Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Institutionalist explanations of modern ethnic violence tend to emphasize the weakness of the state or the failure of civic institutions to prevent violence. Without adequate specification of mechanisms, however, this cluster of explanations risks becoming tautological. Moreover, restricting explanation to proximate temporalities may at times be misleading. This article proposes a historical turn in explanations of ethnic violence, focusing on how legacies of state formation and embedded political networks promote the possibility that violent repertoires will be used at specific historical moments. Using a range of archival and historical sources on recurrent Hindu-Muslim violence in western India, and comparative cases to discipline the theory, this paper demonstrates that ethnic violence becomes a stronger possibility in cases where prior trajectories of state formation have deepened, formalized, and accordingly policed ethnic categories. These possibilities are turned into actual events of ethnic violence when organizations and parties tap them as legacies to create ethnic blocs at unstable historical moments to win political ascendancy. While organizing these blocs they either take advantage of the prior disorganization of other possible social formations (suppressed historical possibilities), or actively disorganize them through tactics that often involve violence.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Regimes emerge when the gains from their existence exceeds the costs of their creation and maintenance. Currently, there are no comprehensive and binding international regimes to regulate the actions of Private Military Companies (PMCs). Those that do exist have been insufficient to address the numerous reports of widespread abuses by these companies which range from contract mismanagement to human rights abuse. Calls have come from academia, governments, and even the companies themselves for a more cohesive regulatory regime. An interaction of sovereignty costs and agency slack helps explain the weakness of regulatory regimes regarding the industry. Increasing international regulation adds complexity to the already tangled relationship between PMCs and states, creating multiple responsibilities to multiple principles, compounding existing problems with agency. This is particularly true with the United States, the leading user and provider of PMC services. The prospective costs of creating and enforcing international laws on the issue outweigh the prospective benefits, hindering international cooperation on the issue. Thus, states continue to prefer to attempt to apply a strong arm in controlling contracting companies rather than a weak law.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study conducts a "large-n" analysis of all interstate asymmetric conflicts from 1850 to the present time to determine why weak states win conflicts against much stronger adversaries a disprortionate amount of the time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The teaching profession is a “weak” profession, and is particularly susceptible to jurisdictional encroachment by non-professional entrepreneurs. The jurisdictional boundaries of the teaching profession are particularly permeable in the private education sector, where teachers lack the market shelter enjoyed by public school teachers. We analyze: 1) encroachment into teachers’ professional jurisdiction and 2) the deprofessionalization of teachers. Using 90 open-ended interviews with private school principals and private tutoring center owners in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, we assess the status of teachers according to Ingersoll’s (1997) seven criteria for professionalization. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial challengers with no formal teaching experience are increasingly commonplace within Ontario private education. As non-professional entrepreneurs enter the private educational field, a distinctly non-professional model of teaching emerges. Within the deregulated private education sector, teacher deprofessionalization is fostered in four ways: uncertified teaching staff, low wages and few opportunities for either specialization or professional development. We conclude that a key consequence of jurisdictional challenges by non-professional entrepreneurs in the field of private education is the further weakening of teachers’ professional status.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Provision of public goods has been the central domain of states since the beginning of the modern state system. In the past century with an emphasis in the last decades various processes of globalization have led to a devolution of public authority to non-state actors. First, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (here defined as non-profit civil society organisations) have become principal advocats and in some cases providers of public goods, because the state as a single actor and the international society as a collective does no longer fulfill this task (see Greenpeace and environmental protection, amnesty international and human rights protection, Oxfam and humanitarian aid). Having only limited material ressources at their disposal, but having immense moral legitimacy they contribute to the provision of national and global public goods. Second, transnational corporations (TNCs) have realized, that if states do not provide acceptable basic parameters, business opportunities are in jeopardy (see Shell in Nigeria, BP in Columbia, DaimlerChrysler in South Africa). Even the huge economic power of TNCs is not enough (reicht nicht aus) if an adequate infrastructure has not been set up and stable political conditions are not in place. In addition, by not always properly applying human rights and environmental standards TNCs' activities lack aspects of legitimacy and become at the same time targets of NGOs campaigns. The power and the legitimacy to provide public goods is somehow interwoven with three actors: the state, NGOs and TNCs. This paper seeks to explore the meaning and application of the concepts: public goods, power and legitimacy from the perspective of NGOs and TNCs. If the existence of private authority is reality, how do non-state actors make use of these concepts. What role do they assign to the state in this context? How do they deal with the assets that they do not possess (NGO - resources, TNC - legitimacy). And finally are the views of NGOs and TNCs compatible? Moreover from a theoretical standpoint, is there enough common ground for a new form of public-private authority? The theoretical argument will be confronted with empirical results of two surveys conducted with German based NGOs and German based TNCs in 2003 and 2004.