International relations: the dawn of a historiographical turn?

Books reviewed in this article:
Donnelly, Jack, Realism in International Relations
Dunne, Tim, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School
Schmidt, Brian, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations
Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant     

“Shifting the stuff wasn’t any bother”: Illicit enterprise, tobacco bootlegging and deconstructing the British government’s cigarette smuggling discourse

This paper presents the results of interactions/interviews with an active tobacco bootlegger regarding his illicit entrepreneurial activity spanning his illegal career. This narrative is intended to portray a snapshot of a type of organised criminality within an illicit market place but seeks to add to the critical academic literature responding to State-led depictions of organised crime as an apocalyptic menace. The results of the fieldwork suggest that illicit market enterprise in this context is neither threatening nor predatory, is very ordinary and, crucially, is driven by insatiable consumer demand within local trading networks.     

Marijuana But Not Alcohol Use During Adolescence Mediates the Association Between Transmissible Risk for Substance Use Disorder and Number of Lifetime Violent Offenses

Aim

This study determined the extent to which alcohol and marijuana use during adolescence mediates the relation between transmissible risk for substance use disorder (SUD) and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses.

Methods

The transmissible liability index was administered to 359 10-12 year old youths who were tracked to 22 years of age. Past year frequency of alcohol and marijuana consumption was longitudinally tracked to age 22 at which time lifetime violent offenses was recorded.

Results

Rate of increase in marijuana use mediated the association between transmissible risk and lifetime number of different types of violent offenses. No association was found between past year frequency of alcohol use and violent offenses.

Conclusions

Prevention directed at lowering the psychological characteristics associated with transmissible risk for SUD may also reduce violent offending.     

Local cohesion and radical right support: The case of the Swiss People’s Party

Radical right parties have become effective electoral competitors in many parts of Western Europe yet failed to achieve success in others. Much recent scholarship seeks to understand variation in radical right support. Here, we argue that local social cohesion boosts these parties’ vote shares. We use Swiss census data at the municipal level to measure local cohesion, drawing on indicators of residents’ commuting patterns, linguistic similarities and home ownership. Regression analysis shows that social cohesion is a positive predictor of local level support for the Swiss People’s Party, but not for any other major party. Hierarchical logit models combining aggregate cohesion measures with survey data demonstrate this contextual effect on individuals’ vote choices.