SPSS step by step - essentials for social and political science

No abstract available

Global Governance and International Migration: A Case Study of Trafficking of Human Beings

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of “global governance” and the way it applies to the management of international migration by using trafficking of human beings as a case study. Globalization has altered the scene of world politics. A traditional State-centric view of the world order has been overshadowed by the increasing importance of other actors, including the United Nations, multi-national corporations and non-governmental organizations. Globalization has also altered the dynamics of rule making and their enforcement within the international system, in that not only States but also these non-State actors exercise enormous influence. The concept of global governance acknowledges this as it aims to include all the pertinent actors involved. To illustrate this further, the author will use trafficking of human beings as a case study. Two key principles of global governance are participation and accountability. This article will analyse how these principles are reflected and implemented in the regime dealing with the prevention and suppression of trafficking of human beings.

The ‘Public Interest’ Agency of International Organizations? The case of the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance

This article seeks to outline and explore some of the conditions necessary for International Organizations (IOs) to perform in a public interest fashion through a case study of the Principles of corporate governance formulated by the OECD. Rather than the more commonly documented pathological and dysfunctional behavioural forms of IOs, the case of the Principles, both in their formulation by the OECD, and in their assessment by the World Bank through the ROSC process, represent an episode of IO agency protecting and promoting a wider public interest. In exercising their agency, IO staff, have made the Principles more agreeable to a wider range of interested parties, giving them a general interest orientation, in accordance with a proceduralist definition of public interest. This case should therefore encourage IPE scholars to consider carefully and systematically the sets of circumstances and conditions, which might be required for IO agency to take more socially useful forms. In the final section, three indicators are identified which might be evaluated in future research into the positive public interest agency of IOs across a range of cases.

The New Political Economy of the Macroprudential Ideational Shift

From late 2008 onwards, in the space of six months, international financial regulatory networks centred around the Swiss city of Basel presided over a startlingly rapid ideational shift, the significance and importance of which remains to be deciphered. From being relatively unpopular and very much on the sidelines, the idea of macroprudential regulation (MPR) moved to the centre of the policy agenda and came to represent a new Basel consensus, as the principal interpretative frame, for financial technocrats and regulators seeking to diagnose and understand the financial crisis and to advance institutional blueprints for regulatory reform. This article sets out to explain how and why that ideational shift occurred. It identifies four scoping conditions of presence, position, promotion, and plausibility, that account for the successful rise to prominence of macroprudential ideas through an insiders' coup d'état. The final section of the article argues that this macroprudential shift is an example of a ‘gestalt flip’ or third order change in Peter Hall's terms, but it is not yet a paradigm shift, because the development of first order policy settings and second order policy instruments is still ongoing, giving the macroprudential ideational shift a highly contested and contingent character.

Sectarian and Nonsectarian Violence: Mothers' Appraisals of Political Conflict in Northern Ireland

Past research on peace and conflict in Northern Ireland has focused on politically motivated violence. However, other types of crime (i.e., nonsectarian) also impact community members. To study the changing nature of violence since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, we used a qualitative approach and the Constant Comparative Method to analyze focus group discussions with mothers from segregated Belfast neighborhoods. Participants articulated clear differences between sectarian and nonsectarian violence, and further distinguished sectarian violence along 2 dimensions—overt acts and perceived intergroup threat. Although both sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behavior related to insecurity, participants described pulling together and increased ingroup social cohesion in response to sectarian incidents. The findings have implications for the study of violence and insecurity as experienced in the everyday lives of mothers, youth, and families in settings of protracted conflict.

Convergence/Divergence: Party political discourse in Northern Ireland's transition from conflict

This paper illuminates the role of political language in a peace process through analysing the discourse used by political parties in Northern Ireland. What matters, it seems, is not whether party discourses converge or diverge but rather how, and in what ways, they do so. In the case of Northern Ireland, there remains strong divergence between discourses regarding the ethos of unionist and nationalist parties. As a consequence, core definitions of identity, culture, norms and principle remain common grounds for competition within nationalism and unionism. There has, however, been a significant shift towards convergence between unionist and nationalist parties in their discourses on power and governance, specifically among the now predominant (hardline) and the smaller (moderate) parties. The argument thus elaborated is that political transition from conflict need not necessarily entail the creation of a “shared discourse” between all parties. Indeed, points of divergence between parties’ discourses of power and ethos are as important for a healthy post-conflict democratic environment as the elements of convergence between them.

Photographing Vladimir Putin: Masculinity, Nationalism and Visuality in Russian Political Culture

This article introduces the study of photographs of politicians as an object of geopolitical analysis. It does this through exploring the holiday photographs of Vladimir Putin released by the Kremlin in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Putin's biography provides a backdrop to a detailed analysis of the geopolitical representations contained in the photographs of him. In the same fashion as other images, the photographs seek to provide a contemporary view of events and, at the same time, serve as a medium through which particular political scripts are narrated. The photographs also help to reproduce (and question) hegemonic discourses about public forms of masculinity in Russia. This article is intended to contribute to the debate on how visual images can help make sense of the geopolitical world

The Terror that Underpins the “Peace”: The Political Economy of Colombia's Paramilitary Demobilization Process

Studies on terrorism have traditionally focused on non-state actors who direct violence against liberal states. These studies also tend to focus on political motivations and, therefore, have neglected the economic functions of terrorism. This article challenges the divorce of the political and economic spheres by highlighting how states can use terrorism to realise interconnected political and economic goals. To demonstrate this, we take the case of the paramilitary demobilisation process in Colombia and show how it relates to the US-Colombian free trade agreement. We argue that the demobilisation process fulfils a dual role. First, the process aims to improve the image of the Colombian government required to pass the controversial free trade agreement through US Congress to protect large amounts of US investment in the country. Second, the demobilisation process serves to mask clear continuities in paramilitary terror that serve mutually supportive political and economic functions for US investment in Colombia.

Social Identity and Youth Aggressive and Delinquent Behaviors in a Context of Political Violence

The goal of the current study was to examine the moderating role of in-group social identity on relations between youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggressive behaviors. Participants included 770 mother-child dyads living in interfaced neighborhoods of Belfast. Youth answered questions about aggressive and delinquent behaviors as well as the extent to which they targeted their behaviors toward members of the other group. Structural equation modeling results show that youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior is linked with increases in both general and sectarian aggression and delinquency over one year. Reflecting the positive and negative effects of social identity, in-group social identity moderated this link, strengthening the relationship between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggression and delinquency towards the out-group. However, social identity weakened the effect for exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community on general aggressive behaviors. Gender differences also emerged; the relation between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior and sectarian aggression was stronger for boys. The results have implications for understanding the complex role of social identity in intergroup relations for youth in post-accord societies.