The way back in: Reintegrating illegal armed groups in Colombia then and now

Back in the early 1990s, Colombia reintegrated five left-wing guerrilla groups. Whether as groups or individuals, these guerrillas found space for legitimate political participation at the local and national levels. Society accepted them and they embraced democracy and contributed to the strengthening of liberal political ideas and human rights norms in the country. Fifteen years later Colombia is once again attempting to reintegrate ex-combatants, 33,000 from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, the so-called ‘paramilitary’—a right-wing force that sought to fight guerrillas—and about 11,000 ‘individually demobilised’ combatants of FARC, ELN and AUC who have since 2002 deserted their group. This time, however, the task of transforming illegal armed groups into legitimate political entities is proving to be harder. In particular, the reintegration of the paramilitary has elicited wide criticism from Colombians and the international community. Why are things different today? By examining and comparing the processes of political reintegration of the M-19 and the paramilitary this article will argue that there are at least four critical factors that either allow or bar former combatants from becoming legitimate players with a capacity for political interlocution: the international and domestic political and normative contexts; the nature and behaviour of the illegal armed group (how much power they command, to what extent groups use war for personal profit and whether they commit egregious crimes); the terms of the peace negotiation; and the practical dimensions of exercising political interlocution.     

Multinational Enterprises as "Moral Entrepreneurs" in a Global Prohibition Regime Against Corruption

This article explores the incentives and means multinational enterprises (MNEs) may have to create a corruption-free business environment. It draws on Ethan Nadelmann's (1990) article in International Organization , "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society" and discerns the emergence of such a regime centered on bribe paying and bribe soliciting.     

Surrogacy,Identity, Parentage and Childrenʼs Rights – Through the Eyes of a Child

In this article I will focus on two important aspects of children's rights which are impacted by artificial reproductive technology (particularly surrogacy); being the rights to identity and the rights to legal parentage. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child acknowledges the importance of a child's right to identity, to be protected from discrimination on the basis of the status or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians or family members. For many children born through surrogacy arrangements, they may have only one or no legally recognized parent. The adults caring for them may have parental responsibility orders but this falls well short of providing children with the benefits and protections that legal parentage does. The issue of identity can be complex. Increasingly, states have recognized the importance of children knowing the circumstances of their birth and being able to access biological and genetic information including medical information. From a child's perspective the issues of identity and parenthood are intertwined. Given the importance of identity, more needs to be done to ensure that identifying information about children born as a result of artificial reproductive technology is properly stored and readily accessible for these children. Denying a child legal parentage when there are no concerns about the care being provided by their parents cannot be justified when considered from a children's rights perspective.     

The Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster: Avoiding the Trap and Realising the Promise

By failing to acknowledge the link between the design of our political institutions and growing levels of anti‐political sentiment, the restoration and renewal programme risks falling into a trap of its own making. Involving the public from the outset in an open review of the (re)design options for Westminster—in a positive and confident conversation—ensures the best opportunity for meaningful engagement between the public and the future of their democracy.     

Judging from a Guilty Conscience: The Chilean Judiciary's Human Rights Turn

Since the detention of General Pinochet in London in 1998 on charges of crimes against humanity, Chile's judges have sentenced more former officials of the military regime for human rights violations than judges of any other country in Latin America. This article argues that the prosecutorial turn reflects the judiciary's attempt to atone for its complicity with the dictatorship. The London arrest created pressure for prosecution of Pinochet-era human rights violations; but it is the contest over the judiciary's legacy, as an important piece of postauthoritarian memory struggles, that explains why Chile's notoriously illiberal judiciary ceded to that pressure. By reconceptualizing judicial culture as contested, heterogeneous, and dynamic, this article opens the door to richer understandings of judicial politics, transitional justice, and the reception of international human rights.     

State-led bricolage and the extension of collective governance: Hybridity in the Swiss skill formation system

This paper explores the extension of collective governance to sectors without collective governance tradition. We introduce the concept of state-led bricolage to analyze the expansion of the Swiss apprenticeship training system – in which employer associations fulfill core collective governance tasks – to economic sectors in which training had previously followed a school-based and state-oriented logic. In deindustrializing societies, these sectors are key for the survival of collectively governed training systems. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we examine the reform process that led to the creation of new intermediary organizations that enable collective governance in these sectors. In addition, we compare the organizational features of these organizations with the respective organizations in the traditional crafts and industry sectors. We find that the new organizations result from state-led bricolage. They are hybrid organizations that reflect some of the bricoleur's core policy goals and critically build on the combination of associational and state-oriented institutional logics.     

The Individual-Level Determinants of Exiting German Parties

With respect to explaining declining party membership, the question who leaves political parties and why has so far been neglected. This article aims to fill this gap by applying Hirschman’s theory of “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty” to both current and former party members, and at combining it with the resource model of political participation. We find that neither individual resources nor reasons for discontent are sufficient to explain the different reactions to discontent, but that the exit-voice-loyalty model has a certain explanatory power.