‘Control Grabbing’ and small-scale agricultural intensification: emerging patterns of state-facilitated ‘agricultural investment’ in Rwanda

The Rwandan government's ongoing reconfiguration of the agricultural sector seeks to facilitate increased penetration of smallholder farming systems by domestic and international capital, which may include some land acquisition (‘land grabbing’) as well as contract farming arrangements. Such contracts are arranged by the state, which sometimes uses coercive mechanisms and interventionist strategies to encourage agricultural investment. The Rwandan government has adapted neo-liberal tools, such as ‘performance management contracts’, which make local public administrators accountable for agricultural development targets (often explicitly linked to corporate interests). Activities of international development agencies are becoming intertwined with those of the state and foreign capital, so that a variety of actors and objectives are starting to collaboratively change the relations between land and labour. The global ‘land grab’ is only one aspect of broader patterns of reconfiguration of control over land, labour and markets in the Global South. This paper demonstrates the ways in which the state is orienting public resources towards private interests in Rwanda, through processes that have elsewhere been termed ‘control grabbing’ [Borras et al. 2012 Borras, S.M., et al. 2012. Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: key features in Latin America. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 33(4), 402–416. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2012.745394[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 402–416].     

The relationship between adverse childhood experiences,coping using sex,and adult sexual coercion in non-incarcerated,community-based females

ABSTRACT

Adverse childhood experiences have been associated with negative outcomes in adulthood, including sexual offending. Using a cross-sectional design, we investigated whether self-reported adverse childhood experiences related to the perpetration of coercive sexual acts among 250 females recruited from the community. Furthermore, we examined whether sexualised coping mediated any potential relationship between childhood experiences and sexual coercion. A Spearman’s rank order correlation revealed no relationship between adverse childhood experiences and sexual coercion. However, adverse childhood experiences were significantly correlated with sexualised coping, which in turn was correlated with sexual coercion. Additionally, there was a significant but small indirect effect of adverse childhood experiences on sexual coercion through sexualised coping. Findings may help researchers to better understand the causal relationship between childhood experiences, sexual coping, and sexual coercion in females.     

Trapping Constituents or Winning Hearts and Minds? Rebel Strategies to Attain Constituent Support in Sri Lanka

Why do rebels choose violence over non-violent methods to attain the cooperation of their constituency in the war against the government? This article assesses the importance of rebels' dependency on constituent support through a case study of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. The empirical findings suggest that dependency largely results in non-violent measures. However, a multitude of passive coercion methods – broadly unaccounted for by existing theory – evolve over time in the form of territorial and social entrapments. This implies that rebels do not need the hearts and minds of their people to wage war at later stages of conflict. Time pressure, however, appears to result in violence.     

Who are the targets of familial electoral coercion? Evidence from Turkey

The unfettered expression of electoral choice is an important democratic right; however, in many contexts voters are pressured by others to cast their votes in certain ways. Electoral coercion is a topic that has received increased attention from researchers in recent years as part of the wave of research on electoral violence, yet there is little consensus in the literature as to who the targets of coercion are most likely to be. This article uses a list experiment embedded in a survey fielded following the Turkish general election of 2018 to identify the targets of coercive electoral practices within families and among close friends. The analysis reveals familial electoral coercion to be strongly conditioned by partisanship and disadvantaged demographic characteristics, but finds no evidence that women are more likely than men to be coerced.     

Recruitment and coercion in Japan’s far north: evidence from colonial Karafuto’s forestry and construction industries, 1910–37

In 1905, Karafuto (Southern Sakhalin) became Japan’s second formal colony and the most sparsely populated territory in the Japanese empire. Despite its peripheral location and small population the colony was of important economic value, boasting considerable natural resources such as marine products, coal, oil and timber. This combination of richness and remoteness meant that enterprises in the colony faced an acute labour shortage. This paper examines the ways that enterprises operating in Karafuto sought to circumvent this problem by analysing the recruitment, management and maintenance of labour in Karafuto’s forestry and construction industries. It is found that a degree of coercion emerged at worksites in the colony, as management struggled to hold onto its workforce for the entirety of a project; however, coercion was not the norm and was strongly associated with specific recruitment grounds. Utilizing contemporary social research, colonial newspaper reports, oral testimony and other sources this paper finds that recruits from further afield were more likely to be involved in incidents of abuse than those in close proximity to Karafuto. Local connections, strength in numbers and mutual dependence of workers from these areas and Karafuto-based recruiters for work/labour served to reduce levels of conflict between the two parties.     

也论组织乞讨罪

设立组织乞讨罪一方面考虑到维护社会治安秩序和未成年人、残疾人合法权益的重要性,另一方面是为了与有关规定相衔接.该罪的犯罪客体是残疾人和未成年人的意志自由,在客观方面表现为以暴力、胁迫为手段组织乞讨,主观方面是故意,而且不需具备牟利的目的.本罪的设立并不一定能有效地实现保护残疾人和未成年人身心健康的目的.     

行政强制救济若干理论问题探析

学理概念行政强制与法律概念行政强制措施不配套。从定义要求、语词构造以及法理分析,行政强制权属于行政权范畴,行政强制则包括行政执行强制和行政即时强制。与强制执行不同的是,行政强制属于行政模式,而非司法主导的混合模式。在宪法上界定行政与司法的分野,结合我国实际并借鉴域外经验对行政强制进行统一立法是行政强制救济的前提与基础。在合作行政时代,行政强制法制化的事前和事中救济过程比事后救济更为重要。     

覆盖与节制:一个有关“审判阴影”的悖论

当事人之间的合意是以自治为目标的调解正当化的首要原理。在现实实践中,纯粹的合意取得面临诸多障碍,合意贫困化的现象在各种调解模式中都有可能产生。在当事人自主交涉的场合,力量的不均衡和信息的不对称导致交涉中恣意的蔓延,以审判阴影覆盖交涉过程、围绕法律判断凝炼合意以抑制其中的恣意因素成为必要。审判阴影覆盖的路径可以划分为一般路径和特别路径。特别路径的审判阴影的覆盖在抑制恣意的同时又可能损害自律这一调解本质属性,反过来又成为另一形式的合意贫困化生成的契机。审判阴影也要有所节制。调解这一难解悖论提醒我们,无论是审判阴影的传递亦或是审判阴影的抑制与自我收缩,都应该也只能将提高当事人的自治能力奉为圭臬。     

New challenges in immigration theory: an overview

Normative political theory over recent decades has focused mainly on what ought to be done as far as migration policies are concerned. It faces a basic challenge, which stems from two competing, yet equally fundamental, ideals underpinning liberal democratic societies: a commitment to moral universalism and the exclusionary requirement of democracy. The objective of this special issue, ‘New Challenges in Immigration Theory’, is to provide a conceptual overview of (some) immigration theories and to highlight the challenges new streams of immigration pose for normative (political) theory and liberal democratic practice. The issue will consider how to reconcile state-based exclusion with a commitment to equal moral concern for all persons, by focusing on the non-standard immigration questions that have so far been ‘neglected’ by normative political theory. In line with this objective, the issue will discuss some of the inadequacies of the dominant political theories of immigration and show how such theories can be expanded to take account of new migration challenges such as brain drain, climate migration, detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, rights of labour migrants, transnational networks of movement, and so on.     

Neo-Kantianism and Coercive Diplomacy: The Complex Case of Economic Sanctions

Although voluminous research connects the neo-Kantian triad—democracy, economic interdependence, and intergovernmental organization membership—to amelioration of conflict processes, comparatively little is known about how these factors relate to economic coercion. We advance the relevant literature on neo-Kantianism and the determinants of sanction decisions by (1) analyzing the impact of all three neo-Kantian factors on economic coercion and (2) assessing the effects of these factors across both the onset of threat and imposition of sanctions. Results from the time-series, cross-national data analyses indicate a significant but complex connection between the neo-Kantian variables and sanctions. Specifically, we find that although democratic regimes are less likely to threaten each other with sanctions, once a threat is made, democracies are more likely to impose sanctions against each other. Economic interdependence and common IGO membership are likely to increase the probability of sanction threats. Yet, the results also suggest that common IGO membership decreases the probability of sanction imposition while economic interdependence has no statistically significant effect on the decision to impose sanctions. Overall, these results highlight the importance of a more nuanced study of sanction decisions for a better understanding of the factors that lead to sanction use.