The Pirates' Curse: Economic Impacts of the Maritime Piracy

During the last decades, the activities of pirates have increased exponentially in Eastern Africa, with their attacks becoming considerably more violent. In addition to the intrastate and interstate conflicts, the lack of state capacity and the presence of terrorist groups, maritime piracy represents a serious and sustained threat to economic security. Indeed, from an economic point of view, pirates affect international trade through an increasing insecurity related to the prompt delivery of the goods transported. The aim of this work is to explore the main works on maritime piracy analyzed in quantitative economics.     

INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING IN GOVERNING HEALTHCARE QUALITY

Since the 1980s, regulated markets and New Public Management have been introduced in the public sector across the world. How they have affected existing governance mechanisms such as self‐regulation and state regulation has remained largely unexplored, however. This article examines the origins and consequences of institutional layering in governing healthcare quality. Dutch health care, where a market‐based system has been introduced, is used as a case study. The results show that this market‐based system did not replace but modified existing institutional arrangements. As a result, hospitals have to deal with the fragmentation of quality demands. Using the concept of institutional layering, this study shows how different arrangements interact. As a consequence, the introduction of a certain policy reform will work out differently in different countries and policy sectors. Our ‘archaeological’ study in this layering can be seen as an example of how such incremental change can be studied in detail.     

Natural Resources,Development Strategies,and Lower Caste Empowerment in India’s Mineral Belt: Bihar and Odisha During the 1990s

Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, the Indian states of Bihar and Odisha pursued markedly different development strategies during India’s first decade of economic liberalization. Whereas Bihar turned away from its natural resource sector and adopted policies of social empowerment, Odisha courted private investment in extractive industries and aggressively pursued market reforms. To account for this divergence, we argue that the social composition of political power in each state directly shaped the strategies that leaders embraced towards the natural resource sector and overall development. This paper makes contributions to the writings on natural resources and the political economy of India. We show that the presence of abundant natural resources does not necessarily result in a predictable pathway of sectoral and economic policy outcomes. Instead, social factors can be a powerful determinant of how resource-rich states approach their economies.     

The Challenges to Cooperation Posed by the Nexus of Terrorism and Organized Crime: Comparing the Situations Between the Andean and the Sahel Regions

The recent conflict in the Sahel area is another case where the nexus of terrorism and organized crime causes challenges to the international community. Comparing the situation with that of the Andean region brings forth the challenges faced when dealing with this type of conflict: the states’ weak presence in the remote regions, the insurgents’ ability to offer income and “security” to the people, immediate threat to international investments, unresolved political/regional issues, the marriage of convenience of insurgents/terrorists and organized crime, internal divisions of the insurgent groups and also ideologies surviving or suffering after the elimination of their leaders.     

Gendered bodies in academia — an analytic approach to social meaning‐making among students

This article presents an analytic approach to the study of gender meaning in an academic context. In the presentation empirical material from an interview study among 29 Danish male and female university students is applied. The analytic approach is based on the conception of gender meaning as a culturally constructed phenomenon in continuous process. Current gender meaning is seen as a construction based on the idea of coherence between the gendered sign on the body and a variety of components including sexual and professionally related aspects. The connections between body sign and the components as well as among the components themselves are a continuous goal of negotiation processes among the male and female students.     

Protective Predictors of Alcohol Use Trajectories Among Canadian Aboriginal Youth

Some Aboriginal youth are at disproportionate risk of using substances and developing abuse and dependence disorders. However, not all Aboriginal youth misuse substances and limited research has examined the protective factors conferring against substance use among these youth. The present study aimed to identify protective factors related to the alcohol use trajectories from early adolescence to emerging adulthood among off-reserve Canadian Aboriginal youth. Participants (N = 330; 50.3% male) aged 12–23 were selected from cycles 2–7 of Statistics Canada’s NLSCY. Multilevel modeling was employed to identify protective factors for two constructs of alcohol use. Participation in weekly activities and optimism were found to be protective for both the frequency of alcohol use and heavy drinking trajectories. Attendance of religious services was also found to be protective for heavy drinking behaviors. In contrast, positive peer relationships were a risk factor for frequency of alcohol use, but not heavy drinking. The results provide preliminary evidence of important developmental factors to integrate into substance use intervention programs targeting Aboriginal youth.     

Father- and Mother-Adolescent Decision-Making in Mexican-Origin Families

Understanding the prevalence and correlates of decisional autonomy within specific cultural contexts is necessary to fully comprehend how family processes are embedded within culture. The goals of this study were to describe mothers’ and fathers’ decision-making with adolescents (M = 12.51 years, SD = 0.58; 51% female), including parent-unilateral, joint, and youth-unilateral decision-making, and to examine the socio-cultural and family characteristics associated with these different types of decision-making in 246 Mexican-origin families. Mothers reported more joint and youth-unilateral decision-making and less parent-unilateral decision-making than did fathers. Fathers reported more youth-unilateral decision-making with sons than with daughters. Further, for mothers, more traditional gender role attitudes and higher levels of mother-adolescent conflict were associated with more parent-unilateral and less joint decision-making. In contrast, for fathers, lower levels of respect values were associated with more youth-unilateral decision-making with sons, and higher levels of parent-adolescent warmth were associated with more youth-unilateral decision-making with daughters. The importance of understanding the different correlates of mothers’ and fathers’ decision-making with sons versus daughters is discussed.