New ‘Mass Line’ Campaign

The Communist Party of China(CPC)recently began a new training campaign for Party members and cadres as part of a multi-pronged approach designed to confront a number of challenges facing China today.The purpose of the campaign is to reassert and deepen the Party’s values and connection with the Chinese masses,and to establish in the clearest of terms the professional and ethical requirements of service.     

Genes and Antisocial Behavior: Perceived versus Real Threats to Jurisprudence

Separating wheat from chaff in regard to the hyperbole surrounding media coverage about genes for violence, born killers, et cetera provides a launch pad for two experienced behavioral geneticists who have conducted research on aggression and crime with twins, families, and adoptees to provide an essay on the facts and limitations of current knowledge; they conclude that any current threats to jurisprudence lie in perception rather than in empirical facts.     

The Economics of Science and Technology

This paper provides a non-technical, accessible introduction to various topics in the burgeoning literature on the economics of science and technology. This is an interdisciplinary literature, drawing on the work of scholars in the fields of economics, public policy, sociology and management. The aim of this paper is to foster a deeper appreciation of the economic importance of science and technology issues. We also hope to stimulate additional research on these topics.     

Organised diaspora networks and homeland peacebuilding: the Bosnian world diaspora network as a potential development actor

International donors and development INGOs are increasingly recognising the potential contributions that Diasporas can make to developing countries. However, traditional peacebuilding literature has largely ignored the potential of Diasporas to contribute to post conflict reconstruction in the homeland. This article, therefore, assesses this potential through an examination of the Bosnian World Diaspora Network, created after the recent dispersal of refugees due to the conflict in Bosnia. It concludes that the relationship between, on the one hand, diaspora activities and, on the other, armed conflict and war recovery is considerably less straightforward than has been supposed. However, it does suggest a number of ways in which donors/host lands could assist the coordination of development agencies and diaspora networks.     

Preaching politics: Islam and Christianity on the Kenya coast

Focusing on the Kenya coast, this article analyses the developing contrast between the place of Islam and Christianity in public politics. It argues that Islam’s association with criticism of the political order contrasts with Christianity, but that this is not the result of inherent difference between the religions. Both have previously provided a language, and space, for political commentary and activism in Kenya. The contrast is rather the contingent result of particular circumstances in Kenya. Christianity has become increasingly associated with affirming clientelism and the accumulation of wealth in a way which is avowedly non-political but in practice legitimates the current political order. Meanwhile, although individual Muslims are more likely to enjoy high political office than was previously the case, Muslims are also more likely to locate their experience as symptomatic of a wider pattern of exclusion in Kenya and link this sense of local injustice to global inequalities.     

Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality: Evidence for Lijphart's Proposition from Venezuela

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.