From Reset to Restart: The US-Russia Cyclical Relationship in the Post-Cold War Era

ABSTRACT

After a quarter of a century of oscillating relations between Washington and Moscow, Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy named Russia as one of the main challengers to the US-led order. Power transition theory is used to explain the alternating cooperative and competitive phases during each of the first three post-Cold War US presidencies: first, initial attempts at cooperation are driven by US willingness to integrate its former rival into the liberal order; then, regression into competition follows as Washington’s influence rises in territories that Moscow considers sensitive for its national security.     

Decentralisation and NGO–municipal government collaboration in Ecuador

Decentralisation, or the transfer of decision-making power and funds from central to local governments, is one of the most important reform movements in Latin America. Recent constitutional changes in Ecuador have contributed to the democratisation and empowerment of municipal governments. Case studies of three municipalities in highland Ecuador examine new opportunities for NGO–municipal government collaboration. NGOs have considerable experience of working locally and can help municipalities with planning and capacity building. Municipalities offer NGOs the legitimacy and local accountability they may lack, as well as the means both to extend project activities beyond isolated communities and to maintain the results once NGO assistance ends.     

Der Fall Bautzen: Eine Netzwerkanalyse zur Entstehung digitaler Öffentlichkeiten

In autumn 2016, refugees and followers of the political right were caught up in a violent conflict in the Saxon town of Bautzen. The paper analyses how this event was discussed in the digital public. On the basis of Bruno Latour’s relational sociology it carries out a quantitative network analysis in order to understand the structural dynamics of Twitter as a discursive arena. It appears that the political debate of the event develops from unconnected partial publics via antagonistic battles of opinion up to closed echo chambers. In the case of Bautzen, Twitter works like a megaphone: the technology doesn’t contribute to intersubjective understanding but facilitates the distribution of personal constructions of reality.     

Manifestations,Drivers, and Frictions of Mobile Phone Use in Low- and Middle-Income Settings: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Rural India and China

Against the backdrop of alleged mobile phone ubiquity and the enthusiasm about the developmental value of mobile technology, this paper examines the manifestations, drivers, and frictions of mobile phone use in two low- and middle-income settings where mobile technology has diffused rapidly. Qualitative data from 231 participants and survey data from 800 adults in rural Rajasthan and Gansu provide consistent and strong support for the claim that the notion of ‘ubiquity’ can mislead development practice because it obscures persistent non-use, under-utilisation, and heterogeneous engagement with mobile technology despite its apparently wide accessibility in rural field sites. The paper suggests avenues for further work on the indicators of technology adoption, and it cautions that phone-based development interventions (and their benefits) may diffuse unevenly if the assumption of ubiquitous technology use is violated.     

Participation exemption and tax arbitrage: Italy’s case

This paper studies how participation exemption (PEX) tax rules for stocks owned by companies, which are frequent in EU countries, introduce tax arbitrage opportunities. The focus is on Italy’s PEX rules. PEX enables companies to make manufactured loans that generate tax exempt interest income by combining stocks with forwards or options. Borrowing through similar manufactured loans allows companies to bypass restrictions to deducting the cost of borrowing. PEX induced arbitrage exploitable through stock and options portfolios is available even when put-call parity holds for European options. Derivatives that hedge a stock can “inherit” the PEX regime of the stock they hedge. PEX gives companies that own a stock a tax timing option, which can be exploited through stock straddle strategies, i.e. long-short positions in the same stock, and which can generate valuable tax savings.     

Deciding who will decide: Assessing random selection for participants in Edmonton's Citizen Panel on budget priorities

Selecting participants is a key component in the design, operation, and outcomes of public‐deliberation events to reflect the diversity of opinion in the larger public. This article examines how the City of Edmonton selected the members of its Citizen Panel on budget priorities in 2009 to inform Edmonton's 2010–2011 budget. The organizers relied on random selection stratified by gender, age, length of residence in the city, educational attainment, and income. This article also reports on the findings from pre‐event and post‐event public‐opinion surveys sent to 5,000 citizens. It argues that the selection method for the Citizen Panel was justified because there were distinct views on key issues among different groups of citizens.     

In search of a post-hegemonic order: Germany,NATO and the European security and defence policy

This article explores the erosion of the conditions which supported Germany's emergence as a ‘Civilian Power’, in particular fundamental changes in the US perspective on the transatlantic relationship and international security, but also the increased sensitivity of German foreign policy to domestic circumstances. It explores Germany's so far ambivalent and inconsistent role in the pursuit of a post-hegemonic order for Euro-Atlantic security, focusing in particular on the emerging European Security and Defence Policy.     

Governing by contract as a way to reduce crime? An impact evaluation of the large-scale policy of security pacts

Policy Sciences - In the last decades, governing by contracts, and in particular security contracts and pacts, has been increasingly promoted as a principal means of advancing crime prevention and...     

Making sense of pollsters’ errors. An analysis of the 2014 second-order European election predictions

Pollsters have been recently accused of delivering poor electoral predictions. We argue that one of the reasons for their failures lies in the difficulty of including an updated deep understanding of electoral behaviour. Even if pollsters’ predictions are not forecasts produced by models, the set of choices needed to produce their estimates is not indifferent to a theoretical comprehension of electoral dynamics. We exemplify this lack of theory by using an original dataset consisting of 1057 party*poll observations in the case of the last European election. Pollsters failed to account for what we know about second-order elections, thus overestimating government and big parties, which normally obtain poor results in European elections, and underestimating new and Eurosceptic ones, which usually perform well.