President Trump,There Is A Deal To Be Made With North Korea

North Korea might agree to a nuclear deal in return for economic concessions from South Korea and security assurances from the US     

A continuum of hate: delimiting the field of hate studies

Crime, Law and Social Change - A relatively nascent discipline, the field of hate studies has been explored and theorised from a multiplicity of disciplinary contexts. However, the field is...     

Political Markets, Bond Markets, and the Effects of Uncertainty: A Cross-National Analysis

One of the critical challenges of contemporary democracy is securing a balance between the markets of representation and the markets of exchange and capital within democracies. This article explores the effect that political markets have upon capital markets' performance as measured by the market risks within the long-term government bond markets in nineteen democracies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) between 1955 and 1992. Our theory linking political markets and capital markets will be developed around the logic of transaction cost economics. We will argue that critical aspects of transaction costs within political markets generate corresponding transaction costs and risks within capital markets thereby reducing market efficiency. Specifically, we demonstrate that, based on cross-national evidence drawn from three panels over the time period 1955–1992, stochastic political markets generate transaction costs within long-term government bond markets, the consequences of which are reflected in rising market risk within these capital markets. Our pooled cross-sectional sample confirms that stochasticity in institutional structure presents trade-offs for democracy. Stochasticity may reflect more responsive and generally sensitive representative institutions, but often at the price of risk-laden capital markets. We consider the implications of these findings at the conclusion of the article.     

Rational Choice Rewards and the Jihadist Suicide Bomber

Suicide terrorism is the most violent and horrifying form of terrorism in the world today. This kind of terrorism causes many fatalities and can throw an entire nation into a state of panic. We usually attribute this kind of terrorism to altruistic motivation, assuming that bombers are willing to sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. The current study uses the criminological theory of Rational Choice to analyze the motivation of jihadist suicide terrorism. By reviewing the religious, personal, and social incentives, we demonstrate that even those who kill themselves in suicide attacks, which are seemingly examples of irrational or altruistic behavior, do so while considering future, self-gratifying benefits. Since this self-destructive behavior is mostly driven not by altruistic motivation but by the anticipation of costs and benefits, we find that there is no fundamental difference between the perpetrators’ motivations and those of other criminals; both groups are committed to maximizing self-gratifying, beneficial behavior.