Search results for "POLITICAL ECONOMY"

New Modes of Regulation for Health and Safety: Post-Enlargement Policy Perspectives for the European Union

2006

The recent joining of ten new member states to the European Union, eight of which are former communist countries, has reopened inherent tensions in current European Union (EU) policy-making on safety and health in the workplace. These spring from seemingly incompatible objectives; the need to ensure broad EU member state compliance with regulation, around agreed minimum standards through active regulatory enforcement, and the promotion of “softer” voluntary initiatives in the management of workplace risks and hazards in order to create “a culture of prevention.” The present EU strategy which ends in 2006, seeks to secure a balance between both sets of objectives. However, with respect to t…

Differences between tight and loose cultures: a 33-nation study.

2011

With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention …

Global social identity and global cooperation

2011

This research examined the question of whether the psychology of social identity can motivate cooperation in the context of a global collective. Our data came from a multinational study of choice behavior in a multilevel public-goods dilemma conducted among samples drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. Results demonstrate that an inclusive social identification with the world community is a meaningful psychological construct that plays a role in motivating cooperation that transcends parochial interests. Self-reported identification with the world as a whole predicts behavioral contributions to a global public good beyond …

Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Anti-Racism in Latvia

2011

My paper is a critical analysis of anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives in Latvia. First, I trace the historical and geopolitical conditions that enable the emergence of two discursive positions that are central to arguments about racism - that of liberally inclined tolerance activists and that of Latvians with politically objectionable nationalist sensibilities. Subsequently, I argue that, plagued by developmentalist thinking, anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives fail in their analysis of contemporary racism. They posit backward attitudes as the main hindrance to the eradication of racism and displace racism as a constitutive feature of modern political forms onto ind…

The President of the gold diggers: Sources of power in a gold mine in Burkina Faso

2003

The article provides an example of how 'formal' and 'informal' modes of power and legitimacy, as well as material and symbolic leadership resources, may intersect and interrelate. It analyses the sources of power that a Big Man in West Africa mobilised in order to appropriate mining rights and to establish leadership in a gold mining camp. As an entrepreneur in an economic field directly regulated by state laws and authorities, he has to operate within these structures while at the same time subverting them by creating a 'system of personal power' that resembles Sahlins' classic model of the Big Man in Melanesia. Although he is elected to represent the gold diggers, his leadership position …

Faimingen-Phoebiana I. Der romische Tempelbezirk in Faimingen-Phoebiana

1996

Intervention and peace*

2018

Abstract Intervention often does not lead to peace, but rather to prolonged conflict. Indeed, we document that it is an important source of prolonged conflicts. We introduce a theoretical model of the balance of power to explain why this should be the case and to analyse how peace can be achieved: either a hot peace between hostile neighbours or the peace of the strong dominating the weak. Non-intervention generally leads to peace after defeat of the weak. Hot peace can be achieved with sufficiently strong outside intervention. The latter is thus optimal if the goal of policy is to prevent the strong from dominating the weak.

Security in Niamey : an anthropological perspective on policing and an act of terrorism in Niger

2012

ABSTRACTThe abduction of two Frenchmen in January 2011 in Niamey's supposedly most secure neighbourhood has led many to question the functioning of the city's security apparatus. This paper analyses Niamey's security landscape, initially from an historical and then from a spatial perspective. It argues that for a comprehensive analysis of security, we must first decentre our perspective on security construction, and thus take informal non-organised modes of policing just as seriously as policing by state and vigilante organisations; and second, take into account the inseparability of sociality and security, a fragile balance of trust and acceptable risk. In conclusion I argue that this focu…

Route for political interests to weaken conservation

2009

A Differentiated European Union

2020

Differentiation in the EU has substantially increased. It does not only refer to instances of (differentiation in) integration, but also (potential) disintegration. Differentiation can often be causally traced back to crises, yet it should not be equated with ‘crisis’. However, the literature has only scarcely discussed the putative link between crisis and differentiated integration. Fundamentally, demands for differentiation need to be treated as both a cause and an effect of integration. Thus, differentiation should be acknowledged as a persistent feature of European integration. The chapter discusses the development of differentiation in European integration and reflects upon the scholar…