The impact of cybercrime on businesses: a novel conceptual framework and its application to Belgium

Despite growing indications and fears about the impact of cybercrime, only few academic studies have so far been published on the topic to complement those published by consultancy firms, cybersecurity companies and private institutes. The review of all these studies shows that there is no consensus on how to define and measure cybercrime or its impact. Against this background, this article pursues two aims: 1) to develop a thorough conceptual framework to define and operationalize cybercrime affecting businesses as well as its impact, harms, and costs; and 2) to test this conceptual framework with a survey of businesses based in Belgium, which was administered in summer 2016 and elicited 310 valid responses. Consisting of five types, our conceptualization of cybercrime is, unlike others, technology-neutral and fully compatible with the legislation. Drawing on Greenfield and Paoli’s Harm Assessment Framework (The British Journal of Criminology, 53, 864–885, 2013), we understand impact as the overall harm of cybercrime, that is, the “sum” of the harms to material support, or costs, and the harms to other interest dimensions i.e., functional (or operational) integrity, reputation and privacy. Whereas we ask respondents to provide a monetary estimate of the costs, respondents are invited to rate the severity of the harms on the basis of an ordinal scale. We claim that this “double track” gives a fuller, more valid assessment of cybercrime impact. Whereas most affected businesses do not report major costs or harm, 15% to 20% of them rate the harms to their internal operational activities as serious or more, with cyber extortion regarded as most harmful.     

Land and grievances in post-conflict Sri Lanka: exploring the role of corruption complaints

There is a growing academic literature on both land and corruption in relation to post-conflict peace building. This paper aims to understand what role corruption complaints play in the nexus between land and grievances in post-conflict societies. Drawing on field material collected in Sri Lanka, the paper interrogates the role of corruption complaints in relation to a number of highly politicised and ethnicised post-conflict land issues, ranging from the return of idps and alleged new resettlement schemes to land grabbing for military, ‘development’ and/or commercial purposes. The comparatively high visibility of land use, and the fact that land-related corruption is likely to affect a specific set of people who lay claim to the land, makes it a particularly important area to address in research on corruption and post-conflict peace building.     

Not so Fair after All? Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Satisfaction with Democracy in the Nordic Welfare States

The Nordic countries are known for their well-functioning public administrations. In indices measuring control of corruption and the quality of the rule of law, they frequently occupy top positions. However, as we demonstrate in this article, a country's top position in comparative indices does not automatically imply that citizens view the state of affairs in the same way as depicted by experts. The observation is in no way trivial: Drawing on theories of procedural fairness, we go on to show—statistically, using individual level data—that widespread public perceptions about the unfairness of civil servants may have a negative effect on the legitimacy of the political system even in so-called high-trust and “least corrupt” settings such as the Nordic ones.     

Le phénomène “Krouman” à Sassandra: la marque d’une institution séculaire

A recurrent anxiety in contemporary Botswana is the perception of an immediate threat from external forces: strangers, livestock, and disease. How do the state and its citizens react under these conditions? The following article explores this question in the context of globalization, discourses of autochthony, and the blood-based politics of population management in Botswana. In recent years, Batswana increasingly see themselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and in particular, newly arrived migrants from Zimbabwe. Under pressure from outside, Botswana citizens fear the loss of their physical homeland and the denigration of their collective identity and sense of morality. Through a reading of publications in the print media, I examine the articulation of the rhetoric of invasion and national paranoia that has taken root in Botswana. Although the presumption of assault by outsiders is said to threaten the existence of the Batswana nation through the erosion of the supposedly distinct boundaries between citizen and stranger, these apprehensions also carry a potent creative potential. I argue that, in an environment of economic uncertainty and ethnic instability, the specter of the stranger/Zimbabwean is used to reconfigure the content and emphasis of citizenship in Botswana.     

The Long Walk to Knowledge: On the Determinants of Higher Education Mobility to Europe

This paper investigates the determinants of demand for higher education mobility from students in developing countries to Europe. Used together with various linguistic relations, we emphasise the relevance of informal and formal networks in explaining resistance to student migration. The former are made up of friends or previous students while the latter are formal partnerships that have been established among higher education institutions. Overall, our results show that, apart from the usual economic considerations, student mobility is strongly correlated with non-monetary factors specific to origin and destination, such as socio-demographic characteristics, individual beliefs, and institutional profiles.     

The Dictator's New Clothes: The Relationship Between E-Participation and Quality of Government in Non-Democratic Regimes

It is often assumed that the development of e-participation and e-government initiatives aimed at stimulating citizen participation in the political process and fostering more efficient governmental services harbors a great potential for improved control of corruption and government performance. Thus, it is often argued that e-participation is an efficient instrument for increasing transparency and quality of government in non-democratic and developing countries. However, this article argues that these assumptions should be questioned on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. The results of the empirical time-series cross-section analyses show that positive development in terms of e-participation in non-democratic countries does not lead to corresponding positive effects in terms of control of corruption and quality of government. Rather, in many cases the Internet offers political elites new opportunities in their quest for remaining in power.     

Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.