Economic Assistance to Peacebuilding and Reconciliation Community-Based Projects in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties: Challenges,Opportunities and Evolution

The International Fund for Ireland and the European Union (EU) Peace III Fund have provided external economic resources to local community projects in Northern Ireland and the Border region to support intercommunal relations, community development, economic development, peacebuilding and reconciliation. The British and Irish governments, the EU, and the USA see the economic aid as their commitment to support the peace process, nurture the local voluntary sector, and build the peace dividend. The research findings demonstrate that the reality on the ground is more complex. Some believe that the economic assistance has created employment opportunities, built capacity, and localized peacebuilding knowledge. Others are more sceptical and perceive that the aid has created dependency, facilitated a competitive milieu, and has not transformed relationships in a sectarian environment.     

Creating capacities for peacebuilding citizenship: history and social studies curricula in Bangladesh,Canada, Colombia,and México

Public education is one influence on how young people learn to navigate social conflicts and to contribute to building democratic peace, including their sense of hope or powerlessness. Social studies curricula, in particular, introduce core concerns, geographies, governance and civil society, and participation skills and norms. History education narratives frame identity, (dis)trust or peaceful coexistence, and provide exemplars of how social conflicts and injustice have been handled in the past. To shed light on these peacebuilding and peace-blocking choices, this paper examines government-sanctioned social studies and history curricula in contrasting contexts of violent conflict and peace: Bangladesh, Colombia, México, and (Ontario) Canada. Our comparative analysis shows how these official curricula (de)normalize violence and militarism, present national identities as hegemonic/exclusive or plural/inclusive, and create opportunities for teaching/learning peacebuilding citizenship competencies such as conflict dialog, human rights awareness, and engagement in collective processes of civil society and governance.     

The challenge of assessing governance in Asian states: Hong Kong in the Worldwide Governance Indicators ranking

As countries in Asia work towards achieving development, the state of governance emerged as a benchmark for them. Assessing governance is an important exercise because a country’s image is influenced by its position in world rankings which plays a role in decisions by the international community regarding aid and trade. The methodology adopted in preparing the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) rankings underlines the preference for some values that are dominant in Western liberal democratic systems. This places Asian states at a disadvantage as other traditional values are ignored in assessing the state of governance. This article examines the methods and criteria of the WGI with reference to the case of Hong Kong. An overview of the critiques of WGI and analysis of the scores awarded to Hong Kong reveal the challenge of assessing governance across countries with the same instrument without taking into consideration the context of the units. The article argues that there is a need for developing alternative criteria for accommodating indigenous institutional structures, processes, and practices to ensure that Asian countries can benefit from the desired values of governance and help overcome the partial picture of governance that emerges in the WGI.     

Federations, coalitions, and risk diversification

We investigate the optimal size of a nation in the context of a portfolio choice model under uncertainty. With an equal sharing rule, we characterize the equilibrium coalition structure, which is shown to depend on income, risks, and market correlations. Specifically, coalitions are likely to form among regions with similar variance in income and among regions with negative market correlations. The conditions that yield a grand coalition, two sub-coalitions of different sizes, and singletons are derived. Moreover, the equilibrium coalition structures are also examined when geographical contiguity is required.     

Postmortem Fluid Concentrations of Heroin Biomarkers and Their Metabolites

Only limited data exist concerning the utility of complementary specimens in heroin-related deaths. As such, this report employed a validated LC-MS-MS method to quantify 6-monoacetylmorphine (6-MAM), 6-acetylcodeine (6-AC), and their metabolites morphine and codeine in blood with (BN) and without preservative (B) and the additional unpreserved specimens of vitreous humor, urine, stomach contents, and bile from 20 postmortem cases in which heroin was the primary cause of death. The median concentration of 6-MAM in BN was 0.011 mg/L, B was 0.008 mg/L, urine was 0.186 mg/L, vitreous humor was 0.022 mg/L, stomach contents was 0.147 mg/L, and bile was 0.012 mg/L. Only one case was found to be positive for 6-AC in B (case 6, 0.002 mg/L), and the median concentration of 6-AC was 0.002 mg/L in BN, 0.012 mg/L in urine, 0.003 mg/L in vitreous humor, 0.057 mg/L in stomach contents, and 0.004 mg/L in bile. These findings present new information on the distribution of these analytes in complementary matrices and support their inclusion for accurately determining the role of heroin in opioid-related deaths.     

Can Islamists be secularized? Religion and politics in urban Bangladesh

As in many other Muslim majority states, the Islamist parties play a significant role in the body politic of Bangladesh. Because of their counter-hegemonic modus operandi, the question arises regarding the ability of the Islamists to cohabit democratically in a secular or a quasi-secular political system. The literature on secularization, secularism, and Islam relies on a grand narrative of the reasons to address the question and provides us with polarized answers regarding the Islamists’ ability to accommodate the principle of secularism. However, almost all of the works have been done on the abstract, theoretical level and do not address the interplay of social and political factors in Muslim societies. None of the research on Islamism in Bangladesh addresses Islamist parties’ ability or inability to participate in a quasi-secular, democratic system through acclimating to secularism in the rubric of their political ideology, Islamism. This study therefore examines the grassroots-level socio-political interplays of the Islamist activists with the non-Islamists and analyzes their willingness and ability to accommodate secularism in order to democratically participate in a quasi-secular political system.     

Corporate Sustainability and Financial Performance of Banks in Muslim Economies: The Role of Institutions

Sustainability performance (SP) provides firms with the opportunities that if strategically handled could improve the financial performance of these firms through reputation building. This research aims to investigate the impact of SP on the bank's performance in Muslim countries. This research further investigates the role of institutions in moderating the relationship between SP and the banks' financial performance. It is found that banks with higher SP tend to have better financial performance. Furthermore, the marginal results suggest that the impact of SP is greater for banks in countries with greater institutional quality. These findings are robust to different proxies of financial performance. It is imperative not only to report sustainability practices, but it is equally important to publicize these activities. The sustainable business models would create value for the banks if properly managed and communicated well. This can be made more effective with strong institutions in the country. Moreover, the results are suggesting that banks can enjoy more through contributing to society, doing their part in the equitable distribution of wealth, social justice, and economic wellbeing.     

Impact of job location on relationship between job satisfaction and self‐esteem of employees: Evidence from the Indian BPOs

Does job location impact on job satisfaction and self‐esteem? To answer this question, a sample of 298 responses was drawn from business process outsourcing employees working in four different locations in two south Indian states. The study conducted in both rural and urban locations witnessed that the job location (rural/urban) has a significant impact on job satisfaction and self‐esteem despite similar job demands and resource support conditions for all the respondents. Results show a very large divergence in self‐esteem between rural and urban settings and some divergence across genders. Location of delivery centres in smaller towns could thus be an effective solution for the high turnover experienced at urban delivery centres handling data capture and such low end processing.