The impact of the 1970s’ oil boom on Iranian agriculture

This article challenges the dominant strand of thinking on Iranian agriculture, which has hitherto stressed the depressing effects of the 1970s’ oil boom on the rural economy. In highlighting the nature of the economic boom both in the rural and urban areas, it delineates new constraints imposed on agriculture and offers a new explanation as to its outcome. The precipitated outflow of agricultural workforce in this period is thus shown to have been a common source of difficulty to the sector, and not a mere manifestation of its demise. The reasons for this process are located in new developments in the rural non‐farm and urban construction sectors, rather than in the ‘decay’ and ‘disintegration’ of agriculture.     

Are Perceptions of Organizational Justice Universal? An Exploration of Measurement Invariance Across Thirteen Cultures

Previous research examined whether justice effects are comparable, focusing on quantitative differences in justice effects. This study examines whether justice perceptions are structured similarly or whether they are qualitatively different across working populations from 13 nations. Confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group analysis show that Colquitt??s (J Appl Psychol 86:386?C400, 2001) four-dimensional model of justice works well across these samples. However, factor intercorrelations and reliabilities are found to systematically vary between cultural samples. Perceptions of justice are more highly intercorrelated in power distant and collectivistic samples, in line with extensions of the relational model of authority. Score reliabilities were lower in collectivistic settings.     

The application of the Khiyar al-‘Aib (option of defect) principle in on-line contracts and consumer rights

This paper scrutinises the legal protection of consumer rights in on-line contracts through the application of Khiyar al-??Aib (option of defect). Khiyar al-??Aib is a legal Islamic mechanism by which, one party, both parties or even a third party can nullify a contract, electronically or conventionally. Khiyar (option) means the authority to nullify a contract and Aib means defect. In fact, it is a right given to the purchaser to cancel the contract if he discovers that the object acquired has defect that diminishes its value. In on-line contracts, the consumer has no direct contact with the merchant and cannot easily verify the quality of the goods, thus creating a situation in which contracting parties are not at equal bargaining strength. Therefore, application of Khiyar al-??Aib (option of defect) would be helpful in protecting consumer rights in the virtual world. This paper explores the Islamic principles by taking Iranian laws as well as the European law as a point of reference.     

Growth of Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius) Maggots in a Morgue Cooler*

Abstract: In estimating the postmortem interval (PMI) using maggots obtained during autopsy, the forensic entomologist makes decisions regarding the effects of low‐temperature storage of the body on the insects. In this case report, a corpse was found in an abandoned house in the residential area of Bukit Mertajam, Penang, Malaysia. The maggots were found to be alive inside the mouth of the deceased although the corpse had been in the morgue cooler for 12 days. The maggots were reared and identified as Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius). The emerged adult flies were kept as a stock colony, and the duration of development under the indoor fluctuating temperature regime was studied. The total duration of developmental process of this species was 9.5 ± 0.5 days, and the PMI estimated was 3.2 ± 0.6 days. This case report demonstrates the survival of Ch. megacephala maggots for 12 days and their growth inside the morgue cooler.     

How do college students in Ukraine and the United States view criminal offenders?

This paper introduces an original data set that provides insight into how Ukrainian and US college students would punish criminal offenders. Students on four campuses in Ukraine and four in the United States completed surveys that help us better understand these differences. In general, Ukrainian students are more likely than American students to be crime victims than are American students and they are consistently more fearful of being victimised. Ukrainian students are more punitive than American students for some types of crimes (e.g., drug possession) while Americans are more punitive on other crimes (e.g., burglary).     

The use of technology in the transformation of business dispute resolution

The use of technology in dispute resolution mechanism can be viewed from two perspectives: first, as an aid in the conventional dispute resolution system, and second, as an online dispute resolution mechanism via the Internet. Online dispute resolution (ODR) is transforming the way disputes are being resolved, in particular, in business to consumer (B2C) transactions. ODR offers a more successful means of resolving e-commerce disputes. In fact, there is a new move by the Malaysian judiciary to transform its court system. Previously, the judiciary has been very conventional in its administration of justice, and the system is said to be slow and outdated. The court system in Malaysia has been frequently criticised because of its dilatoriness in resolving disputes, resulting in a large backlog of cases. To overcome these problems, the judiciary has introduced a new system called the e-court. New methods including as e-filing, electronic case management, queue management, and court recording and transcribing form the complete e-court mechanism.     

Between Scylla and Charybdis: religion,the military and support for democracy among Egyptians, 2011–2014

Democracy as a form of civilian rule must navigate a path between clerical and military powers, both of which are highly engaged in the politics of post-Mubarak Egypt. The authors ask in this article how mass support for democracy changed in Egypt between 2011 and 2014, and how this support is connected with views on religion and the role of the military. This question is important for understanding the prospects for democracy in a major state in the Arab world. It is also of comparative interest because of what change in the social and ideological drivers of mass attitudes may tell us about the nature of democratic support more generally. The authors’ analysis is based on nationally representative surveys of Egyptians in 2011 after the country’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and in 2014 after the removal of the Islamist President Morsi. The findings indicate that Egyptians in large numbers favour both democracy and unfettered military intervention in politics. The authors also observe important shifts in the social bases of support for democracy away from religion but also from economic aspiration. Negative political experience with democratic procedures in 2011–2013 seems to be the strongest factor behind the observed decrease in democratic support.     

The Strategic Shuffle: Ethnic Geography,the Internal Security Apparatus,and Elections in Kenya

For autocrats facing elections, officers in the internal security apparatus play a crucial role by engaging in coercion on behalf of the incumbent. Yet reliance on these officers introduces a principal‐agent problem: Officers can shirk from the autocrat's demands. To solve this problem, autocrats strategically post officers to different areas based on an area's importance to the election and the expected loyalty of an individual officer, which is a function of the officer's expected benefits from the president winning reelection. Using a data set of 8,000 local security appointments within Kenya in the 1990s, one of the first of its kind for any autocracy, I find that the president's coethnic officers were sent to, and the opposition's coethnic officers were kept away from, swing areas. This article demonstrates how state institutions from a country's previous authoritarian regime can persist despite the introduction of multi‐party elections and thus prevent full democratization.     

Political security: from the 1990s to the Arab Spring

The 1994 Human Development Report (HDR) set out the definition and parameters of political security in fewer than 400 words. It was defined as the prevention of government repression, systematic violation of human rights and threats from militarization. This was intended to establish an agenda that would protect people against states that continued to practice political repression, systematic torture, ill treatment and disappearance. Yet, the concept of political security has evolved in both theory and practice. This has been done through an ongoing debate, which has been shaped more by immediate crises and the practice of international relations, than the parameters set out in the 1994 HDR report. In practice, achieving the ambitions of the political security agenda has become tied to questions of humanitarian assistance and intervention. This was narrowly interpreted throughout the 1990s as a debate surrounding the nature and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. In the 2000s, this was institutionalized into a Responsibility to Protect agenda, only to see the second decade of the twenty-first century reveal the need for a far more complex and nuanced debate about how this should be carried out.