The Struggle for Meaning of Obshchestvennyi Kontrol’ in Contemporary Russia: Civic Participation between Resistance and Compliance after the 2011–2012 Elections

This article explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011–2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it as a means to enhance government efficiency. The article shows that the Kremlin has co-opted the counter-hegemonic discourse into a new law which delimits the possibilities for enacting this concept in a fashion that recalls Soviet governance practices.     

Identifying the determinants of aggregate judicial performance: taxpayers’ money well spent?

There have been a sizeable number of studies trying to identify the determinants of judicial performance on the country level. Such a design is appropriate to identify underperforming individual judges or underperforming courts or court districts. However, it is not appropriate to identify institutions conducive to judicial performance. A dataset produced by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice contains very detailed information on the judicial systems of the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe. Drawing on robust regressions and using an objective variable, we find that (1) resolution rates are not a function of per capita income. In other words: poor countries can also afford them. (2) Countries belonging to the French legal tradition enjoy relatively lower resolution rates. (3) Resolution rates are negatively—and very robustly—correlated with court budget. As such, a higher budget will not “buy” more court decisions. (4) Resolution rates are never positively correlated with the presence of judicial councils. (5) Mandatory training for judges is correlated with higher resolution rates. Drawing on the subjectively perceived efficiency of the judiciary as the dependent variable we find that (6) countries belonging to both the French and the socialist legal tradition are less efficient and that (7) judicial councils are also negatively correlated with our measure of judicial efficiency, in other words: countries that do not have them should not introduce them.     

Using Outcome Measurement to Promote Continuous Quality Improvement for Children in Foster Care

Continuous Quality Improvement is the term used to measure progress toward achieving safety, permanency, and well‐being for children in foster care. This report highlights the results of a 2014 survey conducted by the National Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues asking states to identify how they are using performance measures to improve the lives of children in care, which measures are being used, whether the newly‐created well‐being measures are being integrated into the original set of court performance measures, and how performance measures are being used to support Continuous Quality Improvement. Although there is much more to do, the number of performance measures being used, the number of states sharing data between courts and child welfare agencies, and the number of documented examples of improvement in lives of abuse and neglected children are all encouraging signs.     

Observing protest: media use and student involvement on 7 April 2010 in Bishkek,Kyrgyzstan

Individuals in and around protests are generally classified as either participants or nonparticipants. However, observers witnessing protests can also play an important role in collective actions by sharing their experiences. This paper explores the characteristics of observers during the 7 April 2010 demonstrations in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Based on data collected via a survey of university students, I demonstrate that protest observers differed from nonparticipants on a range of variables. A key factor differentiating student observers from nonparticipants was their online activity prior to the protests. Logistic regressions show that students with higher rates of online activity were significantly and substantially more likely to be protest observers than nonparticipants. These findings provide empirical evidence for categorizing observation as a distinct level of protest involvement, shed light on the demonstration in Bishkek on 7 April 2010, and suggest that examining online activity can contribute to a better understanding of protest involvement levels.     

Contingent Borders, Ambiguous Ethics: Migrants in (International) Political Theory

The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative arguments provided by liberal-cosmopolitan and liberal-communitarian authors are contrasted. While sympathetic to such approaches, we argue that traditional liberal theory has attempted to downplay the contingency and resultant ambiguity of many of its moral precepts. Historically contingent borders underpin neat universal categories like "citizen" and "refugee," which fail to reflect the diverse and contested experiences of migration. But such ambiguities need not undermine liberal approaches. Indeed, a proper engagement with the problematic and uncertain realities of migration can provide a spur to a more thoroughgoing ethical praxis. We draw on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty to outline an approach to migration that remains open to the contingent construction of terms like "migrant,""refugee," and "asylum-seeker." By extending Rorty's concept of sentimental education, we provide an imaginative and politically challenging set of agendas for the ethics of migration.     

Power, Morality, and Foreign Policy

Despite the vast amounts of rhetoric one hears in the United States on the role of morality in international politics, the nation lacks a coherent position on the appropriate application of morality to foreign policy. History reflects two prominent and contrasting views on the subject. The first is that morality is irrelevant to national foreign policy; the second applies common principles of individual morality—compassion, generosity, forgiveness, benevolence, and tolerance—to interactions between states. Though elements of each are evident in the Bush administration's foreign policy, the limits on them restrict the efficacy of either. As the application of morality to foreign policy becomes both more necessary and more difficult, prudence and decency—more than self-righteousness or power—should provide the primary inspiration for American foreign policy.