Globalisation and resistance in post-cold war Mexico: Difference,citizenship and biodiversity conflicts in Chiapas

In the post-cold war era changes at the global, regional, national and local level are altering earlier ways of understanding and practising citizenship. In Mexico the decline of the state-guided national development project (1930s-70s) has been accompanied by the transformation of corporatist forms of political control. This article uses examples of recent biodiversity conflicts in the state of Chiapas to illustrate this process in terms of a struggle between competing models of 'market citizenship' and 'pluri-ethnic citizenship'. By focusing on the actions and demands of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and other indigenous organisations, the article highlights how resistance to globalisation in the Lacandon rainforest of Chiapas is related to struggles for collective rights and a more inclusive form of democracy in Mexico. This also raises important questions regarding the future shape of national identities and the scope of democratic rights around the world in the post-cold war era.     

Governing after the Rights Revolution

In this paper I explore the relevance of neo-republican thinking for current debates in constitutional law. In particular, I am interested in how deliberative forms of law and democracy might be grounded in real-world institutional contexts. My thesis is that the neo-republican model, underpinned as it is by the values of equality, participation, and accountability, has both explanatory and critical potential when exploring the voices, spaces, and processes of constitutionalism. I test this argument with reference to constitutional change in Northern Ireland. It is evident that equality is the core value in the settlement reached but it is in the combination of values that the potential and tensions will arise in the future. The provisions of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 on equality are useful examples of how law might be shaped to include the voices of affected groups in the process of enforcing change in public administration. Law's role in this process is, however, more problematic than is often assumed. In this, and in other aspects of the settlement, there are lessons for others who are presently reflecting on the constitutional future in the new devolutionary contexts.     

An examination of gender and age in print media accounts of child abductions

Previous research has suggested that the print media over-report on certain demographics of abducted children. Specifically, cases where the abduction victim is younger or the abduction victim is female are most often covered. The purpose of the current study was to systematically examine, through the research technique of content analysis, whether a lack of congruency exists between newspaper articles detailing child abduction victims and empirical data of the same. Newspaper articles were collected from LexisNexis Academic, and empirical data were drawn from the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children. The results revealed that gender and age play only a minor role in deciding which abduction incidents are covered by newspapers, as well as the extent to which they are reported on. Specifically, newspapers dedicated more words to female victims than male victims and reported more on younger children (aged 11 and under) than older children (aged 12 and over) when they were the victim of a nonfamily abduction. It appears, however, that in all other types of abduction cases, newspapers are reporting a rather factual depiction of the demographics of victims. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Comment on Jean L. Cummings and Denise DiPasquale's “The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit: An Analysis of the First Ten Years”

Abstract

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (housing credit) that Cummings and Di‐Pasquale portray is effective, efficient, and healthy. However, rapid changes in the industry have turned some of their data stale, and the absence of suitable context and information invalidate some key analyses and findings. Moreover, the researchers sometimes seem to see the glass as 10 percent empty instead of 90 percent full. A practitioners’ perspective is more positive.

The housing credit generates an array of public benefits while harnessing private investors’ business discipline. Genuinely low‐income tenants occupy the housing. The housing revitalizes low‐income communities. Properties are in good financial and physical condition. The housing credit is also cost effective. The economic fundamentals of producing low‐income rental housing, not the housing credit, necessitate substantial subsidies. A remarkably high proportion of the federal tax‐credit subsidy goes into the housing, and investor returns are modest. Nonprofit‐sponsored production appears to cost more because nonprofits are prominent in high‐cost locations and for other similar reasons, not because nonprofit developers are inefficient.     

Intelligence to counter terror: The importance of all-source fusion

The modern digital environment has made terrorism and other transnational crimes vastly easier to coordinate on a worldwide scale than was possible before World War II. It has also exacerbated a most serious challenge: governments attempting to stop terrorists – particularly democracies – are expected to do so without undermining the laws, representative principles and informal confidences upon which a culture of democracy depends. The purpose of this article is to examine the modern intelligence requirements for countering terror in order to appreciate this challenge in greater depth and to develop a reasoned basis for balancing counterintelligence capabilities with civil liberties. It begins by considering the nature of the terrorists we face and the requirements for good intelligence operations against them. Historical examples illustrate those lessons that can be learned from the defeat of similar threats in the past, including the recurring ways in which challenges to civil liberties arise as democracies optimize intelligence in the name of security. In discussing the special opportunities and challenges modern technology poses in this contest, the analysis suggests an essential next step for democracies threatened by terrorists in their midst.     

Reconsidering individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting

This paper proposes a general theory of individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting based on the perspective that the strength of the relationship varies with factors that influence the relevance of the economic evaluation to the vote choice. We posit that the electoral relevance of the economic evaluation increases with the strength of partisanship as well as political sophistication. Given the strong correlation between partisanship and sophistication, this theoretical perspective casts doubt on extant evidence that more sophisticated voters are more likely to hold the incumbent party electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance since this result might be an artifact of failing to control for the economic evaluation being more relevant to the vote choice of stronger partisans. Our statistical investigation of this question finds no significant evidence that sophistication conditions the economic voting relationship once the conditioning effect of partisanship is included in the model. This finding suggests that individual-level heterogeneity in the strength of the economic voting relationship is largely due to stronger partisans voting more consistently with their national economic evaluation than to more sophisticated voters being more policy-oriented by holding the incumbent party more electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance.     

Human Rights, Free Movement, and the Right to Leave in International Law

This article starts from a rights-based premise: freedom ofmovement is an established human right recognised in a rangeof international instruments. The right to leave one's own countryis one aspect of this general concern with free movement. Thisarticle addresses the status of this right under internationallaw, a right that is enshrined in several different internationalinstruments and has attracted considerable attention. This articleexplores how the Human Rights Committee, the only United Nationshuman rights treaty body that has examined the right to leavein significant detail, has interpreted this right in light ofstate practice. This article considers whether internationallaw requires, or allows, states to prevent their nationals fromleaving their own states by unauthorized or irregular meansand whether such prevention could be construed as a violationof the right to leave. This article also examines whether statescan legitimately prosecute migrants when they leave their ownstates with documents that they know to be fraudulent. The legitimacyof exit visas and regulations related to holders of state secretsis also explored. Finally, this article presents some thoughtson the continuing significance of the right to leave.     

Liverpool Law Review

Liverpool Law Review -