Deeper Commitment to Human Rights Treaties: Signaling and Investment Risk Perception

Why do some leaders make deeper commitments to human rights treaties (HRAs) by consenting to receive extra monitoring of complaints or communications from individual citizens? Extant theory suggests leaders join HRAs for tangible benefits. However, empirical support for this argument is mixed. To address this mismatch, we approach this question from a different angle. We argue that by ratifying HRAs, leaders send a signal that they are reliable partners who value future returns. Accepting optional articles and protocols that increase monitoring of the state’s human rights behavior, without changing the state’s substantive obligations, helps better signal that the regime does not fear instability nor sees the need to resort to the proscribed abuses in the future. This, in turn, serves as an important middle step to recognizing tangible benefits, such as foreign direct investment, by improving investors’ risk perception of ratified countries.     

Secrecy and Self-Interest: When Mediators Act Deceitfully

3rd party intervention in interstate conflict is a common strategy for mitigating conflict and obtaining a final agreement. However, not all mediations are successful, leading to the development of a rich literature on the mechanisms which decrease the probability of failure in a 3rd-party intervention. Within this literature, some studies examine how a mediator’ behavior and incentives affect the result of the mediation. Virtually all these studies assume that the mediator is virtuous such that peace is the most desired outcome of a conflict for her. However, this study challenges this assumption and contends that a mediator can gain benefit from the conflict between disputants. If this benefit is adequately large to overcome the benefits of peace, then the mediator has enough incentive not to conduct the mediation toward a peaceful outcome. We develop a signaling game model to study this issue formally and test the proposed hypothesis empirically.     

When school meets the Other: intercultural policies in the Basque inclusive school

ABSTRACT

Gatti, Irazuzta and Martinez address the intercultural public policies implemented in the education system of the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country (Spain). Focusing on the education system allows them to reconstruct the historicity of identity-alterity production in a region in which language has been central for the establishment of ethnic frontiers. More specifically, they examine the implementation of these policies in three pre-school and primary educational institutions in a multicultural neighbourhood of the city of Bilbao. They look at Euskara—the Basque language—as a key element of the us-them distinction. The various education models regarding language and the teaching in/of Euskara or Spanish pave the way for the specialization and spatialization of the schools analysed. ‘Integration’ policies are implemented in ethnically marked schools only, based on a rhetoric of interculturality that assumes that any ‘racial or ethnic discrimination’ can be overcome through knowledge of the Other. Moreover, the assessment of public policies through ‘interculturality figures and best practice’ developed to address the so-called ‘immigration issue’ promotes a protectionist intervention on behalf of the assumed social vulnerabilities of immigrant schoolchildren and their families, which are read as ‘problematic characteristics’. The article argues that, as a result of the approach based on the social conditions of immigrant children and their families in the Basque Country, the race issue evaporates.     

Conceptualising the policy engagement of interest groups: Involvement,access and prominence

While much progress has been made in empirically mapping and analysing a variety of interest group activities in the last decade, less attention has been devoted to conceptual work that clearly defines and distinguishes different forms of policy engagement. This article contributes to this endeavour by developing a theoretical framework that explicitly links currently available measures of the policy engagement of groups to the distinct concepts of group involvement, access and prominence. It argues that greater conceptual clarity will lead to better accumulation of knowledge in the sub‐field and a better understanding of the role of interest groups in political systems.     

Public support for coercive diplomacy: Exploring public opinion data from ten European countries

Scholarship has increasingly acknowledged the importance of public attitudes for shaping the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. Economic sanctions emerged as one of CFSP's central tools. Yet despite the emergence of sanctions as a popular instrument in the EU foreign policy toolbox, public attitudes towards sanctions are yet to be studied in depth. This article explains public support for EU sanctions, using the empirical example of sanctions against Russia. It looks at geopolitical attitudes, economic motivations and ideational factors to explain the variation in public support for sanctions. The conclusion suggests that geopolitical factors are the most important, and that economic factors matter very little. Euroscepticism and anti‐Americanism play an important role in explaining the support for sanctions at the individual level.     

The Characteristics and Unmet Housing Program Needs of Disabled HUD-Assisted Households

The mismatch between the housing needs of persons with a disability and the housing programs designed to accommodate those needs is an important housing policy concern. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsors several programs designed to improve the housing conditions of persons with a disability, but we know little about the characteristics of persons with a disability, among those receiving federal housing assistance, or the degree to which persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored housing programs that are designed to meet the needs of persons with a disability. Our study relies on administrative data from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau to address this research gap. We find that many persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored programs that are not designated for persons with a disability, even when disability accommodations have been requested, and a similarly large share of persons with a disability live in potentially eligible low-income households that do not receive HUD assistance.     

Fiscal Austerity and Rental Housing Policy in the United States and United Kingdom, 2010–2016

After the 2008 global financial crisis, both the United States and the United Kingdom introduced austerity policies targeted at particular elements of their national budgets. The purpose of this article is to compare the nature of this retrenchment; the similarities and differences in how it was implemented; and its initial impacts on one of the expenditure areas particularly affected: affordable rental housing programs and housing support for low-income households. Using a wide range of data sources, we find evidence of political and fiscal policy analogies in the timing and forms of the initial policy choices and how these were modified in the face of economic and political pressures. There are considerable similarities both in the instruments used to reduce housing expenditures and in the early impacts on support mechanisms and recipients. However, we find different histories and trajectories of support between the two countries that suggest that the longer term differences in outcomes may be more important.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.     

Telling the stories of others: claims of authenticity in human rights reporting and comics journalism

ABSTRACT

There are various intermediaries bearing witness to distant conflicts and atrocities. They travel to distant parts of the world to collect different kinds of evidence and stories, motivated by the assumption that knowledge can evoke change. This article asks how authenticity is claimed in this context of humanitarian witnessing. It focuses on two, at first sight quite different, practices of representation: NGO human rights reporting and comics journalism, also known as graphic reporting. It argues that representations of first-hand access to sites and people involved in abuses, or of ‘having been there’, figure centrally in establishing authenticity and thereby truth. The article discusses two techniques through which first-hand truth claims are performed: representations of field research methodologies, and personifications of truth in the figure of the witness. The intermediaries chosen for an in-depth study are the human rights NGO Human Rights Watch and the US comics journalist Joe Sacco.