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.

Victimhood and Attitudes towards Dealing with the Legacy of the Past: Northern Ireland as a Case Study

Research Highlights and Abstract: Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article provides the first nationally representative and systematic study of victims' views on how to deal with the past; Focusing specifically on Northern Ireland, it both investigates and provides a comprehensive account of the marked divisions between the various religious groupings-Protestants, Catholics and the non-affiliated-in terms of a range of truth recovery mechanisms to deal with legacy of its violent past; It empirically investigates and validates two key predictors-perceptions of victimhood and general attitudes towards the past-in determining the source of these divisions It outlines the implications of our findings for other societies emerging from conflict. Truth recovery mechanisms have become a cornerstone of peacebuilding efforts in societies emerging from conflict. Yet, to date, the view of victims in post-conflict societies concerning such arrangements remains highly anecdotal and often second-hand in nature. Mindful of this omission and using Northern Ireland as a case study, this article investigates the views of victims towards a range of mechanisms to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland's violent past. Based on the 2011 Northern Ireland Social and Political Attitudes Survey, the results suggest some marked divisions in relation to this issue, with victims within the Catholic community being significantly more supportive of such initiatives than either Protestants or those with no religion. Moreover, while perceptions of victimhood emerge as the key predictor of attitudes among Protestants and the non-affiliated, general opinions on how to deal with the past are the key determinant of views among members of the Catholic community

Macroprudential Ideas and Contested Social Purpose: A Response to Terrence Casey

In response to Terrence Casey's argument that the emergence of macroprudential regulation since the financial crash can and should save neoliberalism we raise five objections. 1). The Debt-Driven Growth Hypothesis (DDG) and the Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH), as Casey terms them, are just as likely to be complementary as they are oppositional and they are by no means incompatible. 2) Casey's empirics are too thin and static, drawn from the 1980s and 1990s, while Anglo Liberal Financialised Capitalism (ALFC) is a complex adaptive system that has continued to evolve throughout the 2000s. 3) Casey overlooks the dynamic relationship between potentially excessive financialisation and the performance of the wider economy, which is becoming a growing concern for many policy makers using the macroprudential frame. 4) Macroprudential as a series of ideas about the economy are often incompatible with neoliberal premises and their ontological foundations. 5) Many of the policy makers who have acted as the biggest champions of macroprudential regulation have also been highly critical of ALFC and view the macroprudential turn as making a contribution to a much needed deeper financial reformation that would over time transform some of the constituent economic and social relations of the existing political economy. We conclude that what we call the social purpose of macroprudential regulation (the question of whether it is intended to patch up or transform the existing system) is contested, and that macroprudential regulation has much potential beyond saving ‘neoliberalism’.

Flawed Premises and Unexpected Consequences: Support of Regional Languages in Europe:Support of Regional Languages in Europe

This article discusses the relationship between three language communities in Europe with variant levels of official recognition, namely Kashub, Sorb, and Silesian, and the institutions of their host states as regards their respective use, promotion, and revital-ization. Most language communities across the world campaign for recognition within a geographic/political region, or on the basis of a historic/group identity to ensure their language's use and status. The examples discussed here illustrate that language recognition and policies resulting therefrom and promoting official monolin-gualism strengthen the symbolic status of the language but contribute little to the functionality of language communities outside the area. As this article illustrates, in increasingly multilingual societies, language policies cut off its speakers from the political, economic, and social opportunities accessible through the medium of languages that lack official recognition locally. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Age discrimination before the ECJ - Conceptual and theoretical issues

Although only addressed by EU law from 2000, age discrimination has been the theme of quite a few cases before the Court of Justice, with a high proportion decided by the Grand Chamber recently. This is due to the conceptual and theoretical challenges that a prohibition to use age as differentiating factor poses. After all, age has been an important stratifier used to synchronize life courses through welfare State regimes in Europe. Partly due to these traditions, there are stereotypes associated with old age, and young age, that in turn lead to disadvantage in employment. For the same reason, age discrimination frequently intersects with discrimination on other grounds, such as sex, race or disability. EU legislation on age discrimination has sought to accommodate the traditional role of age in employment policy by allowing wider justifications than for other forms of discrimination. This leads to contradictions within the larger field of discrimination law, which may even threaten to dilute its efficiency. This article analyses how recent case law of the Court of Justice, and in particular its Grand Chamber, deals with the theoretical challenges posed by these conflicting demands on age discrimination and on discrimination law at large.

Cases, Materials and Text on National, Supranational and International Non-Discrimination Law

This casebook, the result of the collaborative efforts of a panel of experts from various EU Member States, is the latest in the Ius Commune Casebook series developed at the Universities of Maastricht and Leuven. The book provides a comprehensive and skilfully designed resource for students, practitioners, researchers, public officials, NGOs, consumer organisations and the judiciary. In common with earlier books in the series, this casebook presents cases and other materials (legislative materials, international and European materials, excerpts from books or articles). As non-discrimination law is a comparatively new subject, the chapters search for and develop the concepts of discrimination law on the basis of a wide variety of young and often still emerging case law and legislation. The result is a comprehensive textbook with materials from a wide variety of EU Member States. The book is entirely in English (i.e. materials are translated where not available in English). At the end of each chapter a comparative overview ties the material together, with emphasis, where appropriate, on existing or emerging general principles in the legal systems within Europe.
The book illustrates the distinct relationship between international, European and national legislation in the field of non-discrimination law. It covers the grounds of discrimination addressed in the Racial Equality and Employment Equality Directives, as well as non-discrimination law relating to gender. In so doing, it covers the law of a large number of EU Member States, alongside some international comparisons.
The Ius Commune Casebook on Non-Discrimination Law
- provides practitioners with ready access to primary and secondary legal material needed to assist them in crafting test case strategies.
- provides the judiciary with the tools needed to respond sensitively to such cases.
- provides material for teaching non-discrimination law to law and other students.
- provides a basis for ongoing research on non-discrimination law.
- provides an up-to-date overview of the implementation of the Directives and of the state of the law.
This Casebook is the result of a project which has been supported by a grant from the European Commission's Anti-Discrimination Programme.

Water and temperature relations of soil Actinobacteria

Actinobacteria perform essential functions within soils, and are dependent on available water to do so. We determined the water-activity (a_w) limits for cell division of Streptomyces albidoflavus, Streptomyces rectiviolaceus, Micromonospora grisea and Micromonospora (JCM 3050) over a range of temperatures, using culture media supplemented with a biologically permissive solute (glycerol). Each species grew optimally at 0.998 a_w (control; no added glycerol) and growth rates were near-optimal in the range 0.971–0.974 (1 M glycerol) at permissive temperatures. Each was capable of cell division at 0.916–0.924 a_w (2 M glycerol), but only S. albidoflavus grew at 0.895 or 0.897 a_w (3 M glycerol, at 30 and 37°C respectively). For S. albidoflavus, however, no growth occurred on media at ≤ 0.870 (4 M glycerol) during the 40-day assessment period, regardless of temperature, and a theoretical limit of 0.877 a_w was derived by extrapolation of growth curves. This level of solute tolerance is high for non-halophilic bacteria, but is consistent with reported limits for the growth and metabolic activities of soil microbes. The limit, within the range 0.895–0.870 a_w, is very much inferior to those for obligately halophilic bacteria and extremely halophilic or xerophilic fungi, and is inconsistent with earlier reports of cell division at 0.500 a_w. These findings are discussed in relation to planetary protection policy for space exploration and the microbiology of arid soils.

Water and Temperature Relations of Growth of the Entomogenous Fungi Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, and Paecilomyces farinosus

The effects of temperature (5-50°C), water availability (0.998-0.88 water activity, aw), and aw × temperature interactions (15-45°C) on growth of three entomogenous fungi, Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae, and Paecilomyces farinosus, were evaluated on a Sabouraud dextrose-based medium modified with the ionic solute KCl, the non-ionic solute glycerol, and an inert solute, polyethylene glycol (PEG) 600. The temperature ranges for growth of B. bassiana, M. anisopliae, and P. farinosus were 5-30, 5-40, and 5-30°C, and optimum growth temperatures were 25, 30, and 20°C, respectively. All three species grew over a similar aw range (0.90-0.998) at optimum temperatures for growth. However, there were significant interspecies variations in growth rates on media modified with each of the three aw-modifying solutes. Growth aw optima ranged between 0.99 and 0.97 on KCl-, glycerol-, and PEG 600-modified media for M. anisopliae and P. farinosus. B. bassiana grew optimally at 0.998 aw, regardless of aw. Comprehensive two-dimensional profiles of aw × temperature relations for growth of these three species were constructed for the first time. The results are discussed in relation to the environmental limits that determine efficacy of entomogenous fungi as biocontrol agents in nature. © 1999 Academic Press.

Old truths and new politics:Does truth commission 'publicness' impact democratization?

This article analyzes the relationship between truth and politics by asking whether the 'publicness' of a truth commission - defined by whether it has public hearings, releases a public report, and names perpetrators - contributes to democratization. The article reviews scholarship relevant to the potential democratizing effects of truth commissions and derives mechanisms that help explain this relationship. Work from the transitional justice field as well as democratization and political transition more generally is considered. Using a newly-constructed Truth Commission Publicness Dataset (TCPD), the analysis finds that even after statistically controlling for initial levels of democracy, democratic trends in the years prior to a commission, level of wealth, amnesties and/or trials, the influence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and different cutoff points for measuring democratization across a number of models, more publicness predicts higher levels of democracy years after the commission has finished its work. The more public a truth commission is, the more it will contribute to democratization. The finding that more public truth commissions are associated with higher levels of democratization indicates particular strategies that policymakers, donors, and civil society activists may take to improve prospects for democracy in a country planning a truth commission in the wake of violence and/or government abuse. © The Author(s) 2012.

Emotions and voting in EU referendums

There is an emerging scholarship on the emotional bases of political opinion and behaviour and, in particular, the contrasting implications of two distinct negative emotions - anger and anxiety. I apply the insights in this literature to the previously unresearched realm of the emotional bases of voting in EU referendums. I hypothesise that anxious voters rely on substantive EU issues and angry voters rely on second-order factors relating to domestic politics (partisanship and satisfaction with government). Focusing on the case of Irish voting in the Fiscal Compact referendum, and using data from a representative sample of voters, I find support for the hypotheses and discuss the implications of the findings for our understanding of the emotional conditionality of EU referendum voting. 

Holding parties responsible at election time: Multi-level, multi-party government and electoral accountability

This paper highlights the crucial role played by party-specific responsibility attributions in performance-based voting. Three models of electoral accountability, which make distinct assumptions regarding citizens' ability to attribute responsibility to distinct governing parties, are tested in the challenging Northern Ireland context - an exemplar case of multi-level multi-party government in which expectations of performance based voting are low. The paper demonstrates the operation of party-attribution based electoral accountability, using data from the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly Election Study. However, the findings are asymmetric: accountability operates in the Protestant/unionist bloc but not in the Catholic/nationalist bloc. This asymmetry may be explained by the absence of clear ethno-national ideological distinctions between the unionist parties (hence providing political space for performance based accountability to operate) but the continued relevance in the nationalist bloc of ethno-national difference (which limits the scope for performance politics). The implications of the findings for our understanding of the role of party-specific responsibility attribution in performance based models of voting, and for our evaluation of the quality of democracy in post-conflict consociational polities, are discussed. 

Inequality, state ownership and the European Union: How economic context and economic ideology shape support for the European Union

This article investigates the extent to which economic ideology affects people's support for European Union integration and how this is conditioned by economic context. We argue that people on the economic left who live in a country with conditions of high income inequality and little state ownership will support European integration, because more integration would move public policy in a left-wing direction. By contrast, people on the left who live in a country with conditions of low income inequality and widespread public ownership are likely to be eurosceptic, as further integration would result in a more right-wing public policy. We empirically confirm our hypotheses and discuss the implications for European Union democracy.