Do mirrors reflect reality in agonistic encounters? A test of mutual cooperation in displays

Animals frequently engage in mutual displays that may allow or at least help decisions about the outcome of agonistic encounters with mutual benefit to the opponents. In fish these often involve lateral displays, with previous studies finding evidence of population-level lateralization with a marked preference for showing the right side and using the right eye. Because both opponents tend to show this preference a head to tail configuration is formed and is used extensively during the display phase. Here we tested the significance of these lateral displays by comparing displays to a mirror with those to a real opponent behind a transparent barrier. The frequency of displays was lower to a mirror but the individual displays were of greater duration indicating a slower pace of the interaction with a mirror. This suggests that fish respond to initiatives of real opponents but as mirror images do not initiate moves the focal fish only moves when it is ready to change position. However, lateralization was still found with mirrors, indicating that the right-side bias is a feature of the individual and not of the interaction between opponents. We discuss implications for ideas about the evolution of mutual cooperation and information exchange in contests, as well as the utility of the use of mirrors in the study of aggression in fish.

Elaborating Justice for Victims at the International Criminal Court: Beyond Rhetoric and the Hague

Justice for victims has often been invoked as the raison d’être of international criminal justice, by punishing perpetrators of international crimes. This article attempts to provide a more holistic account of justice for victims by examining victims’ needs, interests, and rights. The International Criminal Court itself includes participation, protection and reparation for victims, indicating they are important stakeholders. This article also suggests that victims are integral to the purpose of the ICC in ending impunity by ensuring transparency of proceedings. However, there are limits to the resources and capacity of the ICC, which can only investigate and prosecute selected crimes. To overcome this justice gap, this article directs the debate towards a victim-orientated agenda to complementarity, where state parties and the Assembly of State Parties should play a greater role in implementing justice for victims domestically. This victim-orientated complementarity approach can be achieved through new ASP guidelines on complementarity, expanding universal jurisdiction, or seeking enforcement and cooperation through regional and international bodies and courts, such asUniversal Periodic Review or the African Court’s International Criminal Law Section. In the end, ifwe are serious about delivering justice for victims we need to move beyond the rhetoric, with realistic expectations of what the ICC can achieve, and concentrate our attention to what states should bedoing to end impunity.

The Business of Building Peace: Private Sector Cooperation across the Irish Border

The sustainability of cross-border peacebuilding initiatives is increasingly pertinent in a context of reduced public funding (national and European), yet the potential contribution to be made to this from private sector cooperation remains under-explored. This paper brings together quantitative data on cross-border trade with qualitative evidence from business leaders in the Irish border region in order to examine the nature of cross-border cooperation within the private sector and its possible connections to peacebuilding. This evidence is analysed in the light of three theses: spillover, contact and business-based peacebuilding. The first part of this paper assesses the conditions for cross-border business cooperation in Ireland, including funding support for economic development, European integration, and (post-Agreement) institutional change. The second part examines the particular contributions made by the private sector to peace, centring upon consciously non-political motivations (such as pragmatism and profit), networking and leadership.

Evolving southwest African response to abrupt deglacial North Atlantic climate change events

Climate change during the last deglaciation was strongly influenced by the „bipolar seesaw‟, producing antiphase climate responses between the North and South Atlantic. However, mounting evidence demands refinements of this model, with the occurrence of abrupt events in southern low to mid latitudes occurring in-phase with North Atlantic climate. Improved constraints on the north-south phasing and spatial extent of these events are therefore critical to
understanding the mechanisms that propagate abrupt events within the climate system. We present a 19,400 year multi-proxy record of climate change obtained from a rock hyrax midden in southernmost Africa. Arid anomalies in phase with the Younger Dryas and 8.2 ka events are apparent, indicating a clear shift in the influence of the bipolar seesaw, which diminished as the Earth warmed, and was succeeded after ~14.6 ka by the emergence of a dominant interhemispheric atmospheric teleconnection.

Partial Cooperation in Strategic Decision Situations

We consider a normal form game in which there is a single exogenously given coalition of cooperating players that can write a binding agreement on pre-selected actions. These collective actions typically represent a certain number of dimensions in the players’ strategy space. The actions represented by the other dimensions of the strategy space remain under the complete, individual control of the players.
We consider a standard extension of the Nash equilibrium concept denoted as a partial cooperative equilibrium as well as an equilibrium concept in which the coalition of cooperators has a leadership position. Existence results are developed for these new equilibrium concepts. We identify conditions on these partial cooperative games under which the various equilibrium concepts are equivalent.
We apply this game theoretic framework to existing models of multi-market oligopolies and international pollution abatement. In a multi-market oligopoly typically a merger paradox emerges in the partial cooperative equilibrium, which vanishes if the cartel of collaborators exploits its leadership position. Our application to international pollution abatement treaties shows that cooperation by a sufficiently large group of countries results in a Pareto improvement over the standard tragedy of the commons outcome described by the Nash equilibrium.

Forecasting invasions: resource use by mussels informs invasion patterns along the South African coast

Invasive species are often more able to rapidly and efficiently utilise resources than natives, and comparing per capita resource use at different resource densities among invaders and trophically analogous natives could allow for reliable predictions of invasiveness. In South Africa, invasion by the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis has transformed wave-exposed shores, negatively affecting native mussel species. Currently, South Africa is experiencing a second mussel invasion with the recent detection of the South American Semimytilus algosus. We tested per capita uptake of an algal resource by invading M. galloprovincialis, S. algosus, and the native Aulacomya atra at different algal concentrations and temperatures, representing the west and south coasts of South Africa, to examine whether their per capita resource use could be a predictor of their spread and subsequent invasiveness. Regardless of temperature, M. galloprovincialis was the most efficient consumer, significantly reducing algal cells compared to the other species when the resource was presented in both low and high starting densities. Furthermore, these findings aligned with a greater biomass of M. galloprovincialis on the shore in comparison with the other species. Resource use by the new invader S. algosus was dependent on the density of resource and, although this species was efficient at low algal concentrations at cooler temperatures, this pattern broke down at higher algal densities. This was once more reflected in lower biomass in surveys of this species along the cool west coast. We therefore forecast that S. algosus will be become established along the south coast; however, we also predict that M. galloprovincialis will maintain dominance on these shores.

The 4Cs of Disaster Partnering: Communication, Coordination, Cooperation and Collaboration

Public, nonprofit and private organisations respond to large-scale disasters domestically and overseas. Critics of these assistance efforts, as well as those involved, often cite poor interorganisational partnering as an obstacle to successful disaster response. Observers frequently call for ‘more’ and ‘better’ partnering. We found important qualitative distinctions existed within partnering behaviours. We identified four different types of interorganisational partnering activities often referred to interchangeably: communication, cooperation, coordination and collaboration—the Four Cs. We derived definitions of the Four Cs from the partnering literature. We then tested them in a case study of the response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. We suggest that the Four Cs are distinct activities, that organisations are typically strong or weak in one or more for various reasons, and that the four terms represent a continuum of increased interorganisational embeddedness in partnering activities.

EU Cross-Border Cooperation and Conflict Transformation in the Basque and Irish Border Regions

Comparative research on violent conflict in the Basque Country and Ireland has yielded a sizable body of published academic work. Less well explored is the relationship between conflict transformation and cross-border cooperation in that specific comparative context. This paper provides a comparative examination of Third (not for profit) sector cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation in the Basque (France/Spain) and Irish (UK/Ireland) border regions. To what extent does cross-border cooperation contribute to peacebuilding in the two last violent ethnonationalist conflicts in Western Europe? The comparison is based on the premise that the EU played a different role in both cases. In the Irish case, the EU contributed to the institutionalization of a peace process that included cross-border cooperation between third sector organizations among the policy instruments contributing to conflict transformation. In the Basque case, the unilateral renunciation of violence by ETA (Euskadi eta Askatasuna) in 2010 did not generate the consistent involvement of the EU in a comparable institutional peace process. However, some third sector organizations used EU instruments for cross-border economic, social and cultural cooperation between France and Spain in order to reinforce their cross-border networks, which indirectly impacted on conflict transformation. The effectiveness of this cross-border cooperation for conflict transformation is assessed comparatively. To what extent does this increase in cross-border cooperation “from below” connect to wider institutional and social processes of conflict transformation in Ireland and the Basque Country? Crucially, does the strengthening of cross-border relations on shared issues mollify or sharpen existing identity cleavages? Also considered is the sustainability of such cooperation in these regions in light of the less favourable post-2004 EU funding environment, and the post-2008 economic and political turmoil affecting the relevant EU member states, especially Ireland and Spain.

European Union Cross-Border Cooperation as Conflict Transformation:Potential and Limits

Cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation provides a potential strategy for the European Union (EU) to help realise its founding peacebuilding objective. A wealth of cross-border cooperation activity sponsored by the EU spans a quarter of a century. Although the conflict transformation capacity of that cooperation is questionable in some border regions there is evidence to suggest that it has delivered peacebuilding dividends in other border regions. However, EU cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation faces a number of significant twenty-first century challenges including: ghost borders of the communal imagination; EU external border securitization; perceptions of EU and Russian empire-building; and the Mediterranean transmigrant/refugee crisis. It is argued that these challenges pose significant obstacles to EU cross-border cooperation as conflict transformation and undermine the peacebuilding objective of European integration.

Review of Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique.

Book review of Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique, by Eric Allina, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2012, 255 pp., £44.50, ISBN 978-0-8139-3272-9.