[Review of] Ivo Mijnssen, The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia I. Back to Our Future! History, Modernity and Patriotism According to Nashi, 2005–2012. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2012, 202pp., e 34.90 p/b

THE YOUTH MOVEMENT NASHI (OURS) WAS FOUNDED IN THE SPRING of 2005 against the backdrop of Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’. Its aim was to stabilise Russia’s political system and take back the streets from opposition demonstrators. Personally loyal to Putin and taking its ideological orientation from Surkov’s concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, Nashi has sought to turn the tide on ‘defeatism’ and develop Russian youth into a patriotic new elite that ‘believes in the future of Russia’ (p. 15). Combining a wealth of empirical detail and the application of insights from discourse theory, Ivo Mijnssen analyses the organisation’s development between 2005 and 2012. His analysis focuses on three key moments—the organisation’s foundation, the apogee of its mobilisation around the Bronze Soldier dispute with Estonia, and the 2010 Seliger youth camp—to help understand Nashi’s organisation, purpose and ideational outlook as well as the limitations and challenges it faces. As such,the book is insightful both for those with an interest in post-Soviet Russian youth culture, and for scholars seeking a rounded understanding of the Kremlin’s initiatives to return a sense of identity and purpose to Russian national life.The first chapter, ‘Background and Context’, outlines the conceptual toolkit provided by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to help make sense of developments on the terrain of identity politics. In their terms, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has experienced acute dislocation of its identity. With the tangible loss of great power status, Russian realities have become unfixed from a discourse enabling national life to be constructed, albeit inherently contingently, as meaningful. The lack of a Gramscian hegemonic discourse to provide a unifying national idea was securitised as an existential threat demanding special measures. Accordingly, the identification of those who are ‘notUs’ has been a recurrent theme of Nashi’s discourse and activity. With the victory in World War II held up as a foundational moment, a constitutive other is found in the notion of ‘unusual fascists’. This notion includes not just neo-Nazis, but reflects a chain of equivalence that expands to include a range of perceived enemies of Putin’s consolidation project such as oligarchs and pro-Western liberals.The empirical background is provided by the second chapter, ‘Russia’s Youth, the Orange Revolution, and Nashi’, which traces the emergence of Nashi amid the climate of political instability of 2004 and 2005. A particularly note-worthy aspect of Mijnssen’s work is the inclusion of citations from his interviews with Nashicommissars; the youth movement’s cadres. Although relatively few in number, such insider conversations provide insight into the ethos of Nashi’s organisation and the outlook of those who have pledged their involvement. Besides the discussion of Nashi’s manifesto, the reader thus gains insight into the motivations of some participants and behind-the-scenes details of Nashi’s activities in response to the perceived threat of anti-government protests. The third chapter, ‘Nashi’s Bronze Soldier’, charts Nashi’s role in elevating the removal of a World War II monument from downtown Tallinn into an international dispute over the interpretation of history. The events subsequent to this securitisation of memory are charted in detail, concluding that Nashi’s activities were ultimately unsuccessful as their demands received little official support.The fourth chapter, ‘Seliger: The Foundry of Modernisation’, presents a distinctive feature of Mijnssen’s study, namely his ethnographic account as a participant observer in the Youth International Forum at Seliger. In the early years of the camp (2005–2007), Russian participants received extensive training, including master classes in ‘methods of forestalling mass unrest’ (p. 131), and the camp served to foster a sense of group identity and purpose among activists. After 2009 the event was no longer officially run as a Nashi camp, and its role became that of a forum for the exchange of ideas about innovation, although camp spirit remained a central feature. In 2010 the camp welcomed international attendees for the first time. As one of about 700 international participants in that year the author provides a fascinating account based on fieldwork diaries.Despite the polemical nature of the topic, Mijnssen’s analysis remains even-handed, exemplified in his balanced assessment of the Seliger experience. While he details the frustrations and disappointments of the international participants with regard to the unaccustomed strict camp discipline, organisational and communication failures, and the controlled format of many discussions,he does not neglect to note the camp’s successes in generating a gratifying collective dynamic between the participants, even among the international attendees who spent only a week there.In addition to the useful bibliography, the book is back-ended by two appendices, which provide the reader with important Russian-language primary source materials. The first is Nashi’s ‘Unusual Fascism’ (Neobyknovennyi fashizm) brochure, and the second is the booklet entitled ‘Some Uncomfortable Questions to the Russian Authorities’ (Neskol’ko neudobnykh voprosov rossiiskoivlasti) which was provided to the Seliger 2010 instructors to guide them in responding to probing questions from foreign participants. Given that these are not readily publicly available even now, they constitute a useful resource from the historical perspective.

Essays on durable goods consumption and firm innovation

This dissertation comprises three individual chapters. Chapter Two examines how free riding across neighbors influenced the diffusion of color television sets in rural China. Chapter Three tests for asymmetric information between a firm’s management and other investors concerning its patent output. Chapter Four discusses how knowledge stocks influence a patenting firm’s later diversification. Chapter Two documents the existence of a type of network effects—free riding across neighbors—in the consumption of color television sets in rural China, which reduces the propensity of non-owners to purchase. I construct a model of the timing of the purchase of a durable good in the presence of free riding, and test its key implications using household survey data in rural China. Chapter Three tests for asymmetric information between a firm’s management and other investors about its patent output by examining insider trading patterns and stock price changes in R&D intensive firms. It demonstrates that management has considerable information about its patent output beyond what is known to investors. It also shows that the predictive power of insider trading patterns on patent output comes from purchases rather than sales. Chapter Four discusses two sequential channels through which knowledge stocks may influence a firm’s later diversification. One is that firms with more knowledge are more likely to enter a new industry. The other is that firms’ businesses have a better chance of surviving, conditional on being formed. By examining U.S. public patenting firms in manufacturing sectors for 1984-1996, I find that knowledge stocks predict the likelihood of new industry entry when controlling for firm size. However, this predictive power is weakened when diversification effects are included. On the other hand, a survival study of newly established segments shows that initial knowledge stocks have significant positive effects on segment survival, whereas diversification effects are insignificant.

Shareholder ratification of the auditor and audit market competition

In my dissertation, I examine factors associated with firms’ submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification and test if shareholder ratification of auditor selection is associated with the extent of price competition in the audit market (as measured by audit fees) and audit quality (as measured by clients’ earnings management). The dissertation is motivated from the recent recommendation of the U.S. Treasury’s Advisory Committee on Auditing Profession (ACAP) regarding the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification votes. The ACAP suggests that this practice may improve the competition in the audit market; yet, there is no empirical evidence supporting the ACAP’s recommendation. My dissertation attempts to fill the gap in the literature on an issue of current interest to the auditing profession. I find that firm size, CEO-Chair duality, insider ownership and institutional ownership are associated with the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. However, I do not find an association between audit committee variables and the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. The second essay investigates the association between auditor ratification and audit fees. Audit fees are higher in firms that submit auditor selection for shareholder ratification. The finding is not consistent with the increased price competition predicted by the ACAP. The third essay of my dissertation examine whether the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification is associated with earnings management. I find that firms that submit auditor selection for shareholder ratification are more likely to have lower level of earnings management. Overall, the results suggest that the same factors that are associated with higher quality monitoring also may be associated with the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. The results call into question the one-size-fits-all approach recommended by the ACAP.

Shareholder Ratification of The Auditor and Audit Market Competition

In my dissertation, I examine factors associated with firms’ submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification and test if shareholder ratification of auditor selection is associated with the extent of price competition in the audit market (as measured by audit fees) and audit quality (as measured by clients’ earnings management). The dissertation is motivated from the recent recommendation of the U.S. Treasury’s Advisory Committee on Auditing Profession (ACAP) regarding the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification votes. The ACAP suggests that this practice may improve the competition in the audit market; yet, there is no empirical evidence supporting the ACAP’s recommendation. My dissertation attempts to fill the gap in the literature on an issue of current interest to the auditing profession. I find that firm size, CEO-Chair duality, insider ownership and institutional ownership are associated with the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. However, I do not find an association between audit committee variables and the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. The second essay investigates the association between auditor ratification and audit fees. Audit fees are higher in firms that submit auditor selection for shareholder ratification. The finding is not consistent with the increased price competition predicted by the ACAP. The third essay of my dissertation examine whether the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification is associated with earnings management. I find that firms that submit auditor selection for shareholder ratification are more likely to have lower level of earnings management. Overall, the results suggest that the same factors that are associated with higher quality monitoring also may be associated with the submission of auditor selection for shareholder ratification vote. The results call into question the one-size-fits-all approach recommended by the ACAP.

The Policy Dystopia Model:an interpretive analysis of tobacco industry political activity

BACKGROUND: Tobacco industry interference has been identified as the greatest obstacle to the implementation of evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use. Understanding and addressing industry interference in public health policy-making is therefore crucial. Existing conceptualisations of corporate political activity (CPA) are embedded in a business perspective and do not attend to CPA's social and public health costs; most have not drawn on the unique resource represented by internal tobacco industry documents. Building on this literature, including systematic reviews, we develop a critically informed conceptual model of tobacco industry political activity. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We thematically analysed published papers included in two systematic reviews examining tobacco industry influence on taxation and marketing of tobacco; we included 45 of 46 papers in the former category and 20 of 48 papers in the latter (n = 65). We used a grounded theory approach to build taxonomies of "discursive" (argument-based) and "instrumental" (action-based) industry strategies and from these devised the Policy Dystopia Model, which shows that the industry, working through different constituencies, constructs a metanarrative to argue that proposed policies will lead to a dysfunctional future of policy failure and widely dispersed adverse social and economic consequences. Simultaneously, it uses diverse, interlocking insider and outsider instrumental strategies to disseminate this narrative and enhance its persuasiveness in order to secure its preferred policy outcomes. Limitations are that many papers were historical (some dating back to the 1970s) and focused on high-income regions. CONCLUSIONS: The model provides an evidence-based, accessible way of understanding diverse corporate political strategies. It should enable public health actors and officials to preempt these strategies and develop realistic assessments of the industry's claims.

Female employment from the household. Towards a comprehensive analysis of work-life articulation

Research on women’s employment has proliferated over recent decades, often under a perspective that conceptualizes female labour market activity as independent of male presences and absences in the productive and reproductive spheres. In the face of these approaches, the article argues the need to focus on the couple as the unit of analysis of work-life articulation. After referring to the main theoretical arguments that, from a gender perspective within labour studies, have pointed out the relevance of placing the household as the central space for the analysis of the sexual division of labour, the article reviews different empirical contributions that have incorporated such perspective in the international literature. Next, the state of the art in the Spanish literature is presented, before arguing the desirability of applying such framework of analysis to the study of employment and care work in Spanish households, which are at present undergoing major transformations.

THE NETWORK EMBEDDEDNESS OF A FOREIGN SALES SUBSIDIARY The subsidiary personnel perspective

This study focuses on the network embeddedness of a subsidiary of a multinational company. Academic research has identified the rising role of geographically dispersed subsidiaries as valuable sources of strategic knowledge and value to the whole multinational company. Moreover, previous research suggests that in order to gather this knowledge and transfer it across the multinational company, a subsidiary needs to be insider, i.e. embedded, in both its local external network as well as in its internal corporate network. The purpose of this study is to describe the network embeddedness of a foreign sales subsidiary from the subsidiary personnel perspective and hence increase understanding on the phenomenon and provide suggestions to enhance overall subsidiary embeddedness. The empirical study was based on a theoretical framework on subsidiary network embeddedness and comprised a qualitative single-case study in a French sales subsidiary of a Nordic multinational company. Data collection included nine semi-structured interviews and six Network Pictures drawing tasks. Altogether eight people out of subsidiary staff of eleven participated in the study providing relatively exhaustive overview of the subsidiary personnel perspective. Based on the collected data, the relationships toward the most relevant network actors, both internal and external were identified and their impact on the subsidiary embeddedness were analyzed separately. Moreover, the subsidiary’s simultaneous embeddedness in both internal and external network, that is, the subsidiary dual embeddedness, was discussed to increase understanding how subsidiary personnel perceive their role between the two networks and its impact on the subsidiary activities. The findings of the study suggest that the subsidiary personnel perceives strong external embeddedness increasing internal and dual-embeddedness since intensive external collaboration requires including and activating other corporate units as well. The role of the local sales subsidiary is to act as the interpreter and connector between the internal and external network actors. Hence, by actively promoting relationship linkages between internal and external actors, the subsidiary may adopt an active role beyond its original corporate mandate. In order to achieve this, both managers on the subsidiary and corporate level need to promote open communication and increase cultural understanding between different corporate units.

`A Reporter's Paper': The National Thrift News, Journalistic Autonomy and the Savings and Loan Crisis

Business journalism comes under persistent criticism for serving its historic readership of brokers and business people while lacking sufficient autonomy and failing to sufficiently question or challenge powerful corporate and economic interests. This is a dominant theme in media criticism of the savings and loan crisis⁠ and 2008 financial crisis.⁠ Against this backdrop, this dissertation asks: Is this critique valid, and if so, how can business journalism improve? To engage these questions, this dissertation examines the question of autonomy in business journalism in an unlikely place: the trade press. The central case study is coverage of the savings and loan crisis by the National Thrift News, a small financial services newspaper that won a George Polk award for its reporting in 1988. How could a small trade newspaper succeed in some instances when larger news organizations failed to connect the dots? The National Thrift News created a newsroom environment that celebrated reporter autonomy and independence. In some cases, it used its insider knowledge and consistent beat reporting to serve both its core readers and the broader society by uncovering savings and loan corruption. This study will highlight a long-running debate among theorists of journalistic professionalism by arguing that the commercial and advertising model in journalism does not inevitably compromise journalistic independence⁠ but rather can help pave a way forward for a more independent press. It therefore challenges the political economy critique of journalism, which holds that external forces such as capitalism harm press independence. This case suggests journalistic independence and individual agency remain powerful forces in newsrooms. Lastly, the dissertation argues that in an era of media downsizing, the trade press can perform an even more useful watchdog role over industry if the mainstream news media acknowledges and pursues some of the innovative trade reporting.

21st century literacy : perceptions of and influences on year 6 teachers in Victorian classrooms

This paper presents a study of teachers’ perceptions of ‘21st century literacy’ practices and the dilemmas teacher face when these perceptions clash with the policies and the practices they feel are expected of them. Using narrative inquiry as its methodology, the paper presents 3 themes identified within the study, namely: ‘Teachers’ insights into 21st century literacy, ‘Teachers’ perceptions of necessary 21st century literacy skills for Year 6 students’ and ‘Influences on teachers’ literacy pedagogical decision-making and practice’. The narratives present two teachers’ perceptions (and misperceptions) of 21st century literacy, their pedagogical approaches, and how various factors influence their work. The paper considers how various factors influence teachers’ pedagogical practices, and highlights discrepancies between teachers’ professional beliefs and their practices based on external classroom influences. Narrative offers an insider’s view of how these discrepancies are lived out in two Victorian classrooms.

Informed options trading prior to takeovers - Does the regulatory environment matter?

We investigate the prevalence of informed options trading prior to takeover announcements, when the legal prohibition against insider trading is strictest. Although insider trading laws apply equally to the options and stock markets, the options market is considerably more transparent than the equity market, which makes insider trading in options more easily detectable. We find that privately informed investors trade in the options market prior to takeover announcements; however, their transactions are limited to liquid call options and options with high inherent leverage. Furthermore, we find that prior to takeover announcements, informed investors trade on their private information in the options market only when a SEC investigation of insider trading is unlikely to occur. Our results suggest that even prior to takeover announcements informed investors are attracted to the options market, which increases profit making potential due the greater leverage it affords, although they trade in a way which minimizes the likelihood of detection.

The perspectives of secondary school students with special needs in Spain during the crisis

This paper presents an overview of a situational analysis of inclusive schooling in Spain from the perspective of students with special educational needs. The purpose of this work was to learn how young people collectively considered their experiences of school inclusion. The participants—aged 12–19 years who attended six different settings—highlighted the school community, resources, teacher pedagogy, support and social cohesion as germane aspects of their inclusion. Through a presentation of these characteristics, this analysis demonstrates how schools can effectively fulfil the core requirement of teaching and supporting diversity and, in so doing, how they can incite included subjectivities of differently abled students. This analysis is positioned within the climate of economic instability in Spain, which threatens to derail the headway made towards inclusive schooling via the introduction of severe austerity measures.

Investors’ behavior in an emerging, tax free market

We provide empirical evidence on the stock market participants’ behavior in an emerging market, with a tax-free environment. Our results show that UAE investors exhibit overconfidence and home bias, and tend to sell prior winners and buy prior losers. We find that investors rely on familiarity and on their information channels to make decisions. The results indicate that investors are risk averse, especially after the global financial crisis, which has had contagion effect on UAE markets. Investors attribute this effect to the inability to manage systemic crisis and to problems of information asymmetry, insider trading, and lack of good governance during crisis.

Peer research with young Muslims and the politics of knowledge production

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on the authors’ experiences as a team made up of both “insiders” and “outsiders” in order to investigate how an insider-outsider peer research method facilitates productive forms of research into the lives of young Muslims, and to contribute to debates about ways of knowing youth. The authors aim to shift focus from a common claim that peer research methods simply improve research about youth to more deeply investigate how they enable, as well as limit, the production of particular kinds of knowledge, in this case, about Muslim youth in Australia. Design/methodology/approach – The research aimed to explore how “ordinary” young Australian Muslims engage in civic life. Yet the authors were faced with the challenge of accessing and recruiting “ordinary” youth in times of Islamophobia, wherein Muslim communities expressed serious concerns about their voices being misinterpreted, misused and misappropriated. Therefore, the authors sought to utilise an approach of outsider-designed and guided research that was then shaped and executed by insider peer researchers. It is this research design and its execution that the authors interrogate in this paper. Findings – As well as affording the authors access and the elicitation of rich, complex and high-quality data, the approach also fostered more complex stories about young Muslim identities and experiences, and enabled the authors to contest some common and homogenising representations. It also allowed opportunities for fundamental issues inherent in these kinds of qualitative research methods to be made explicit. These include the politics of performativity and issues of positionality in the peer research process. The authors suggest that the “insider” and “outsider” approach succeeded not so much because it got the authors closer to the “truth” about young Muslims’ civic lives, but because it revealed some of the mechanics of the ways stories are constructed and represented in youth research. Originality/value – The originality and value of this paper lie in its contribution to a debate about the politics of knowledge production about young people and Muslims in particular, and in its effort to move forward a discussion about how to be accountable in youth research to the various communities and to one another in insider-outsider research teams.

El dragón chino en Angola: la diplomacia cultural como una herramienta de construcción de identidad

El creciente interés de China por África ha modificado y estructurado una nueva política exterior, en donde el fortalecimiento de las relaciones políticas y económicas se ve ligado al uso de la diplomacia cultural como una herramienta de atracción. Teniendo en cuenta lo anterior, la presente investigación tiene por objetivo principal indagar cómo China construye una identidad a través de su diplomacia cultural en Angola, demostrando así, que este país utiliza sus costumbres, principios y normas para establecer una identidad de rol en la que se asume como una potencia que debe cooperar. No obstante, sus intereses van más allá de la cooperación al profundizar en relaciones de confianza que lo beneficien política y económicamente. Haciendo un uso del concepto de Imperialismo, la investigación mostrará las limitaciones y los vacíos de la noción de identidad para explicar acciones chinas en Angola, mostrando cómo se hacen uso de herramientas imperialistas para un beneficio propio.

Soft Power del Vaticano en el reconocimiento de Palestina como Estado

Desde 1945, el inicio de la cuestión palestina, el país ha sufrido una serie de transformaciones e intervenciones en su soberanía y en legitimidad, las cuales siguen en discusión actualmente; y han dado como resultado el estudio del reconocimiento de Palestina como Estado. Es pertinente hacer un acercamiento a este tema desde la variable religiosa (Vaticano), teniendo en cuenta el gran número de lugares sagrados que hay en la región de Palestina y la variable religiosa del conflicto Palestino-israelí. Desde la mirada del Soft Power, concepto que ha venido tomando fuerza en la academia desde 1980, podemos acercarnos al objeto de estudio y dilucidar las injerencias de este actor. Mediante una aproximación cualitativa, que conlleva análisis del discurso, análisis histórico y análisis de política exterior, se logrará obtener el resultado esperado, que es entender de qué manera el Vaticano ejerce influencia (ideológica y cultural) en el Sistema Internacional, en el asunto del reconocimiento de Palestina como Estado.