Language rights have emerged as an issue within the study of general human rights among modern normative theorists, but the complexity of the relationship between languages and societies makes them extraordinarily complex. Against this background, this paper will address efforts to reach a...

In the last few decades, there have been great advances in the study of how the structure of policy networks affect performance at a systemic level, but more recently public policy and management scholars have begun exploring in more detail how networks form and evolve. In an article published...

We suggest a new approach to narrowing the field in elections, based on the deservingness of candidates to be contenders in a runoff, or to be declared one of several winners. Instead of specifying some minimum percentage (e.g., 50) that the leading candidate must surpass to avoid a runoff...

In theory, democratic political systems are created to insure equality amongst their citizenry through universal suffrage. In reality, there is very little equality between those who vote and those who do not. From the study of mass behavior, we know that the affluent and educated vote. From the...

We examine an anomaly – the rapid increase over the last decade in the number of local public sector organizations lobbying their state governments. After documenting this increase in public sector lobbying from 1997 to 2007, we discuss why this pattern is so theoretically anomalous and then...

Scholars have long argued that time horizons alter incentive structures: when political actors face a high risk of being removed from their posts, they behave differently than they would otherwise. This study explores this idea in the context of conflict behavior. Using a new proxy for time...

Former highly classified documents and records chronicling the internal communications and discourse of the Soviet Politburo reveal important insights into how senior leaders in the Soviet Union assessed the evolving situation in Afghanistan from events leading up to the 1979 invasion and its...

Why do governments and rebel groups employ child soldiers in some internal armed conflicts but not in others? While previous studies have examined aspects of the causes and consequences of child soldier usage, to date there has never been a comprehensive empirical analysis that has examined...

When does the implementation of global standard initiatives (GSI) in transnational companies (TNC) lead to effective outcomes? GSIs as institutions which try to find solutions for transboundary issues (e.g. health, migration, climate, labour rights) are becoming more and more important in the...

What does governance mean for the World Bank (WB) and how far does the organization influence the world community with this concept? The World Bank primarily focused on economic aspects of governance in the 1980s and progressively moved to its political dimensions in the end of 1990s. The paper...