Cold War Along the Emerald Curtain: Rural Boundaries in a Contested Border Zone

This paper examines how anxieties about ethnic identity proliferate as state borders begin to shift and open in response to accelerating possibilities of cross-border cooperation. As the border becomes more porous, social and cultural boundaries become marked in other ways, spatially re-scaled to reflect new uncertainties consequent upon border change. Using an example from the Irish land border, the paper traces how national space is re-imagined and re-placed in the everyday practices of residents in a violent border zone from which the state is ostensibly retreating. It shows that communal division is as sharply drawn as ever at a time when the ‘visibility’ of the state border itself is beginning to diminish.

What Did the Lawyers Do During the 'War' ? Neutrality, Conflcit and the Culture of Quietism

Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this paper explores how lawyers responded to the challenges of entrenched discrimination, sustained political violence and an emerging peace process. Drawing upon the literature of the sociology of lawyering, it examines whether lawyers can or should be more than ‘paid technicians’ in such circumstances. It focuses in particular upon a number of ‘critical junctures’ in the legal history of the jurisdiction and uncouples key elements of the local legal culture which contributed to an ethos of quietism. The paper argues that the version of legal professionalism that emerged in Northern Ireland was contingent and socially constructed and, with notable exceptions, obfuscated a collective failure of moral courage. It concludes that facing the truth concerning past silence is fundamental to a properly embedded rule of law and a more grounded notion of what it means to be a lawyer in a conflict.

Representing War as Punishment in the War on Terror

This paper shows how the notion of punishment has been invoked by former US President George W. Bush, and ex UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to represent war. It is suggested that in this context, the notion of punishment serves different objectives: legitimizing violence, suggesting the sovereign role taken by the US and highlighting the emergence of new sensibilities. Building on previous literature in criminology and international relations it examines points of contact between two previously distinct security mechanisms - war and punishment- and suggests possible effects of this discursive blurring. It highlights not only the need for criminologists to engage with international relations literature but also the need to evaluate closely the different nature of the international context.

Long-term return reversals-Value and growth or tax? UK evidence

This paper examines (i) whether value-growth characteristics have more power than past performance in predicting return reversals; and (ii) whether typical rational behaviour such as incentives to delay paying capital gain taxes can better explain long-term reversals than past performance. We find that value-growth characteristics generally provide better explanations for long-term stock returns than past performance. The evidence also shows that winners identified by capital gains dominate past performance winners in predicting reversals in the cross-sectional comparison. However, in the time-series analysis, when returns on capital gain winners are adjusted by the Fama and French (1996) risk factors, the predictive power of capital gain winners disappears. Our results show that capital gain winners are heavily featured as growth stocks. Return reversals in capital gain winners potentially reflect market price corrections for growth stocks. We conclude that investors’ incentives to delay paying capital gain taxes cannot fully rationalise long-term reversals in the UK market. Our results also imply that the long-term return pattern potentially reflects a mixture of investor rational and irrational behaviour.

War, peace and suicide: The case of Northern Ireland

Durkheim’s idea that war reduces suicide through greater social and political integration has been used to explain suicide trends during the Northern Ireland conflict and in the period of peace. The applicability of Durkheim is critically evaluated through a case study of suicide trends by age, gender and cause of death over a forty year period. The key finding is that the cohort of children and young people who grew up in the worst years of violence during the 1970s, have the highest and most rapidly increasing suicide rates, and account for the steep upward trend in suicide following the 1998 Agreement. Contrary to Durkheim, the recent rise in suicide involves a complex of social and psychological factors. These include the growth in social isolation, poor mental health arising from the experience of conflict, and the greater political stability of the past decade. The transition to peace means that externalised aggression is no longer socially approved. It becomes internalised instead.

Europe's New Border Tax.

Instead of abolishing internal border controls in 1993, the European Union (EU) replaced them with VAT and statistical requirements that appear to be just as onerous. For Dutch businesses, the compliance costs of the new requirements are, on average, 5 per cent of the value of their intra-EU trade. The figure is probably higher for other EU Member States. Obviously, the costs constitute a (differentiated) border tax that impedes intra-EU trade. The article analyses the determinants of the compliance costs, as well as their effect on intra-EU trade intensity. The article submits that the differential compliance costs violate the non-discrimination provisions of the EC Treaty. Suggestions are made to reduce them.