Unheard Testimony,Untold Stories: the representation of women's Holocaust experiences

This article seeks to show that despite women's lives during the Holocaust becoming a growing area of historical interest, there is a reluctance on the part of Holocaust scholars to acknowledge testimony that does not concur with preconceived gender roles, patterns of suitable female behaviour, or pre-existing narratives of survival. The article focuses on both the testimonies of female witnesses to the Holocaust, and the small but rapidly growing body of secondary literature devoted to looking at women's lives in German-occupied Europe, to show how many testimonies are overlooked because they represent difficult experiences.     

The Influence of Self-Threats on Fairness Judgments and Affective Measures

This paper focuses on the question of why fairness matters to people. Extending on terror and uncertainty management theories and the literature on the self, it is proposed here that fairness can be a means of self-defense. Thinking of a situation that is threatening to the self therefore should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of two experiments support this line of reasoning: Asking participants to think about things that are threatening to themselves led to stronger reactions to manipulations of both procedural and distributive fairness. In the discussion it is argued that these findings suggest that fairness especially matters to people when they are trying to deal with threats to their selves.     

Procedural decisions in intergroup conflict situations: The influence of hierarchical group membership

A review of research on procedural and distributive justice shows that whereas distributive justice research has examined people's actual choice of outcomes, procedural justice research has paid little attention to the investigation of people's actual choice of procedures. In the present paper, three experiments are presented, all investigating people's actual choice of procedures. In all three experiments, participants were in a middle-management position where their subordinates demanded an opportunity to voice their opinion, while their superiors demanded that the subordinates should not be allowed voice. In Experiments 1 and 2 it was found that participants who were induced to identify with the low hierarchical group (subordinates) allowed more voice than participants who were induced to identify with the high hierarchical group (superiors), but that the effect of hierarchical group membership was absent when maximizing performance (Experiment 1) or participative values (Experiment 2) were explicitly emphasized. In Experiment 3 it was found that the effect of hierarchical group membership on procedural decision making was also evident in persons who progressed from identifying with both hierarchical groups to identifying with one hierarchical group. In the discussion it is argued that cross-fertilization between the fields of procedural and distributive justice will deepen our understanding of social justice in general.     

How rumors are born

Jean-No?l Kapferer is an internationally recognized expert on rumors. He is professor of communication at l’école des Hautes études Commercialesand at l’Institut Supérieur des Affairesin Paris, and president of the Foundation pour l’étude et l’Information sur les Rumeurs.He is author of numerous books on communication and persuasion. This article has been adapted from his book Rumors, Uses, Interpretation, and Images,published by Transaction.     

Flip-flop rebel,dollar soldier: demobilisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo1

The wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have seen the recruitment of flip-flop clad rebels and instability arising because soldiers have not received their salary of a few dollars. Conversely, demobilisation programmes, which bring promises of reintegration grants, have not attracted people to disarm. This paper examines this conundrum alongside three features of the situation in Congo: the informalisation of politics and the economy, the exercise of power through violence, and the multiple crises in which people are living. Drawing on reports on demobilisation and interviews conducted in Congo, the paper investigates what implications these three aspects have for demobilisation, and what is achieved by the programmes as they stand. It argues that demobilisation programmes do not address fighters' motivations, and outcomes are largely immaterial. Instead there is a political pillage—akin to the pillages that took place across Congo in the early 1990s—by which some parties make immediate gains, whilst shaping the conditions for longer term losses and destructive systems.     

Same Game but More Players? Sub-national Lobbying in an Enlarged Union

This contribution builds on the insights provided by the literature on sub-national mobilization in the European Union (EU) to assess whether the 2004–2007 rounds of enlargement have changed anything in this respect. Empirical analysis uses two types of data sources. The first is a survey of over a 100 regional offices in Brussels, and the second consists of 29 semi-structured interviews with Commission officials led in the aftermath of the 2004–2007 enlargements. These data are used to answer the following two research questions: (1) is there a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage at the territorial level in Brussels? (2) Is there anything like an ‘enlargement effect’ on sub-national mobilization? Analysis reveals that, while there is fading evidence of a ‘new’ versus ‘old’ cleavage in Brussels, enlargement has nevertheless had an impact on sub-national mobilization at the EU level, reinforcing older but also newer trends.     

Economic Crisis and Sub-national Elections in Selected European Countries. Three Types of Possible Relationships

During the past two decades, decentralisation issues have generated a keen interest in a large number of countries. However, this notion is very difficult to define as it refers to a wide range of institutional arrangements on the political, economic and social levels. There are many good reasons why the allocation of fiscal resources and budget transfers among levels of government must come after a strict assignment of spending powers. Hence, decentralisation as a silent revolution in public sector governance has swept across the globe and has reemerged as a valued political and economic goal in most countries, significantly varying from country to country. The purpose of this article is to show the impact of financial and economic crisis on sub-national government and sub-national elections in chosen European countries such as Poland, Ireland, Denmark and Greece. In some of the countries mentioned the sub-national run-offs were conducted with national parliamentary elections, but not in other countries, including Poland. Because of its uniqueness, however, the explanation of which constitutes an essential part of the article, Poland can be ‘a matiere a penser’ and a starting point for interesting analysis. As can be seen, the economic situation can not only change the election results, but also stabilise the political system, which is a good example of how the government party can manipulate public opinion, or even make elections a referendum on economic policy. The main determinant is the financial situation of sub-national government units and the country concerned.