Can human rights conditionality reduce repression? Examining the European Union’s economic agreements

The insertion of human rights commitments into international economic agreements is now a widespread practice. We argue that the effect of such commitments depends on the degree of leverage held by one partner over the other. In a comprehensive analysis of the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with developing countries, we find that human rights clauses are conditionally effective; they are associated with improved political freedom and physical integrity rights only in countries that are more heavily dependent on EU aid. An in-depth look at the EU’s enforcement of its human rights clause in the African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) group reveals that the Union most often responds to violations of political rights—particularly coups and flawed elections—and that enforcement is indeed a more powerful catalyst for change in highly aid-dependent states. Alternative explanations—that the impact of the human rights clause depends on legalization, the country’s strategic importance, NGO activity, or domestic institutions—find little support.     

“One,none, and a hundred thousand” recipes for a robust response to turbulence

Turbulence appears to be a “new normal” in current societies, and public organizations need to learn how to react and adapt to it. Scholars agree on the need for robust actions to respond to turbulence. Through a qualitative comparative analysis performed on the vaccination campaigns of all 20 Italian regions, our paper explores whether different and alternative models of robustness may exist to cope with turbulence. Results shed light on three alternative models featuring static, hybrid, and dynamic robustness. They also highlight that robust governance appears to involve a capacity to learn, and to employ this learning as circumstances demand.     

Globalisation and the Restructuring of State Power in the Arab World

The dynamics of change in the Arab world today are part of a much larger global process–the neo-liberal phase of globalisation–that started in the 1980s and engendered a process of state power restructuring, both for peripheral “weak” states and core industrialised countries. Beyond national differences, the restructuring of the Arab states has implied the consolidation of neo-authoritarian political regimes characterised by fragmentation of the power structure and by an increase in informal modes of government (neo-patrimonialism, corruption), accompanied by the parallel political and economic marginalisation of large sectors of society. These less centralised and more elitist regimes are likely to be more dependent and vulnerable than their predecessors to external pressures and foreign influence.     

Community of care from a victim-perspective: a qualitative study

Even if there has been some theoretical debate on the role of what has been called the ‘community of care’ in restorative justice (RJ) there has not been much research on, or analysis of, the implications of the role of significant others in its practice. This lack of reflection is especially evident in the case of the victims’ community of care, despite findings that would indicate a systematic lack of participation of victim’s supporters in restorative practices. Through the qualitative analysis of 35 interviews with victims of crime who consented to attend mediation (direct and indirect), an attempt to describe and discuss the characteristics of victim’s communities of care that may become relevant for the practice of RJ is made. Results indicate that, despite a victims’ need for company or support, victims tend to disclose few details about the offense, its consequences and the mediation offered as a way to protect their loved ones or to avoid possible negative reactions from their communities. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are offered.     

Risk and the limits of governance: Exploring varied patterns of risk‐based governance across Europe

Risk‐based approaches to governance are widely promoted as universally applicable foundations for improving the quality, efficiency, and rationality of governance across policy domains. Premised on the idea that governance cannot eliminate all adverse outcomes, these approaches provide a method for establishing priorities and allocating scarce resources, and, in so doing, rationalise the limits of what governance interventions can, and should, achieve. Yet cursory observation suggests that risk‐based approaches have spread unevenly across countries. Based on a comparison of the UK, France, and Germany, this article explores the ways in which, and why, such approaches have “colonised” governance regimes in the UK, but have had much more limited application in France and Germany. We argue that the institutionally patterned adoption of risk‐based governance across these three countries is related to how entrenched governance norms and accountability structures within their national polities handle both the identification and acceptance of adverse governance outcomes.     

K9s killed in the line of duty

While police work comes with a slew of dangers, little research has focused on deaths of police dogs in the line of duty. The purpose of this paper is to begin a conversation about violence toward police dogs and the treatment of animals working with the police.

To do so, a database of 96 police dogs that died in the line of duty in the United States between 2011 and 2015 was compiled, drawn from the Officer Down Memorial Page. More police dog deaths were reported in 2014 and 2015, during summer months, with half clustering in the Southern US. The victim police dogs were mostly younger and recently employed by the policing agency. The most frequent cause of death was heat exhaustion, followed by gunfire and automobiles. Most offenders were apprehended by police or shot.

Policymakers and researchers should encourage systematic data collection for a better understanding of the extent of the issue.     

Doing (things with) sounds: introduction to the special issue

This special issue aims at analyzing music as a site of social semiosis, i.e., at investigating the manifold ways in which music is constituted as a socially shared event. The papers collected here follow three main threads, considered as central aspects of music making: studying the kind of coordination and participation required to make music together; looking at the semiotic resources employed by musicians to construct their roles in interaction; examining the relationship between language and music. A variety of perspectives is adopted, ranging from social semiotics to conversation analysis, anthropology, multimodal analysis, and critical discourse analysis. Such a variety is also reflected in the musical traditions – Western art music, jazz, gospel, church hymns, pop music – and in the settings under examination, which comprise instructional activities like musical classes and rehearsals, as well as ordinary conversations and written accounts of musicians' biographies. Issues of epistemicity and authority, intersubjectivity, correction of musical action, solidarity, and ideology are thereby addressed. The issue thus aims at exploring the richness and complexity of music making as a social practice, and documents how the integration of different disciplinary perspectives can offer fruitful insights on music as a domain of sociality which lies at the intersection of aurality and writing, norm and creativity, individuality and collectiveness.     

Articulated Thoughts of Intimate Partner Abusive Men during Anger Arousal: Correlates with Personality Disorder Features

This study extends Eckhardt et al. (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66:259–269, 1998) research on cognitive correlates of anger arousal among intimate partner abusers (IPA; n = 130), distressed/nonviolent (DNV; n = 27), and satisfied/nonviolent men (SNV; n = 21) during a standardized anger induction task by examining variables thought to differentiate batterers. Variables pertinent to the Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (Psychological Bulletin, 116:476–497, 1994) typology—borderline and antisocial personality, psychopathy, general violence, and partner violence—were correlated to articulated cognitive distortions. Since between group comparisons were not significant, articulated anger was correlated with antisocial, borderline, and psychopathic features. Borderline personality features correlated positively with articulations reflecting jealousy. Articulated themes were more consistently related to psychopathology than to violence, suggesting that tailoring treatments to personality features of clients may prove fruitful.