Suchergebnisse

An analysis of four case studies provides evidence of a unique and short-term increase of resource dependence on community organizations by outside institutions in times of emergency. Outside institutions rely on community organizations as the primary service providers, sometimes temporarily replacing traditional service channels; they also depend on the advantages these organizations offer for the distribution of their own resources. A window of opportunity results for these organizations to advocate on behalf of their clientele, establish their own policies for distribution of resources, and expand and create programs. Policy implications are discussed, as well as the possible changes in these relationships in the long run.

This article examines the destabilizing impact of rapid-onset, climate-related disasters. It uses a sample of storms and floods in conjunction with two intensity measures of civil unrest to examine two perspectives on human reactions to disasters (conflictual, cooperative). It also uses insights from the contentious politics literature to understand how emotions posited by the conflictual perspective are transformed into destabilizing acts. While the data show that mean levels of unrest are higher in the wake of disasters, the means poorly reflect the data: the vast majority of episodes do not show higher levels of unrest. Moreover, even when higher levels of unrest emerge, they are not a simple reflection of disaster's human impact; this underscores the importance of the transformational process. Thus, a preliminary model of political violence is investigated; it employs impact, process and institutional variables and it explains three-quarters of the variance in the intensity of violence.

Georgia has been experiencing robust GDP growth since the Rose Revolution despite its formal financial system remaining critically underdeveloped. This goes against a strongly supported proposition that a country's economic development is followed by a welldeveloped and efficient financial system. In this paper we first explain the shallow financial deepening in Georgia and show that the economic growth in Georgia has been driven by such determinants as public spending and construction works mainly supported by foreign debt and FDI inflow. This paper further argues that prolonged civil conflict is one of the critical obstacles toward financial development in Georgia. Bank lending activity is associated with high level of uncertainty stemming from recurrent civil war. Newly privatized commercial banks are excessively cautious in expanding their loan assets to private non-financial corporations due mainly to the banks' inability to precisely assess borrower's risk involving not only with individual financial soundness but also with political uncertainty.

Georgia has been experiencing robust GDP growth since the Rose Revolution despite its formal financial system remaining critically underdeveloped. This goes against a strongly supported proposition that a country's economic development is followed by a well-developed and efficient financial system. In this paper we first explain the shallow financial deepening in Georgia and show that the economic growth in Georgia has been driven by such determinants as public spending and construction works mainly supported by foreign debt and FDI inflow. This paper further argues that prolonged civil conflict is one of the critical obstacles toward financial development in Georgia. Bank lending activity is associated with high level of uncertainty stemming from recurrent civil war. Newly privatized commercial banks are excessively cautious in expanding their loan assets to private non-financial corporations due mainly to the banks' inability to precisely assess borrower's risk involving not only with individual financial soundness but also with political uncertainty. [Copyright The Regents of the University of California; published by Elsevier Ltd.]

Social media has received tremendous attention as a tool of revolution since the Arab Spring. Current scholarship predicts that social media can be a threat to internal stability by aiding rebel recruitment and mobilizing them. This article expands this research agenda beyond the Middle East-North Africa region and authoritarian regimes and explains the dynamics of how social media affects contentious politics. Youth bulge is used here as an intervening variable between social media and conflict. Using mixed methods on a sample of 28 Indian states, four Union Territories and 200 educated youth, I find that the presence of educated youth using social media is not a clear threat. Online and offline surveys conducted on Indian youth show that they do not consider social media a useful "technology of revolution" for mobilizing support and thereby bringing about any meaningful change. At best, social media helps in gathering support at the local level like in a neighborhood brawl.

Background: Sustained political violence (SPV) may have long-term effects.Aims: To assess mental and residual effects of exposure to SPV. To validate a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) assessment tool in Quechua-speaking Peru.Method: Survey of 373 individuals aged 15 and over using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL-25) and a Trauma Questionnaire (TQ), derived from the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire. Sociodemographics were recorded. Reliability was assessed. Data reduction used factor analysis and modelling multiple regressions.Results: A quarter of the sample had symptoms compatible with PTSD. Questionnaire reliability ranged from 0.81 to 0.89. Factor analysis confirmed high construct validity for TQ and HSCL-25. Modelling showed a strong association of PTSD-related symptoms and expressions of distress with the degree of exposure to SPV, especially among returnees.Conclusions: Long-term consequences of exposure to SPV take the form of PTSD, anxiety and depressive disorders, and culturally formulated expressions of distress. Some implications for clinicians are discussed.

Online social media activity can often be a precursor to disruptive events such as protests, strikes, and "occupy" movements. We have observed that such civil unrest can galvanize supporters through social networks and help recruit activists to their cause. Understanding the dynamics of social network cascades and extrapolating their future growth will enable an analyst to detect or forecast major societal events. Existing work has primarily used structural and temporal properties of cascades to predict their future behavior. But factors like societal pressure, alignment of individual interests with broader causes, and perception of expected benefits also affect protest participation in social media. Here we develop an analysis framework using a differential game theoretic approach to characterize the cost of participating in a cascade, and demonstrate how we can combine such cost features with classical properties to forecast the future behavior of cascades. Using data from Twitter, we illustrate the effectiveness of our models on the "Brazilian Spring" and Venezuelan protests that occurred in June 2013 and November 2013, respectively. We demonstrate how our framework captures both qualitative and quantitative aspects of how these uprisings manifest through the lens of tweet volume on Twitter social media.

Republic of Colombia credited as the fourth-largest economy in Latin America, faced economic turmoil due to COVID 19 pandemic, corruption in state machinery and mismanagement of economic resources. Columbia is also regarded as second most populous democracy in South America and an important ally of USA in its combat against drug trafficking. Economy had been the hardest hit and lockdown measures led to economic activities shrinking further. There was reduction in job opportunities, spike in unemployment and rise in level of poverty. Healthcare sector struggled with whooping number of infected cases and death rate mounted high. Poor people suffered more than their affluent counterpart. Protest broke out in 2019 when thousands of injustice-stricken people took to the streets for rescind of pernicious tax reform, better wages and higher fund allocation for education. Many youngsters are devoid of education and unfit for salaried job. There was a claim for free education and job subsidy but prospect of both remained dimmed as Colombia's foreign currency debt worsened in 2020. The proposed tax reform bill of April 2021 infuriated dissenters and sparked protests for weeks. President of Colombia, Iván Duque had no choice but to repeal the tax reform. Violent crackdown on protesters by Colombia's security forces brought criticism from international bodies and human rights group in May 2021.