The post-cold war political topography of the Middle East: prospects for democracy

The debate on democracy in the Middle East has generated many important questions but has, so far, answered few of them satisfactorily. This paper endeavours to understand the prospects and problems for democracy in the region by making visible the connections between this issue and one of the least explored and understood aspects of the contemporary Middle East: how the suppression of communist, socialist, and other leftist and reformist political movements in the region after World War II affected and continues to affect the region's economic and political development. It details the campaign in the 1950s and 1960s to eradicate not only communists and socialists but any element in the region calling for democratic government or land reform. The result of this campaign was to suppress liberal, reformist and progressive elements in the region that, in Europe and elsewhere, supported and encouraged the democratisation of national politics.     

The PIRA,D-Company,and the Crime-Terror Nexus

This article compares and contrasts the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and D-Company, two seemingly dissimilar organisations that nonetheless share some striking commonalities, especially in regards to the use of tactics that contradict their declared ideology in pursuit of a larger goal. First, the growing relationship between organised criminal syndicates and terror groups is discussed and Makarenko's well-known “Crime-Terror Continuum” introduced. Following this, a historical overview and an analysis of the organisational structure of the PIRA is provided and organisational models proposed. Further, the founding and development of D-Company is addressed in addition to the syndicate's intricate involvement in the 1993 Bombay Blasts. Similarly, organisational models are offered and conclusions drawn. This work then moves to a comparative analysis of the organisational and operating structure of the PIRA and D-Company and finishes with a brief conclusion. This article argues that although criminal syndicates and militant groups may have different organisation structures, the line that distinguishes their activities has begun to blur and the space between Makarenko's graduated levels is becoming smaller and less discernible, thus rendering her model obsolete.     

Loyalist Women Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland: Beginning a Feminist Conversation about Conflict Resolution

Research on war, conflict, and terrorism has traditionally focused on the motivations of male combatants to participate in political violence. Such a focus has largely ignored the role of women who wield political violence. This article revisits one of feminist International Relations (IR) most basic questions, “Where are the women?” and encourages an expanded view of security and conflict resolution that asks how combatant women might contribute to current scholarly understanding of conflict and conflict resolution processes. I argue that the thirty-year conflict remained intractable in part because of the exclusion of those Loyalist women who wielded political violence, seriously limiting the British and Irish governments' ability to understand and resolve the conflict. Included in the analysis is interview data collected in an eight-month empirical study conducted by the author in 2006 with thirty women who identify as past or present members or supporters of Loyalist paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland. The unique perceptions of Loyalist women combatants of four cross-border agreements between 1974 and 2006 are used to illustrate how a feminist approach to conflict resolution can serve as an innovating starting point in theorizing about and attempting to resolve conflict.     

Review article

Towards a Post‐Fordist Welfare State? Edited by Roger Burrows and Brian Loader. London, Routledge, 1994. Pp.263. £35.00 hb, £13.99 pb.     

India as a democracy promoter? New Delhi's involvement in Nepal's return to democracy

According to the theory of ‘democratic peace’, India, as the largest democracy in the world and as South Asia's predominant regional power, should be expected to promote democracy in neighbouring countries. However, New Delhi lacks any kind of official democracy-promotion policy, and its past record on democracy promotion efforts in the region is mixed at best. Against this background, the article analyses the substantial role India has come to play in the peace and democratization process in Nepal in the years 2005–2008, asking whether this constitutes a departure from New Delhi's traditional policy of non-interference in its neighbours' internal affairs and a move towards a more assertive approach to democracy promotion. However, the analysis shows that India's involvement in Nepal was the product of short-term stability concerns rather than being an indicator of a long-term change in strategy with the intention of becoming an active player in international democracy promotion.     

State of the world 2018: democracy facing global challenges*

This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2018, and recent developments building on the 2019 release of the V-Dem dataset. First, the trend of autocratization continues and 24 countries are now affected by what is established as a “third wave of autocratization”. Second, despite the global challenge of gradual autocratization, democratic regimes prevail in a majority of countries in the world (99 countries, 55%) in 2018. Thus, the state of the world is unmistakably more democratic compared to any point during the last century. At the same time, the number of electoral authoritarian regimes had increased to 55, or 31% of all countries. Third, the autocratization wave is disproportionally affecting democratic countries in Europe and the Americas, but also India’s large population. Fourth, freedom of expression and the media, and the rule of law are the areas under attack in most countries undergoing autocratization, but toxic polarization of the public sphere is a threat to democracy spreading across regimes. Finally, we present the first model to predict autocratization (“adverse regime transitions”) pointing to the top-10 most at-risk countries in the world.     

The Takeover Directive: Is a Little Regulation Better Than No Regulation?

This article examines Directive 2004/25/EC on Takeover Bids through a regulatory lens in order to determine its effectiveness as a regulatory mechanism. A central regulatory problem for European legislators is to determine the optimal balance between harmonisation and diversity, and the directive reflects the balance which was struck. The article questions whether the resulting 'light regulatory touch' may have jeopardised the existing efficient self-regulatory regime which operates in the UK (the largest European takeover market), while simultaneously undermining the directive's goal of facilitating takeovers and yielding a level playing field.     

Unusual fentanyl patch administration

Fentanyl is an extremely potent narcotic analgesic that is becoming more popular as a drug of abuse. Because of the unique way in which the drug is packaged and delivered, the potential for unusual methods of abuse exists. We report the first case of true fentanyl patch ingestion in the medical literature. Initially, though unusual, cases of fentanyl ingestion were thought to have been reported, but further investigation of the literature revealed that in other case reports the patches had been held in the mouth and chewed. Because no reports of swallowing the patch had been published, suicide was initially a strong consideration in this case; however, further investigation showed that the decedent and his brother enjoyed swallowing the patches for quick "highs." Cases such as these serve to remind medical examiners and law enforcement officials of the value of performing thorough death investigations by performing complete autopsies with toxicological testing and correlating with investigation information to form an opinion with regard to the cause and manner of death.     

Political and economic motivations for labor control: A comparison of Ireland, Puerto Rico, and Singapore

The global economy imposes many constraints on small economies, especially those pursuing export-oriented industrialization (EOI) through the attraction of foreign direct investment. It has been argued that the success of EOI depends on the government’s ability to meet the labor requirements of this economic model—labor peace and low wages—through labor control policies and even repression. This article compares the histories of labor control in Ireland, Puerto Rico, and Singapore, three island-nations of similarly small size and high degree of integration with the global economy. While the pressures for labor control during EOI are evident in each case, there is a great deal of variation in the strategies governments adopted to rein in organized labor. I argue that the labor control methods employed during EOI are not explained by an economic logic but by a political one inherited from an earlier period when labor control was motivated by the efforts of a dominant party to consolidate its power.     

Local governments and their arm’s length bodies

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art on the creation of arm’s length bodies (ALBs) by local governments. We make three main contributions. First, there are many different types of ALBs and each country has its own categories; an expert survey was held identifying three common types of body, to enable future comparative research. Second, we point out that the creation of ALBs has led to a number of new challenges for local governments, particularly regarding governing bodies at arm’s length to ensure ALBs’ good performance. A lack of capacity and information have to be countered, for example, by increased monitoring – also for democratic accountability purposes. Special attention is needed for the multiple principal problem that arises when local governments jointly create ALBs. Third, research into local ALBs is still in its early stages. We present a research agenda to develop knowledge on the topic.