Between Scylla and Charybdis: religion,the military and support for democracy among Egyptians, 2011–2014

Democracy as a form of civilian rule must navigate a path between clerical and military powers, both of which are highly engaged in the politics of post-Mubarak Egypt. The authors ask in this article how mass support for democracy changed in Egypt between 2011 and 2014, and how this support is connected with views on religion and the role of the military. This question is important for understanding the prospects for democracy in a major state in the Arab world. It is also of comparative interest because of what change in the social and ideological drivers of mass attitudes may tell us about the nature of democratic support more generally. The authors’ analysis is based on nationally representative surveys of Egyptians in 2011 after the country’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and in 2014 after the removal of the Islamist President Morsi. The findings indicate that Egyptians in large numbers favour both democracy and unfettered military intervention in politics. The authors also observe important shifts in the social bases of support for democracy away from religion but also from economic aspiration. Negative political experience with democratic procedures in 2011–2013 seems to be the strongest factor behind the observed decrease in democratic support.     

The Strategic Shuffle: Ethnic Geography,the Internal Security Apparatus,and Elections in Kenya

For autocrats facing elections, officers in the internal security apparatus play a crucial role by engaging in coercion on behalf of the incumbent. Yet reliance on these officers introduces a principal‐agent problem: Officers can shirk from the autocrat's demands. To solve this problem, autocrats strategically post officers to different areas based on an area's importance to the election and the expected loyalty of an individual officer, which is a function of the officer's expected benefits from the president winning reelection. Using a data set of 8,000 local security appointments within Kenya in the 1990s, one of the first of its kind for any autocracy, I find that the president's coethnic officers were sent to, and the opposition's coethnic officers were kept away from, swing areas. This article demonstrates how state institutions from a country's previous authoritarian regime can persist despite the introduction of multi‐party elections and thus prevent full democratization.     

Political security: from the 1990s to the Arab Spring

The 1994 Human Development Report (HDR) set out the definition and parameters of political security in fewer than 400 words. It was defined as the prevention of government repression, systematic violation of human rights and threats from militarization. This was intended to establish an agenda that would protect people against states that continued to practice political repression, systematic torture, ill treatment and disappearance. Yet, the concept of political security has evolved in both theory and practice. This has been done through an ongoing debate, which has been shaped more by immediate crises and the practice of international relations, than the parameters set out in the 1994 HDR report. In practice, achieving the ambitions of the political security agenda has become tied to questions of humanitarian assistance and intervention. This was narrowly interpreted throughout the 1990s as a debate surrounding the nature and legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. In the 2000s, this was institutionalized into a Responsibility to Protect agenda, only to see the second decade of the twenty-first century reveal the need for a far more complex and nuanced debate about how this should be carried out.     

Attitudes toward suicide bombing in Pakistan

Although suicide bombing is a historical phenomenon, there has been a recent upsurge in such incidents. In Pakistan, over the last year, more than 1,000 people have been killed in suicide bombing incidents. Assessing the attitudes and perceptions of people toward suicide bombing can help understand some of the root causes of this phenomenon. In this pilot study, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of people (N = 215) in Karachi, Pakistan, to assess their attitudes and perceptions toward suicide bombing. The majority of the respondents condemned suicide bombing and disagreed with the notion that Islam or any other religion supports it. Belonging to the Sunni Muslim sect and strong adherence to religion predicted support for suicide bombing. The majority believed suicide bombing to be a result of religious fundamentalism. Opinion was divided as to whether suicide bombers have an underlying psychiatric illness. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to determine the attitudes and perceptions of the Pakistani population regarding this important issue.     

The Behavioral Public Administration Movement: A Critical Reflection

Proponents of the behavioral public administration movement call for greater use of theories from psychology and experimental research designs to improve the rigor of public administration research. We agree that the use of such theories and methods will provide much-needed reinforcements to public administration research, but the approach taken so far might be too narrow and might unnecessarily alienate scholars using other perspectives and research approaches. Reflecting on our own training and experiences, we suggest that adopting a more inclusive approach that employs insights and research tools not only from psychology but also from other disciplines will provide public administration scholars with a stronger footing in their efforts to generate actionable knowledge for public managers and policy makers. We also identify some key methodological issues that behavioral public administration scholars need to consider and address as the use of experiments becomes more common in public administration research. Finally, we encourage public administration scholars interested in behavioral research questions to do more to contribute to broader management and organizational behavior research.     

Goods and services tax,cascading, and revenue performance: Analyzing Indian commodity taxation market

Indian economy has finally introduced an improvised value‐added tax commonly known as goods and services tax (GST) with an explicit focus to target cascading. Cascading is by far the most serious issue of a tax structure as it leads to many other challenges like opaqueness, complexity, evasion besides deadweight losses. GST is a fiscal policy reform aimed at integrating and harmonizing the Indian tax structure and hence reduce the incidence of cascading. This study is an attempt to empirically analyze the possible impacts of GST on the cascading and hence revenue collection in the Indian economy. The study has employed a simple but representative simultaneous equation model representing the commodity taxation using time series data from 1990 to 2017. This study finds that reduced cascading under GST will enhance the revenue efficiency of the Indian commodity tax structure. The findings are corroborated by the post‐GST revenue performance of Indian states and the central government.     

KURDISTAN’S REFERENDUM: THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE KURDISH FORCES IN KIRKUK

Less than a month after the Kurdistan independence referendum, the Iraqi Army and units of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) attacked the disputed province of Kirkuk on October, 16, 2017. Unlike most national defence forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga is divided along partisan lines between the two largest parties in Iraqi Kurdistan. This particular area was largely under the control of units affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which decided to make a strategic withdrawal in the face of superior numbers and firepower. The city was then retaken in short order by forces loyal to Baghdad, as were all other disputed territories previously under Kurdish control. Subsequently, the allegation that the PUK had retreated too easily has been described by the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and others as a betrayal of the Kurdish people by the PUK. This has created two competing post-event perspectives: first, that the Peshmerga forces should have defended Kirkuk to the last man and should not have left their front line trenches; second that the withdrawal of the Peshmerga was a deliberate and rational military reaction to overwhelming opposition. This article critically assesses both perspectives and finds that partisan divisions in the Peshmerga critically undermined the ability of Kurdish forces to defend the disputed areas that they controlled. Instead of serving as motivation of create a unified fighting force, the loss of Kirkuk has only served to deepen those divisions.     

Absence of Vertical Linkages and the Quest for Decentralized Service Delivery in Pakistan: An Innovation under Constraints

Local Government Ordinance, 2001 aimed to create a service-orientated local government by devolving many public services from the provincial to local levels. However, in many cases, local governments either did not have the capacity to manage them or the services extended across different geographic jurisdictions. The new system also restructured the three sub-national levels but without any vertical hierarchical linkages between them, and asked them to coordinate public service provision between them. This article suggests different remedies, including developing vertical administrative linkages and the reconstitution of Zila Mushawarat Committee to undertake coordination functions at intra-district level.     

Reckoning Electronic Government Progress in Bangladesh

In the context of the recent interest and enthusiasm regarding e-government, this article proffers an overview of e-government by focusing on its conceptual development and experimental practices with a particular focus on Bangladesh. The study primarily draws on an extensive review of the secondary literature together with personal insights of the authors gained in the course of engagements with selected e-government related projects in Bangladesh. It explores, inter alia, the conceptual setting by examining the key definitional issues and models of e-government; reviews e-government as a practice at the global and developing country contexts; and examines the policy frame and infrastructural status of e-government in Bangladesh. Major challenges and constraints on wider application of e-government in Bangladesh are identified and some clues on possible improvement of the situation are also explored. Despite many constraints, a degree of positive change is already noticeable in reducing the digital divide in the country.     

An Empirical Study of E-Government Service Adoption: Culture and Behavioral Intention

This study seeks to identify and understand the important factors that influence citizens’ behavioral intention to take up e-government services. We adopted a research model empirically tested in the United States. The model integrates three established constructs—the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), trust, and computer self-efficacy. We conducted the research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a leader in e-government development in the Arab world. Our findings are mostly different from the U.S. study and suggest that behavioral intention may be influenced by citizens’ cultural context. This study contributes to a better understanding of citizens’ behavioral intention and adoption factors in e-government, in particular from a cultural perspective. The findings may help governments formulate effective strategies to improve the level of citizens’ uptake of e-government services. This study paves the way for further research on an e-government adoption model that is robust across cultures.