“So,the Killings Continued”: Wartime Mobilization and Post-War Violence in KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

ABSTRACT

Many post-war states experience continuous low-intensity violence for years after the formal end of the conflict. Existing theories often focus on country-level explanations of post-war violence, such as the presence of spoilers or the nature of the peace agreement. Yet, post-war violence does not affect all communities equally; whereas some remain entrenched in violence, others escape the perpetuation of violent conflict. We argue that communities where wartime mobilization at the local level is based on the formation of alliances between armed groups and local elites are more likely to experience post-war violence, than communities where armed groups generate civilian support based on grassroots backing of the group’s political objectives. We explore this argument in a comparison of three communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which have experienced different levels of post-war violence. The analysis supports the main argument and contributes to the research on the microdynamics of civil war by outlining the implications of certain strategies of wartime mobilization and how these may generate localized legacies.     

Birth order and youth delinquent behaviour testing the differential parental control hypothesis in a french representative sample

Studies on delinquent behaviour have frequently shown that firstborn children are less involved in delinquency than middle-born children. We suggest that differential parental control of the children depending on their ordinal position might account for this phenomenon. The study, carried out with a French representative sample (n=1129), indicated that firstborns were more supervised than middle-borns. Firstborns reported less minor offences and serious offences than middle-born children. However, when sibship size and parental supervision were controlled in a subsequent analysis of covariance, the effect of ordinal position on serious offences disappeared, whereas the birth-order effect on minor offences declined but remained significant. It is concluded that ordinal position plays a moderate role in delinquent behaviour and that this effect is partly induced by differential parental control.     

Do Minority Cabinets Govern More Flexibly and Inclusively? Evidence from Germany

A widespread view in political science is that minority cabinets govern more flexibly and inclusively, more in line with a median-oriented and 'consensual' vision of democracy. Yet there is only little empirical evidence for it. We study legislative coalition-building in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which was ruled by a minority government between 2010 and 2012. We compare the inclusiveness of legislative coalitions under minority and majority cabinets, based on 1028 laws passed in the 1985–2017 period, and analyze in detail the flexibility of legislative coalition formation under the minority government. Both quantitative analyses are complemented with brief case studies of specific legislation. We find, first, that the minority cabinet did not rule more inclusively. Second, the minority cabinet’s legislative flexibility was fairly limited; to the extent that it existed, it follows a pattern that cannot be explained on the basis of the standard spatial model with policy-seeking parties.     

In the Spotlight: Analyzing Sequential Attention Effects in Protest Reporting

During waves of contention, international media attention can be of crucial importance for activists and protest participants. However, media attention is a scarce resource and the competition over news coverage is high. While some emphasize the agenda-setting power of news outlets and argue that receiving coverage is determined by factors outside the protest movement, others suggest a dynamic relationship between media attention and activism where social movement organizations are assumed to have some agency to make it to the news. In this article, we contribute to the latter and analyze how protest can endogenously trigger more coverage. Building on insights from communication science, we argue that widely covered protests attract media attention and temporarily lower the selection threshold for subsequent incidents. Using fine-grained data on anti-regime protest in all authoritarian countries between 2003 and 2012, we find robust empirical evidence for this hypothesis. We also show that this effect becomes weaker and eventually disappears with increasing spatial and temporal distance from a highly salient event. These findings are important for research in contentious politics, since they allow us to gauge the extent to which protest activity on the ground may under certain circumstances be overreported in the media.     

Less conflict,more peace? Understanding trends in conflict persistence

Persistent civil wars constitute a serious challenge to human security and have received growing attention in recent years. Yet our understanding of patterns of conflict persistence suffers from both the absence of clear definitions and measurements as well as a lack of attention to changes over time. As a result, the prevailing image of conflict persistence as an increasing threat does not adequately reflect reality. This in turn limits our ability to identify factors that favour or prevent persistence. The paper will highlight largely overlooked developments in intrastate conflict persistence over the last decades, showing that new conflicts appear to be shorter than before, while long duration and high recurrence rates are predominantly found in relatively small and peripheral conflicts. I argue that the major drivers of these patterns include changes in the nature and context of civil wars since the end of the Cold War, as well as changes in state capacity. The relationship between state capacity and conflict persistence, however, is ambivalent, and in some cases state strength appears to be a permissive factor of conflict persistence.     

Sampling and statistical considerations for the Suchey–Brooks method for pubic bone age estimation: Implications for regional comparisons

Although the Suchey–Brooks (SB) system is currently the most widely used method for age-at-death estimation from the pubic bone, the system continues to evolve through stepwise improvements. Since the system was developed from a pubic bone sample derived mainly from North Americans, it is unclear how well it performs on populations from other continents. During the last decade, studies of the SB system on pubic bone samples from local populations in Europe and Asia have indicated regional differences in the relationship between age and pubic bone development. However, these studies have for the most part followed different research protocols, which make comparisons between their results less meaningful. It would be most useful if future regional analysis of the SB system were done in a rigorous and uniform fashion, following standard procedures. In this paper, sampling and statistical considerations are outlined that hopefully will help to standardize research on the SB system.     

Religion und Religiosit?t als Ursache von Homonegativit?t

Although the attitudes towards homosexuality have become more liberal especially in industrialized Western countries, there is still a huge variance in terms of the levels of homonegativity worldwide. This article seeks to explain this variance by means of a multi-level-analysis of 79 countries. The data stem from the last two waves of the World Values Survey. On the basis of this data, the article focuses on the power of the religious denomination of a person and her religiousness in order to explain her attitude towards homosexuality; for both variables a strong influence can be detected. In addition, the article indicates that, on the individual level, socio-demographic variables??e.g. age, gender, education, marital status or profession??are highly interconnected with the intensity of homonegativity. On the country-level, however, the main explanatory factors are both the economic development and the communist heritage. The article further highlights significant conditional relationships by introducing cross-level interactions and interaction terms on the individual level. The final model explains about 60% of the variance on the aggregate level and 30% on the individual level.     

Survived stab to the heart in a schizophrenic man

Schizophrenia is associated with a significant risk of suicide. According to recent research, 10-15 % of all schizophrenic patients die by suicide. It is not uncommon that the victims show sharp force injuries, so that the forensic pathologist first has to differentiate between self-infliction and involvement of another person. The authors' case report presents a 68-year-old schizophrenic patient who committed suicide by jumping out of a window of his apartment located on the second floor after inflicting multiple stab wounds to his thoracic region. At autopsy, an older stab wound to the apex of the heart was detected. In the criminal investigation, a suicide attempt made 13 days before could be ascertained. As the patient did not want to be taken to a hospital at that time, the injury had never been examined or documented. Since there was no evidence suggesting homicide, the older stab to the heart was interpreted as a tentative injury.     

Cardiac Changes Due to Electronic Control Devices? A Computer‐Based Analysis of Electrical Effects at the Human Heart Caused by an ECD Pulse Applied to the Body's Exterior

Electronic control devices (ECDs) deliver high‐voltage, low‐current energy pulses temporarily paralyzing a person. For the ECD–human interaction, we have developed a computer model using the SEMCAD program within which to simulate the electrical effects throughout the body resulting from the imposition of an ECD pulse at a particular point on the body surface. Our human body models were based on cross‐sectional MRIs and CT scans, with the dielectric properties of the various tissues assigned based on previously published values. We simulated the application of a single ECD pulse and calculated the resulting electric field strength and current and charge densities at different body locations. The results were compared with corresponding values obtained by other researchers in similar simulations. Furthermore, we simulated an application of a pulse of 20‐millisecond duration equal to the European household current of 50 Hz and to the ventricular fibrillation threshold. The resulting current level indicated at the heart muscle was 1/5 the level considered the threshold for triggering ventricular fibrillation.