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Ideology, typically defined on a left-right spectrum, should provide a means of communication between elites and masses. After years of leftist party rule, have Brazilian voters internalized ideological divisions? Longitudinal surveys conducted from 2002 to 2006 reveal high nonresponse and instability in ideological self-identification. We find that the capacity to think ideologically is in part a function of political and social context. This capacity has real political consequences. A Heckman selection model reveals that those who refuse to take an ideological position or who exhibit high instability in self-identification tend to be latent rightists and to choose rightist presidential candidates. Moreover, they interpret the ideological spectrum differently from those who are more consistent in ideological self-placement. We thus make two contributions, showing how contextual factors influence ideological thinking and how low levels of ideological thinking affect the measurement of Brazilian public opinion. (GIGA)

Daniel Raisbeck and Gabriela Calderon de Burgos


For the first time since 1991, Argentina suffers from annual inflation rates above 100 percent. As voters prepare to head to the polls on August 13, the date of the presidential primaries for all parties, a majority thinks—regardless of ideology— that inflation is the country's most pressing problem. Meanwhile, a significant minority—29 percent according to one poll— now considers that the best way to tackle inflation is to get rid of the Argentine peso altogether and adopt the U.S. dollar as the official currency. They are absolutely right.
As we explain in a new briefing paper out today, dollarization works because it deprives the local ruling class of all control over the national currency. This protects ordinary people's purchasing power from the excesses of chronically profligate politicians and often subservient—or simply incompetent—central bankers. Along with Peru, a semi‐​dollarized economy, Latin America's three fully dollarized countries—Panama, Ecuador, and El Salvador—have had the region's lowest inflation levels during the past 20 years (and much longer in the case of Panama). Unlike many countries in the region, the dollarized trio did not see double‐​digit inflation in the aftermath of the Covid‐​19 pandemic. Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins University economist, puts it well: dollarization is equivalent to instituting the rule of law in the monetary sphere.
Dollarization is often compared to the convertibility system that Argentina implemented in the 1990s, a monetary regime consisting of the Central Bank maintaining unlimited convertibility between its currency and that which it is pegged to at a fixed exchange rate. That system ultimately fell apart because it deviated from following orthodox rules. But because dollarization simply replaces a local currency with a foreign one, it does not depend on a promise from the political class to abide by a certain set of rules and it has proven much harder to undo. As we explain in our policy brief, this does not imply a country's surrender of its monetary policy to the United States:
"As economist Juan Luis Moreno‐​Villalaz argued in the Cato Journal in 1999, Panama's banks, which have been integrated to the global financial system after a series of liberalization measures in the 1970s, allocate their resources inside or outside the country without major restrictions, adjusting their liquidity according to the local demand for credit or money. Hence, changes in the money supply—which arise from the interplay between local factors and the specific conditions of global credit markets— and not the Federal Reserve, determine Panama's monetary policy. Fed policy affects Panama only to the same extent that it does the rest of the world".

In Argentina, opposition to dollarization comes from critics on both the left and the right. The former usually claim that adopting the dollar is a costly affront to national sovereignty (the cost pertaining to the loss of seigniorage). The latter tend to argue that local technocrats will be left without monetary tools with which to steer the national economy. Neither side has come to terms with the reasons why an overwhelming majority of Panamanians, Ecuadoreans, or Salvadoreans wouldn't dream of ditching the dollar in favor of weak national currencies. In fact, minimal inflation rates are but one benefit of dollarization. The others include far lower interest rates, longer loan periods, and an intrinsic hard budget constraint on governments and parliaments alike.
Despite such advantages, dollarization is certainly no guarantee of fiscal discipline or sustained economic growth, as the recent experience of both Ecuador and El Salvador can attest. Nonetheless, dollarization is worth it simply because it leaves politicians and bureaucrats unable to devalue a local currency or monetize the debt, thereby limiting the magnitude of the potential harm. During the 2010s, radical left‐​wing governments in both El Salvador and Ecuador were unable to get rid of the dollar despite their anti‐​dollarization rhetoric. The pros of dollarization may be difficult to grasp ex‐​ante; once it is instituted, however, dollarization's benefits in daily life are so palpable to a large majority that the greenback has become demagogue‐​proof in a region ripe with demagoguery.
The loss of seigniorage, it turns out, is an infinitesimal price to pay for the advantages of dollarization. Manuel Hinds, a former finance minister in El Salvador, likens giving up seigniorage to paying a small insurance premium for protection against the very high risks of maintaining a local currency. Nor is a lack of large dollar reserves an excuse not to dollarize.
In Ecuador, the mere announcement of dollarization in January of 2000 led to a massive increase in deposits in dollars previously held abroad or under mattresses. This was the case even though the beleaguered banks were offering negative interest rates.
As we discuss in our briefing paper, adopting the dollar can also help solve Argentina's serious problem with short‐​term liquidity notes, the debt of which is more than twice as large as the monetary base. This is yet another reason why Argentina's next government should dollarize, albeit taking seriously the technical challenges that dollarization presents.
The Argentinean peso no longer provides the basic functions of money. Argentineans already use the dollar as a unit of account and—if they can overcome multiple legal obstacles and afford significant transaction costs—as a store of value and a medium of exchange for important transactions. Dollarization would democratize the latter two essential functions of a sound currency.

This dissertation is concerned with the study of work-family balance in Portugal and Spain between the early nineties and 2012. This topic has been at the centre of political and academic debate in recent decades as the share of families with two working adults and small children have significantly increased in Western societies. As a result, traditional strategies for the articulation of the work and the family spheres have been put in question and claims for more gender balanced options have become widespread. In contrast with most west European countries, the Iberian democracies experienced the main transformations in the work and family spheres after a long period of right-wing authoritarian rule. This entails that changes occurred in opposition to the authoritarian legacy and alongside with the consolidation of similar civil, political, social and economic rights. Nonetheless, both countries do in fact present distinct patterns in work-family arrangements and this variation makes them a particularly relevant object of comparative research, still widely unexplored. This study conceptualizes strategies for work-family balance and the gendered variation they entail within a capabilities-based approach, thus seeking to understand the extent to which real, unconstrained choice is equally available for women and men. In the study of work-family balance this translates as the freedom to choose between labour market participation and care, which are defined as equally valuable options. Empirically, this involves the analysis of factors that operate at the individual, institutional and cultural levels and which shape capabilities for balancing work and care. This dissertation argues that women's and men's choices are bound up with the real opportunities they have to choose and therefore gender inequalities in capabilities may correspond to similar inequalities in the division of labour. Key findings show that globally the modernization of work-family arrangements between the early nineties and 2012 does correspond to a pattern of enhanced capabilities in the articulation of work and family in both countries. Notwithstanding, Spain displays greater imbalances in the division of work and care than the neighbouring country which reflect weaker institutional resources, namely at the policy level. In the case of Portugal, more motherhood-centred cultural values do not seem to constrain the participation of both women and men in the labour market as it coexists with a high value attributed to paid work. This study further emphasizes that gender inequalities in both facets of the work-family nexus are still visible in Portugal as in Spain. Indeed, capabilities for balancing work and care are not similar for women and for men and this imbalance has become especially evident in the institutional factors that support it. ; A presente dissertação estuda a conciliação entre trabalho e família em Portugal e Espanha desde o início da década de noventa até 2012. Nas décadas mais recentes este tema tem estado no centro do debate político e académico perante o aumento significativo do número de famílias com filhos e com dois adultos ativos no mercado de trabalho. Como consequência, as estratégias tradicionais de articulação entre trabalho e família vêm sendo postas em causa e novas alternativas mais equilibradas em termos de género vêm sendo exigidas. Ao contrário da maior parte dos países europeus, as democracias ibéricas conheceram as principais transformações nas esferas do trabalho e da família após um longo período de governo autoritário de direita. Daqui decorre que estas mudanças ocorreram em oposição aos legados autoritários ao mesmo tempo que se consolidavam direitos civis, políticos, económicos e sociais. Todavia, os dois países apresentam padrões distintos de combinação entre trabalho e família e esta variação torna-os um objeto de comparação particularmente relevante e ainda muito sub-explorado. Este estudo conceptualiza as estratégias de conciliação e as respetivas variações de género a partir da abordagem das capacidades, procurando assim compreender em que medida uma escolha real e sem restrições é igualmente possível para mulheres e homens. No estudo da conciliação entre trabalho e família isto traduz-se na liberdade de escolha entre a participação no mercado de trabalho e a prestação de cuidados, sendo definidos enquanto opções com valor idêntico. Em termos empíricos, isto envolve a análise dos fatores que operam individuais, institucionais e culturais e que moldam as capacidades de conciliação. A presente dissertação argumenta que as escolhas de mulheres e homens estão ligadas às reais possibilidades de escolha que se lhes apresentam e, portanto, desigualdades de género ao nível das capacidades poderão corresponder a desigualdades na divisão do trabalho pago e não pago. Os principais resultados mostram que, de uma forma geral, a modernização dos padrões de combinação entre trabalho e família no período de análise corresponde, de facto, a um padrão de capacidades mais elevadas em ambos os países. Contudo, Espanha apresenta maiores desigualdades de género na divisão do trabalho que o país vizinho, refletindo recursos institucionais mais fracos, nomeadamente ao nível das políticas de conciliação. No caso português, os valores culturais mais maternalistas não representam um impedimento à participação de mulheres e homens no mercado de trabalho, uma vez que coexistem com uma forte valorização do trabalho pago. Este estudo vem ainda realçar a persistência das desigualdades de género nas esferas do trabalho e da família em ambos os países. Com efeito, as capacidades de conciliação não são semelhantes para as mulheres e para os homens e esta desigualdade é especialmente evidente nos fatores institucionais que as sustentam.

Erase and Forget is an inquiry into the nature of human conscience and the limits of deniability. It premiered at the 2017 Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Glashuette most original documentary award. Charting 'the deep bonds between Hollywood's fictionalized conflicts and America's hidden wars', Andrea Luka Zimmerman's ERASE AND FORGET is a new investigative documentary which charts the extraordinary life and times of Bo Gritz, one of America's highest decorated veterans and the 'inspiration' for Rambo and Brando's Colonel Kurtz. Using never before seen archive footage of covert US operations, and interviews filmed over a ten year period, ERASE AND FORGET provides a complex perspective of an individual and a country in crisis. ERASE AND FORGET is a compelling inquiry into the nature of human conscience which raises urgent questions about US militarism and gun control, and embodies contemporary American society in all its dizzying complexity and contradictions. Erase and Forget was long-listed for BIFA new talent emerging producer award, with Ameenah Ayub Allen, 2018 / Nominated for Glashuette original documentary award, Berlin Film festival, 2017 /Platinum Reel Award, Nevada International Film Festival, 2018 / Semi finalist, best documentary Hot Springs Womens film festival, 2018 / Spotlight Documentary Film awards, 2017 Erase and Forget was screened at Spring Sessions in Wadi Rum, in Jordan (http://www.springsessions.org/happenings/announcement244?edition=edition2019-en) and in a special session at Goethe Institut Ramallah, including discussion with the director (https://www.events.ps/en/Events/1086/Screening-and-discussion-with-the-director-of-Erase--Forget). --- DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT: "You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions." Sven Lindqvist, from 'Exterminate All The Brutes' I chose to work with Bo over ten years because I needed to understand how he was part of history (as much as what history). I am fascinated by profound questions of responsibility – on the part of ourselves and others. There can be no moral high ground or hierarchy if we are genuinely seeking to understand extreme behaviour. We are part of a system that makes enormous profits out of structural and political violence. Bo is really a witness to the excesses of the military-industrial complex. I wanted to explore how a highly intelligent man came to believe, through cultural and social conditioning, that killing in such a way and on such a scale might be perceived as virtuous. My years with Bo recorded his reflections on life before, during and after his time as 'the real Rambo – the American Warrior'- when the reasons for transgressing these boundaries had shifted. Bo is a man of a thousand faces. His is a public life lived in the media age. It is a life made from fragments, from different positions, both politically and in terms of their mediation. His life is contradictory and assembled from all these shards. There is no single 'right' life or reading of his public activities. My portrait of Bo is drawn mainly from original material, which I shot over ten years, but it also includes found footage from the world's first truly public archive – the global online media bank, scattered across numerous platforms. My structural approach is instinctual, distinctive, and formally rigorous articulated in tightly selected montages – each emotional unfolding is countered with a denial of feeling, hence producing a confliction emotional experience, truer the creative maladjustment necessary when grappling with structural and political violence and their spectacular representations through Hollywood (dominant) cinema. While working with a broadly chronological, autobiographical narrative, I also operate associatively, tracking parallels and seeking echoes and refrains of action and reflection across the decades of Bo's diverse military, political and social experiences. The exploration of this complex and constantly changing relationship between event and image is one of my key intentions in and for the film. When contentious ideas and actions enter this social mediated space, all too often crude binaries (of action and reaction, right and wrong, etc…) are created. These are, as is evident across the world today, extremely dangerous. I see my film being in creative dialogue with Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist's Exterminate all the Brutes, a seminal work exploring the origins of totalitarian thinking. The film is an inquiry into the nature of human conscience and the limits of deniability. Over the course of a decade of filming, it became clear that the focus must be Bo's own relationship with his public image, activities and response (underpinned by the known and covert activities of his military career). Director's Statement on the Relationship with Cinema: Hollywood's Ghosts Fiction creates reality. Hollywood and political structures in the United States are tightly knit. On a material level, there are exchanges of personnel and funds. Hollywood regularly employs (often retired) covert operators and military staff as advisers and the story rights of military operations often become the properties of major studios. Whereas the purchase of such rights is, by definition, often after the fact, on occasion funding precedes the event. For instance, a covert prisoner-of-war recovery mission led by Bo Gritz was in part financed by Clint Eastwood in return for a possible option on the story. It is variously claimed, that Bo is the soldier who the Rambo series is modelled on. The flow of funds from Hollywood to the military is not exclusive. The Pentagon contributes by providing army assistance (military advisers, helicopters, use of bases, etc…) to productions that it deems supportive of US policy. Such films inform climates of public opinion within which policy operates. They open imaginative spaces and arenas of ethical consideration in which certain kinds of military operations are validated. Furthermore, Hollywood cinema serves as a curious, discursive space for policy makers (and thus for speechwriters as well as scriptwriters). Ronald Reagan, on numerous occasions, publicly drew on the Rambo series to articulate his foreign policy vision and promote his political aspirations: "After seeing Rambo last night, I know what to do next time this happens." [Ronald Reagan, 1985] Where Reagan at times dipped into the movies to illustrate an argument, Bo is produced as if he were a movie star, by both the media and by his own public performances. On January 31st, 1983, CBS News described Bo's foray into Laos as "the stuff from which movies are made…a case of life imitating art". The inadvertently implied elision of difference between 'life' and 'art' in this strictly nonsensical news-speak is telling. Does the above mean that 'this mission is a model for movies that this mission is modelled on'? Touring the country for his own presidential campaign, Bo is hailed on national television as the 'real-life Rambo' as well as the "model for the real life Rambo". The description of Bo as a mythical figure has been drawn in terms of another such character: Colonel Kurtz. A journalist on Nevada Regional news, declared that Bo is "[…] the mythical Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now…". It was not just the news media however, that tried to fuse Bo with the 'mythical' Colonel Kurtz. In 1975, Francis Ford Coppola's production company approached Bo during the making of Apocalypse Now to ask for permission to superimpose Marlon Brando's face over Bo's. As Bo explains, "he wanted to use the photograph in General William C. Westmoreland's book showing me with Nurse Toi kneeling in front of a lot of really mean-looking Cambodian mercenaries as the headliner for his new movie. Colonel Kurtz was commanding a Cambodian army and I was Major Gritz, and I did command a Cambodian army. Matter of fact I was the first to do so". What does it mean that Bo so eagerly figures himself as the man who inspired these representations? After all, he is not unaware of the fact that Coppola's Kurtz and indeed, the entire plot of Apocalypse Now, is taken from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and set in the context of the Indochinese war. Rather, Bo's suggestion that 'Kurtz' is a play on 'Gritz' not only indicates a desire to project himself as famous and infamous, it also points to a willingness to perform his own history, including that of his covert operations, in accordance with the conventions of Hollywood cinema. Bo's willingness to perform according to a 'script' (both inspired by Hollywood and subsequently itself adapted and produced by Hollywood in a feedback loop between the silver screen and covert policy) gives the POW 'production' an actual star – a star who becomes a simulacum of the Hollywood characters and vice versa. Bo's authenticity is produced not only by his own insistence that he is the basis for his Hollywood avatars, but equally by his parallel insistence that he has no interest in these figures or, as he dismissively puts it, 'Hollyweird' and its 'play acting'. This denial, by masking his desire to identify himself as the 'original', therefore makes his identification more plausible, precisely by producing him as 'the real thing'. The chicken comes back to roost Rambo III was released in 1988. The film ends with a dedication printed over its final scene: 'This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan'. At the time of its release, the Reagan administration's covert funding for operations in Afghanistan was at its highest. The film premiered as President Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, a policy decision that was welcomed by none more than the marketing team working on Rambo III. The film rode the wave of euphoria for US political and military 'success'. This was, then, a historical context which enabled the film's hero to be figured – both by the film's marketing team and, indeed, by audiences, who read the film in the social and discursive context of the times – as individually responsible for the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. There is another, utterly un-distributed film that stands as testimony to the Reagan government's dedication to the 'gallant people of Afghanistan'. Untitled and shot on Super 8 Sound film in the autumn of 1986, it is the record of a secret training program for Afghan Mujahedeen on US soil. Bo claims that the training program was initiated by the National Security Council (NSC) under the direction of State Department official William Bode and that the funding was allegedly channelled through Stanford Technology, a CIA front-company. Spectres Bo was part of a world where deniability lies at the forefront of action on the uncertain line between knowing and unknowing (post-truth before the event …). The spectral nature of covert operations resides in their being officially, 'neither confirmed, nor denied'. Thus the spectral is produced by official discourse, but admissible to it only as that which cannot be admitted. However, rather than being a product of official denial, it is a product of 'deniability'. This involves not the denial of a particular event, but the denying of official authorisation of an event. Dislocating action and intention, cause and effect, creates a shadow realm from which strategic operations march forward like zombies. An operation appears to have been carried out in the absence of an originating order. The action is spectral in as much as it seems to escape the laws of causality that govern the rest of the world – it is an effect without identifiable cause. A methodology of making This led me to develop a film making approach through which I have tried to understand the person within this context of visibility and invisibility – between deniable reality and fiction. There is a curious symmetry between the careers of Reagan and Bo. On the one hand there is the actor turned politician, who became President and imagined he'd been a soldier; and on the other there is the soldier who would have been President, who flirted with the movies and now defines himself as 'real' in contra-distinction to them. The relationship between Bo and the President he served has surely been subject to Bo's mythologizing autobiographical imagination. Nonetheless, the speculative discursive space that has opened around the relationship (in biographies and autobiographies, in news reports and internet conspiracy sites) has effected a conflation of political drama and movies, of covert operator (whose modus operandi is disguise, dissemblance, subterfuge) and movie actor. And so, focusing on such a figure as Bo, has allowed me to trace a series of discursive and imaginary movements that issue not so much into an exchange between domains, as a conflation of domains. Bo seems to induce a certain ontological confusion, a collapse of fiction and history, biography and popular myth, which is not restricted to his own imagination. It is a confusion that the media are happy to propagate (this is so for his detractors as well as his champions, for the major news channels and fringe internet conspiracy blogs alike). And how timely for our times this is… --- '.like a Lynchian nightmare of right-wing America.' Total Film ★★★★ 'The film is so loopy you end up like Laocoön, wreathed by serpents of paradox and contradiction.' Financial Times ★★★★ 'Zimmermann marshals her material…with relentlessly thought-provoking confidence.' Empire ★★★★ 'An especially probing portrait of a wounded man and his role in the fetishisation of state-sanctioned violence.' Time Out ★★★★ 'This illuminating portrait of a rather broken champion is enriched by extraordinary archive footage.' Filmuforia ★★★★ 'Gripping and jaw-dropping, it's a documentary that needs to be seen to be believed.' Morning Star ★★★★ 'Bo's nonchalance when talking about his behaviour in countries such as Panama makes your jaw drop. An education.' EVENING STANDARD 'This is a new way to make a documentary, exploiting the bountiful public record of the Internet age.' Variety …like a Lynchian nightmare of right-wing America. Tim Coleman, Total Film Erase and Forget reflects the kind of ideological instability that has contributed to the US's surreal political moment. Jessica Loudis, Frieze ERASE AND FORGET explores 'the deep bonds between Hollywood's fictionalized conflicts and America's hidden wars' through a complex portrayal of US soldier, whistle-blower and ex-presidential candidate Bo Gritz, taking us to a world before President Trump. One of America's highest decorated veterans, the 'inspiration' behind RAMBO, Colonel John 'Hannibal' Smith (THE A-TEAM) and Brando's Colonel Kurtz (APOCALYPSE NOW), Gritz was at the heart of American military and foreign policy – both overt and covert – from the Bay of Pigs to Afghanistan, before turning whistle-blower and launching anti-government training programmes. Today he lives in the Nevada desert where he once secretly trained Afghan Mujahedeen, is loved by his community and still admired as a hero figure by white supremacists for his role in the Ruby Ridge siege of 1992. This event was a key turning point in the rise of the far right and militia anti-Government groups in the US. Filmed over ten years, Zimmerman's film is an artist's perspective of an individual and a country in crisis, which raises urgent questions about US militarism and gun control. Deploying confessional and exploratory interviews, news and cultural footage, creative re-enactment and previously unseen archive material, ERASE AND FORGET explores the implications on a personal and collective level of identities founded on a profound, even endemic violence. It examines the propagation of that violence through Hollywood and the mass media, the arms trade and ongoing governmental policy. Revealing the filmmaker's own nuanced relationship with a controversial subject, without judgment and sensationalism, ERASE AND FORGET proposes a multi-layered investigation of war as a social structure, a way of being for individuals and countries in what is becoming an era of 'permanent conflict'.

Kolumbia w okresie ostatnich pięćdziesięciu lat doświadczyła długiej i krwawej walki politycznej, w ramach tzw. pełzającej wojny domowej. W tym okresie komunistyczna partyzantka reprezentowana przez różne ugrupowania – Ruch 19 kwietnia (M-19), Narodowa Armia Wyzwolenia (ELN) czy wreszcie Rewolucyjne Siły Zbrojne Kolumbii (FARC), wielokrotnie próbowały obalić demokratycznie wybrany rząd, stosując brutalne metody walki, takie jak porwania dla okupu czy wymuszenia. Zamach terrorystyczny na Centrum Handlu Światowego we wrześniu 2001 roku był dodatkowym wzmocnieniem dla tych organizacji w ich krwawej walce z rządem. Autor charakteryzuje związane z atakiem na WTC konsekwencje dla bezpieczeństwa Kolumbii, wykorzystując dorobek Clausweitza czy Che Guevary. W zakończeniu wskazuje na współpracę regionalną w dziedzinie bezpieczeństwa jako jedną z metod walki z terroryzmem. ; Colombia has experienced a long and difficult political struggle for over 50 years. During this time, communist guerrillas such as the 19th April movement (M-19), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) have sought to overthrow the government of Colombia and have engaged in illicit activities such as kidnappings and extortion to finance their operations. During the 1990s, these groups became involved in the cocaine trade, and engaged in drug trafficking which significantly increased their financial revenue, access to weapons, and the overall size in terms of membership. As these organizations witnessed the tragic events of September 11, 2001 take place in New York City and in other locations in the United States, they became emboldened and began to envision themselves overthrowing and defeating the government of Colombia. Through Al-Qaeda's example, armed groups in Colombia imagined themselves as the biblical character David, who defeated the giant Goliath with a sling and a stone. After 9/11, Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) operating in Colombia began to extend their reach beyond national borders and became a major threat to national and regional security. For decades, these groups were embedded and nested with insurgent groups, right wing paramilitary groups, and other illegally armed groups involved in the nation's armed conflict. However, after the 2016 signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the political arm of the FARC, transnational criminal organizations now work in concert with each other, or opposing each other for control of the illegal drug industry in Colombia.19 This new criminal paradigm in Colombia is, in many ways, far more complex than the construct in place prior to 2016, and has created new security challenges for the government. ; Kolumbien ist seit mehr als 50 Jahren in einen langen und schwierigen politischen Kampf verwickelt. Seitdem haben kommunistische Guerillagruppen, wie die Bewegung des 19. April (M-19), die Revolutionären Streitkräfte Kolumbiens (FARC), die nationale Befreiungsarmee (ELN) und die Volksarmee der Befreiung (EPL) versucht, die kolumbianische Regierung zu stürzen und sich zur Finanzierung ihrer Operationen illegaler Aktivitäten bedient, wie Geiselnahmen und Erpressungsversuche. In den 1990er Jahren begannen die o.g. Gruppen, sich im Kokain- und Rauschgifthandel zu betätigen, was die finanziellen Einnahmen, den Zugang zu Waffen und ihre Mitgliedszahlen stark erhöhte. Als die Guerilla- Formationen Zeuge der tragischen Ereignisse am 11. September 2001 in New York City und andernorts in den Vereinigten Staaten wurden, fühlten sie sich ermutigt und malten sich aus, die kolumbianische Regierung zu stürzen und zu besiegen. Nach dem Vorbild von Al-Quaida sahen sich die bewaffneten Aufständischen in Kolumbien in der Rolle des biblischen David, der den Riesen Goliath alleine mit einer Schleuder und einem Stein besiegt hatte. Nach dem 11. September begannen transnationale kriminelle Vereinigungen in Kolumbien, ihren Einflussbereich über die Staatsgrenzen hinweg auszuweiten und wurden zu einer ernsthaften Gefahr für die nationale und regionale Sicherheit. Jahrzehntelang waren diese Gruppen in Vereinigungen Aufständischer, rechte paramilitärische Gruppierungen und andere illegale bewaffnete Gruppen eingebettet, die in den bewaffneten Konflikt der Nation verwickelt waren. Nach der Unterzeichnung des Friedensabkommens im Jahr 2016 zwischen der kolumbianischen Regierung und dem politischen Arm der FARC arbeiten transnationale kriminelle Vereinigungen aktuell jedoch entweder Seite an Seite oder kämpfen um die Kontrolle über die illegale Drogenindustrie im Land. Dieses neue kriminelle Paradigma in Kolumbien ist in vielerlei Hinsicht weitaus komplizierter als das Konstrukt vor 2016 und hat neue sicherheitspolitische Herausforderungen für die Regierung zur Folge. ; В течение последних пятидесяти лет Колумбия пережила долгую и кровопролитную политическую борьбу вызванную длительной гражданской войной. В течение этого периода коммунистические партизаны, представленные различными группиров- ками, такими как Движение 19 апреля (М-19), Армия национального освобождения (ELN), или Революционные вооружённые силы Колумбии (FARC) неоднократно пы- тались свергнуть демократически избранное правительство, используя насиль- ственные методы борьбы, такие как похищение людей с целью получения выкупа или вымогательства. Атака террористов на здания Всемирного торгового центра (ВТЦ) в сентябре 2001 года стала дополнительным толчком для этих организаций в их кровавой борьбе с правительством. В статье дана характеристика последствий нападения на ВТЦ для безопасности Колумбии. В заключении рассмотрен один из методов борьбы с терроризмом, каким является региональное сотрудничество в области безопасности.

PhD thesis in Risk management and societal safety ; This thesis elaborates on the complex relationship between terrorists and the targets they attack. There are at least three main reasons for the complexity: each case, with the people involved therein, is unique; moreover, many factors may affect terrorist decision-making. Furthermore, most terrorists can choose between a number of targets. Therefore, a comprehensive approach is a prerequisite for research in this area. The starting point here is that terrorists in general must be considered rational actors. I analyse the dynamic interaction between four main components that affect terrorists' target selection: Ideology, strategy, internal factors (characteristics or capacities possessed by the terrorist actor), and external factors (variables outside the terrorists' control). This categorisation is sensible for sorting the factors of influence, but in order to identify correlations between variables and arrive at a deeper understanding, casestudy process-tracing has been applied. Situational analysis of plot scenarios and conducted attacks, with a systematic focus on offender(s), target(s) and situational context, also represent an essential part of this work. There are three main objectives for this thesis. I present a generic theoretical and methodological approach for qualitative research on terrorist targeting. I apply the above-mentioned approach to the 22 July 2011 attacks in Norway, tracing the terrorist's target selection process in detail. I also analyse the targeting preferences of militant Islamists operating in Western Europe from 1994 to 2016. In addition to target types, this study focuses on the terrorists' casualty focus, soft versus hard target preferences and the degree of target discrimination – all central issues in the context of public security. The two concrete part studies are not comparative, but they exemplify how the generic theoretical and methodological approach can be applied both to single and multiple case studies, on terrorist actors from different ideological directions and on different levels of analysis. A such the two part studies are complementary. Regarding the 22 July 2011 attacks in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik was not the typical lone actor terrorist. The long timeline of his terrorist operation, his hideous strategy, the mass-casualty focus and the brutality demonstrated at Utøya were beyond what most lone actor terrorists could do. His megalomaniac personality influenced several of these factors, but if we leave the aberrant characteristics and skills of Breivik aside, he was quite average in other ways. His background, radicalization process and ideological foundation were not that unusual. Also, his operational phase was not without its flaws. This research shows that even the ruthless terrorist Breivik was affected by an overarching framework and constraints of various kinds. His customised right-wing ideology set the scene. He took both the inner (those responsible for immigration) and the outer enemies (the Muslims) into consideration, but chose to attack the inner enemy. The public rage following a racist killing in 2001 affected his decision. Breivik's strategy of a massive "shock attack" was related to his narcissistic personality and striving for attention. Moreover, his lack of empathy enabled him to conduct the barbaric actions. Breivik's decision to act alone, his focus on one political party only, and the fact that he discarded individual assassinations, were also important decisions. Breivik's limited operational background was compensated for by a high level of motivation, persistence and thoroughness in terms of the bombmaking. The fact that he miscalculated the time needed to find a farm and only managed to make one bomb did, however, affect his plans significantly. Moreover, his financial situation worsened during 2011, and he also made practical mistakes during the operation. Regarding external factors, the terrorist took advantage of a peaceful society. The long process of closing the Grubbegata street in the Government Quarter symbolises how distant the terrorist threat was to different decision-makers at the time. This was exploited by Breivik. He also had the advantage of operating on home ground. Breivik experienced that terrorist operations are dynamic and not fully controllable. He became frustrated and pragmatic, as the Utøya attack proves. The Labour Party and the media represented the most attractive targets for Breivik, but in the end, the media was not attacked. Constraints derailed the terrorist from this part-goal, leading him to attack only the Labour party. It is also a paradox that the shooting attack at Utøya outbid Breivik's number one priority target – the Government Quarter – regarding the death tolls.

"Life among the lowly" is the XIX century best-seller which strongly con- tributed to the anti-slavery movement. Certainly, it denounced the life and labour conditions of black slaves, but it also inspired some stereotypes on black people that still survive today. These two faces of the novel are contained in the present dissertation. The first chapter "Hate at First Sight? Dynamic Aspects of the Electoral Impact of Migrations: the Case of the UK and Brexit" analyses how native political preferences are influenced by the presence of foreigners in a neighbourhood. The last European and U.S. election campaigns hinged on the migration issue and we argue that the preferences expressed through the vote might reflect some prejudicial attitudes. Instead, the second and third chapters refer to the impact of immigration on the domestic labour market. "Need for Flexibility or Subsidies? Reviewing the Impact of Immigration on the Domestic Labour Market" reviews all the seminal papers that have contributed to understand the effect of immigrant workers on native labour market conditions. The conclusion of this literature sustains a non negative impact of foreign labour supply on native average wage. According to these studies this effect is achieved more easily when the labour market is flexible and workers can nimbly change their occupations. Nonetheless, the crucial hypothesis of all the analysis is a perfect elastic capital supply. Studies on the reaction of investments to an increase in the immigrant labour-force are still rather scant and we try to improve the knowledge on the underlying dynamics in the last chapter. "The Labour Demand Response to Supply Shocks. The Indirect Effect of Immigration" investigates how industries and firms production decisions are influenced by migration inflows. The general conclusion, as suggested by the title of the review, is that policy makers should pay attention to industrial policies and not only to labour market structure. In particular, previous studies on the impact of foreign-born population on native voting preferences have highlighted a positive effect of immigration on the electoral consensus for right-wing parties. Nonetheless, this result holds with some caveats. To overcome the limit of the existing literature we formulate the hypothesis that an anti-immigrant attitude rises only at the arrival of the migration inflows and disappears some period later. At the basis of such a dynamics there could be material concerns about the adjustment costs of the new population or some prejudices, both denoting an "hate at first sight effect". To measure this potential mechanism we use an approach based on the standard network instrument which robustly supports our hypothesis. With regard to the analysis on the labour market, neglecting the reaction of investments to an increase in the labour supply can lead to some mislead- ing policy conclusions. Our contribution to the literature is to explicitly looking at the labour demand side of the market. Furthermore, contrary to the existing studies, the data that we use allow us to conduct the analysis at the firm level. We then avoid the bias that originates from the heterogene- ity of production units within industries. The data refer to an important case-study such that of Italy. Although it is only a landing country for most migrants, inflows increased tremendously from 2007, deserving a specific at- tention from academics. The result of the empirical analysis – conducted by means of the network instrument – highlights that immigrant labour- force has been largely absorbed by the adoption of more labour-intensive technologies. The layout with which we present the different studies depicts the order of priorities that in our opinion policy makers should follow. From the very beginning of the refugee crisis the economic analysis has been used in order to find political answers. Public attitudes in favour of solidarity have been linked to the ability of the market in absorbing the population shock. In doing that few attention has been given to the potential effect of the phe- nomenon on the political stability and social cohesion. On the contrary, we expect that public actors would build a community around shared values and consequently design the policies to overcome the market failures.

Let us turn to Latin America. How is the End of History faring in that part of the world? In Latin America, as almost everywhere else, Fukuyama's theory was taken (somewhat unfairly) to be a Reaganite shout of triumph, and it aroused an instant feeling of outrage and indignation. The Nicaraguan philosopher Alejandro Serrano Caldera published a response to Fukuyama as early as 1991 under the title El fin de la historia: Reaparicion del mito (Havana: Editorial 13 de Marzo, 1991), intending to defend a revolutionary Marxist project. And, in fact, revolutionary Marxism did manage to survive in Latin America. Fidel Castro has entered his fifth decade of one-man rule, and, when he travels abroad, crowds of naive and misinformed people still come out to cheer. In Colombia, the Marxist guerrillas remain extremely powerful, even if their Marxism contains a strange mix of cocaine revenue and jungle millenarianism. These are some of the anomalies of Latin American life today. Still, in most other respects, Latin American Marxism has collapsed, and so have the several Latin traditions that descend from the Fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. The larger vector of political thought and action in Latin America has definitely pointed in the direction that Fukuyama identified. At the start of the 1980s, most of Latin America was dominated by despots and military dictators, principally on the extreme right. Even the left-wing dictators, in Cuba and Nicaragua, were careful to wear their military uniforms. Those days are gone. Every single government in Latin America today, except Cuba's, conforms at least outwardly to the principles of liberal democracy. The forward step is enormous--though, to be sure, much could be said about conditions in this place and that, almost everywhere in the region. BUT WHAT HAS been the larger result of these developments in Latin America? Forrest D. Colburn takes up this question in his own response to Fukuyama, Latin America at the End of Politics. Colburn is a political scientist who, in the early 1980s, was driven by the spirit of the age to spend a couple of years in Nicaragua, when the Sandinista People's Revolution was in its prime. I think it is fair to say that, like most of the other academics and journalists who journeyed to Nicaragua from around the world in those years, Colburn keenly hoped for a Sandinista success--that is, a revolution that would succeed in creating a new society with much more wealth, social equality, and freedom than before. He made careful observations of Sandinista agrarian policies, and he produced a sophisticated and observant study called Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua, in 1986. Unfortunately, he was unable to report a success. Colburn concluded that Sandinista policies had led to a devastating fall in farm productivity--a disaster for Nicaragua, which has always depended on agricultural exports. Naturally, he blamed the contra war and the United States foreign policy for some of the problems. But he was able to identify the precise ways in which the Sandinista plans and planners had wreaked their own damage. His book was the first substantial report about the Sandinista failure in agriculture--a brave and original book, which he wrote in a period when quite a few other academic scholars were blithely repeating all sorts of preposterous claims of success by the Sandinista government. It was only later, in the 1990s, that the Sandinistas themselves, in a series of writings and analyses, finally confirmed Colburn's analyses. WHAT DOES this phrase mean--The End of Politics? In Colburn's description, it pretty much means what Castaneda wrote about in Utopia Disarmed, which is to say: the abandonment of the Marxist revolutionary ambition that got its start in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution--the abandonment of guerrilla insurgencies and the end of the mass Marxist and Cuban- or Soviet-style revolutionary movements: the end of what Castaneda calls Latin America's 'Thirty Years War.' The End of Politics means something larger, too. In the field of politics, Latin Americans have achieved one great historic success. They have created sturdy and stable nation states--which is why, among all the regions of the world, Latin America, together with North America, has engaged in the fewest wars between states, a triumph of politics. And the Latin Americans have tried to build on this triumph, too, by looking to their national states to dominate economies and to establish social equality. In the past, revolutionary Marxism struck many Latin Americans as merely a new, scientific variation on the old Latin theme of the all-powerful state.

SummaryPOLITICAL RADICALISM AMONG DUTCH FARMERSAlthough income parity has been achieved in Dutch agriculture, dissatisfaction with income is prevalent among farmers for reasons which are quite understandable. Low income is the most important factor that brings about the decrease in the number of farmers. A real opposition against government agricultural policies is pursued by two minor political parties, namely the Communist Party and the Farmers Party. The Farmers Party is a radical right wing political party which has enjoyed a fast growing electoral success between 1958 and 1966.Farmers who sympathise with the Farmers Party are over‐represented among those farmers who look for security to be given by the government.The central hypothesis of the empirical study was that those farmers who score high on the authoritarianism scale, and who at the same time are disoriented in some way, will show sympathies with the Farmers Party. Two kinds of disorientation are further elaborated: anomy and relative deprivation. This central hypothesis is invalidated by empirical data. Anomy, independent from authoritarianism, appears to be a factor explaining sympathies with the Farmers Party; second, only among the less authoritarian farmers and, connected with this, among the higher income categories can a relationship be observed between relative deprivation and sympathy with the Farmers Party.Disorientation is presumably the central factor that brings about a sympathy with the Farmers Party. Among the higher income categories, anomy seems to originate from income dissatisfaction; among the lower income categories, those farmers who look for security to be given by the government and who at the same time do not believe that the government will be ready to procure this security, show sympathies with the Farmers Party.RésuméLE RADICALISMS POLITIQUE DES AGRICULTEURS NÉÉRLANDAISBien que la parité des revenus ait été réalisée dans l'agriculture néerlandaise, l'insatisfaction à leur égard domine chez les exploitants agricoles et ceci pour des raisons compréhensibles. Le faible niveau de revenu est la cause majeure de la diminution du nombre des agriculteurs. Une réelle opposition à la politique du gouvernement est menée par deux partis politiques mineurs: le parti communiste et le parti paysan. Le parti paysan est un parti d'extrême droite dont le succès électoral a cru rapidement de 1958 à 1966. Les agriculteurs dont les sympathies vont à ce parti sont relativement plus nombreux parmi ceux qui considèrent que leur sécurité doit être assurée par le gouvernement.L'hypothèse de base de l'analyse empirique était que les agriculteurs dont le score d'échelle pour leur attitude envers l'autoritarianisme était élevé et qui, de plus, étaient de quelque manière désorientés, devaient adhérer aux slogans du parti paysan. Deux types de désorientationfurent ensuite cernées: la frustration et la privation relative. Cette hypothèse est invalidée par les données empiriques. Indépendante de la mesure de l'autoritarianisme, l'anomie apparait comme un facteur explicant la sympathie envers le parti paysan. En second lieu, ce n'est que parmi les agriculteurs moins authoritoirs et, en liaison avec ceci, parmi les revenus les plus éléves, que Ton peut observer une relation entre une privation relative et la sympathie envers le parti paysan.La désorientation est, vraisemblablement, le facteur essentiel de cette adhésion. Parmi les catégories de revenus les plus élevés, l'in‐satisfaction avec les revenus semble être a l'origine de l'anomie. A l'opposé, parmi les catégories de revenus les plus faibles, ce sont les agriculteurs qui pensent que leur sécurité doit être assurée par l'Etat et qui, en mêne temps, ne croient pas que le gouvernement soit disposéà la leur procurer, qui font preuve de sympathie à Pegard du parti paysan.ZusammenfassungPOLITISCHER RADIKALISMUS BEI NIEDERLÄNDISCHEN LANDWIRTENObwohl in der niederländischen Landwirtschaft die Einkommensparität erreicht ist, herrscht bei den Landwirten aus verständlichen Gründen Unzufriedenheit mit dem Einkommen vor. Niedrigere Einkommen sind der wichtigste Faktor für die Abnahme der Zahl der Landwirte. Zwei kleine politische Parteien, die kommunistische Partei und die Bauernpartei verfolgen eine wirkliche Opposition gegen die Agrarpolitik der Regierung. Die Bauernpartei ist eine politische Partei des radikalen rechten Flügels mit einem schnell zunehmenden Wahlerfolg zwischen 1958–1966. Landwirte, die mit der Bauernpartei sympathisieren, sind überrepräsentiert ünter den Landwirten, die von der Regierung Sicherheit erwarten.Die zentrale Hypothese der empirischen Studie war, daß jene Landwirte, die hohe Ränge auf der Autoritätsskala haben und die gleichzeitig in irgendeiner Weise desorientiert sind, mit der Bauernpartei sympathisieren. Zwei Arten von Desorientierung werden weiter untersucht: Anomie und relative Entbehrung. Diese zentrale Hypothese wird durch die empirischen Daten widerlegt. Unabhängig vom Autoritätsglauben scheint die Anomie ein Faktor zu sein, der die Sympathie mit der Bauernpartei erklärt. Ferner: Nur unter den weniger autoritären Landwirten und damit im Zusammenhang bei den hoheren Einkommenskategorien kann eine Beziehung zwischen relativer Entbehrung und Sympathie mit der Bauernpartei festgestellt werden. Die Desorientierung ist vermutlich der zentrale Faktor, der Sympathie für die Bauernpartei verursacht. Unter den Kategorien mit hohen Einkommen scheint die Anomie von Unzufriedenheit mit dem Einkommen herzurühren. Unter den Kategorien mit niedrigeren Einkommen zeigen jene Landwirte Sympathie mit der Bauernpartei, die von der Regierung Sicherheit erwarten und die gleichzeitig nicht glauben, daß der Staat bereit sei, diese Sicherheit zu gewähren.