The Dictator Game, Fairness and Ethnicity in Postwar Bosnia

This study considers the effects of ethnic violence on norms of fairness. Once violence is a foregone conclusion, will cooperative norms ever (re‐)emerge beyond ethnic boundaries? We use an experiment that measures how fairly individuals in a postconflict setting treat their own ingroup in comparison to the outgroups—in this case, examining the behavior of 681 Muslims, Croats, and Serbs in postwar Bosnia‐Herzegovina. To assess fairness, we use the dictator game wherein subjects decide how to allocate a sum of money between themselves and an anonymous counterpart of varying ethnicity. We find that the effects of ethnicity on decision making are captured by our experiments. Although results indicate preferential ingroup treatment, the incidence and magnitude of outgroup bias is much less than expected. We conclude that norms of fairness across ethnicity are remarkably strong in Bosnia, and we take this to be a positive sign for reconciliation after violent conflict.     

Oversight Effectiveness and Political Will: Some Lessons from West Africa

The purpose of the present note is to advance two theoretical claims. The first claim proposed is that the impact of the availability of oversight tools and of the most broadly understood legislative capacity (availability of material, technical, financial resources; availability of well-trained staff) on the effectiveness with which legislative oversight is performed is conditional. The second claim put forward, after reviewing a rich body of work on executive–legislative relations and legislative oversight in West Africa, is that, of the various conditions that promote or prevent the effective use of oversight tools and capacity, political will is the single most important. These claims have both theoretical and practical relevance, for if political will is as important as is claimed for the effective performance of the oversight function, then international organisations may have to reconsider their approach to legislative strengthening.     

Legislative oversight in Nigeria: an empirical review and assessment

This article builds upon and extends the analyses presented by Fashagba (2009) and drills down on the analyses of oversight in Nigeria presented by Pelizzo and Stapenhurst (2014). It presents more nuanced findings. Based on an in-country document search and 45 personal interviews with politicians, parliamentary staff, civil society representatives and journalists, the article demonstrates that the Nigerian National Assembly possesses the tools and constitutional powers to undertake oversight; what it lacks so far is the political will of National Assembly representatives and senators to use these tools and powers effectively.     

Clarifying the Contours of the Police Legitimacy Measurement Debate: a Response to Cao and Graham

Asian Journal of Criminology - With the emergence of police legitimacy as a major indicator of good policing, scholars have continued to push our conceptual understanding of this construct. In...     

A Review of: “The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice,by Edward T. Brett”

In a few short years, the World Wide Web has become a standard part of candidates' campaign tool kits. Virtually all candidates have their own sites, and voters, journalists, and activists visit the sites with increasing frequency. In this article, we study what candidates do on these sites—in terms of the information they present—by exploring one of the most enduring and widely debated campaign strategies: “going negative.” Comparing data from over 700 congressional candidate Web sites, over three election cycles (2002, 2004, and 2006), with television advertising data, we show that candidates go negative with similar likelihoods across these media. We also find that while similar dynamics drive negativity on the Web and in television advertising, there are some notable differences. These differences likely stem, in part, from the truncated sample available with television data (i.e., many candidates do not produce ads). Our results have implications for understanding negative campaigning and for the ways in which scholars can study campaign dynamics.     

Interests over norms in western policy towards the Caucasus: How Abkhazia is no one's Kosovo

The potentially numerous cases of ‘genocide’ around the world can now invoke the precedent of NATO's use of military force for humanitarian purposes against Serbia in spring 1999. Such a claim was suggested by Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze over Georgia's disputed former autonomous republic of Abkhazia. The conflict over this former ‘Soviet Riviera’ again demonstrates the constraints behind gaining accurate information on the causes and consequences of a conflict. Particularly, it illustrates the difficulty of determining what constitutes ‘genocide’ and against whom, as both the Abkhaz and the displaced Georgians make such claims. On that basis, each party can expect ‐ and equally fear ‐ a NATO‐style military intervention. In the event, even if both sides view themselves as victims of ‘genocide’ and entitled to such intervention, Western perceptions of strategic interests in the Caucasus prevent this scenario. The determination of injustices, quite apart from their redress, goes unanswered.