Ethnicity and conflict severity: accounting for the effect of co-ethnic and non-ethnic militias on battlefield lethality

How does the presence of armed pro-regime groups affect conflict lethality? This study examines the relationship between ethnicity, militia violence and conflict lethality in civil wars. We emphasise that differences in whether pro-regime militias were recruited in accordance with their ethnicity or not are critical in their influence upon conflict lethality, which we estimate in battlefield deaths. To that end, we categorise militias into groups recruited on their ethnic basis (co-ethnic militias) and those recruited regardless of their ethnicity (non-ethnic militias). We hypothesise that conflicts are more lethal when non-ethnic militias are involved. We link higher number of battle-deaths in conflicts with non-ethnic militias with the militia use of one-sided violence against civilians. Co-ethnic militias – that is militias recruited from the same ethnicity as rebels – are deployed amongst their co-ethnics and therefore tend to target civilians less than non-ethnic militias. This militia–civilian relationship has direct impact on conflict severity. To test our hypotheses we conduct global statistical analysis of 84 intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2014.     

High Performance Expectations: Concept and Causes

Employees contribute more when they are aware of their leaders’ high performance expectations (HPE), but how can leaders successfully convey HPE? Here it is argued that both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors involve goal-setting, which can affect employee-perceived HPE. Using a leadership training field experiment with 3,730 employees nested in 471 organizations, the findings support that training in transformational, transactional and combination leadership training significantly increased employees’ HPE relative to a control group. Furthermore, transformational leadership and pecuniary rewards seem to be important mechanisms. This implies that public leaders can affect HPE through leadership and thus potentially organizational performance.     

Emerging powers,soft power,and future of regional cooperation in South Asia

This article looks into the future of regional cooperation in South Asia in the light of two emerging powers: China and India focussing on how their rise would change the relationship in the region. The paper argues that China and India both are trying to enhance their spheres of influence forcing the states in the region to align with either of them in a binary framework of unstable equilibrium and uneasy coexistence rather than reinforcing the regional solidarity of SAARC. Such a competition between China and India and the putative interventionary efforts of Western powers and their agencies in the region are bound to bring implications of profound value for not just regional cooperation but for the individual destinies of the various states involved in the days ahead.     

‘Where am I in this story?’ – listening to activist women writers*

This study discusses the dynamic roles of activist women in militarized societies. It offers an analysis of the perspectives of Israeli activist women regarding their roles as women activists and writers. In their non-fiction writings, these activist women voice their resistance and document both their everyday lives and political perspectives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their socio-political activism and resistance to the Israeli occupation. These women were interviewed regarding their perspectives and struggles. The interviews were analysed by applying narrative analysis – the ‘Listening Guide’ methodology – to explore their various voices and narratives. By using this methodology, this study sought to uncover additional knowledge regarding women’s forms of resistance in militarized societies. We emphasize the importance of women citizens’ voices, narratives and points of view by presenting activist women’s critical insights on activism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and literature. Their curiosity, agency, critical perspectives, and resistance can be viewed as counter-narratives that de-centre Israeli hegemonic masculinity and demand a critique of the national and militarized ideology. Our article seeks to demonstrate the importance of women’s perspectives, everyday life experiences, dilemmas and struggles in a reality of conflict and war.     

北京市工会干部队伍状况调查

当前首都发展进入新时代,首都工会工作面临产业结构、劳动关系、职工队伍等一系列深刻变化。工会干部作为工会工作的组织者、推动者和实践者,是新时代工会工作的主力军和关键要素。因此,加强工会干部队伍建设对于促进新时代首都工会工作发展具有极其重要的作用。本文在对北京市工会干部队伍状况调查的基础上,系统梳理了北京工会干部队伍的基本情况和总体特征,旨在把握工会干部队伍发展的新情况、新问题,并针对调查中发现的主要问题和工会干部队伍建设的时代要求,提出了相关建议。     

Determinants of e-government maturity： Do organizational specific factors matter？

E-government is said to be an efficient and effective way of delivering government services to its customers. Web information accessibility and online transactional services increase transparency, openness of bureaucratic institutions and reduce cost of transactions. Global e-government surveys which portray the trend in countries＇ e-government readiness and stage of e-government maturity rank developing countries at the bottom. Based on the benefits reaped from e-government and the fact that some countries can progress than others; it is evident that e-government has become a development phenomenon to researchers and policy makers. Accordingly, the basic empirical question to researchers has been on what determines e-government maturity？ To answer this question, it is important first to distinguish between e-readiness and e-government maturity in order to understand the intuition behind this question. E-readiness comprises of all prerequisite necessary to implement e-government while e-government maturity refers to the actual level of e-government progress a country has attained based on websites assessment. While macro factors such as level of Gross Domestic Product, human capital and ICT （information and communication technology） infrastructure are important in determining e-government maturity at the national level; they may not necessarily explain differences of e-government maturity among government agencies within the same country. In other words, why there are differences in e-government maturity among governmental agencies even in those countries which are ranked at the top. In this paper authors argue that organizational specific factors play a vital role in determining the stage of organizational e-government maturity. To accentuate the argument, authors provide one of the possible frameworks and respective propositions to indicate the influence of organizational specific characteristics on e-government maturity.     

Salt,high blood pressure,and performance‐based regulation

Performance‐based regulation is a new approach to public health promotion. The aim of this article is to explain how this idea might be applied to the public health goal of reducing salt consumption as a way of reducing high blood pressure and thereby saving lives. Performance‐based regulation is compared with competing regulatory strategies.     

Power to the legal professionals: Is there an Americanization of European law?

Twelve years ago, Robert Kagan asked “Should Europe worry about adversarial legalism?” He answered this question with a qualified “no,” and identified a number of sources of resistance to such a trend. More recently, he broadened the issue in this journal by asking whether European countries experience an “Americanization” of their legal systems. The articles in this Symposium on the Americanization of European Law all revisit that question. The present article introduces the topic, discusses the elements that make up adversarial legalism, and summarizes and compares the findings of the articles in the Symposium. The articles find an increase in one dimension of adversarial legalism, namely, more legalism, that is, more litigation, more formalism, and more verdicts interfering with politics, but hardly any increase in adversarialism. Tenacious pre‐existing national legal and political cultures and institutions resist a further move in the direction of American style adversarial legalism. The mix of more litigation, more legalism, and more politicization, overlaid on the pre‐existing hierarchic authority of courts and legal functionaries has, however, strengthened the societal and political power of the judiciary vis‐à‐vis other powers. A professional elite is increasingly making the political choices that in a democratic society ought to be made by democratic representatives. Perhaps Europe should worry about this.