COVID-19 and Historical Global Rupture in Latin America

This article contrasts two significant ruptures in globalisation. World War I in 1914 was a significant break from the Latin American export-oriented development that was firmly connected to economic globalisation. This article uses the Argentine case study to reveal the ramifications of the post-1914 global breakdown for the republic's internationally dependent development. It draws comparisons with the current COVID-19 crisis as a significant departure from rapid globalisation. Both events altered the trajectory of international activity. Analysis of the 1914 rupture exposes the parallels with COVID-19 and its potential severity for Latin America's internationally connected development.     

Dynamics of protest and electoral politics in the Great Recession

This article links the consequences of the Great Recession on protest and electoral politics. It innovates by combining the literature on economic voting with social movement research and by presenting the first integrated, large-scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. The economic voting literature offers important insights on how and under what conditions economic crises play out in the short-run. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics of opposition in the two arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic grievances. More specifically, it is argued that economic protests act as a ‘signalling mechanism’ by attributing blame to decision makers and by highlighting the political dimension of deteriorating economic conditions. Ultimately, massive protest mobilisation should, thus, amplify the impact of economic hardship on the electoral losses of incumbents and mainstream parties more generally. The empirical analysis to study this relationship relies on an original semi-automated protest event dataset combined with an updated dataset of electoral outcomes in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The results indicate that the dynamics of economic protests and electoral punishment are closely related and point to a destabilisation of European party systems during the Great Recession.     

国际人道法体系内创设恐怖犯罪罪名之提倡

自第一次世界大战结束至1977年两项日内瓦公约附加议定书的通过,武装冲突期间禁止恐怖活动的规则已由草案条款发展为了一项正式的国际人道法规则。不仅如此,《第一附加议定书》还将恐怖主义行为规定为第85(3)条中的"严重违反行为",从而暗含了战争罪之恐怖犯罪。但恐怖犯罪却没有被明示规定于任何普遍性的国际条约中,大多数部门反恐条约都排除适用于武装冲突期间。同时,恐怖犯罪向公众散布恐怖的特殊目的会造成长期恐惧的社会氛围,有着不同于一般犯罪的特别严重性。上述因素说明创设恐怖犯罪作为一项国际人道法的单独罪名具有国际法依据和现实紧迫性。恐怖犯罪与战争罪、危害人类罪之间的重合关系导致罪犯的同一行为可能同时构成其中的两项或三项犯罪,此时可根据"?elebi?i标准"判断这些犯罪之间是否互相存在具有实质性区别的要素,进而作出是否应累积定罪的决定。     

The psychological effects of state socialization: IGO membership loss and respect for human rights

We present an interdisciplinary theory that considers how loss of membership in international organizations affects states’ human rights practices. Drawing mostly from social psychology and international relations research, we argue that states are socialized into the international community through a process of social influence, whereby they are incentivized to comply with group norms by the promise (threat) of social rewards (punishments). Social influence occurs when states form social bonds through interactions with other states. When social bonds are severed, fewer opportunities for social influence occur due to lower information to both the remaining states and the state that lost those social bonds. Thus, we hypothesize that the loss of membership from IGOs reduces incentives to comply with group norms and adversely affects human rights practices at home. A combination of propensity score matching/regression and autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) models on a global cross-section across the years 1978–2012 supports the theory. Specifically, losing at least one IGO membership leads to a long-run drop in human rights respect of about one quarter to one half standard deviation.     

Treatment format and external validity in international relations experiments

Political scientists use short vignettes or mock news stories to embed treatments in experimental survey designs. We investigate whether the choice of format entails a trade off between internal and external validity. On the one hand, short vignettes may improve internal validity by isolating key variables without overloading respondents with information, thereby mitigating satisficing and improving data quality. On the other hand, mock news stories may improve external validity by approximating the circumstances under which individuals consume political information, which may enhance the credibility of the information. We find no evidence, however, that short vignettes mitigate satisficing more than mock news stories. Nor do we find that mock news stories enhance individual perceptions of the credibility of the information. Instead, we find that short vignettes are susceptible to confounding, which mock news story mitigate. These findings have important implications for debates about the use of survey experiments in political science.     

国际劳工组织的历史贡献及其对中国劳动社会保障法制建设的影响 —— 纪念国际劳工组织成立 100 周年

系统梳理概括了国际劳工组织百年发展中的五大贡献,研究表明,几乎每个改变社会和劳动的事件都与国际劳工组织密切相关,在关键的历史时刻它发挥了重要的作用。中国与国际劳工组织的联系源远流长。中国政府和工会、雇主组织在劳动立法、就业促进和社会保障的价值理念、体制机制等方面,吸收了国际劳工组织和国际劳工标准的有益经验和积极影响,履行了国际劳工组织成员国的义务。因此,无论是要构建和谐劳动关系,还是致力于积极参与国际劳动治理,都需要加强对国际劳工组织和国际劳工标准的基础性和应用性研究,以便不断加强我国劳动社会保障法制建设,为促进体面劳动,实现社会正义做出贡献。     

Enhancing Employees’ Work Performance through Organizational Justice in the Context of Financial Crisis. A Study of the Greek Public Sector

In a period of economic crisis, the increasing pressure of sparse financial resources and the structural reforms in labor law are factors pushing and forcing managers of both public and private organizations to do more with less. The current study explores how employees’ performance in the public sector is affected by perceptions of organizational justice in terms of resource allocation (e.g., benefits and compensation). The responses received from a sample of 490 employees working for public organizations in Greece indicated that work performance is significantly and positively related not only to employees’ satisfaction with pay, but also to employees’ perceptions of distributive and procedural justice.     

Fighting for the Soviet Union 2.0: Digital nostalgia and national belonging in the context of the Ukrainian crisis

This paper focuses on the use of Soviet-era symbols, myths, and narratives within groups on VKontakte social media site over the initial stage of the Ukraine crisis (2014–2015). The study is based on qualitative content analysis of online discussions, visual materials, and entries by group administrators and commentators. It also applies link-analysis in order to see how groups on social media are interrelated and positioned online. It reveals that these online groups are driven primarily by neo-Soviet myths and hopes for a new version of the USSR to emerge. Over time, the main memory work in these groups shifted from Soviet nostalgia and “pragmatic” discourse to the use of re-constructed World War II memories in order to justify Russian aggression and to undermine national belonging in Ukraine. Reliance on the wartime mythology allowed for the labelling of Euromaidan supporters as “fascists” that should be eliminated “once again.” This powerful swirl of re-created Soviet memories allowed effective mobilization on the ground and further escalation of the conflict from street protests to the armed struggle.     

Negotiating international civil society support: the case of Ethiopia’s 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation

ABSTRACT

Since 2005, international civil society support has faced increasing resistance around the world. Ethiopia is widely recognized as a key example of this so-called Closing Space phenomenon. With the 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation (CSP) Ethiopia has established strict regulations on civil society organizations that, in particular, restrict the ability of local associations to make use of foreign funding and the range of activities allowed for foreign (funded) organizations. This paper traces the process of international negotiations that has accompanied the drafting of the CSP and identifies the consequences of these negotiations for international civil society support in the country. Focusing on the interaction between foreign “donors” and the Ethiopian government, it analyzes (a) what precisely these negotiations have been about, (b) to what extent these negotiations have actually influenced the content of the CSP, and (c) how the CSP as finally adopted has actually affected international civil society support in Ethiopia.     

How oil autocracies learn to stop worrying: Central Eurasia in 2008 global financial crisis

Autocracies in developing countries are more likely to collapse during economic crises. Some influential works and popular media extend this argument to oil-rich autocracies, but cross-national empirical studies find little evidence to support this view. Yet, while the causes of their stability during boom periods are well understood, how oil-rich autocratic regimes remain stable during busts is underexplored. This article advances an explanation that refines and complements existing accounts. I argue that we need to take into account three interrelated factors that currently are likely to stabilize oil-rich autocracies: considerable savings, policy learning, and sustenance of coercive capacity. Leveraging evidence drawn from 40 original interviews, documents, news media, and academic literature, I investigate the role of these factors through a comparative case study of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan during the 2008 global economic turmoil. The findings highlight the ruling elites’ ability to amass sizeable savings that later provide safety cushions, to update their know-how through drawing lessons within and beyond fiscal policy, and to sustain coercive capacity without resorting to overt repression. Through economic crises, they may learn to not escape the “resource curse,” but to escape despite the “resource curse.”