A model of conflict and leadership: Is there a hawkish drift in politics?

We analyze conflict between a citizenry and an insurgent group over a fixed resource such as land. The citizenry has an elected leader who proposes a division such that, the lower the land ceded to the insurgents, the higher the cost of conflict. Leaders differ in ability and ideology such that the higher the leader’s ability, the lower the cost of conflict, and the more hawkish the leader, the higher his utility from retaining land. We show that the conflict arises from the political process with re-election motives causing leaders to choose to cede too little land to signal their ability. We also show that when the rents of office are high, the political equilibrium and the second best diverge; in particular, the policy under the political equilibrium is more hawkish compared to the second best. When both ideology and ability are unknown, we provide a plausible condition under which the probability of re-election increases in the leader’s hawkishness, thereby providing an explanation for why hawkish politicians may have a natural advantage under the electoral process.

How Political Foundations Affect Performance

This chapter analyzes the political factors that affect the performance of a sovereignty-sharing venture. It explains the need for a supportive political equilibrium to enable effective implementation of a joint venture that can earn performance legitimacy. Such arrangements usually rest on precarious political foundations, due to the divergent interests of the national and international partners. They are often built on compromised state consent, which leads to ambiguous agreements and to confusion and discord in the field. In particular, the chapter shows why sovereignty-sharing ventures have struggled to move beyond stopgap service provision to meet their second stated objective of advancing domestic institutional reform.

In the Name of Cow: Legal–Constitutional Discourse and the Contours of Contemporary Indian Politics

The issue of cow preservation is predominantly seen as a battle between communal/orthodox and liberal/secular ideologies represented by Hindu nationalists and Congress, respectively. In this schema, Hindu nationalists projected themselves as protectors of cow, while Congress seemed to oppose such proposals. The question of how both regimes used cow as a significant symbol for strengthening their politics and positions for favourable political equilibrium in the past 60 years remains under-researched. The article argues that the dynamics of electoral politics in India should not merely be reduced to the ideologies of different political regimes; instead, a critical understanding of successful and timely appropriation of popular religious sensibilities needs to be explored.

Possible Education System Reform Measures for Restoring the Socio-Political Equilibrium in Greek Society after the Crisis (2008)

The article centres on the socio-political dilemma that Greece has been experiencing due to the 2008 economic crisis and the subsequent economic reforms. These reforms, despite being widely unpopular, have had an impact on all aspects of life, including education and the education system. Although educationists and educators as such cannot do much in terms of restoring the economic and socio-political equilibrium in the country, they are able to raise a prophetic voice about what should be done. As one such voice, this article discusses, based on analysis of the situation in Greece through the lens of the social space and ethical / moral action theory, how economic and socio-political equilibrium could be restored in Greece (and in other countries similarly afflicted by emerging economic reforms). Steps such as the following are suggested and discussed: the concept of education to be revisited; a new approach to education in the form of schooling to be considered; education policy to be revised; the education system to be restructured; the curriculum to be reshaped and concrete steps to be taken to put all of the theory outlined in this article into practice.

Social Status Concerns and the Political Economy of Publicly Provided Private Goods

We analyse the political economy of the public provision of private goods when individuals care about their social status. Status concerns motivate richer individuals to vote for the public provision of goods they themselves buy in markets: a higher provision level attracts more individuals to the public sector, enhancing the social exclusivity of market purchases. Majority voting may lead to a public provision that only a minority of citizens use. Users in the public sector may enjoy better provision than users in the private system. We characterise the coalitions that can prevail in a political equilibrium.

Understanding the Use of Byzantine Routes in Central Anatolia (ca. 7TH–9TH Centuries)

This paper mainly focuses on the impact of the change in the political equilibrium in the East caused by the effects of the Arab invasions on the main communication routes in Byzantine Central Anatolia. Beginning in the 640s and continuing for over 150 years, these incursions had an impact on the ways in which major routes in and through the new frontier zone were used, reflecting in part the fact that during this period the Taurus mountain range constituted the natural frontier between the Byzantines and the Arabs. The main communication routes in Central Anatolia, which lie on the northwest-southeast axis, were of importance in terms of the changing role of the main urban centres established along them, since Arab attacks were directed at both major and minor urban and fortified centres in Central Anatolia, as the Byzantine and Arab sources mention. Although the main centres such as Ancyra and Dorylaion were affected by the attacks, these and most other major cities continued to exist throughout the period in question. In this regard, the continued existence of such centres determined the ways in which the major routes of communication were used. A study of the changes in the role and functions of the cities in central Anatolia may thus help to understand the use of the main routes, based on the archaeological, i.e. building structures, ceramics, etc., and textual evidence, including that from narrative sources.

Scotland

The 2015 General Election saw a collapse in Labour support in Scotland resulting in almost total annihilation in terms of parliamentary seats north of the border. In this chapter we show how the referendum on independence in Scotland in September 2014 precipitated this upheaval. We show that the Scottish independence referendum had a realigning effect on party identification in Scotland, cementing the link between SNP voting and pro-independence attitudes. Two years later, a second electoral shock in the form of the EU referendum disrupted this new political equilibrium in Scotland.

Re-thinking comparative education and religion: temptations, traditions, and politics

This article opens by refusing some traditional ways to approach the theme of comparative education and religion-and-education. Partly, this is because some topics, in terms of religion and education, have been well covered. More generally, there is an explicit refusal of the clichéd assumption that ‘comparative education articles’ compare (e.g. education systems in Argentina and Australia, or in Brazil and Bolivia; and so on), juxtaposing narratives on any-old-topic which interests the writer, provided the narratives are about two or more different countries. Fortunately, some current changes in the ‘epistemic gaze’ of comparative education create new levels of theoretical difficulty and permit a break from the classic political equilibrium problem of the liberal secular state juggling education policy choices and juggling competing religious groups. Starting from a different axiom, a sketch of new possibilities is offered. The sketch is theoretically clumsy but it opens up a strategically different way to tell comparative education stories, of the kind which traditionally we have not tried to tell. The conclusion of the article makes a guess about why religion and education might again become a major topic in comparative education.