonable. The predictive validity of self-report measures in detecting prisoners with an Axis I disorders or suicide risks was moderate.ConclusionsThe Dutch ‘behavioural approach’ seems to be quite accurate in detecting prisoners with psychotic disorders. Most prisoners with other mental disorders on regular wards, however, did not receive professional help. The current study suggests that self report scales such as the SCL-90 and the NEO-PI-R may be helpful in screening detainees on important DSM-IV disorders.