IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING,PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

Statebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Looking toward 2000, and beyond: Some developmental tendencies in organizations

Based on our combined readings of partially overlapping literatures, and spiced by our consulting experience and instructional work with employees at all levels, this essay identifies 14 developmental tendencies that seem to have a reasonable chance of becoming dominant features of our exploring organizational landscapes. The effort can be labelled “future scan,” with the focal length varying from tendencies that are already observable in numbers of cases to those that seem noteworthy despite their rarity.     

The Revitalization of Diplomatic History: Renewed Reflections

Diplomacy is one of the oldest human institutions, with diplomatic records dating back to some of the earliest civilizations. At present, the methods and content of diplomatic history have much to offer modern scholars, but the field as a whole suffers from being out of step, philosophically, with the mainstream of historical and political-scientific study. The departure of diplomatic history from the philosophical mainstream both of political science and of history in general has left the field in dire straits. Fallen from its former grace, diplomatic history requires a new vision: not a groundbreaking, original vision, but a vision informed by previous generations, adapting their foundational principles to the ideals and demands of the twenty-first century academy. It is thus not only the Grand Tradition itself, but its ethos that must be preserved, in order to retain the distinguishing character and methods of diplomatic and military history as independent, politically moderate academic disciplines, regardless of their reputation among neighboring fields.     

Social Media Engagement of Berlin and Prague Museums

ABSTRACT

Attracting visitors and engaging them effectively in the highly competitive and saturated environment shaped by Web 2.0 and online social networking forces museums to creatively and purposefully examine channels for extended interaction with audiences. This exploratory and comparative research aims to compare the state of social media strategies across museums of two regions and to identify the influence of applied strategies on users’ reactions. The surveyed sample considers 296 museums from two European capitals—Berlin and Prague—whose activity has been observed during a three-month period. The findings identify the differences in the approaches of museums and suggest that the frequency and characteristics of published messages correlate to the level of fan reactions, facilitating targeted relationship-building possibilities with online audiences. They further imply that the museums can influence the engagement of visitors by focusing on the particular properties of their posts, both in the sense of post structure, media application, and underlying semantic features.     

Social networks of sexual offenders

Abstract

Despite the extensive research attention directed toward criminal peer groups, there has been little attention to the peer groups of sexual offenders. Sexual offenders are often considered to be loners who offend in isolation, but cases of sex crimes involving peer support are not difficult to find, e.g., child sex rings, gang rapes. To examine the role of peers in sexual offending, sexual offenders and nonsexual offenders were asked whether they knew other people who have committed sexual crimes. In comparison to the nonoffender community comparison group, the sexual offenders reported considerably more association and identification with sexual offenders. The associations also tended to be offence specific, such that child molesters knew other child molesters and rapists knew other rapists. These findings have important implications for the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders.     

A modified Stroop task with sexual offenders: Replication of a study

Abstract

Cognitive–behavioural treatment of sexual offenders assumes that sexual offenders are motivated by deviant attitudes, perceptions and values. Although aspects of deviant schema can be assessed by questionnaires, self-report measures are limited by the respondent's willingness to be forthright and by the fact that, typically, these cognitive processes occur quickly, revealing signs of automaticity. Recent research by Smith and Waterman has suggested that the deviant schema of sexual offenders could be assessed using a version of the Stroop colour-naming task. Long latency periods to sexual colour words imply a longer information-processing route and evidence of pre-established (deviant) sexual cognitive schema. Stroop techniques may offer the advantage of eliminating limitations that arise when using self-report techniques, such as fakeability and social desirability concerns. The current study replicates and extends Smith and Waterman's results using samples of sexual offenders, non-sexual violent offenders and non-violent offenders. The cumulative results of the two studies suggests that Stroop techniques have promise, but that further work is required before measures are available that have sufficient reliability and validity to be used in applied contexts.     

Clash of the Titans?

Abstract

Asia's strategic evolutions during the next two decades or so will put major theories about great-power behavior to the test. A trio of new books about the Sino–Indian rivalry help sketch out a timely research agenda.     

Miserly Developments

We measure the level of poverty in the midst of affluence using what we denote the miser index. We calculate the index of poverty-induced polarisation for a number of countries. The most miserly countries are in Southern Africa and Latin America. Miserly countries tend to be socially fractionalised, bureaucratically inefficient, and politically corrupt. They provide low levels of healthcare and education. Considering the world as a single entity, we find a dramatic rise in global miserliness over the last 30 years going from the level of Colombia to that of South Africa.

For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. (Adam Smith, 1776: 232)