Sinai's Insurgency: Implications of Enhanced Guerilla Warfare

This article aims to explain the endurance of Sinai's insurgency despite its limited military capacity and resources, and the overwhelming man- and fire-power of the incumbent's regular and tribal forces. After reviewing the literature on how insurgents beat or survive strong incumbents, the article offers a short overview of historical developments and socio-political causes leading to the rise of Sinai Province and its military build-up. It then analyses, qualitatively and quantitatively, how Sinai Province fight, based on its original documents and releases as well as on interviews with individuals who fought against it. Finally, the article concludes with an explanation of why did the insurgency survive and, at times, expanded based on the quality of its military tactics. It also provides policy implications, as a result.     

India,Brazil, and public health: Rule-making through south–south diffusion in the intellectual property rights regime?

This article analyzes the domestic drivers of regulatory state formation in India and Brazil and its consequences for the global rules governing pharmaceutical patents. We first analyze Indian and Brazilian politics of regulatory state formation; then, in light of the extent to which the two countries have built regulatory capacity and capability in the field of patent regulation, we explore whether and how they have been able to influence the existing intellectual property regime in health. We look into India's Section 3(d) and Brazil's prior consent requirement. Whereas India's Section 3(d) regulation has gained international regulatory influence by diffusing to other developing countries, the same cannot be said for Brazil's prior consent regulation, which has been caught by policy-reversals. The transition toward regulatory states in emerging countries is a bulky road and does not progress in linear ways. However, once regulatory capacity and capability have been solidified, domestic policy innovations can become internationally influential.     

Post-Jihadism: Libya and the Global Transformations of Armed Islamist Movements

This article analyzes the global transformations of jihadist movements towards abandoning and de-legitimizing political violence in general and terrorism in particular. It focuses on the de-radicalization process of Libya's largest armed Islamist movement: the Islamic Fighting Group. It analyzes the causes behind those transformations and outlines the necessary conditions for, and policy implications of, successful de-radicalization. The article is mainly based on primary sources, field work, and interviews with former jihadist leaders, mid-ranking commanders, grassroots activists, security and intelligence officers, and state officials.     

Fighting Tax Evasion in Latin America: the contrasting strategies of Chile and Argentina

In the 1990s both Chile and Argentina embarked on efforts to tackle tax evasion. The strategies they pursued differed substantively: Argentina followed a coercive approach that created an elite audit team endowed with special legal powers, while Chile undertook a less spectacular service-oriented approach that improved the fiscal pact between state and society and enacted tax administration reform. Chile succeeded in permanently lowering tax evasion levels, while Argentina's success was short-lived and evasion levels soon returned to previous heights. Besides important differences in the institutional strength of these countries, the contrasting outcomes can be attributed in no small measure to the different strategies adopted. Their experience can provide some useful lessons in the elusive battle against tax evasion in Latin America.     

The terminologies associated with development and marginalisation for Orang Asli in Malaysia

Previously, any failure of Orang Asli development activity in Malaysia, was characterised by using a single term in all situations ? “marginalisation”. This generalisation was unfair to everyone involved in the Orang Asli development process, made it difficult to resolve problems, and resulted in tendencies to blame certain people. Based on ethnographic research in Kuala Gandah, Pahang, Malaysia, this article allocates three terms in the Orang Asli development marginalisation discourse: “secluded”, “isolated”, and “marginalised”. “Secluded” refers to development activity that accidentally marginalises. “Isolated” refers to development activity that directly and deliberately marginalises. “Marginalised” refers to the Che Wong that were eliminating or avoiding development. These terms were exposed by weaknesses in the implementation of development, namely the role of a single dominant approach in development activities – the top-down approach – and a tendency to generalise the marginalisation of the Orang Asli. This article recommends that more care be taken to apply a development approach that deals with situations on a case-by-case basis and that utilises the partnership approach to development, involving all parties in all phases.     

RegData: A numerical database on industry‐specific regulations for all United States industries and federal regulations, 1997–2012

We introduce RegData, formerly known as the Industry‐specific Regulatory Constraint Database. RegData annually quantifies federal regulations by industry and regulatory agency for all federal regulations from 1997–2012. The quantification of regulations at the industry level for all industries is without precedent. RegData measures regulation for industries at the two, three, and four‐digit levels of the North American Industry Classification System. We created this database using text analysis to count binding constraints in the wording of regulations, as codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, and to measure the applicability of regulatory text to different industries. We validate our measures of regulation by examining known episodes of regulatory growth and deregulation, as well as by comparing our measures to an existing, cross‐sectional measure of regulation. Researchers can use this database to study the determinants of industry regulations and to study regulations’ effects on a massive array of dependent variables, both across industries and time.