African states in international organisations: A comparative analysis

The active participation in international organisations (IOs) is an important condition for the ability of states to exert influence over the content of international norms and rules. Thus, this paper adopts a comparative perspective and examines how active African states are in more than 500 international negotiations and under what conditions they are likely to remain silent. This reveals that diplomatic staff capacities are an essential precondition for active participation, while incentive structures, such as the scope of interests, impact how often states take the floor. An alternative to voicing national interest is to negotiate on behalf of regional organisations or regional groups. This paper shows that especially weaker and smaller African states benefit from regional group membership and use references to them in order to increase their leverage in international negotiations and improve, thereby, their chances to exert influence over the international architecture of rules and norms.     

Counting on codes: An examination of transnational codes as a regulatory governance mechanism for nanotechnologies

This article examines the rise of nanotechnology‐specific codes of conduct (nano‐codes) as a private governance mechanism to manage potential risks and promote the technology. It examines their effectiveness as well as their legitimacy as regulatory instruments in the public domain. The study first maps the rise of voluntary nano‐codes and the roles played by different actors. Focusing on five specific nano‐codes, the article then discusses their adequacy in terms of scientific uncertainty, gaps in existing regulatory regimes, and broader societal concerns. It concludes that these voluntary nano‐codes have weaknesses including a lack of explicit standards on which to base independent monitoring, as well as no sanctions for poor compliance. At the same time it also highlights the potential power of these governance mechanisms under conditions of uncertainty and co‐regulation with government. It is likely that nano‐codes will become the “first cut” of a new governance regime for nanotechnologies.     

Democracy,Governance, and Emigration Intentions in Latin America and the Caribbean

It is now clear that the global shift toward democracy in recent decades has resulted in a highly uneven democratic landscape in which the quality and performance of democracies around the world vary greatly. In an era characterized by increasingly open borders to goods, services, information, and, at times, labor, we argue that poorly performing, uneven democracies have become an important, yet underexplored, component in one’s emigration calculus. We test this argument through analysis of survey data across 22 Latin American countries and find strong and consistent evidence that both the quality of a democratic system and its ability to fulfill basic governance responsibilities influence the degree to which an individual considers emigration as a viable life strategy. These findings in turn have implications for the subsequent impact emigration may have on the democratic development of high migration communities.     

The Influence of Ethnicity and Adverse Life Experiences During Adolescence on Young Adult Socioeconomic Attainment: The Moderating Role of Education

Previous research has documented that adverse life experiences during adolescence, particularly for ethnic minorities, have a long-term influence on income and asset attainment and that this relationship is largely mediated by educational achievement. We extend prior research by investigating three research questions. First, we investigate the extent to which community disadvantage, family factors and race/ethnicity each exert an independent influence on young adult socioeconomic attainment. Second, we examine whether youths’ educational attainment mediates these independent influences on socioeconomic attainment. Third, we test whether educational attainment ameliorates the negative influences of disadvantaged community and family conditions and race/ethnicity on socioeconomic attainment. We address these questions using multilevel modeling with longitudinal, prospective data from Waves 1 and 4 of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N?=?13, 450; 53?% females). Regarding our first research question, our results indicated that African Americans, youth from disadvantaged communities, lower SES families achieve significantly lower levels of earnings, assets, and job quality during young adulthood. Second, we found that young adults’ educational level only partially mediate the influences of family and race/ethnicity influences on young adults’ socioeconomic attainment. Third, we found that young adults’ educational level buffered the influence of early socioeconomic adversities and accentuated the positive influences of family resources. Findings highlight the importance of social context as well as educational opportunities during childhood and adolescence for economic stability in early adulthood.     

Defending the Realm: The Appointment of Female Defense Ministers Worldwide

Though the defense ministry has been a bastion of male power, a growing number of states have appointed women to this portfolio. What explains men's dominance over these positions? Which factors predict women's appointments? With comprehensive cross‐national data from the post–Cold War era, we develop and test three sets of hypotheses concerning women's access to the defense ministry. We show that women remain excluded when the portfolio's remit reinforces traditional beliefs about the masculinity of the position, particularly in states that are engaged in fatal disputes, governed by military dictators, and large military spenders. By contrast, female defense ministers emerge when expectations about women's role in politics have changed—that is, in states with female chief executives and parliamentarians. Women are also first appointed to the post when its meaning diverges from traditional conceptions of the portfolio, particularly in countries concerned with peacekeeping and in former military states with left‐wing governments.     

Immigrant Engagement in Participatory Budgeting in New York City

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a welcome experiment in participatory democracy in New York City (NYC), one that could produce greater civic engagement of traditionally marginalized groups and more equitable resource distribution. By engaging immigrants, PB aims to affirm and elevate their voices, help develop their civic capacities, and promote their political participation and community empowerment. During the past four years, participation by immigrants (foreign-born residents) in New York City’s PB process (PBNYC) has steadily increased, growing from nineteen to twenty-eight percent of all PB voters. Yet, immigrant participation lags compared to their numbers, with great variation among PB districts. Using a mixed methods approach that incorporates surveys of and interviews with immigrant community members, staff at immigrant serving community-based organizations, and City Council staff, this article aims to parse out the logistical and affective barriers to participation immigrants face in PB districts and how PBNYC’s design attempts to circumvent said barriers and facilitate participation. Ultimately, our study reveals a complex mix of promising practices and structural constraints involved in working toward PB’s “inclusive” and “equitable” aims.     

Studying small states in international security affairs: a quantitative analysis

Todays’ international security architecture composed of international security treaties and international security norms has been established and formalized by negotiations. Owing to the great importance of international security negotiations for international security practices, this paper sheds light on negotiation activities. A study of 100 different international security negotiations shows that states vary considerably with respect to their negotiation activity. Some countries voice positions very often, while others remain completely silent. This is puzzling, as active negotiation participation is an expression of state sovereignty and a means to influence the shape of the international security architecture. The article distinguishes between capacity and incentives as driving forces of state activity in international security negotiations. The analysis reveals that, next to political and financial capacities, states that place high priority on military matters are more active, while smaller and poorer states are more likely to shelter under the security umbrella of larger counterparts.     

What do Australian Foundations Do – Who Knows and Who Cares?

This article explores governance and accountability demands on foundations in Australia and compares these with requirements in the US. The article begins by discussing the meaning of, and rise of concern with, governance and accountability, the nature and variety of foundations and their status as organisations in the public domain. The second and third sections compare the formal and informal requirements relating to governance and accountability of foundations in the US and Australia. It is suggested that US foundations are both more closely regulated and more concerned with issues of governance and accountability than Australian foundations. The fourth section identifies the drivers of demand for better governance and accountability of foundations in the US and their relevance in Australia. Finally, some possible explanations of the relative lack of concern with foundation governance in Australia are considered.     

politicizing biographies: the forming of transnational subjectivities as insiders outside

We take our own life stories as points of departure to look at some of the ways in which women were politicized in Argentina and West Germany (our respective countries of origin), focusing on similarities as well as differences in our politicization processes. We aim at putting present discussions about global political movements into a historical perspective. We want also to illuminate the centrality of political identities in the construction of specific (gendered) subjectivities. Our focus lies on theorizing the ways through which privileged (gendered) identities critically re-read their own position and transform their own understanding of themselves and the world through the field of the political. Methodologically, we want to contribute to ways of re-thinking Feminist methodologies by experimenting with a form of analysis in which we are alternately the subject and the object of our research process. The aim of this intervention is to transgress the binary oppositions between researcher/researched and challenge traditional understanding of social science where researchers provide analysis and informants have ‘experience’. One of our conclusions is that the 68 movement provided subject positions for living alternative normalities as an ‘insider-outside’, that is, for those who belonged to normalized groups in their respective societies, but for different reasons (of which we analyse some concerning our formation as ‘women’) could not identify with the dominant normalities offered to them. At the same time, the dominant male instrumentality of the movement estranged (some) women and allowed them (or forced them into) a kind of distanced engagement that, perhaps paradoxically, provided a basis for sustaining their political subjectivities through transformative experiences of defeat.