Making and Mobilizing Moderates: Rhetorical Strategy,Political Networks,and Counterterrorism

Studies of counterterrorism have argued for the importance of bolstering, or “mobilizing,” moderates in the confrontation with violent extremists. Yet the literature has not elucidated when states seek to mobilize moderates and marginalize extremists, how they do so, or when they prove successful. The received wisdom is that states should cultivate and strengthen moderate allies by reaching out to them. This approach, however, fails to grasp the political challenges confronting potential moderates, whose priority is to build and retain legitimacy within their political community. Inspired by network approaches, we maintain that moderates can more easily emerge when their political interactions with the authorities are relatively sparse. We further argue that the state's strategies, including crucially its rhetorical moves, can bolster the moderates' local legitimacy. At times, this will entail not reaching out to moderates but isolating them. Before moderates can be mobilized, they must be made, and the state's criticism, more than its love, may do much to help moderate political forces emerge. This article explains why mobilizing moderates is critical, when it is difficult, and how authorities can nevertheless play a productive role in moderates' emergence. We establish our theoretical framework's plausibility by examining two cases—India's ultimately triumphant campaign against Sikh extremists and Spain's gradual marginalization of Basque extremists. We then suggest what lessons these campaigns against ethnonational terrorism hold for the so-called War on Terror.     

Expenditures and receipts in state and local government finances: Comment

The aim of this note has been to show that Marlow and Manage's (1987) paper suffers from serious methodological problems due to the non-stationary data series used and the arbitrary lag lengths employed. Use of appropriate stationarity tests and optimal lag lengths of the variables change some of the basic conclusions of their paper. Contrary to their suggestion, the presence of a feedback between local tax receipts and expenditures imply that local governments should be concerned with the implication of their spending and revenue-enhancing decisions on their budget. Decisions to increase current expenditures may lead to higher future taxes. Similarly, efforts to impose higher taxes to reduce budget deficits at the local government level may be futile due to a subsequent increase in spending.     

Social preference function and policy prioritisation for Bangladesh: An experiment with analytical hierarchy process

The difficulty in assigning priority weights in the multiple objective optimisation exercise of the planning process often leads to arbitrariness in the determination of priority weights. However, Frish (1957) has demonstrated that despite Arrow's famous impossibility theorem, a social preference function can be numerically established by systematically interviewing the decision makers or responsible politicians. In the light of the above, this paper attempts to achieve two goals: (a) that it is, indeed, possible to find intuitively plausible numerical priority weights and (b) the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) can be used to translate the interview responses into cardinal ordering. The close correspondence between the investment allocations of the Planning Commission and those derived from the priority weights of our exercise with AHP implies that AHP can be used to by-pass detailed planning exercises and thereby make planning more flexible.     

A journey towards development: the impact of local NGO programmes on women living in the char lands of Bangladesh

Both national and international policy-making institutions have acknowledged the contribution of NGOs in alleviating poverty, through empowering the poor and continuing to support their endeavours. In Bangladesh NGOs are working at national and local levels, but very few are working with the poorest and most vulnerable groups who live in the riverine and coastal areas, known as the char lands. These areas are unlike other parts of the country in terms of their physical, economic, and social structures, and they require a different approach in order to address the unique set of problems facing those who live there. Using experimental and innovative programmes, a small number of local NGOs have begun to make an impact in an area where government interventions and success are rare.     

Lessons learned from inter-laboratory studies of carbon isotope analysis of honey

Forensic application of carbon isotope ratio measurements of honey and honey protein to investigate the degree of adulteration with high fructose corn syrup or other C₄ plant sugars is well established. These measurements must use methods that exhibit suitable performance criteria, particularly with regard to measurement uncertainty and traceability – low levels of adulteration can only be detected by methods that result in suitably small measurement uncertainties such that differences of 1‰ or less can be reliably detected. Inter-laboratory exercises are invaluable to assess the state-of-the art of measurement capabilities of laboratories necessary to achieve such performance criteria. National and designated metrology institutes from a number of countries recently participated in an inter-laboratory assessment (CCQM-K140) of stable carbon isotope ratio determination of bulk honey. The same sample material was distributed to a number of forensic isotope analysis laboratories that could not participate directly in the metrological comparison. The results from these studies have demonstrated that the majority of participants provided isotope delta values with acceptable performance metrics; that all participants ensured traceability of their results; and that where measurement uncertainties were reported; these were fit-for-purpose. A number of the forensic laboratories only reported precision rather than full estimates of measurement uncertainty and this was the major cause of the few instances of questionable performance metrics. Reporting of standard deviations in place of measurement uncertainties is common practice outside metrology institutes and the implications for interpretations of small differences in isotopic compositions are discussed. The results have also highlighted a number of considerations that are useful for organisers of similar inter-laboratory studies in the future.     

Violence,politics and the state in Bangladesh

The politics and ideology of South Asia has been characterised by violence for a considerable time. Bangladesh is no exception, where violence is both widespread and multifaceted. It arises for political, economic, and socio-cultural reasons and is evidenced not only in the incidence of violence but also in the availability of small arms, in the evident political ties with violent organisations and criminal activities, in the prevalence of corruption and the effect which all this has on the forces of law and order. This poses enormous challenges for the state which urgently needs to introduce measures of reform in the judicial and police administration system. De-linking politics from the activities of criminals and terrorists is an important first step toward this goal.