White-Collar Crime and Police Crime: Rotten Apples or Rotten Barrels?

In the research literature on white-collar crime, there seems to be a tendency to claim individual failure rather than systems failure. Occupational crime is often emphasized at the expense of corporate crime. In the research literature on misconduct and crime by police officers, however, there seems to be a tendency to claim systems failure. It is argued that police crime is a result of bad practice, lack of resources or mismanagement, rather than acts of criminals. Based on two empirical studies in Norway of business and police crime, this paper is concerned with the extent to which the rotten apple theory versus the rotten barrel theory can explain crime in business organizations and police organizations.     

White-collar criminals in Norway: An empirical study

This article addresses the following research question: What characteristics concerning white-collar criminals can be found based on newspaper articles in Norway? This research is important, as studies of white-collar criminals so far have focused on case studies rather than statistical analysis of a larger sample. Based on articles in Norwegian financial newspapers in 2010/2011, a total of 49 white-collar criminals convicted to jail sentence were identified. The average age of the convicted persons was 51 years. 47 out of 49 criminals were men. The average sentence was 3 years imprisonment. The average sum of money involved in the financial crime was 185 million Norwegian kroner (30 million US dollars).     

Symposium on Replication in International Studies Research

The following symposium tackles an important debate in the field of international studies research and in social science research more broadly. Originating as presentations at the 2002 International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans, the following set of papers examines issues concerning the potential replication of research results from a number of different conceptual and technical perspectives. It also spans an array of journals and journal editors in our field that confront issues of replication on a regular basis. The interactions generated by this symposium have already led to the agreement, detailed at the end of the symposium among the four leading internations relations journals to adopt a single common replication policy. The editors of these journals challenge others to follow their lead. The Editors of ISP hope that this symposium begins a larger discussion on these issues and invites commentary from interested scholars. Lastly, I want to thank Nils Petter Gleditsch for soliciting, organizing, and coordinating the contributions to this symposium. Without his work, this project would not have come to fruition as quickly or in as insightful a fashion. Three anonymous reviewers also provided detailed comments on the entire set of articles in this symposium. We are indebted to the care and effort they gave to the project. Mark A. Boyer For the Editors of ISP     

Chronology of Jihadism in Western Europe 1994–2007: Planned,Prepared, and Executed Terrorist Attacks

Considering Europe's long history of terrorist violence by separatist, leftist and rightwing groups, terrorism by militant Sunni Islamists has until recently been a marginal phenomenon. However, empirical data presented in this chronology suggests it constitutes a growing and increasingly lethal threat, and a worrisome trend in the context of increased tensions between the Muslim world and the West in the wake of 9/11 and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which needs to be dealt with on many levels—socially, politically, and economically. The current chronology is meant to serve as a tool for conducting academic research on the scope of the threat, and for mapping incidents that might be surveyed in more depth to create a better understanding of its organizational, operational, and motivational patterns.     

Three Basic Questions in Political Inquiry

Discussion about political research could be seen as dealing with three basic questions. The first being whether type of government or type of public policy should be considered as our main object. The second being whether constitutional law or the more realistic approach of political science should dominate. And the third being whether we should be arguing in or about politics. If we separate these three questions it is much more likely that discussion will improve.     

Types of Policy and Types of Politics

Basically, there are two solutions to the problem of how policies determine politics. One is the structural solution suggested by Theodore J. Lowi. His way of classifying policies in terms of the likelihood and applicability of coercion seems to be most valid under the general macropolitical assumption of asymmetrically organized patterns of authority. The other is the marginalist solution suggested by James Q. Wilson. His classification of policy change in terms of whether costs and benefits are being dispersed or concentrated through the change in question seems to be most fruitful when the focus is upon the logic and equilibrium of a policy situation as such, regardless of its characteristics from the point of view of coercion and inducement. In this article the confrontation between Lowi and Wilson is analyzed, and a way of combining the two approaches is suggested.     

Toward an Increasingly Heterogeneous Threat: A Chronology of Jihadist Terrorism in Europe 2008–2013

The 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings and the grisly murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013 are stark reminders of a continued terrorist threat posed by jihadist terrorists in Europe. Whereas the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden and the advent of the “Arab Spring” fed expectations that international jihadism was a spent force, attack activity in Europe does not only seem to persist, but as will be shown here, the region has actually faced an increase in terrorist plots over the past few years.