When corporate citizens ‘second-class’ national citizens: The antinomies of corporate-mediated social provisioning in Nigeria's oil province

This article explores the contradictions of corporate-aided social provisioning and shows how such contradictions impact on social existence in three oil- and gas-producing communities in Nigeria. It is based in part on the findings of the author's ethnographic work in the three communities. The analysis extends the growing scholarly debate that when the state abandons its developmental obligations to the citizenry, and business voluntarily steps into the centre stage of social provisioning by way of corporate citizenship, the resulting interventions could have profound counter-developmental consequences, especially at the grassroots.     

Ideological Motives in Spoiler Violence: Postconflict Assam,Northeast India

Spoilers of peace agreements are normally seen as motivated by utility maximization, their actions intended to gain a larger proportion of postconflict political power or economic wealth. In this article, I examine this perspective via a comparative analysis of two cases of spoiler violence in Assam, India, one involving a spoiler excluded from the agreement and the other a spoiler central to the peace process and the postconflict political and economic milieu. Both cases suggest that some spoiling action following peace agreements is less instrumental and driven more by emotional and ideological phenomena than this leading understanding suggests.     

Delegating Terror: Principal–Agent Based Decision Making in State Sponsorship of Terrorism

State sponsorship of terrorism, where a government deliberately provides resources and material support to a terrorist organization, is common in the international system. Sponsorship can provide significant strategic and political benefits for a state, but there are inherent international and domestic risks associated with delegating foreign policy to these actors. Using principal–agent analysis, I develop a model that evaluates the impact of potential costs and benefits on a state’s decision to sponsor terrorism. I test my model by using a novel dataset on sponsorship behaviors that ranges from 1970 to 2008. The results of my analysis support the validity of the principal–agent model in explaining sponsorship, as states will be more likely to engage in sponsorship when the strategic benefits of weakening the targeted state are high and the risks of international reputation loss and domestic dissatisfaction are low.     

Women's work in offices and the preservation of men's ‘breadwinning’ jobs in early twentieth-century Glasgow

As Britain's industrial economy matured and the volume of administrative work increased, different kinds of clerical jobs and clerical careers became possible. Using examples from a variety of small- to medium-sized enterprises in Glasgow, this article will describe how the main functions of administrative work – financial, secretarial and managerial – were divided both horizontally and vertically in order to preserve secure, well-paid, ‘breadwinning’ jobs for men, leaving routine secretarial work for women. The isolation of women in all-women enclaves carrying out shorthand and typing work and the subsequent devaluation of these as kinds of work were of primary importance in the creation of office work that was explicitly women's work     

Market-Oriented Reforms as a Tool of State-Building: Russian Pension Reform in 2001

Despite domestic opposition and several policy alternatives, in 2001 the Russian government adopted a pension reform that was potentially costly and had uncertain long-term benefits. Demographic and fiscal pressures created the desire to reform and a more cooperative Duma made it possible to do so. These points do not explain why Putin chose the pension privatisation option. Russia's pension reform is best understood as part of a state-building strategy to diminish the role of powerful bureaucracies. Russia's welfare state was not merely the product of a powerful and popular president, but rather a tool to create a stronger executive.