Would a United Nations Environment Organization Help to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals?

As a follow-up to the 2005 United Nations World Summit, Jan Eliasson, President of the sixtieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, plans that the General Assembly will take up the issue of international environmental governance (IEG) in spring 2006. This may provide an opportunity to start negotiations on creating a United Nations Environment Organization (UNEO) in the larger context of reforming the UN. Against this background, this article discusses the need for IEG reform, the advantages and disadvantages of creating a UNEO and its potential in helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The article concludes that a UNEO – as a UN specialized agency – may have greater political clout than the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) currently commands, which is only a programme based on a resolution of the General Assembly. Given its increased political weight, a UNEO could be a better tool to address environmental needs in developing countries, and help to achieve poverty and development goals.     

Political Liberalism, Marriage and the Family

Can and should political liberals recognize and otherwise support legal marriage as a matter of basic justice? In this article, we offer a general account of how political liberals should evaluate the issue of whether the legal recognition of marriage is a matter of basic justice. And, we develop and examine some public reason arguments that, given the fundamental interests of citizens, could justify various forms of legal marriage in some contexts. In particular, in certain conditions, the recognition of some form of legal marriage may be the best way to protect the fundamental interests of women as citizens in freely chosen associations. Or, it may be that, in certain conditions, to secure the social conditions necessary for gays, lesbians and bisexuals to be free and equal citizens, some form of legal marriage can or should be recognized.     

Strategic rebels: a spatial econometric approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars

ABSTRACT

Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects.     

Economic globalization and voter turnout in established democracies

This paper asks whether international economic integration negatively affects electoral turnout. The theoretical model builds on the premise that economic integration constrains the ability of national governments to shape outcomes. Citizens are conscious of such constraints and take them into account when considering the costs and benefits of casting a vote in national elections. The result is a lower inclination to vote under conditions of high economic integration. Consequently, aggregate turnout is lower the more internationally integrated a national economy is. Analysis of aggregate data for parliamentary elections in 23 OECD democracies over the period 1965–2006 robustly supports this hypothesis. The empirical estimates suggest economic globalization as a central cause of the general decline in turnout within established democracies.     

Gender, social support, and depression in criminal justice-involved adolescents

Knowing where criminal justice-involved teens look for support and whether those supports reduce depression has important and possibly gender-specific treatment implications for this vulnerable population. This study examines the relationships between social support and depression in a mixed-gender sample of 198 incarcerated adolescents. Greater support from families and overall and greater satisfaction with supports predicted lower depression for boys and girls. Support from siblings and extended family strongly predicted lower depression; support from parents and from friends was either not related or only weakly related to depression. Girls reported higher levels of depression, more support from friends and extended family, and less support from parents than did boys. Family, sibling, and overall support were stronger predictors of depression for girls than for boys. Results suggest that nonparent family members, especially siblings and extended family, provide important emotional resources for teens in the criminal justice system.     

AIDS, employment, and the direct threat defense: the burden of proof and the circuit court split

This Note examines disability-related discrimination in light of the protections afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and in the context of an HIV- or AIDS-infected employee. Under the ADA, an employer may legally fire a worker who poses a direct threat to the individuals around him or her. It is unclear, however, whether the burden of proving or disproving the claim that an individual is a direct threat lies with the employer or the employee. This Note analyzes the circuit split over which party bears the burden of proof under the direct threat standard in light of prospective HIV-related litigation.