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AbstractDoes religion continue to spur violence even in contemporary times? This work aims to shed some light on the relationship between belonging to a given religion and violent behavior. Whereas religions often preach love and caring for others (meaning that among believers, a decrease in the level of violence may be registered), at the same time, it could be argued that a religious sense of belonging shapes self-identity and that in challenging situations this increases violence, especially towards foreigners. To test this hypothesis, we gathered data about yellow and red cards from the FIFA World Cup, obtaining a dataset of quasi-experimental data on violence, which we integrated with the Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project. Via a quantitative analysis that employs different estimators, our results show that the more Christians there are in a country, the more violent its national team will be, whereas the more Buddhists there are, the less violent the team will be. No significant relationship is found with regard to Jews or Muslims. Finally, when investigating Christian confessions, Eastern Christians appear to show the most violent behavior.

Le concept de smart city peut parfois sembler un peu nébuleux pour les décideurs locaux. Ce dernier est englobant et recouvre divers enjeux sociétaux. D'une commune à l'autre, différentes visions de la smart city peuvent coexister et s'adapter aux spécificités et contextes locaux. Ainsi, chaque territoire développe sa propre vision de la smart city en fonction de ses enjeux. Tout cela rend la réappropriation du concept de smart city complexe à réaliser et peut impacter la mise en œuvre de ce type de politiques. Afin de proposer un cadre davantage réappropriable par des décideurs, une étude de l'appel à projets « Territoire Intelligent », initié en 2019 par la Région wallonne, a été réalisée. Dans ce cadre, 88 projets soumis par diverses villes, communes et intercommunales wallonnes ont été analysés. Plus précisément, les motivations, mises en avant dans leur projet par les décideurs politiques, ont été examinées et classées par groupe. Les résultats de ce travail mettent en lumière la diversité d'imaginaires et de réappropriations qui existent en Wallonie derrière le concept de smart city. Concrètement, 10 catégories ont été formées et offrent une classification originale ainsi qu'un cadre conceptuel inspirant pour des décideurs locaux.

This article adopts an interpretive approach to investigate how local policy-makers portray and justify their own visions of digital governance initiatives at the municipal level. Our investigation focuses on smart city projects submitted by various Belgian municipalities in the framework of the 'Intelligent Territory' call for proposals initiated in 2019 by the Walloon Region. We use Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of orders of worth and combine quantitative and qualitative content analysis to categorize the different justifications elaborated by municipal governments. The empirical results point to the polysemic nature of the smart city concept and highlight the diversity of opportunities offered by smart city policies according to municipal policy-makers. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the varieties of interpretations underpinning the construction of digital governance initiatives. It therefore supports the argument according to which there is no one-size-fits-all approach to smart city policies as local policy-makers may attribute different meanings to them and may formulate place-based ICTs solutions to what they perceive as the most pressing problems of their territories. Points for practitioners Smart city projects can be used by governing authorities as instruments to achieve a variety of policy goals Examples of policy goals are to boost local economic development, to improve the effectiveness of municipal service provision, to strengthen social bonds across local community members, to promote the ecological preservation of urban environments and to improve the collaboration between citizens and public administrations Local governments can adaptively use smart technologies as instruments to overcome multiple place-based environmental, social and economic problems Local governments should frame smart urban technologies as means to solve different societal problems and achieve different policy goals – rather than an end per se