Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Mohammed cartoons controversy was an unprecedented international crisis that pitted Western free speech values against the cultural values of the Arabo-Islamic world. This paper compared the legal actions against the two newspapers that were are the center of the global controversy�Jyllands-Posten of Denmark, which first published the controversial Mohammad cartoons, and Charlie Hebdo, of France, which re-published the Danish cartoons in solidarity with its Danish counterpart. This paper argues that the Mohammed cartoons controversy was a clash of �establishmentalities,� the culture-specific logics underpinning the recognition or non-recognition, under the law, of state religion. In Denmark, the controversy pitted a secularized constitutional monarchy where blasphemy is a crime, against the establishmentality of Islam, under which there is no separation of mosque and state, and where Prophet Mohammed and Islam are above reproach, and cannot be visually depicted. In France, the Mohammed cartoons affair pitted the secular establishmentality of France, whose major tenet is the right to blaspheme, against global Islamic establishmentality. Despite their different politico-cultural systems, courts in Denmark and France held that publication of the Mohammad cartoons was not a criminal offence. These outcomes were just as political as the demonstrations against the cartoons.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ALtruistic Punishment induces cooperation by changing the payoff structure of the decision environment. Sustained punishment means that defectors no longer enjoy the benefits of free riding. However punishment itself is a pubic good when it is costly and repeated interactions are scarce. Strictly speaking, altruistic punishment is irrational. However lab experiments and evidence from the field show that humans ordinarily punish defectors at a personal cost. _x000d__x000d_In this essay I explore the psychology of this punishing behavior. I theorize that altruistic punishment is a manifestation of our species adaptations for social exchange and part of a larger adaptive toolbox. In a series of experiments I show that defection is perceived as a norm violation and an increased tendency to obey norms (norm-conformity) also increases the propensity to punish. Altruistic punishment appears to be a conformist reaction towards norm violators.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent research on altruistic punishment suggests a solution to this “paradox of voter participation.” This paper present a model and laboratory experiment that demonstrate how altruistic punishment can explain high levels of political participation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: There has been lot of concern to what is exercised in some Islamic countries as criminal punishment; Punishments that are argued to rest upon the Islamic legal system (Sharia) and are determined by God thus mankind is not allowed to abrogate or alter them. Societies in which state�s practices is considered to be guided by human right standards, see these punishments brutal, unfair, illegitimate, obsolete and some times barbaric exercises of state penal power. Power that rest just on the state ideology of Islamic sovereignty and lack any public support. They see the people living in these countries as oppressed people that are victims of a religious despotic power and the current legal system as some thing contrary to the real will of public. This attitude to what is undergoing in these countries has led to international campaign against these punishments. However, while there is great pressure on Islamic states not to exercise these brutal practices from outside, there is little opposition to them within the country in which these maneuvers are held. This condition can receive at least two explanations, first, the political regime of these societies suppresses strongly any opposition and dissent and there is no room for resistance. Second, society itself accepts and, even more, demands these kinds of exercises. According to the later it may be said that the cultural and social environment of criminal punishment entail its intrusiveness and harshness, and the existing modes of penal power in general.
Focusing on criminal punishment in Iran after revolution 1979 this study investigates the interactions of punishment and society in Iran in this period and tries to show that how mutual relation of state�s Islamic ideology and embedded Islamic culture in Iran has brought about the �conditions of possibility� of current penal apparatus.
This study suggests that such a brutal and unusual pain inflicted to the criminal�s body and the intrusive character of criminal punishment in Iran dose not rest merely on the political ideology of the Islamic state. It operates upon and within a �belief condition� that has had long-standing influence on the way people think, talk and behave in Iran. It defines self and identity of the people.