Social media and protest mobilization: evidence from the Tunisian revolution

This article explores how social media acted as a catalyst for protest mobilization during the Tunisian revolution in late 2010 and early 2011. Using evidence from protests we argue that social media acted as an important resource for popular mobilization against the Ben Ali regime. Drawing on insights from “resource mobilization theory”, we show that social media (1) allowed a “digital elite” to break the national media blackout through brokering information for mainstream media; (2) provided a basis for intergroup collaboration for a large “cycle of protest”; (3) reported event magnitudes that raised the perception of success for potential free riders, and (4) provided additional “emotional mobilization” through depicting the worst atrocities associated with the regime's response to the protests. These findings are based on background talks with Tunisian bloggers and digital activists and a revealed preference survey conducted among a sample of Tunisian internet users (February–May 2012).     

Mental disorder and legal responsibility: The relevance of stages of decision making

The paper discusses the relevance of decision-making models for evaluating the impact of mental disorder on legal responsibility. A three-stage model is presented that analyzes decision making in terms of behavioral control. We argue that understanding dysfunctions in each of the three stages of decision making could provide important insights in the relation between mental disorder and legal responsibility. In particular, it is argued that generating options for action constitutes an important but largely ignored stage of the decision-making process, and that dysfunctions in this early stage might undermine the whole process of making decisions (and thus behavioral control) more strongly than dysfunctions in later stages. Lastly, we show how the presented framework could be relevant to the actual psychiatric assessment of a defendant's decision making within the context of an insanity defense.     

Self-Determination After Kosovo

This article discusses the meaning of self-determination in its historical and contemporary contexts and examines the different options available for the accommodation of contested self-determination claims. Among these, the creation of a new state, arguably, is the most radical of options and one that has significant regional and global implications beyond the territory to which it is applied. Detailing these implications in relation to the case of Kosovo, we make a broader argument that, even if secession is one mechanism to resolve self-determination disputes, this does not do away with the need to continue exploring settlements short of secession as alternatives to changing established international boundaries.     

The Limits of Reconciliation: The Story of a Perpetrator,Katherine Ann Power

In this paper, I apply concepts of restorative justice, along with moral philosopher Joanna North's (1998) multistage model of the process of earning forgiveness to the case of 1960s antiwar militant, Katherine Power. Both frameworks assume that forgiveness ought to culminate in reconciliation between perpetrator and victim. On September 23, 1970, Katherine Ann Power, a 20-year-old college student, was a member of a group of five who were robbing a bank near Boston to support the movement against the Vietnam War. One from the group stayed at the bank and shot and killed a Boston police officer and father of nine. Under Massachusetts' felony murder law, all five were chargeable with murder. Power went underground for 23 years, remaining on the FBI's Ten-Most-Wanted list longer than any other woman in history. During her fugitive years, Power lived her life in a purposeful attempt to make atonement. Ultimately, though, she came to understand that her crime was not a private matter, but demanded social and relational modes of remediation, including public confession, public penance (in a penitentiary), and efforts at reconciliation with the family of her victim. So in 1993, she turned herself in, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and began serving an 8–12-year sentence in Massachusetts. She completed her prison sentence in October, 1999. Power spent her years in prison engaging in reflection and action that maps well onto the first five stages of North's model and onto much of the restorative justice model. So far, though, Power's efforts have failed to yield the hypothesized reconciliation with her victims. Examination of the parallels and divergences between these theoretical frameworks and Power's narrative provides significant insight into the meaning, the promise, and the limits of reconciliation.     

Administrative burden in digital public service delivery: The social infrastructure of library programs for e-inclusion

In their efforts to digitize public service delivery, countries increasingly use algorithms based on mathematical models, data and/or a combination of different administrative datasets to issue decisions, but recent studies point towards challenges around citizens' understanding, accessing, and filing objections to such automated decisions. This paper focuses on the social infrastructure supporting citizens that struggle with accessing such services. To address this, we ask: How does the social infrastructure affect administrative burdens associated with digital government services? This is studied in the Dutch context through expert interviews and observations of support programs in libraries. We find that although libraries as primary sites for these services may pose the disadvantage of being more difficult to reach for low-literate citizens, advantages are their organizational structure at the local level as well as their currently changing role to include a growing range of services, including (digital) skills courses.     

‘For good measure’: data gaps in a big data world

Policy and data scientists have paid ample attention to the amount of data being collected and the challenge for policymakers to use and utilize it. However, far less attention has been paid towards the quality and coverage of this data specifically pertaining to minority groups. The paper makes the argument that while there is seemingly more data to draw on for policymakers, the quality of the data in combination with potential known or unknown data gaps limits government’s ability to create inclusive policies. In this context, the paper defines primary, secondary, and unknown data gaps that cover scenarios of knowingly or unknowingly missing data and how that is potentially compensated through alternative measures. Based on the review of the literature from various fields and a variety of examples highlighted throughout the paper, we conclude that the big data movement combined with more sophisticated methods in recent years has opened up new opportunities for government to use existing data in different ways as well as fill data gaps through innovative techniques. Focusing specifically on the representativeness of such data, however, shows that data gaps affect the economic opportunities, social mobility, and democratic participation of marginalized groups. The big data movement in policy may thus create new forms of inequality that are harder to detect and whose impact is more difficult to predict.

     

Women in mystical Islam

Women played a positive role in Sufism. Even though the early ascetics were rather negative in their statements about women, it was a woman who introduced the concept of pure love into Islamic mysticism, and has been venerated for this reason throughout the centuries. One meets women in almost every avenue of Sufism. They act as patrons of Sufi khānqāhs and as shaykhas of certain convents. They have been venerated as saints and accepted as spiritual guides. The symbol of the woman-soul who embodies the highest ambition of the God-seeking human being, has been popular in the Sufi tradition of Indo-Pakistan. As mothers, many mystically inclined women have deeply influenced their sons who in turn became leading masters of the Path thanks to their early education. The role of women for the expansion of mystically tinged Islamic thought in the countryside and down to the lowest levels of population cannot be overrated; they were the most important depositories of mystical lore and the simple, unassuming faith in God and the Prophet.