Pro-Government Militias and the Repertoires of Illicit State Violence

Most studies of pro-government militias (PGMs) take a narrowly functionalist approach. This article sees PGMs as the product of broader processes of state formation and regime dynamics that generate distinctive repertoires of violence. The article uses a cross-national dataset to shows that low state capacity is singularly correlated with the appearance and activity of all forms of PGMs. Once militias are active, they tend to endure even after initial conditions change, suggesting a strong measure of path dependence in how states PGMs evolve. Democracy curbs the activity of semi-official PGMs but not informal ones. Different authoritarian regime sub-types have varying propensities for militia activity. These findings have major implications for efforts to address state frailty.     

Procedural justice training for police recruits: results of a randomized controlled trial

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Procedural justice training for police officers is designed to improve officers’ interactions with the public. Aside from the fact that it is a given...     

Embodying the Deepest Contradiction: A Rejoinder to Alan Rudy

Andrew Ross: The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society . London: Verso. 1994.

Alexander Wilson: The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez . Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. 1992.

Simon Schama: Landscape and Memory . New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1994.     

Poverty Effects from Trade Liberalisation in Argentina

This paper aims at analysing the linkages between trade liberalisation and poverty in Argentina. Under a specific-factors setting, a two-step procedure is presented. In the first stage the change in prices of goods and factors in both tradable and non-tradable sectors, after a trade liberalisation episode, is considered. In a second step, these variations are applied to assess the changes in poverty and household welfare. A micro simulation approach, using household survey data, is applied in this last stage. Poverty is reduced as a result of the policy and the households that benefit from this reduction are those linked to the non-tradable sectors.     

Making Palestinian “Martyrdom Operations”/“Suicide Attacks”: Interviews With Would-Be Perpetrators and Organizers

Knowledge about the ways in which suicide attacks are recruited and prepared and on the motivation of suicide bombers and the factors that influence the decisions of organizers of suicide attacks has so far been sketchy and sporadic, derived mostly from media sources. In this study, 15 Palestinian would-be suicides and 14 organizers of suicide attacks participated in semi-structured interviews designed to fill this lacuna. The paper focuses on the self-reported feelings and behavior of the suicide bombers from recruitment to dispatching, as well as on the organizers' self-reported views and decisions concerning suicide attacks.     

The Meta-industrial Class and Why We Need It

The paper suggests that the appropriate 'agents of history' in an era of globalisation and ecological crisis are 'meta-industrial' workers. This hitherto nameless class carries out hands-on reproductive labours at the interface of 'humanity' and 'nature' using 'holding skills', a grounded epistemology and ethic consonant with genuine democracy and local sustainability. Pointing to the unexamined neo-liberal assumptions of many environmental philosophers, the author suggests that only an 'embodied materialist' epistemology and ethic can do justice to class, race, gender, and species diversity.     

Moving to an embodied materialism

Edited by U.K. Green Party members David Kemball‐Cook, Mallen Baker, and Chris Haltingly and endorsed for publication by the Green Party Council, The Green Budget: An Emergency Programme for the United Kingdom was published by Green Print, London, in 1991. Joseph Schumpeter once wrote that the public budget is the “skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies.”.