What difference can they make? Assessing the social impact of corporate codes of practice

As retailers in the North increasingly adopt codes of practice containing social and/or environmental provisions in global supply chains, there is a need for rigorous assessment of their social impact. Moving beyond the rhetoric, it is important to establish the actual impact of such codes on poorer workers, their families, and other local stakeholders. This paper sets out the key methodological and conceptual issues arising in such an assessment as identified by a three-year study on the South African wine industry. It reviews the different motivations and approaches employed by code bodies, donors, academics, and practitioners, and highlights the lack of workers' voices in the debate on corporate responsibility as well as some of the early research findings. Finally, it explains how the inherent power inequalities in global supply chains make it more difficult to adopt a truly empowering approach to assessing the impact of codes of practice.     

All for one and one in all: private military security companies as soldiers,business managers and humanitarians

With governments increasingly contracting private military and security companies (PMSCs) to perform military and police-related tasks, international relations scholars have made attempts to better understand PMSCs and to investigate the reasons for the boom of private security. Rather than focusing on the services these companies offer, which has been a common approach, we offer an identity-based explanation for their surge. We show that PMSCs eclectically assume identities related to the military, business managers and humanitarians, independent of the services they perform, their market segment or their location on the battlefield. This finding points to an important yet little-noted dimension in the private security industry. Although companies are heterogeneous, they also appear increasingly homogeneous because they incorporate a similar set of identities. On the one hand, this enables PMSCs to adapt to any context, client or employee, and, on the other hand, it has constitutive qualities, contributing to an important source of power for the respective companies. These multiple identities contribute to a norm of what a superior security provider should look like.     

Competition and Innovation in a Hostile Environment: How Jabhat Al-Nusra and Islamic State Moved to Twitter in 2013–2014

Abstract

Social media offer unprecedented opportunities to terrorist groups to spread their message and target specific audiences for indoctrination and recruitment. In 2013 and 2014, social media, in particular Twitter, overtook Internet forums as preferred space for jihadist propaganda. This article looks into Arabic statements by Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic State and jihadist forum administrators and online activists to argue that, beside the easier use of social media and disruption and infiltration of the forums, the conflict between the jihadist groups accelerated the migration to social media and the building of a presence on Twitter that provided relative resilience to suspensions.     

The role of the Yorta Yorta people in clarifying the common interest in sustainable management of the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

The Murray–Darling Basin incorporates Australia’s three longest rivers and spans four states and one territory. It is important for an agricultural industry worth more than AUS$9 billion per year, but is also the life source and the spirit of the Indigenous Yorta Yorta people. Here, we address whether the interests of the Yorta Yorta people can encompass the common interest of the wider community in the Basin, and how the colonial legacy and climate change of the past century continue to influence the realization of the common interest moving forward. We find that shared regional governance with an agreed outcome supports the ongoing sustainability of the country and its people, but because of the legal history of Australia since colonization, recognition and mutual respect are no less important. Further, we note that the increasing climatic variability and changing climatic mechanisms that now exemplify the southeast of Australia corroborates the need for adaptive planning with longer time horizons. These lessons are supported by the customary law and practice of the Yorta Yorta people.     

Informal Institutions and Democracy

Informal institutions have grown in relevance for the analysis of new ‘third wave’ democracies. The research strategy receives its impetus from the debate on neo‐institutionalism theory, which offers a productive perspective for structuring the field of analysis. This article explains the distinguishing factors between formal and informal institutions. It addresses five basic types of informal institutions, examines the ways in which they function and discusses their relevance in terms of democracy theory. Each type is characterized by the way in which it enacts its respective means of political influence. The study distinguishes between forms of specific relationship (clientelism), of material exchange (corruption), of violent exertion of influence (putsch threat), of civil resistance (civil disobedience) and of legal practice (custom law), and discusses their relevance to democracy. The central argument maintains that a differentiated study of informal institutions is crucial to addressing this question. The necessary typological differentiation allows us to make an appropriate assessment ‐one that does not manifest itself in a simple clear‐cut choice of affirmative or negative answers.     

Evaluation of an electronic comparison system and implementation of a quantitative effectiveness criterion

The identification of fired bullets and spent cartridge cases is one of the key tasks of forensic science. The traditional comparison of signatures on specimen with a large collection with only a microscope is a very tedious and time-consuming work. Fortunately, electronic systems for performing a pre-selection have been invented since the last 25 years. On the basis of an expansive database the electronic comparison system used by the BKA, Germany, is evaluated and a mathematical value is proposed to rate the correlation quality. This effectiveness criterion can be valuable to give an objective assessment of different electronic comparison systems. Additionally, the applicability of the system on different calibres and land engraved area (LEA) width is discussed. The so called scores are also on disposition and their benefit to a decision-making is debated.     

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