Successful and Unsuccessful Pirate Attacks Worldwide: A Situational Analysis

Using concepts drawn from situational crime prevention theory, this study compares successful and unsuccessful pirate attacks (n = 4,638) against ships worldwide and the situational factors that help prevent such attacks. The results show that when a ship’s crew takes proactive self-protective measures that increase the perceived effort (increasing speed, employing evasive maneuvers) and increase the perceived risk (embarking private security, having watchman present, raising alarm, increasing lighting, anti-piracy) of perpetrating an attack, unsuccessful attacks are significantly more likely after controlling for environmental influences. Despite a few common data limitations, the study contributes to the crime prevention literature by analyzing piracy from a micro level instead of a macro level. Future research should examine how the piracy “ecosystem” contributes to the problem and the costs and benefits counter-piracy activities.     

互联网国际规则建构:话语策略的公共安全视角

对当今世界各主要经济体而言,互联网安全已成为一个利益攸关的重要议题,但该领域国际共识和国际规则严重缺失,这与持续加剧的互联网安全威胁之间产生了尖锐的矛盾。在中国,互联网治理日益成为关乎国家安全的政策焦点,同时也是参与全球治理不可或缺的组成部分;建构互联网国际规则的话语能力直接影响着中国对外传播话语体系的建立和制度性话语权的提升,但目前中国对该领域话语策略的学术与政策研究仍严重缺失。当前,对互联网国际规则之制度理念的应然性研究仍显不足,关于中国在该领域对外传播话语策略的探讨更是近乎空白。互联网国际规则的缺失本质上源于互联网信息自由带来的收益与政府信息管控对此种收益的限制之间存在难以调和的矛盾。由于日益严峻的互联网安全形势正逐渐打破互联网信息自由与政府信息管控之间原有的平衡,加之全球化趋势将世界各国的命运更加紧密地联系在一起,该领域国际规则的建构开始具备现实的可能性。鉴于传播话语在规则建构的过程中占据着举足轻重的地位,以公共安全为切入点赢得国际共识、提升中国在互联网全球治理中的话语能力和制度性话语权就成为中国政策制定机构和宣传机构在通过对外传播推进互联网国际规则建构时应采取的话语策略。     

性别议题的媒体表达与中国国际话语权的提升——基于《中国日报》和《纽约时报》对“剩女”议题报道的分析

讲好中国故事,提升中国国际话语权,是当前国际传播的重要命题。本文以《中国日报》《纽约时报》对剩女议题的报道文本为分析对象,对其媒体表达进行深度剖析。研究认为,就性别议题而言,以媒体表达推动国际话语权提升的方法和路径可归纳为:信源的多元化、平衡性和适合度相结合;运用综合、实证等丰富多样的表达方式;增强应对意识和能力;强化受众意识。     

网络时代高校马克思主义理论教育面临的新课题

互联网作为一柄双刃剑,在给高校马克思主义理论教育带来发展机遇的同时,又以其快速便捷的信息提供方式及无可比拟的信息容量,极大地改变着高校师生的思想观念、价值取向、思维方式、行为模式、个性心理甚至语言习惯,对高校马克思主义理论教育带来新挑战,提出新课题。我们要紧密结合网络信息时代的特质,积极探索高校马克思主义理论教育工作的新模式、新方法,趋利避害,争取高校马克思主义理论教育工作的主动权,不断开创高校马克思主义理论教育的新局面。     

Populism and democratic crisis in semi-presidential countries

This article demonstrates how different political opportunity structures in semi-presidential countries either enable or inhibit the overreach of populist presidents. In Turkey, for example, political leverage has been used to hamstring the opposition and transform a democratic regime into an authoritarian one. In Bulgaria, democracy also faded under a populist prime minister. Ukraine’s democracy had a checkered history, with frequent changes of power culminating in presidential breakdown. The Czech Republic introduced popular elections for the president to strengthen legitimacy, but that exposed the regime to conflict between the president and the prime minister.     

Arts Audiences: Establishing a Gateway to Audience Development and Engagement

ABSTRACT

Demand for mainline cultural art forms, including symphonies, opera, and jazz, is diminishing. As the arts face challenges concerning shrinking and aging audiences, reaching new consumer segments has become an imperative. The present research empirically examines how external forces related to an individual's opportunity to participate in the arts and internal variables related to motivation and ability influence audience development initiatives. In addition, the influence that these variables have on important engagement outcomes such as perceived value, loyalty, and advocacy are also evaluated. Findings offer insight for arts administrators into how consumption for live performing arts offerings can be fostered.     

Discursive democracy and the challenge of state building in divided societies: reckoning with symbolic capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Current approaches to democratic state building place serious conceptual limits on policy options. A democratic future for Bosnia's people will require far more searching engagement with identity formation and its politicization than reform efforts have so far contemplated. Theories of discursive democracy illuminate how this might be possible. We deploy the discursive idea of symbolic capital to show how one might identify the lines along which people in Bosnia could constitute meaningful, internally legitimated political communities – or that would indicate the experiment was not worth attempting. Unless advocates of democratic state building can articulate, rather than assume, a sufficiency of common ground among the populations' multiple, overlapping and conflicting identities, they may have to revert to the default of separate political communities.     

Contentious politics and student dissent in the twilight of the Portuguese dictatorship: analysis of a protest cycle

This article focuses on student opposition to the Portuguese Estado Novo regime, examining the links between the dynamics of mobilization and radicalization and the emergence of new political actors before the fall of the Salazar dictatorship on the one hand, and the revolutionary process which characterized the Portuguese transition on the other. The 25 April 1974 military coup d'état that overthrew the Estado Novo triggered what later came to be known as the ‘third wave’ of democratization; but the Portuguese transition was characterized by elements of rupture that were much more significant than those observed in the subsequent democratization processes of Spain and Greece. This rupture was a result of the form of regime change – a military coup d'état – and was sustained with the mass social mobilization that followed. While key studies have stressed that the political crisis after the fall of regime was the fundamental cause of this exceptional mobilization, the argument advanced in this article is that the pre-revolutionary cycle of protest also explains the particular characteristics of the Portuguese transition.     

National democratization theory and global governance: civil society and the liberalization of the Asian Development Bank

Contributing to a growing literature on democracy beyond the nation-state, this article draws on aspects of national democratization theory in order to analyse empirical processes of democracy. By combining insights from transition theory and the theory of political opportunity structures, the article examines the case of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). While the ADB for a long time has been described as a closed, unresponsive and unaccountable international organization, a recent evaluation praised the Bank for its good practices concerning transparency, participation and accountability. The article uses the analytical framework to highlight the interaction between hard-liners and soft-liners within the ADB and explores the role of different transnational civil society actors in the processes that seem to have strengthened the democratic credentials of the ADB. While finding significant divisions within the ADB as well as amongst civil society actors targeting the bank, overall the article argues that transnational civil society actors, interacting with soft-liners within the ADB, have contributed to the implementation of reforms, which in turn create political opportunities for further civil society activism. The reform processes, however, are best described as processes of liberalization – rather than democratization.     

Organised crime,occupations and opportunity

This paper elaborates upon occupations, work relations, work settings, and their connection with organised crime activities. The analysis is based upon data from 120 case studies from the Dutch Organised Crime Monitor, involving 1623 suspects. The paper describes the different kinds of occupations encountered in cases of organised crime and the main characteristics of these occupations. Furthermore, the paper describes in more detail four cases of organised crime that illustrate the embeddedness of certain organised crime activities in work relations and work settings. Following Mars,1 ^?1. Gerald Mars, Cheats at Work: An Anthropology of Workplace Crime (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1982). the paper analyses both the grid dimension and the group dimension of certain occupations and work settings. The paper concludes that social relations as well as settings and opportunity structures provide structure to the organisation of many forms of crime, including organised crime.