The Liberal Peace at Home and Abroad: Northern Ireland and Liberal Internationalism

Northern Ireland, we are told, holds positive lessons for other societies emerging from violent conflict. As Britain is one of the leading proponents of liberal internationalism, this article considers whether the liberal internationalism pushed with so much enthusiasm abroad through British foreign policy has been applied with diligence at home—in the Northern Ireland peace process. The findings suggest that Northern Ireland is by no means a poster child for liberal internationalism. Instead, British government handling of the Northern Ireland peace process shows serious deviations from the liberal internationalist canon. This article argues that liberal peace-lite has been tolerated and facilitated at home, while a stricter variant is often expected in overseas contexts.     

Mediation in disputes between municipal governments

Emerging forms of intergovernmental management include roles for neutrals in a range of problem solving and conflict management situations. Third party intergovernmental mediation has been used to settle adversarial municipal boundary disputes in Virginia since 1980. Settlements fashioned through mediated negotiations are responsive to local officialst concerns. This paper reports on this innovation.     

Data Sharing Mandates,Developmental Science,and Responsibly Supporting Authors

Data sharing has come of age. Long expected as a professional courtesy but rarely honored, data sharing is now highlighted in codes of ethics, supported by research communities, required by leading funding organizations, and variously encouraged and mandated by journals and even publishers. These developments reveal how sharing generates many benefits, all of which go to the integrity of the scientific process. Yet, sharing remains a complex phenomenon. This Editorial explains the journal’s response to the publisher’s mandate to establish an appropriate data sharing policy for the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It describes the need to balance the benefits of sharing with its costs for authors publishing in multidisciplinary, developmental science journals like this one. For this journal and at this time, that balance leads us to err on the side of caution, which means supporting those who created their data and not coercing public sharing as a condition for publishing. This approach recognizes authors’ reliance on a wide variety of data, the needs of differentially situated authors, the requirements of robust peer review, and the potential harms that can come from editors’ unilateral sharing mandates.     

Myanmar’s way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections

The general election held on 8 November 2015 marked a significant turning point in Myanmar’s ongoing regime transition. Under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) overwhelmingly dominated the polls. Although the huge electoral mandate for the NLD suggests that further political liberalization in Myanmar is likely, the country is not yet undergoing a genuine democratization. Under the current constitutional framework, the military will remain a key actor within the government, thus a new power-sharing arrangement between the NLD and the military is inevitable. This article examines how Myanmar has transformed from a military regime into the military’s version of a ‘disciplined democracy’ and argues that the 2015 general election was not a precursor to a democratic government per se, but rather a re-affirmation of the military’s version of democracy, in which popularly elected civilian political parties are allowed to co-govern the country with the military.     

Bond notes,borrowing, and heading for bust: Zimbabwe’s persistent crisis

“Bond notes” were introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in late 2016 as a local surrogate currency equivalent in value to the US dollar to address the acute currency shortage afflicting the economy. Unsurprisingly, they were overwhelmingly rejected by Zimbabweans, who feared that they heralded a return to the hyper-inflation which had destroyed incomes and savings in 2008–09. Accordingly, faced by a widening budget deficit, the ZANU–PF government turned to alternative methods of creating money with a view to winning the next election: expanding the supply of electronic currency and selling Treasury bills. The resultant financial crisis provided the backdrop to the military’s recent displacement of President Robert Mugabe. However, commitments to economic reform by any new government dominated by ZANU–PF appear unlikely to address Zimbabwe’s persistent crisis.