Forward to the Past? Loyalist Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland Since 1994

This article considers in detail loyalist paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland since the paramilitary cease-fires of 1994. The continuing nature of contemporary loyalist violence is documented with reference to sectarian attacks against members of the “Other”/Catholic community and associated symbols of that community, violence directed at other loyalists, and the potential for future violence given constitutional uncertainty regarding Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom. The article also challenges assumptions within the broader literature of an inability within loyalist paramilitary groups to move beyond violence in the post-cease-fire period with particular reference to their conflict transformation efforts.     

Locating Al Qaeda's Center of Gravity: The Role of Middle Managers

This article claims that the ongoing debate about the structure and dynamics of Al Qaeda has failed to appreciate the importance of an organizational layer that is situated between the top leadership and the grass-roots. Rather than being “leaderless,” it is the group's middle management that holds Al Qaeda together. In Clausewitzian terms, Al Qaeda's middle managers represent a center of gravity—a “hub of … power and movement”—that facilitates the grass-roots’ integration into the organization and provides the top leadership with the global reach it needs in order to carry out its terrorist campaign, especially in Europe and North America. They are, in other words, the connective tissue that makes Al Qaeda work. The article substantiates this hypothesis by providing a number of case studies of Al Qaeda middle managers, which illustrate the critical role they have played in integrating the grass-roots with the top leadership. The policy implications are both obvious and important. If neither the top leadership nor the grass-roots alone can provide Al Qaeda with strategic momentum, it will be essential to identify and neutralize the middle managers, and—in doing so—“cause the network to collapse on itself.”     

After Oslo and Utøya: A Shift in the Balance Between Security and Liberty in Norway?

The article addresses the challenges a society faces to when trying to balance security and liberty after a terrorist attack. A main question is to what extent attitudes toward counterterror measures changed in Norway after the massive terror attacks in July 2011. A hypothesis that people will be more in favor of such measures after a terror attack is examined using data from two surveys—one conducted in 2006 and one in August 2011, with additional results from a survey in 2012. The Norwegian response after the 2011 attacks is compared to the response to the same questions in the United States shortly after 11 September 2001. A main finding is that in Norway, in contrast to the United States, levels of support for counterterror measures declined immediately after the attacks. The authors argue that this can be explained partly by the different levels of trust in the two countries, and partly by differences in the political executive's framing of the crisis. In 2012, support of counterterror measures in Norway has risen to pre-2011 levels. This is related to the changed discourse after the publication of the report from the 22 July Commission.     

The predicament of elections in war-torn societies

Why do elections held in the shadow of civil wars sometimes generate more violence in already war-torn societies, while in other circumstances they do not? This article develops a conceptual framework based on three clusters of factors to analyse the conflict-generating aspects of elections in war-torn societies: the key actors in the electoral processes; the institutions of elections; and the stakes of the elections. Two types of war-related elections are distinguished: elections held during an ongoing civil war, and elections held in the post-war period when peace is to be implemented. While different in many respects, the two contexts share critical characteristics through their association with the legacy of warfare. Several important implications emerge from the analysis. First, relating to militant and violent actors, incentive structures need to be altered by addressing both the opportunities and means of violence. Second, to prevent inducements for violent behaviour, institutional arrangements – including electoral commissions – have to be crafted with consideration given to local conflict dynamics and the history of violent conflict. Finally, the stakes of elections in war-shattered societies can be reduced through, for instance, constitutional pact-making and the oversight of external actors in electoral processes.     

Democratization and Transitional Justice

Any country which attempts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights during the process of democratization faces political, judicial, and ethical problems. With regard to politics, the question of which transitional justice measures are appropriate, functional, and feasible has to be decided for every individual case. A judicial approach has to decide which judicial standards to apply and how to justify prosecution. Finally, the ethical dilemmas of dealing with historical injustices have to be understood. There are no ready-made concepts to define guilt and justice. In many cases it is even difficult to tell the victims from the perpetrators. This study examines the different strategies subsumed under the term ‘transitional justice’ used by emerging democracies to deal with a legacy of human rights abuses. It explores the problems and challenges posed by different mechanisms of reconciliation and societal reintegration. While existing analyses of the contribution that transitional justice measures make to the process of social re-integration stress the importance of consensus among citizens and social groups for the emergence of trust and solidarity, this study suggests also thinking about how conflicts over competing ‘truths’ can help to build social capital and reconciliation. Noting a global diffusion of international legal norms, which means at least formal universal acceptance of basic rights and judicial procedures, it is argued that international justice cannot be a substitute for transitional justice measures taken by the domestic regime itself.     

Dynamics of peace and democratization. The Aceh lessons

The viability of the thesis that liberalization and democracy foster peace, security and development is at stake. The main critique is that more liberties and elections lead to more conflict and abuses of power. There are three principal responses to this critique. The liberal argument calls for improving the democratic institutions; the institutions first thesis prioritizes strengthening the rule of law and state capacity over democracy; whilst the transformation argument proposes using fledgling democracy to foster gradually more favourable relations of power and popular capacity towards more substantial democracy. This article analyses the relevance of these theses to the remarkable dynamics of peace-building in Aceh, from the introduction of Indonesian democracy in 1998, the impact of the tsunami in 2004 and the Helsinki peace agreement in 2005 to the general elections in 2009. The study concludes that the liberal argument is congruous with the democratic opportunities for peace, while the institutions first and the transformation arguments give prominence to the dynamics that made peace-building possible but also difficult. While the institutions first argument responds to these difficulties by resorting to power sharing, the transformation thesis proposes more citizen participation coupled with interest and issue group representation.     

The political consequences of reintegration programmes in current peace-building: a framework for analysis

This article demonstrates how democracy and peace-building can interlink at the micro-level, as demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programmes feed into democratisation via their rarely studied political impact among individual ex-combatants. Using the reintegration experiences of ex-combatants in Liberia and the literature on policy feedback, this article demonstrates the varying impacts of current peace-building on the politics of ex-combatants, and develops a framework to analyse this relationship further in other cases. This theoretical framework offers a tool to grapple with and make sense of the political consequences of DDR, thereby clarifying how reintegration programmes structure and condition the ex-combatants' continued political voice. In particular, it is suggested that reintegration programmes influence the politics of ex-combatants either through resources obtained in the programmes, enabling access to politics in a different way, or through their institutional design and procedural traits, offering cognitive cues that either emphasise democratic norms or promote conflict in politics at large.     

Less is Sometimes More: Consequences of Overpayment on Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism

This article investigates the responsive and purposive consequences of overpayment by studying changes in job satisfaction and absenteeism over time. Overpayment is defined as the positive deviation from the net earnings subjectively considered being fair. Two theoretical approaches are tested providing differing predictions: The self-interest model predicts that any increase in earnings always increases individual job satisfaction and that no changes arise in the number of days absent. The justice model predicts that overpayment reduces individual job satisfaction, and that absenteeism decreases in the period that follows. These predictions are tested with longitudinal data from a large-scale survey by means of fixed-effects regression analysis. The results show that increases in pay that are perceived as overpayment decrease job satisfaction and reduce absenteeism in the subsequent period.