In-between anarchy and interdependence: from state death to fragile and failing states

International relations scholars concede a vital role for anarchy in structuring state behaviour towards survival. Anarchy provides strong incentives for power-maximising behaviour, since states that do not act accordingly risk death by conquest. This assumption raises an important question: if international anarchy is pervasive, leading to processes where only the fit survive, how do we explain the survival of fragile and failing states? Under conditions of self-help such states should be tempting targets, yet these vulnerable states avoid death by conquest. Fragile and failing states survive because international order is based on a sovereignty regime backed by major powers. International order is more salient than anarchy and provides better vantage points to understand the absence of state death. Elements of international order, like the relational hierarchies between dominant and subordinate states, no longer tolerate state death. This largely explains the survival of fragile and failing states.     

Going online. Does ICT enabled-participation engage the young in local governance?

Local governments increasingly use online strategies to strengthen political participation of citizens in policy and politics. Young people, however, are generally under-represented. This article studies age patterns of participation across offline and online forms of action to test whether online initiatives are able to overcome this age bias. We first report a case study of online and offline problem reporting to local authorities. We find that simply going from offline to online participation reinforces rather than mitigates age bias. We then report a case study of message posting on an online political forum. In this case, age bias disappears. In contrast to the traditional instrumental modes, a forum is an expressive form of online participation. The young seem to value the act of participating over the outcomes of participation. For practice, these findings suggest a need for participation policies that speak to these expressive needs of young. In recent years, social media have reinforced the potential for expressive participation.     

Crime Victims’ Perceptions of Police Behavior,Legitimacy, and Cooperation: A Review of the Literature

According to Tyler’s theoretical framework, police officers can motivate cooperation among citizens during direct interactions by using fair procedures and by showing how the police perform their job in combating crime. By conducting a systematic literature review, prior research was examined to see whether perceptions of procedural justice and police performance result in higher levels of perceived legitimacy of the police institution, and in turn whether this perceived legitimacy stimulates cooperative behavior among crime victims specifically. Results of the 15 included studies indicate that partial support for the applicability of this framework on crime victims was found. However, none of the included studies tested all relationships within the framework simultaneously among crime victims; they typically focused only on one of the interrelationships between the frameworks’ key concepts. Implications for future research and police practice are discussed.     

The EU and Issues of Human Rights Protection: Same Solutions to More Acute Problems?

Academic literature repeatedly calls for the EU's accession to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950 (hereinafter Convention 1 ). Similarly, the Lisbon Treaty provides that the EU must accede to the Convention. [Correction made here after initial online publication.] This might seem odd as the European Court of Justice (hereinafter ECJ 1 ) has over the years developed abundant case‐law on human rights protection in the EU, and the EU has not so long ago adopted a, albeit non‐binding, catalogue of human rights (the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (hereinafter Charter)). But after all these years, cases, and Treaty amendments, the EU is in fact going back to the ECJ's 1996 landmark opinion which recommended the EU's formal accession to the Convention, 1 already proposed in 1979 by the Commission. 1 One reason for this might be that, in the meantime, human rights issues have multiplied in the application of EU law, especially in areas such as the Second and Third Pillars where—at least initially—fewer human rights protection guarantees were foreseen.     

Family breakdown in nineteenth-century Netherlands: divorcing couples in The Hague.

This is an analysis of divorce trends in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century. "Use was made of a case-control research design in which the social characteristics of all marriages which ended in divorce were compared with those of a random sample from the marriages which ended in widowhood. The author analyzed a group of 2,300 marriages contracted in The Hague from their inception until their dissolution by death or divorce. All migrants were followed to their new place of residence. Multivariate (proportional hazards) analysis showed that the highest probability of divorce was found among persons who had already gone through a divorce before. Other factors related to divorce were high mobility, low ages at marriage, and large age and religious differences between spouses. Higher social classes had relatively high divorce risks."     

An Evaluation of the Economic Approaches Used by Policy Actors towards Investment in Place-Based Partnerships in Victoria

Place-based partnerships are supported by the state and include various organisations and interests within particular geographic areas. The Victorian government has established place-based partnerships to plan and coordinate resource allocation decisions to meet objectives such as economic development and social inclusion. In the literature there are positive and negative views of these partnerships. One view is that they allow regions to build competitive advantage, while another is that they are a means of pursuing a neoliberal policy agenda that seeks to reduce government protection and investment. We help clarify the tensions between positive and negative views of partnerships by examining the economic approaches used by policy actors toward place-based partnerships in Victoria. We find that policy actors combine neoclassical and institutionalist approaches to argue that partnerships generate networks that enable more efficient and equitable resource allocation within places .