Catastrophe risk,insurance and terrorism

This article empirically investigates how the terrorist activity of September 11, 2001, was addressed by the insurance industry and government in the United States. It shows that the insurance system worked reasonably well in compensating losses suffered, albeit with various tribulations. It also demonstrates that the insurance industry, along with government as the ultimate risk manager, imaginatively reconfigured markets to continue terrorism insurance coverage in many contexts. The findings challenge many of Ulrich Beck’s contentions about catastrophe risks and insurability. At the same time, they indicate the fragility of the insurance system. Insurers’ perceptions and decisions about uncertainty – with potential for windfall profits as well as catastrophic losses – create crises in insurance availability and promote new forms of inequality and exclusion. Hence, while the insurance industry is a central bulwark against uncertainty, insurers can also play a key role in fostering it.     

A petro-formula and its world: calculating profits,labour and production in the assembling of Anglo-Iranian oil

Abstract

The paper explores how the calculative work of three different formulas shaped the history of oil in Iran in the first half of the twentieth century. British investors, Iranian government officials, oil workers and other actors battled over the construction and employment of a formula during the course of three different but interconnected disputes over oil profits, labour and production rates. Opening up the dynamics of a petroleum formula exposes how, on each occasion, certain political possibilities were opened or closed in the co-assembling of the Iranian state and Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Scholarship on oil and Iran has not been able to account for the kinds of non-human actors, tools and machinery involved in the building of such a large-scale political project as an oil industry. Thus the paper draws on the current research on formulas and markets in science and technology studies but takes a different direction by looking at their political construction in the resolution of not just financial and economic problems, but social and political ones.     

Enacting catastrophe: preparedness,insurance, budgetary rationalization

Abstract

This article examines ‘enactment’ as a significant new form of knowledge about collective life that differs fundamentally from familiar forms of ‘social’ knowledge. The emergence of enactment is traced through a series of domains where the problem of estimating the likelihood and consequence of potentially catastrophic future events has been made an explicit object of expert reflection: response to a possible nuclear attack in US civil defence planning in the late 1940s; the emergence of natural hazard modelling in the 1960s and 1970s; and the emergence today of terrorism risk assessment and its proposed application to federal budgetary distributions. The article engages with central questions in debates around ‘risk society’ and insurance, holding that new approaches to understanding and assessing risk are not merely idiosyncratic or subjective. Rather, they should be treated as coherent new forms of knowledge and practice whose genealogy and present assemblies must be traced.     

Civilization as a political disposition

Abstract

This paper outlines a number of changes in social and political thought following the momentous events of 1989: the rise of postmodernism, identitarian politics and the transformation of notions of race into culture. It indicates origins for this drift in ideas to be found in the heritage of anti-Enlightenment polemics associated with political romanticism, in Europe as well as globally, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It then concentrates on the theme of civilization, and of the use of this term in international relations.     

What Can Pro-Democracy Activists in Arab Countries Expect from the European Union? Lessons from the Union's Relations with Israel

In this article, we analyze the European Union's (EU) approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, showing that there is a wide gap between its normative opposition to the occupation, Israel's expanding settlement project, and the EU's foreign trade policy. Our argument is not only that there is no evidence of norm diffusion from the EU to Israel, but that within the EU itself there is no diffusion from the normative political stance to the EU's economic interests. The Israeli case suggests that the pro-democracy activists of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria should be aware that the trade interests of the EU Member States will ultimately trump the EU's political declarations.     

Pathway to terrorist behaviors: The role of childhood experiences,personality traits,and ideological motivations in a sample of Iraqi prisoners

Radicalization to terrorism is a multifaceted process with no single theory or approach to explain it. Although research has focused on understanding the process, there is still a dearth of studies that examine an empirically driven pathway to terrorism behavior. This study examines a cross-sectional sample of incarcerated men convicted of terrorism in Iraq (N = 160). A questionnaire-guided interview included adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), conduct disorder (CD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), religious and political ideology, views about causes of terrorism, and the severity of terrorist acts. Path analysis was employed to examine the relationships between these factors and to identify the model with the best fit. After adjusting for age, employment, and location, results indicated that ACEs positively impacted CD, ASPD, religious guidance, and terrorism attitudes. ASPD positively affected political commitment and terrorism attitudes, but inversely affected current religious commitment. Political commitment inversely influenced terrorism attitudes. Religious commitment positively influenced the prioritization of religion in life, which subsequently impacted terrorism attitudes and behavior severity. Additionally, attitudes toward terrorism directly affected the severity of terrorism behavior. All paths in the final model were statistically significant at p < 0.05. Although these findings may be limited in generalizability due to the unique sample, results support the complex and interdependent nature of childhood and adult experiences on the development of both terrorism attitudes and the severity of terrorism behavior.     

Dimensions of security

Abstract

The Arab uprisings’ failure to bring about either the scale or type of political change in the Maghreb that it initially seemed to promise belies the significance of its impact on the region. While Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco continue to be ruled by the same competitive authoritarian regimes that held power when the protests began, they, and the new governments in Tunisia and Libya, must now negotiate an altered and more dangerous security environment than before. The unsettling of Tunisia’s security apparatus and the outbreak of full-blown civil war in Libya have created new opportunities for terror and criminal groups to thrive and expand. The primary aim of this special issue is to chart and explain many of the critical changes in the Maghreb’s security environment that have occurred as a result of the Arab Spring. Each of the articles collected here identifies and analyses at least one important security issue in one or more Maghreb country as well as explain how that issue has emerged in response to or been affected by the Arab Spring.     

恐怖主义问题研究

恐怖主义对国际社会的安全与稳定构成了严重的威胁,已经成为影响地区与世界安全局势的顽疾。恐怖主义的核心特性是追求政治目的与利益并实施或威胁使用暴力。恐怖主义常假借宗教名义,或以极端民族主义、极端意识形态为其思想基础。现代社会对恐怖主义的萌生与发展极具影响,为恐怖主义提供存在的客观环境。反恐怖主义必须着眼于事前预防恐怖主义行为的萌生和事后侦查打击恐怖组织和恐怖分子两大方面,确立反恐怖主义的原则与机制,构建反恐怖情报网络,强化反恐怖侦破工作,加强反恐怖队伍建设。     

European Regional Policy and Backward Regions: Implications Towards EU Enlargement

In this paper we show that the success of the EU Regional Policy, in terms of boosting growth in objective 1 regions, will mean a big opportunity for Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and hence the increases in competition arising from an enlarged European market combined with a suitable regional development policy should in the future boost the growth of those countries. In the last part of the paper we made a simulation for the funding envelope from 2007, based on the 2000–2006 budget. We show that the figures of the Agenda 2000 provide enough financial support for 90% of the total CEEC population and for 75% of current objective 1 population.     

浅谈恐怖化刑事犯罪

相当数量的刑事案件所造成的人员伤亡、财产损失等方面的危害程度和恶劣影响是空前的,并在一定地域范围内造成严重的恐怖气氛和社会恐慌,对此类案件我们称之为"恐怖化刑事犯罪"。恐怖化刑事犯罪的成因是:社会矛盾的演化、价值观的失衡、社会控制的缺陷以及个人心理因素。遏制此类犯罪,必须调节社会矛盾、建立防控体系、提高公民防范意识、快速反应,并对恐怖犯罪进行不断研究。