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.

Green Political Theory

Ecologism or green political theory is the most recent of schools of political thinking. On the one hand, it focuses on issues that are extremely old in politics and philosophical inquiry – such as the relationship between the human and nonhuman worlds, the moral status of animals, what is the ‘good life’, and the ethical and political regulation of technological innovation. Yet on the other, it is also characterised as dealing with some specifically contemporary issues such as the economic and political implications of climate change, peak oil, overconsumption, resource competition and conflicts, and rising levels of global and national inequalities. It is also an extremely broad school of political thought covering a wide variety of concerns, contains a number of distinct sub-schools of green thought (here sharing a similarity with other political ideologies) and combines normative and empirical scientific elements in a unique manner making it distinctive from other political ideologies.

Youth in Contexts of Political Violence: A Developmental Approach to the Study of Youth Identity and Emotional Security in Their Communities

Going beyond the association between youth exposure to political violence and psychopathology, the current article examines within-person change in youth strength of identity with their ethno-political group and youth reports of the insecurity in their communities. Conceptually related but growing out of different paradigms, both group identity and emotional insecurity have been examined as key variables impacting youth responses to threats from other group members. The goal of the current study is to review previous studies examining these two key variables and to contribute new analyses, modeling within-person change in both variables and examining covariation in their growth. The current article uses data from 823 Belfast adolescents over 4 years. The results suggest youth are changing linearly over age in both constructs and that there are ethno-political group differences in how youth are changing. The results also indicate that change in insecurity is related to strength of identity at age 18, and strength of identity and emotional insecurity are related at age 18. Implications and directions for future work in the area of youth and political violence are discussed. © 2014 American Psychological Association.

Parental Disputes, Religious Upbringing and Welfare in English Law and the ECHR

This article assesses the position of English law concerning parental disputes about the religious upbringing of children. Despite the strong emphasis on both parents being able to direct their child’s religious upbringing, courts have interpreted the child’s welfare to restrict the exposure of the child to parental religious beliefs or practices in some circumstances: preserving the child’s future choice of religion, the physical integrity of the child, the child’s contact and relationship with both parents, the child’s educational choices, and the child’s relationship with both parents’ religious community. It is suggested that courts should have a wide understanding of welfare and should be wary to prohibit parents teaching their minority beliefs. This article also compares the position of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and suggests that, despite the stronger emphasis by the ECtHR on parental rights, English law is generally not that much at odds with the ECtHR.

ARTICLE: Anarchy and International Law: The Approaches of Hedley Bull and Noam Chomsky

Are anarchy and the law antithetical? Not so, as for more than 350 years international law has governed a legal order based on anarchy; wherein no central authority exists and law functions not on the basis of coercion but on cooperation whereby States must agree to each specific laws before it is bound by its obligations. This article contemplates two manners in which an anarchist might consider international law interesting: first, as a legal system which governs an anarchical society as described by Hedley Bull in line with the English School of International Relations; and second, as a manifestation of a State system which, though illegitimate can be utilized, as Noam Chomsky does, for tactical reasons to demonstrate its inconsistencies and thus weakening the system with the ultimate aim being its implosion

Spiritual capital and democratization in Zimbabwe:A case study of a progressive charismatic congregation

Throughout Africa, charismatic Christianity has been caricatured as an inhibitor of democratization. Its adherents are said either to withdraw from the rough and tumble of politics ('pietism') or to preach a prosperity gospel that encourages believers to pour their resources into their churches in the hope that God will 'bless' them. Both courses of action are said to encourage such people to be politically quietist, with no interest in democratization or other forms of political activity. This is said to thwart democratization. This article utilizes an ethnographic case study of a 'progressive' charismatic congregation in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2007, to provide evidence that 'pietism' and 'prosperity' are not the only options for charismatic Christianity. Drawing on the concept of 'spiritual capital', it argues that some varieties of charismatic Christianity have the resources to contribute to democratization. For example, this congregation's self-styled 'de-institutionalization' process is opening up new avenues for people to learn democratic skills and develop a worldview that is relationship-centred, participatory, and anti-authoritarian. The article concludes that spiritual capital can be a useful tool for analysing the role of religions in democratizations. It notes, however, that analysts should take care to identify and understand what variety of spiritual capital is generated in particular situations, focusing on the worldviews it produces and the consequences of those worldviews for democratization. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.

Ethnic conflicts and international politics : an analysis of the communal regional, and global dimensions of the Cyprus problem

The thesis assesses the impact of international factors on relations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots during and after the Cold War. Through an analysis of the Cyprus problem it explores both why external actors intervene in communal conflicts and how they influence relations between ethnic groups in plural societies. The analytical framework employed throughout the study draws on contributions of International Relations theorists and students of ethnic conflict. The thesis argues that, as in the global political system, relations between ethnic groups in unranked communal systems are anarchic; that is, actors within the system do not recognize a sovereign political authority. In bipolar communal systems dominated by two relatively equal groups, the struggle for security and power often leads to appeals for assistance from external actors. The framework notes that neighboring states and Great Powers may heed calls for assistance, or intervene without a prior request, if it is in their interest to do so. The convergence of regional and global interests in communal affairs exacerbates ethnic conflicts and precludes the development of effective political institutions. The impact of external intervention in ethnic conflicts has the potential to alter the basis of communal relations. The Cyprus problem is examined both during and after the Cold War in order to gauge how global and regional actors and the structure of their respective systems have affected relations between ethnic groups in Cyprus. The thesis argues that Cyprus's descent into civil war in 1963 was due in part to the entrenchment of external interests in the Republic's constitution. The study also notes that power politics involving the United States, Soviet Union, Greece and Turkey continued to affect the development of communal relations throughout the 1960s, 70s, and, 80s. External intervention culminated in July and August 1974, after a Greek sponsored coup was answered by Turkey's invasion and partition of Cyprus. The forced expulsion of Greek Cypriots from the island's northern territories led to the establishment of ethnically homogeneous zones, thus altering the context of communal relations dramatically. The study also examines the role of the United Nations in Cyprus, noting that its failure to settle the dispute was due in large part to a lack of cooperation from Turkey, and the United States' and Soviet Union's acceptance of the status quo following the 1974 invasion and partition of the island. The thesis argues that the deterioration of Greek-Turkish relations in the post-Cold War era has made a solution to the dispute unlikely for the time being. Barring any dramatic changes in relations between communal and regional antagonists, relations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots will continue to develop along the lines established in July/August 1974. The thesis concludes by affirming the validity of its core hypotheses through a brief survey of recent works touching on international politics and ethnic conflict. Questions requiring further research are noted as are elements of the study that require further refinement.