Shifting Priorities or Business as Usual? Continuity and Change in the post-2011 IMF and World Bank Engagement with Tunisia,Morocco and Egypt

Following the popular uprisings that erupted across North Africa in 2010 and 2011, international financial institutions have embarked on a significant re-engagement with governments in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. New lending arrangements and project initiatives by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in particular, have emphasised a supposed turn towards pro-poor policies, social inclusion and public engagement with economic decision-making. This article analyses the content and logic of IMF and World Bank lending to these three countries, examining whether this re-engagement represents a substantive shift away from the neoliberal policies that characterised pre-2011 IFI relationships with the region.     

Challenges and dilemmas of international development volunteering: a case study from Vanuatu

This article looks at the key challenges and dilemmas of international development volunteering (IDV) as experienced within a community project in Vanuatu. By focusing on the nature and significance of IDV engagements at the local community level, it offers critical insights into roles and relationships among international development volunteers and local host communities, together with the complex global–local interface in which projects are negotiated and constructed. The article concludes by offering some ways in which IDV can be more effective in assisting community projects address the needs of contemporary village life.     

Analysis of Hypodermic Needles and Syringes for the Presence of Blood and Polydimethylsiloxane (Silicone) Utilizing Microchemical Tests and Infrared Spectroscopy

Suspect hypodermic needles and syringes were seized from an unlicensed individual who was allegedly injecting patients with silicone (polydimethylsiloxane [PDMS]) for cosmetic enhancement. Since control syringe barrels and needles often contain an interfering PDMS lubricant, a risk for false positives of foreign PDMS exists. The focus of this report was to minimize this risk and determine a quick and reliable test for the presence of blood in PDMS matrices. Using ATR‐FT‐IR spectroscopy, the risk for false‐positive identification of foreign PDMS was reduced by (i) overfilling the sampling aperture to prevent spectral distortions and (ii) sampling a region of the suspect syringe/needle assembly where manufacturer‐applied PDMS is not typically located. Analysis for blood indicated that the Teichman microchemical test was effective for detecting blood in the presence of PDMS. Overall, detecting PDMS established intent and detecting blood established that the needle containing the PDMS had been used for injection.     

Using Qualitative Information to Improve Causal Inference

Using the Rosenbaum (2002, 2009) approach to observational studies, we show how qualitative information can be incorporated into quantitative analyses to improve causal inference in three ways. First, by including qualitative information on outcomes within matched sets, we can ameliorate the consequences of the difficulty of measuring those outcomes, sometimes reducing p‐values. Second, additional information across matched sets enables the construction of qualitative confidence intervals on effect size. Third, qualitative information on unmeasured confounders within matched sets reduces the conservativeness of Rosenbaum‐style sensitivity analysis. This approach accommodates small to medium sample sizes in a nonparametric framework, and therefore it may be particularly useful for analyses of the effects of policies or institutions in a small number of units. We illustrate these methods by examining the effect of using plurality rules in transitional presidential elections on opposition harassment in 1990s sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Study and revolt

This essay is an inquiry into the forms of life and writing that emerge in the relation between study and revolt. After an initial sketch of the problem of “normal emergency” as it presents itself in post-apartheid South Africa, the essay then turns to a first reading of Richard Rive’s 1990 novel Emergency Continued in order to ask about the relations of study and revolt under conditions of a state of emergency. To deepen its reading of Rive, the essay makes a detour into the utopian theory of education set forth in 1972 by Richard Turner. The essay then turns to a second reading of Rive’s Emergency Continued in order to elucidate the unexpectedly utopian kernel of that text. The essay concludes with a reading of Zoë Wicomb’s short story “A Clearing in the Bush,” and a reflection on the relation between study and revolt under contemporary conditions.     

Installing a Safety on the ‘Loaded Gun’? China’s institutional reforms,National Security Commission and Sino–Japanese crisis (in)stability

As China’s active assertion of its claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has increasingly crowded the surrounding waters and airspace with military and paramilitary forces, the risk of a Sino–Japanese crisis has reached unprecedented heights. Neither side wants conflict, but the increased frequency and proximity at which vessels and aircraft encounter one another means that overall risk has grown proportionately. Were a miscalculation or even an unintended low-level incident to occur, de-escalation would hinge on each side’s respective internal crisis management capabilities and political leaders’ ability to communicate expeditiously. This article analyzes China’s side of the ledger. Specifically, it assesses the extent to which institutional reforms since the 2001 US–China EP-3 crisis have ameliorated longstanding weaknesses in China’s crisis management capabilities and its ability to communicate via hotlines with Japan. While significant issues and obstacles to further urgently needed improvements remain, with the establishment of a Central National Security Commission (CNSC) and other recent reforms, Beijing may finally be achieving modest improvements. Bilaterally, however, no Sino–Japanese crisis hotline exists to date.     

To Bridge the Divide between Evidence and Policy: Reduce Ambiguity as Much as Uncertainty

Policy makers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy. They use two shortcuts—emotions and beliefs to understand problems and “rational” ways of establishing the best evidence on solutions—to act quickly in complex, multilevel policy‐making environments. Many studies only address one part of this problem. Improving the supply of evidence helps reduce scientific and policy maker uncertainty. However, policy makers also combine their beliefs with limited evidence to reduce ambiguity by choosing one of several possible ways to understand and solve a problem. We use this insight to consider solutions designed to “close the evidence–policy gap.”     

Censors Get Smart: Evidence from Psiphon in Iran

Information controls are actions intended to deny, disrupt, monitor, or secure information for political ends. They can be implemented using a wide variety of technical and nontechnical means. Political contests over the control of information are heightened around important events, such as major anniversaries, armed conflicts, protests, and elections. In this paper, we offer a comparative case study of online censorship of the circumvention tool Psiphon during the Iranian elections in 2016 and 2013, drawing on unique access to analytics data from Psiphon. We find that the Iranian regime developed its censorship approach in two ways, deploying blocking that was more targeted and strategically timed in the more recent case. Evidence suggests that the regime relaxed censorship of Psiphon during the official campaign period for the 2016 election. The apparent objective of this new approach was to control access to information while minimizing the political consequences of doing so.     

Transgression Wrongfulness Outweighs its Harmfulness as a Determinant of Sentence Severity

When students suggest sentences for criminal offenders, do they rely more heavily on the harmfulness or on the wrongfulness of the offender's conduct? In Study 1, 116 Princeton University undergraduates rated the harmfulness and wrongfulness of, and suggested appropriate sentences for, a series of crimes. As expected, participants emphasized wrongfulness when choosing an appropriate criminal punishment. In Study 2, 33 Princeton undergraduates made similar ratings for violations of the University Honor Code, and rated their contempt for fabricated amendments to the Code that required sentencers to focus either only on harmfulness or only on wrongfulness. Again, sentences more closely reflected wrongfulness ratings, and participants were more contemptuous of the harmfulness-based proposal. We also consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for sentencing laws and policy.     

Opportunity and Self-Control: Do they Predict Multiple Forms of Online Victimization?

This study investigates the predictors of four types of cybercrime victimization/experiences: online harassment, hacking, identity theft, and receiving nude photos or explicit content. The effects of victimization opportunity and low self-control are examined as the primary independent variables in logistic regression analyses of data collected from a large sample of undergraduates enrolled at two universities in the United States. Results suggest that opportunity is positively related to each of the four types of online victimization, and that low self-control is associated with person-based, but not computer-based, forms of cybercrime. These findings speak to the utility, and also the limitations, of these perspectives in understanding cybercrime victimization risk among college students, and to the potentially criminogenic nature of the Internet.