Israel and its enemies

He has written widely on international relations and international law. His work Security Or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategyremains the authoritative treatment of the subject. His newest book is Force, Order and Justice: International Law in an Age of Atrocity.     

Political business cycles at the municipal level

The present article tests predictions of rational political business cycle models using a large and previously unexplored data set of Portuguese municipalities. This data allows for a clean test of these predictions due to the high level of detail on expenditure items, an exogenous fixed election schedule, and homogeneity of Portuguese local governments with respect to policy instruments and institutions. Estimation results clearly reveal the opportunistic behaviour of local governments. In pre-electoral periods, they increase total expenditures and change their composition favouring items that are highly visible to the electorate. This behaviour is consistent with an effort to signal competence and increase chances of re-election.     

Religion as a Source of Peace and Violence

Fleeing persecution in 615, the disciples and followers of Prophet Muhammad found refuge in Africa. In this “First Hijrah,” or migration, they had escaped Mecca and sought safety in Aksum (now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea), the land of an African Christian king. It was a crucial moment in the development of Islam. Africa, a place of many religions, was seen, rightly, as a safe haven.

Like Islam, Christianity had faced opposition and persecution in its early years. The practitioners of both religions knew firsthand what it meant to suffer violence from those who disagreed. How can it be that religions born of persecution are now themselves used for extreme violence? And why, specifically, in Africa today? How can Africans prevent and fight against extremism and what can we all learn from this experience?     

Undoing a co-operative bargain: The origins and dissolution of federal accommodation of provincial credit unions

The failure of several U.S. regional banks early in 2023 underlined Canada's reputation as home to a resilient banking sector where federal policymakers guard their jurisdictional responsibility over banking against populist impulses and trade off competition for financial stability. This article argues that conventional explanations for this observed stability are incomplete because they omit any discussion of federal policies that shaped the growth of a $550 billion provincially based credit union system. This article reconciles the resulting puzzle by showing how policymakers accommodated credit unions and used them to channel populist impulses but within the bounds of over-arching financial stability concerns.