Women and Support for Terrorism in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

While there have been many scholarly inquiries about the sources of support for terrorism among Muslim publics, to date, scholars have generally not asked whether or not gender predicts support for Islamist militancy. Instead, most scholars and officials assume that “men of military age” are the most important segment of interest. Instead, gender is usually treated as a “control variable” rather than a “study variable,” reflecting the paucity of interest in this subject. This is likely an important scholarly and policy-analytic oversight. Many terrorist groups have women’s wings and women-oriented publications and other outreach programs because they understand the important role that mothers, wives, and sisters play in a male family member’s decision to take up arms with a terrorist group. In some conflicts, women also join as combatants. In this paper, we seek to address these scholarly lacunae by examining gender-wise support for two militant groups based in and operating from Pakistan: the Afghan Taliban, which has no female outreach program, and the sectarian Sipha-e-Sahaba-e-Pakistan, which does. We leverage a dataset drawn from a relatively large national survey of Pakistanis collected in 2011 to model support for these groups using gender as an independent variable along with other demographic and control variables. We find that females are significantly more likely to support the sectarian group with a women’s outreach-wing. In contrast, there is no significant gender effect on support for the Afghan Taliban. We argue, from these results, that gender deserves more attention in understanding who supports and participates in Islamist militancy.     

Social redistribution in federalised Belgium

The federalisation of Belgium has led to a fragmentation of competences in the field of social policy. Only social security has remained an exclusive federal responsibility. However, there have been calls for further federalisation in this policy area. The prominence of interregional financial transfers fuels such calls, while its opponents point out that, among other things, federalisation would result in greater poverty and inequality in Wallonia, a Region that is already disadvantaged in economic terms. In this contribution we first outline the territorial organisation of social policy in a federalised Belgium. We then analyse social transfers between Flanders and Wallonia, focusing on their size and determinants. We demonstrate that these transfers have a considerable equalising and anti-poverty effect. Next, we explore the theoretical arguments for and against federalising social policy, supplemented with examples from the Belgian case. We conclude with an overview of the discussion and indicate some future policy directions.     

The Council of Europe Data Protection Convention reform: Analysis of the new text and critical comment on its global ambition

The year 2010 set an important milestone in the development of data protection law in Europe: both Europe's basic regulatory texts, the EU Data Protection Directive and the Council's Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Convention 108), were placed at an amendment process, having served individual data protection for many years and witnessed in the meantime technological developments that threatened to make their provisions obsolete. After briefly presenting Convention 108, the analysis that follows will highlight the Council's data protection system currently in effect as well as developments relating to the Convention's amendment so far with the aim of identifying improvements and shortcomings. While doing this two separate points of view shall be adopted: at first a micro point of view will attempt to identify improvements and shortcomings through an ‘insider’ perspective, that is, judging only the merits and difficulties of the draft text at hand. Afterwards a macroscopic view will be adopted, whereby strategic issues will be discussed pertaining to the important issue of the relationship of the suggested draft with the EU data protection system, as well as, the same draft's potential to constitute the next global information privacy standard.     

Book Reviews

Matthew Amengual, Politicized Enforcement in Argentina: Labor and Environmental Regulation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 286 pp.; hardcover $99.99, ebook $80. Matthew C. Ingram, Crafting Courts in New Democracies: The Politics of Subnational Judicial Reform in Brazil and Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Maps, figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 392 pp.; hardcover, $110. Russell Crandall, The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Photographs, maps, figures, list of organizations, bibliography, index, 698 pp; hardcover $99.99, paperback $39.99, ebook $32. Luis Fernando Angosto‐Ferrández, Venezuela Reframed: Bolivarianism, Indigenous Peoples and Socialisms of the Twenty‐First Century. London: Zed Books, 2015. Appendix, bibliography, index, 312 pp.; paperback, ebook. Fábio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, and Michiel Baud, eds., Environmental Governance in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Tables, figures, map, bibliography, index, 350 pp.; hardcover $31, ebook. Eduardo Alemán and George Tsebelis, eds., Legislative Institutions and Lawmaking in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 296 pp.; hardcover $90, ebook. Joseph S. Tulchin, Latin America in International Politics: Challenging U.S. Hegemony. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2016. Bibliography, index, 235 pp.; hardcover $60. Kevin P. Gallagher, The China Triangle: Latin America's China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Tables, figures, bibliography, index, 256 pp.; hardcover $27.95, ebook.     

Devolution Plan 2000: dictatorship,democracy, and the politics of institutional change in Pakistan

Contemporary development theory and policy research puts an overarching emphasis on institution building as a key driver of change in developing countries. Over the past few decades, decentralisation reforms have played out as the linchpin of such institution building efforts, advocated by international development agencies and favoured by national governments. This article examines decentralisation reforms implemented in Pakistan under the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers initiative through a case study of the implementation and outcomes of Devolution Plan (DP) in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province. Promulgated by General Musharaf in 2000, the DP aimed to restructure and rebuild political and administrative structures, to redress key issues of governance, resource distribution, and service delivery. The Local Government System (LGS) was a key reform element within the DP, but it lost traction and was abolished in 2008/09. This article demonstrates two important factors, regime legitimisation and the preservation of clientelistic politics, that have profoundly shaped implementation of the DP. The findings demonstrate how the implementation of this large-scale internationally supported attempt at institution building ultimately succumbed to a range of particularistic interests.