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Role played by Sinhalese and Tamil political leaders in creating and institutionalizing ethnic conflicts, 1930s-1980s.

This thesis consists of four self-contained essays on different conflicts shaping local government policy. The first essay examines how population aging affects the generosity of public long-term care. Aging may directly affect long-term care policy as the elderly become a more important voter group. However, concerns for other citizens may dampen the political importance of the elderly. Fixed effects regressions on municipality-level panel data for 1999-2007 suggest that long-term care generosity slightly decreases in response to an aging population. In particular, a smaller share of elderly become entitled to long-term care. The remaining three essays consider determinants of local fiscal performance. The second essay examines a case in which the Swedish central government granted financial assistance to 36 municipalities in financial trouble. The possibility to be bailed out by the central government is often argued to undermine local governments' incentives for fiscal discipline. However, the conditions attached to the grant under study may have reduced the attractiveness of the bailout option. We estimate fixed effects models of operating costs and net revenues during the decade following the announcement of the grant. The estimation sample consists of the municipalities affected by the program and suitable comparison units identified by the synthetic control method. The estimates suggest that the development of operating costs is largely unaffected by the program for most of the admitted municipalities. However, several have increased costs less than expected, and the development of net revenues is favorable for the group as a whole. Thus, we find little evidence that participation in this conditional bailout program undermined subsequent fiscal performance. The third essay examines how fiscal performance is affected by specific institutions aimed at encouraging the budget discipline of agents responsible for policy implementation. We emphasize that these institutions should be of greater importance in municipalities where there is a substantial conflict of interest between the two levels of the municipal hierarchy concerning the importance of fiscal discipline. Regressions on unique survey data from 265 of the 290 Swedish municipalities confirm that the correlation between institutions and fiscal performance depend on the reported strength of conflict between the two levels. A centralized budget process, a credible threat of replacement of managers running deficits, and surplus carry-over rules are all positively correlated to net revenues - but only in municipalities that report substantial conflicts of interest between the two hierarchical levels. However, a deficit carry-over rule is positively correlated to net revenues in municipalities reporting minor conflicts of interest. The fourth essay explores potential determinants of the conflicts of interest reported in the survey. The main findings are that (i) conflicts between the two hierarchical levels are less likely if members of the executive committee chair the local committees; (ii) conflicts are less common in municipalities with fewer committees; and (iii) conflicts are more likely in municipalities with recent experience of deteriorations of the general economic conditions. The first two findings suggest that the center of the municipal hierarchy may use its discretion over appointments and over the number of committees to resolve these conflicts of interests in some instances. However, as the general economic environment is beyond political control, it is difficult to fully prevent conflicts between the central and local level.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- PART I BACKGROUND -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Theories of Conflict and Conflict Resolution -- 3 The Context of Civil Conflict in Africa -- 4 Civil Conflicts in Africa: Patterns and Trends -- PART II CASE STUDIES -- 5 Civil Conflicts and Conflict Management in the Great Lakes Region of Africa -- 6 Understanding the Liberian Civil War -- 7 Military Rule and Sociopolitical Crises in Nigeria -- 8 The Somali Civil War -- 9 Democratic Consolidation and Civil Conflict in Zambia -- Selected Bibliography -- Index -- About the Contributors.

This article considers Nigeria's continuing conflict since independence, providing a valuable case study that illustrates the complexity and specificity of the factors and processes that engender conflict within countries. It argues that a major source of this conflict has been the domination of the Federation by the traditional ruling Fulani aristocracy and their allies in the Northern Region, who controlled rents from petroleum in the Delta. It discusses how the British establishment of a tripartite regional structure during colonialism enabled the traditional aristocracy to control the North, with a majority of Nigeria's population; the Northern victories in the clashes over census design; the dominance of petroleum in government revenue and foreign exchange; the negative post-1983 growth amid cycles of boom and bust; and the resulting urgency of the high-stakes rent seeking for controlling mining revenue paid by multinational corporations. Despite the expansion from three regions in 1960 to 36 states in 1996, the lopsided power of Northern elites has remained and so have the conflicts.

Verlagsinfo: "Since 2004, Thailand's southern border provinces have been plagued by violence. There are a wide array of explanations for this violence, from the revival of Malay nationalist movements and the influence from the global trend of radical Islam, to the power play among the regional underground crime syndicates, politicians, and state authorities. The disparate interpretations signal the dynamic and complex discursive contention of this damaging and enduring conflict, and this book looks at how this is played out in the Thai media, and with what possible consequences. In analysing the southern conflict coverage, the book presents the deficiencies in news coverage, as produced by four news organisations of different natures across a seven-year review period, and discusses the professional practices that hinder journalism from serving as a fair arena for healthy and rational democratic debates. Based on in-depth interviews with news workers, it argues that Thai journalism is not always monolithic and static, as shown in the discursive shifts in news content, the variations of journalistic practices and news workers' disparate stances on the conflict. The book goes on to highlight the less immediately apparent difficulties of political conflict reporting, such as the subtle patterns of intimidation and media manipulation, as well as the challenges of countering socially-prevailing hegemonic beliefs in Thai society. Exploring the political contingencies and socio-cultural influences at play, this book provides an in-depth study of journalism's role in politics in Thailand"--

AbstractCan a hearer be rationally justified to have beliefs based on testimony alone when the source of his information is known to have conflicting epistemic goals? When it comes to belief justification, existing theories either recommend avoiding epistemic conflicts of interest or ignoring them. This is an important epistemological limitation. A theory that comes in degrees, capable of explaining what beliefs we are justified to hold and why, despite epistemic conflict of interest, is still lacking. Building on a game-theoretical approach, I suggest such a theory and argue that the hearer can justify some beliefs on testimony alone. This justification relies on an equilibrium concept, which is only reached in the long run. In addition, the hearer's justified beliefs will always be less accurate than those held by the original source. For instance, assume the speaker is a climate scientist who has good reasons to believe that a 2$$^{\circ }$$


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C increase in temperature will lower the current global GDP by 10 percentage points. Under epistemic conflict of interest, a hearer will typically be justified to a belief close to that value, but not equal to it. The smaller the epistemic conflict of interest, the closer, on average, the hearer's and speaker's belief. These results highlight the importance of scientific norms which, in practice, are the embodiment of these equilibrium mechanisms and thus of scientific credibility.

The relationship between ethnic conflicts and democratisation is one of the most topical issues of the present time, but also of the future of multiethnic societies.That is why the subject of the analysis in this paper will be basic determinants ofethnic policies and models of ethnic relations management in the territories of former communist/socialist, multiethnic federations (CSSR, USSR and SFRY). Causes, factors, chief political and social actors and the impact of ethnic conflictson development and democratisation of post-communist multiethnic societies will be also analysed. As ethnic conflicts, i. e. the relationship the Majority - Minority, are going to be an active factor of changes in Eastern Europe, this paper will dealwith connections between ethnic conflicts, the status of minorities and the achieved level of democratisation. Special attention will be paid to the analysis of processes in the territory of former Yugoslavia, which could provide an abundance of material for such an analysis.This particularly applies to the most important conflicts between Serbs and Croats; Serbs, Croats and Muslims in B&H, Serbia and Macedonia. The exarnple of the Serbian-Albanian relations and war in Kosovo will be elaborated on because it sublimely manifests the devastating force of ethno nationalisrn alongwith Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, and Albanians and Macedonians in western Macedonia. However, the analysis will be reduced to Serbia and the FRY, more specifically to the crisis of national and state identity of the Majority (Serbs) andthe status of Minorities.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. War and La Violencia in Todos Santos: Accounting for the Past -- 2. Localities in Conflict: Spaces and the Politics of Mapmaking -- 3. Histories and Silences -- 4. Reimagining Fiesta: Migration, Culture and Neoliberalism -- 5. After Lynching -- 6. Life and Death of a Rural Marero: Generations in Conflict -- Epilogue: Waiting after War -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

AbstractCompared to other affluent democracies, class conflict has not been very intense nor as much of an organizing principle in American politics. However, as wages stagnate for the working class and economic inequality grows, class conflict is becoming increasingly salient. Yet, reviewing recent political science studies, I argue that rather than politics becoming a clearer class "war" between the upper and lower classes, the growing class bias in political mobilization and participation, and the resulting overrepresentation of upper class actors, has prevented a clear articulation of lower class interests