Dangerous Days: The Impact of Nationalism on Interstate Conflict

Does an upsurge in nationalism make interstate conflict more likely? This article gives evidence to suggest that spikes in nationalism do have a direct impact on the likelihood of disputes between states. In it, I use national days or anniversaries as occasions that increase the salience of a national identity and its historical wars. I show that in the two months following national days, conflict is markedly higher than would be expected—almost 30 percent more likely than the rest of the year—and particularly likely for states who initiate conflict or who have revisionist intentions. I demonstrate further how nationalist sentiment can increase international tensions with a case study of national anniversaries in China and Japan. Together, this evidence suggests that the increase in nationalism around national days provides both risks and opportunities to regimes and shapes when they choose conflict over cooperation in international relations.     

Testing Application of Geographical Information Systems,Forensic Geomorphology and Electrical Resistivity Tomography to Investigate Clandestine Grave Sites in Colombia,South America

Colombian forensic investigators required assistance locating clandestine burials of missing persons related to human right atrocities from 14 years ago. Geoscientific search methods were trialled, including a predictive spatial statistical model, using various input and database information, to select the most likely grave locations in difficult mountainous terrain. Groundwork using forensic geomorphology, near-surface geophysics (ERT) and subsequent probing identified suspect burial positions. One site was in mountainous terrain and the other in former school grounds, both difficult to access and in poor weather conditions. In the mountainous area, a negative resistivity anomaly area was identified and intrusively investigated, found to be a buried rock. In school grounds, after MESP and intelligence were used to identify a burial site, surface depressions were identified, and ERT datasets collected over the highest priority depression; intrusive investigations discovered a hand-dug pit containing animal bones. This approach is suggested for Latin American searches.     

The Utility of Forms and Functions of Aggression in Emerging Adulthood: Association with Personality Disorder Symptomatology

A sample of 679 (341 women) emerging adults (M = 18.90 years; SD = 1.11; range = 18.00–22.92) participated in a study on the utility of forms (i.e., physical and relational) and functions (i.e., proactive and reactive) of aggression. We examined the link between these four subtypes of aggression and personality pathology (i.e., psychopathic features, borderline personality disorder features, and antisocial personality disorder features). The study supports the psychometric properties (i.e., test–retest reliability, internal consistency, discriminant validity) of a recently introduced measure of forms and functions of aggression during emerging adulthood. Aggression subtypes were uniquely associated with indices of personality pathology. For example, proactive (i.e., planned, instrumental or goal-oriented) and reactive (i.e., impulsive, hostile or retaliatory) functions of relational aggression were uniquely associated with borderline personality disorder features even after controlling for functions of physical aggression and gender. The results highlight the differential associations between forms and functions of aggression and indices of personality pathology in typically developing emerging adults.

Soviet Cinema, 1929–41: The Development of Industry and Infrastructure

This article explores the development of the Soviet film industry in the 1920s and 1930s and argues that the rise of Soviet cinema as an industry was hampered by a lack of technical equipment and the know-how to produce this, and that the USSR struggled to achieve independence in the production of equipment for film production and demonstration throughout the 1930s. The article examines the technical and economic aspects of film production in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. It explores the extent of ‘cinefication’, especially in terms of the lack of technology for sound film. It scrutinises the distribution and demonstration systems for films, making comparisons to the US industry. It argues that fewer films were produced in the USSR, thus offering a limited choice to Soviet audiences; at the same time new films were distributed with an insufficient number of copies, so that the rise of Soviet film as an industry was hampered. The article demonstrates the absence of an infrastructure and an industry to produce the technical equipment for film production and demonstration (film stock, cameras, sound equipment were all important) making the industry dependent on the West.     

A Large-Scale Meta-Analysis Relating the Hare Measures of Psychopathy to Antisocial Conduct

The present meta-analysis integrated effect sizes from 95 non-overlapping studies (N=15,826) to summarize the relation between Hare Psychopathy Checklists and antisocial conduct. Whereas prior meta-analyses focused on specific subdomains of the literature, we used broad inclusion criteria, incorporating a diversity of samples, settings, methodologies, and outcomes in our analysis. Our broad perspective allowed us to identify general trends consistent across the entire literature and improved the power of our analyses. Results indicated that higher PCL Total, Factor 1 (F(1)), and Factor 2 (F(2)) scores were moderately associated with increased antisocial conduct. Study effect sizes were significantly moderated by the country in which the study was conducted, racial composition, gender composition, institutional setting, the type of information used to score psychopathy, and the independence of psychopathy and transgression assessments. However, multiple regression analyses indicated that the information used to assess psychopathy did not have a unique influence on effect sizes after accounting for the influence of other moderator variables. Furthermore, racial composition of the sample was related to the country in which the study was conducted, making it unclear whether one or both of these moderators influenced effect sizes. We provide potential explanations for the significant findings and discuss implications of the results for future research.     

Why the Philippines Chooses to Import Rice

Embedded in the debate in the Philippines over food security and food sovereignty are three conventional reasons why the country is a longstanding rice importer: geography, exploitative international policy pressure predicated on the dictates of neoliberalism, and colonial history. This paper argues that these conventional reasons share two limitations. First, they attribute mono-causal reasons for perennial rice imports, either in the form of geography, exogenous power, or history. While these perspectives are not wrong, each on its own is inadequate. Multiple, contributing factors have and will continue to abound. Second, each of these arguments limits Filipinos' agency. Through a four-part argument, I show how Filipinos have had more say in the reasons for serial rice imports than these conventional accounts allow.     

Meeting the Dalai Lama and perceptions of democracy in China: a quasi-natural experiment

How does the international human rights community affect the likelihood of democratization? Scholarship on Chinese citizens’ preferences about their political system has not explored the importance of the external environment, perhaps surprising given the extensive foreign pressure on China’s authoritarian system over the last 30 years. I use a quasi-natural experiment around the meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama in 2011 to examine the impact of foreign pressure on citizens’ perceptions of democracy in China in real time. I show that the meeting significantly increased the Chinese public’s belief that their country is democratic, with those of above average patriotism over 11 percentage points more likely to believe China is democratic in the five days following the meeting than before. The findings suggest that some kinds of external pressure may help to increase satisfaction with authoritarian rule, ultimately boosting autocrats’ ability to hold on to power.