‘It was the done thing’: Southern Irish Protestants and the Second World War

During the Second World War, members of the southern Protestant community occupied a curious position in neutral Ireland. The majority, including former unionists, were openly sympathetic to the Allied cause and many actively supported Britain's war effort, but there was also a broad consensus that the policy of neutrality had been the correct course for the Irish state. This duality, incomprehensible to British contemporaries bitterly critical towards Irish neutrality, was also, until quite recently, not fully appreciated by the wider Irish public. This chapter assesses the attitudes of the southern Irish Protestant community during the war by exploring mail censorship reports and excerpts from well-known Irish Protestant publications. It examines attempts by a lobby group, composed of Irish ex-British officers living in Britain, many of them former unionists, to defend the integrity of the neutral Irish state to the British government, while simultaneously denouncing the Northern Ireland government for their antagonism towards Dublin. Lastly, it explores the contribution that was rendered to the British war effort by members of the younger generation through service in Britain’s armed forces. It does so by analysing the motives of young Irish Protestants who enlisted in the British forces, a study which, although verifying a very defined affiliation with Britain and a strong family tradition of military service in British uniform, highlights the approval of many Irish Protestant ex-service personnel for the policy of Irish neutrality.

Distrust, danger, and confidence: A content analysis of the Australian Vaccination-Risks Network Blog

The Australian Vaccination-risks Network is Australia’s most active counter-vaccine lobby group. This study employs a content analysis of the organization’s 2012–2019 blog posts, while further considering Australian-specific vaccine contexts. The goal is to identify the persuasion attributes of these counter-vaccine articles, and the ways that the group’s media employs persuasive cues when communicating to Australian publics. The project gauges the occurrence rates of message variables associated with the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, including those labeled as the Scarcity Principle, Arousal of Fear, Asking Questions, Source Cues, the Contrast Principle and Negativity Effect, as well as Statistics and Technical Jargon. Three overarching themes collectively exhibited by these message variables are further identified and described as Distrust, Danger, and Confidence. In view of these findings, the study then considers how persuasive cue expression in Australian Vaccination-risks Network blog posts corresponds with Australian vaccine hesitancies and the country’s No Jab No Pay/Play policies.

Foreign direct investment, corruption, and institutional reforms

Corruption impacts the competitive conditions among firms and the flow of foreign investment. Institutional reforms made for fighting against corruption are sometimes useless. We develop a model in which a corrupted government tries to set an optimal institutional level taking into account the cost of this policy on foreign investment, the benefit of a corrupted domestic firm and the benefit of local citizens. A political contribution is made by a corrupted lobby group in order to benefit from a lower institutional level. Our results suggest that the optimal institutional level depends on the degree of efficiency of firms and the level of corruption of the host government.

Fundraising for Favors? Linking Lobbyist-Hosted Fundraisers to Legislative Benefits

Do legislators and lobbyists trade favors? This study uses uncommon data sources and plagiarism software to detect a rarely observed relationship between interest group lobbyists and sitting Members of Congress. Comparison of letters to a Senate committee written by lobby groups to legislative amendments introduced by committee members reveals similar and even identical language, providing compelling evidence that groups persuaded legislators to introduce amendments valued by the group. Moreover, the analysis suggests that these language matches are more likely when the requesting lobby group hosts a fundraising event for the senator. The results hold while controlling for ideological agreement between the senator and the group, the group’s campaign contributions to the senator, and the group’s lobbying expenditures, annual revenue, and home-state connections.