To Participate or Not to Participate: The Link Between Survey Participation, Electoral Participation, and Political Interest

Survey participation, electoral participation, and politicalinterest have been given wide attention in the research literature,but no one so far has combined these three variables in onemodel. Taking the social isolation-hypothesis as our startingpoint, we developed a model with one factor, social involvement,as the common factor underlying these three types of participation.We reviewed the literature and concluded that we had to includea second underlying factor: attachment to society. Using a newdata set, gathered on the occasion of the 1998 Dutch nationalelections and including validated voter turnout measures, wewere able to test the model. After making some adaptions, wefound a model with a satisfactory fit. The results show that,by including social involvement and attachment to society asmediating variables, we can reach much higher levels of explainedvariances of survey and electoral participation than we canwith traditional models. The results also add to our understandingof the relationship between survey and electoral participationand political interest.     

Emissions trading for households? A behavioral law and economics perspective

This is the first research article on expanding emissions trading in the EU to households in which law and economics is explicitly and systematically combined with behavioral science. The goal of the article is neither to plead in favor nor against emissions trading for households, but rather to provide an analysis of such a scheme. To that end, the article gathers relevant theoretical insights and discusses how established empirical findings can be used to design a potentially workable scheme. The analysis not only presents an overview of possible economic and behavioral barriers, but also creates a feedback to its institutional design by presenting possible solutions to overcome them. Downstream allocation creates a more direct and visible carbon incentive, whereas administrative costs can be reduced by concentrating monitoring and enforcement upstream. Behavioral acceptance can be boosted via strategic communication, for instance by stressing that emissions trading is both effective (emissions are capped) and fair (those who emit less, pay less). Energy conservation can be stimulated by frequently sending updates to households of their carbon transactions to make the consequences of their behavior more noticeable. Whether these necessary conditions are also sufficient to ensure political acceptance remains an open question.     

The agrarian question in Peru: Some observations on the roads of capital

Under the military governments of Velasco (1968–75) and Morales Bermùdez (1975–80) one of the most important agrarian reforms of South American history took place in Peru. According to Alain de Janvry [1981] this reform involved a shift from a junker‐road to a farmer‐road toward the development of capitalism in Peruvian agriculture. In the first part of this study de Janvry's approach to the ‘agrarian question’ and his evaluation of the Peruvian reform will be discussed. It will be argued that he overestimates the importance of farmer‐type capitalism and pays too little attention to the cooperatives established during the reform. Focusing the discussion on the co‐operatives in the coastal region it will be argued that these enterprises can be understood, to an important extent, as a form of simple commodity production. In the final part of the article a case study of the cotton producing co‐operatives in the province of Ica will be presented.     

Land tenure,land law and development: some thoughts on recent debates

This paper offers a discussion of some of the features of recent land tenure debates and policies. It argues that two different orientations can be discerned: one that tends to regard land primarily as an economic asset and another that rather takes a (human) rights orientation and emphasises food and shelter security. These different orientations can be seen to be related to contrasting conceptualisations of extra-legality and different ranges of policy options when it comes to the legalisation or formalisation of land tenure and the acknowledgement of arrangements alternative to Western style individual ownership.     

Land tenure legislation in a pluri-cultural and multi-ethnic Society: The case of Bolivia

After considering notions of social justice as they are related to concepts of ‘development’, this article seeks to provide a regionally differentiated overview of the evolution of land tenure in Bolivia and the way arrangements for land tenure legalization have been contested and negotiated over time. It will show how the colonial ‘reciprocity pact’, which entailed recognition of indigenous tenure systems came under attack from liberalizing policies during the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1953 agrarian reform brought new arrangements and new agrarian policies that formally aimed at modernization. Yet another reform, in 1996, under the aegis of neoliberalism, brought a formal recognition of indigenous tenure systems which, however, has not yielded very satisfactory outcomes. This is due to a one-sided emphasis on tenure that disregards broader community organization and a slow and biased implementation favouring the traditionally dominant sectors.     

The Challenge of Diversity in Rural Latin America: A Rejoinder to Jean-Pierre Reed (and Others)

A review in the Journal of Peasant Studies by Reed [2003] of our book on indigenous movements and the state in Latin America provides a suitable opportunity to discuss several comments on questions raised in that text. In this rejoinder I argue that we do not judge neoliberalism a positive factor that provides indigenous peoples with a democratic space to press their demands. I show that our discussion of the neoliberal ‘cultural project’ provides the ground precisely for questioning the neoliberal brand of multiculturalism. Although the latter entails some degree of cultural affirmation, it simultaneously involves economic marginalization and disempowerment. This leads in turn to a further discussion of the relationship between indigenous movements and citizenship, and the strategy choices indigenous movements face in their pursuit of multicultural citizenship.     

Climate Change Sceptical Frames: The Case of Seven Australian Sceptics

Climate change sceptics are known for their resistance to proactive climate response policies, especially policies aimed at restricting greenhouse gas emissions. It is often assumed that scepticism about the science behind climate change would lead directly to outright rejection of all proactive climate policies aimed at mitigating emissions and adapting to climate‐induced changes already under way. This article demonstrates the variability among the climate policy views of seven well‐known Australian climate change sceptics in the period 2007–2012. Using the lens of frame‐analysis, we unpack some key sceptic rationales and narratives. The analysis shows that sceptics share a master frame that privileges individualist‐libertarian‐progress‐social order values, which are thus likely to conflict with the values implicit in conventional climate policy remedies. The analysis also shows that sceptical pre‐occupations diverge at more detailed framing levels, with various practical concerns and fears often at the centre of sceptical argumentation     

Interaction Quality in Political-Administrative Relations in the United States: Testing a Multi-Dimensional Model

Building on theories on new public management and results-based management, this article addresses performance measurement in comprehensive peace operations. More specifically it focuses on the Effects-Based Approach to Operations (EBAO) that is currently implemented by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan to measure the performance on a wide range of areas such as security, governance, and socio-economic development. The article reveals and structures several key challenges in the complex measurement process, varying from technical (e.g., the lack of targets or benchmarks for an indicator) to fundamental ones (e.g., the large controversy between intuition-driven and assessment-driven leadership) and provides recommendations to meet these challenges.     

Social workers' and police officers' perception of victim credibility: Perspective-Taking and the impact of extra-Evidential factors

Abstract

The credibility of a victim can be influenced by factors that objectively should not have any impact on the judgemental process. The present two studies examine the influence of two such factors: (1) the non-verbal behavior of the victim, and (2) the ethnic identity of the victim, in the context of two different perspectives of observation (victim focused or truth detecting). Study 1 focused on perspective taking, and was included for the methodological reason that in Study 2 perspective taking was necessarily confounded with subject gender. Study 1 indicates that the perspective of the observer has a significant influence on the perceived credibility of the victim and the interpretation of non-verbal behavior. In Study 2 perspective-taking was manipulated more realistically by including a sample of social workers and of police officers. The other two factors were manipulated in the videotapes. Results suggested that the white victim exhibiting white non-verbal behavior, judged by a social worker, is perceived as more credible and has less chance of secondary victimisation. The black victim however, exhibiting black non-verbal behavior, who is judged by a police-officer, is perceived as least credible and runs a higher chance of secondary victimisation.