Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Does the American recession and the decline of stock markets in 2000 represent a turning point of world capitalist dynamics, which breaks with neo-liberalism? This paper advances an analysis of the economic moment of this question. After a conceptual introduction, which defines terms such as neo-liberalism, globalisation, imperialism and hegemony, a more concrete analysis, based on national accounting statistics from Europe but especially the US, is advanced in the remainder of the paper. Neoliberalism created new income flows in favour of capitalist owners that nevertheless, because of increased rent and dividend income at the expense of retained profits, have been detrimental to capital accumulation. In this context, the US has benefited from its key position in the asymmetrical process of exploiting the rest of the world and supplying income to international capital. However, growing external deficits are gradually eroding the benefits of the asymmetrical yield. These in turn are the result of an intensified, debt-financed, consumption by rich American households, underwritten by the US state. This consumption, as well as an unusual inflow of foreign capital, were behind the long US boom 1994-2000 (a unique boom that could not be copied elsewhere, but indeed had the stagnation of Europe as the other side of its coin). However, declining profit rates due to the rise of labour costs and rising interest burdens interrupted the boom in 2000, and the current 'correction' is severe and includes the collapse of the stock market and financial turmoil. But debts are still growing in what seems to be a self-limiting contradictory process, which is bound to have profound qualitative implications for the capitalist world economy as a whole.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For any political entity, endogenous pressure converges as external violence, while exogenous pressure results in internal violence. Thus the cause of violence is not in the relations between political actors but within the assailant per se.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Following large scale grants from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) and the European Union, the political communication research group at ASCoR is currently designing a study of the June 2009 elections for the European Parliament. This paper will identify and discuss pro’s and con’s of different designs in terms of their ability to tap campaign effects and the implications and opportunities that different designs offer for data analysis. This will be related to the challenges of cross-national and multiple modes of data collection. The paper reviews the most important recent developments in campaign research designs and offers first results from a study that is still in the field during the 2009 ICA elections.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Our court system prides itself on the protection of individual rights but is the traditional risk prediction approach, applied by judges, the best way to protect the public in a free society? Do the new, widely touted risk prediction instruments raise moral and ethical issues as well as Constitutional concerns? Is "Dynamic Risk Management" a better way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of state and local criminal justice systems? The presenter postulates that risk prediction instruments have serious limitations and courts may be ideally situated to be effective risk management tools.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The current study seeks to examine the utility of drawing on concepts of personality and individual roles within grups to explain criminal behavior. It is suggesed that doing so may shed light on differences between crimes committed by individuals and crimes committed within groups. Strengths, limitations and policy implications will be discussed.