Military Mobilization and Commitment Problems

Because of its costliness, military mobilization is generally seen as a mechanism by which high-resolve leaders can credibly signal their high resolve in international crises, thereby possibly overcoming informational asymmetries that can lead to costly and inefficient war. I examine how power-shifts caused by mobilization within a crisis can lead to commitment-problem wars. In a simple ultimatum-offer crisis bargaining model of complete information, war occurs if and only if the power-shift caused by mobilization exceeds the bargaining surplus, which is Powell's (2004 Powell, Robert. 2004. The Inefficient Use of Power. American Political Science Review, 98 May: 231–241. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2006 Powell, Robert. 2006. War as a Commitment Problem. International Organization, 60(1): 169–203. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) general inefficiency condition for commitment-problem wars. When private information is added, and hence mobilization potentially has a stabilizing signaling role, under certain conditions the commitment problem overwhelms the signaling role and mobilization leads to certain war. Finally, I analyze an infinite-horizon model that captures the reality that mobilizing takes time, and find that commitment-problem wars occur under broader conditions than the general inefficiency condition implies.     

我国党风廉政建设中公众参与的政治动员模式：回顾与反思

动员公众参与党风廉政建设是我国在特定的历史条件下为获得公众对这一议题的认同和支持．引导公众积极参与而采取的一种模式。客观分析这种模式形成的背景,深入剖析这种模式的特征。认真总结其经验和教训。对当下如何引导公众参与党风廉政建设,完善公众参与制度,加强政府与公众在党风廉政建设中的互动与合作仍具有重要的意义。     

从国际法角度评菲律宾对黄岩岛的主权主张

菲律宾在其立场文件中所提的用来支持其对黄岩岛主权主张的各种材料并不足以支持其关于自独立以来对黄岩岛行使了有效占领和有效管辖并由此获得该岛主权的主张。其中有些并非以主权名义从事的行为,而有些不能被用作支持其实施行为的证据。     

Alternative action organizations across different welfare and third sector regimes during hard economic times

ABSTRACT

Since 2008, the international economic and financial crisis has been affecting the living and working conditions of European citizens in different ways and scope. Yet, the pattern is of rising unemployment, social deprivation and poverty, cuts in health, education and social security budgets. These negative socio-economic conditions have led to major transformations in collective responses, which, among others, take place through Alternative Action Organisations (AAOs). The specific organizations carry out non-mainstream activities that primarily target the economic and the social well-being of citizens, including their basic needs, health and lifestyles. Using quantitative data from the LIVEWHAT project and drawing on social origins theory and resource mobilization theory, the article investigates AAOs’ main characteristics across four European countries that have been differently affected from the recent recession as well as belong to different welfare state and third sector regimes, including Germany, Greece, Sweden and Poland. The findings stress the importance of considering the particular combinations of the welfare state and third sector regimes as well as the severity of the experienced economic crisis in understating the variation in AAOs’ main features under a comparative perspective.     

Politics and the Roma in state-socialist Eastern Europe

This article is a comparative analysis of state-socialist policies towards the East European Gypsies (Roma). I make two related arguments. First, the Gypsy policies of East European states evolved differently and resulted in considerable variation. Second, notwithstanding the state-socialist social control policies, a measure of independent Romani activism did emerge laying the groundwork for post-socialist Gypsy mobilization.     

Mobilizing the Seldom Voter: Campaign Contact and Effects in High-Profile Elections

Decades of research suggests that campaign contact together with an advantageous socioeconomic profile increases the likelihood of casting a ballot. Measurement and modeling handicaps permit a lingering uncertainty about campaign communication as a source of political mobilization however. Using data from a uniquely detailed telephone survey conducted in a pair of highly competitive 2002 U.S. Senate races, we further investigate who gets contacted, in what form, and with what effect. We conclude that even in high-profile, high-dollar races the most important determinant of voter turnout is vote history, but that holding this variable constant reveals a positive effect for campaign communication among “seldom” voters, registered but rarely active participants who—ironically—are less likely than regular or intermittent voters to receive such communication.

What Drives Political Participation? Motivations and Mobilization in a Digital Age

This article provides insights into the driving forces that underpin new forms of political participation. Digital technologies offer opportunities for engaging in a wide range of civically oriented activities, each of which can contribute to deeper democratic engagement. Conventional acts of political participation are argued to be driven primarily by intrinsic motivations relating to self-efficacy and empowerment, with participants feeling they can have influence over decision makers. Little research explores whether similar motivations drive participation in less conventional acts, as well as whether mobilization attempts via social media by peers or political organizations mediate those motivations. Drawing on data from a survey among a representative sample of the U.K. electorate, we find the offline and online spheres of agency remain fairly distinct. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations both matter but extrinsic motivations have the strongest explanatory power independent of the sphere of activity. The mediating effect of mobilization tactics has a minimal effect on extrinsic motivations, online or offline, but online intrinsic motivations lose their explanatory power. As intrinsic factors offer little explanatory power, some forms of online political participation may lack meaning to the individual. Rather, these non-conventional acts result from reward seeking and are more likely to be encouraged by nongovernmental campaigning organizations, suggesting social media users are most likely to perform simple acts in support of non-contentious causes.     

Discursive Construction of territorial disputes: foreign newspaper reporting on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute

Most studies of the news discourse surrounding territorial disputes focus on the domestic newspapers of the conflicting countries from the perspective of “us” and “them”. This study examines how the newspapers of foreign countries discursively construct a territorial dispute within the framework of an intergroup conflict schema. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of articles on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute published online in five newspapers of record (the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, Le Monde, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) reveals two main points: First, the articles published by these newspapers share a similar intergroup conflict schema that is based on competition and the pursuit of national interests as interpreted in conformance with the national interests of the respective countries (USA, UK, Australia, France, and Germany). Second, in terms of how news discourse is framed, there are noticeable differences between the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the other four which may reflect the influence of Germany’s socio-historical context on domestic public opinion.     

Established and emergent political subjectivities in circular human geographies: transnational Arab activists

In this paper, we argue that Arab transnational citizenship mobilization can be configured through ‘geographies of circularity’ (e.g. bridging multiple locales, encircling the state, transversally stirring political subjectivities, and in the full-circle return of identity). Circularity helps ground and highlight the character and significance of transnational political and social activism, and the transfer of communications, skills, behaviors, organizational forms, tools, and projects (political technologies’) for citizenship. Based on the networks initiated by the Arab revolts, we argue that Arab émigrés, workers, and students – framed here as Arab transnationals – traverse and embody these geographies of circularity and leverage connectivity to mobilize citizenship claims and remit/ bridge/diffuse/export/import important progressive ideas and values locally in the western world and into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.     

Mobilization and state formation on a frontier of Vietnam

Defining mobilization as a powerful tactic and social process enables a critical analysis of state power as well as its spatial configurations and legitimation practices. Mobilization in the site of ?in Biên Ph first appeared during military confrontation (1952–54) and reappeared during land reform (1953–57) and collectivization (1959–60), all of which transformed agrarian community forms, political relations, and economic production – although not always as intended. Analyzing its use, meaning, and contingent effects on a frontier of an emerging Vietnam underlines how mobilization drew on and produced power to regulate relations of rule and production within an emerging nation-state. Drawing on historical sources and in dialog with literatures on social movements and comparative politics, this paper considers a series of mobilizations to represent distinct but inter-related stages in a process of statemaking.