Aggrieved Individuals Research Articles

Mobilizing for Jihad: How Political Exclusion and Organized Protest Contribute to Foreign Fighter Outflows

ABSTRACT This article adds to a growing literature explaining driving forces behind Muslim foreign fighters in Jihadist conflicts. Employing quantitative analyses, we examine counts of Muslim foreign fighters from non-Muslim majority countries in Iraq and Syria from 2011 to 2015. We find that greater numbers of foreign fighters come from countries where Muslim minorities are politically organized, excluded from policymaking processes, and engaged in peaceful mobilization than countries where these conditions are otherwise absent. These results contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms by which aggrieved individuals tend to be recruited in larger numbers to participate in foreign wars.

The Criminal Selfie: Conveying Grievance While Recording and Live Streaming Antisocial Behavior

Despite attempts to regulate content, social media platforms continue to host images of antisocial behavior and crime. These images include dashboard videos of road rage and CCTV footage of shoplifting, as well as more extreme recordings of torture, sexual assault, suicide, and mass shootings. These images are often produced by offenders of their own volition using smartphone cameras and wearable recording devices. We understand criminal selfies as media content of antisocial behavior or crime produced by or with the awareness of an offender. By producing a criminal selfie, an offender renders themselves vulnerable to public scrutiny, legal punishment, and other negative outcomes. Yet criminal selfies remain a popular form of toxic online communication. This manuscript theorizes that one of the previously underappreciated explanations for criminal selfies is a desire to broadcast personal grievances. In such cases, they allow an offender to publicize their motivating politics and to offer them to an online audience for consideration and discussion. Antisocial content often evokes an unfavorable ratio of denunciation versus supportive responses. We claim that some offenders wager that a criminal selfie nonetheless earns their grievances a degree of awareness and, potentially, consequence. Some criminal selfies reflect a willingness to self-incriminate by documenting antisocial behavior in hopes that their images will contribute to public discourse. This article contributes to studies of criminal visibility by addressing how it can be intended as political expression. We first outline the concept of the criminal selfie and how it reflects a changing relationship between visibility and criminality in contemporary digital society. We then review literature on the motives of criminals who film themselves. We seek to compliment this literature by considering socially and politically aggrieved individuals producing antisocial content. This includes livestreams of white nationalist mass shootings (Christchurch, Halle) as well as a series of Reddit groups that solicit and (counter-)denounce antisocial grievances by digital media users (r/iamverybadass, r/publicfreakout, r/iamatotalpieceofshit).

Do Emerging Trends in Climate Litigation Signal a Potential Cause of Action in Negligence against Corporations by the Australian Public?

Abstract Over the past two decades a global jurisprudential trend of domestic climate litigation against governments and companies has emerged. One avenue for litigation against these entities is tort law. The tort of negligence could provide access to compensation for aggrieved individuals and groups. Using the example of Australia, this article discusses whether the emergence of climate tort cases, an increasing drive to hold corporations responsible for climate change, and a company focus on voluntary climate action, could lead to the emergence of a new duty of care by corporate actors toward non-shareholders. We highlight opportunities and barriers to the further development of negligence law as a cause of action against corporations for harms related to climate change.

Glee and Grievance: Emotive Events and Campaign Size in Nonviolent Resistance

AbstractWhile scholars of nonviolent resistance recognize that large-scale campaigns are more likely to be successful campaigns, we currently have little understanding of why some nonviolent protests grow into mass movements while others do not. In this article, we explore campaign size and, in particular, the role of individual and collective motives in facilitating the growth of nonviolent campaigns. We start by assuming that, after campaign onset, barriers to growth emerge because some aggrieved individuals who are sympathetic to the cause are wary of incurring the (opportunity) costs of participating in campaign rallies. On occasion, we argue, organizers respond to this challenge by staging events that generate rewarding emotional experiences for participants and spectators, such as concerts, mass singing, or other collective expressive acts. Since the feelings of empowerment, solidarity, catharsis, or glee that accompany these events can only be enjoyed by those who are physically present at campaign rallies, the provision of such “emotive events” creates an individual-level incentive for passive supporters to mobilize. As this incentive attracts new participants, campaigns can grow—potentially into large-scale phenomena. To assess the plausibility of our argument, we code original data on emotive events and investigate whether the provision of such events in the course of nonviolent campaigns is associated with the size and scale of those campaigns. Finding this to be the case, we conclude that campaigns that are more creative, humorous, cathartic, and/or fun are also more likely to be large-scale campaigns.

Judging the Party: Public Law Wrongs and Private Law Remedies

This article offers a case study of civil litigation in which the decision of a Party organ or the application of Party rules in a decision have allegedly infringed the private law rights of individuals. Party organs have always performed civil activities and engaged with a wide range of civil legal relations affecting the rights and interests of various individuals and entities, resulting in occasional legal disputes between a Party organ and the aggrieved individuals or entities. After failing to challenge a Party organ’s decision within the political system, the affected member brings a case to court to challenge the validity of the decision. In the court process, legal rules are used primarily to deal with issues involving insignificant players in employment disputes with Party organs. For matters involving the Party’s own officials and those matters regarded as internal, legal rules are largely limited, if not dispensed with entirely, confirming the prerogative state’s superior position in the hierarchy above the normative state. Freedom of contract is more relevant and recognized for claims by individuals at the lower end of the political ecosystem, while politics is reserved for the elites of society and for issues where the Party is determined to maintain direct, hands-on control.

Adjudicating Presidential Election Disputes in Africa: The Emerging Challenge of Election Technology

Challenging the results of presidential elections in courts in many African countries is largely a phenomenon that accompanied the fall of dictatorships and one-party regimes across Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The reintroduction of multiparty democracy entailed that elections would be genuinely contested between several candidates, with the possibility that opposition leaders could wrestle power from the incumbent leaders. Many constitutions or electoral laws adopted following this wind of change provide for the possibility of aggrieved individuals and/or entities to seek legal redress in courts of law or other quasi-judicial bodies, usually on specified grounds. This phenomenon is now compounded by the increased use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the electoral process. In the last ten years, almost all presidential election disputes in Africa have revolved around failure or alleged tampering with the ICT facilities in the electoral process. It would, therefore, seem that ICTs, although helpful in increasing efficiency in the electoral process, provide possible new and cleaner ways of stealing elections. This new development presents new challenges to courts as ICTs are often adopted by Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) without appropriate changes to the electoral laws to enhance transparency and accountability. This article analyses how the courts are facing the challenge of increased use of technology in elections and explores the way forward in terms of progressive interpretation and proactive adjudication of election matters.

Contentious Politics in the Courthouse: Law as a Tool for Resisting Authoritarian States in the Middle East

Under what conditions will individuals mobilize law to resist states that operate above the law? In authoritarian countries, particularly in the Middle East, law is a weapon the state wields for social control, centralizing power, and legitimation. Authoritarian legal codes are overwhelmingly more deferential to state authority than protective of citizens' rights. Nevertheless, people throughout the Arab world deploy law to contest a broad array of state abuses: land expropriations, unlawful arrests, denials of jobs and welfare, and so on. Using detailed interviews in Jordan and Palestine, I outline a theory of law as a tool for resisting authoritarian state actors. Integrating qualitative insights with survey experiments fielded in Egypt and Jordan, I test this theory and show that aggrieved individuals mobilize law when they expect courts are powerful and attainable allies in contentious politics. My results further demonstrate that judicial independence does not uniformly increase authoritarian publics' willingness to access courts.

Food price increase and urban unrest: The role of societal organizations

Under what conditions do increasing food prices lead to urban unrest? Existing literature suggests a positive correlation between food prices and social unrest. Meanwhile, there is a large variation in the consequences of increasing food prices, indicating that this phenomenon has a heterogeneous effect across different contexts. The theoretical focus on grievances in the existing literature appears to be insufficient for explaining the variations in outcome. This study asks whether specific features in the domestic institutional setting can explain why food-price induced grievances sometimes lead to unrest and at other times do not. Specifically, the article argues that the manifestation of unrest when food prices increase is moderated by the degree to which the state represses societal organizations. Civil and political society have the potential to channel collective dissent around food-related grievances, as these organizations provide existing mobilization structures that people can draw on to engage in collective action. Further, they can translate an individual-level grievance into a group phenomenon by politicizing the cost of food through the formulation of grievance frames. If the state represses existing societal organizations that can help aggrieved individuals engage in collective action to voice discontent – or introduces barriers to initial mobilization – this will likely reduce the possibility of unrest when food prices go up. Using institutional data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project combined with the Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD), the findings suggest that repression of societal organizations decreases the likelihood of unrest when food prices rise.

POSTRZEGANIE OFIARY HANDLU KOBIETAMI W CELU PROSTYTUCJI PRZEZ FUNKCJONARIUSZY ORGANÓW ŚCIGANIA – WYNIKI BADAŃ ANKIETOWYCH

The subject of the following text was the image of victims of trafficking women for prostitution amongst police officers and border officers. For this purpose, surveyresearch was carried out on 114 officers from these units. Their results enabled anindication of how victims of trafficking women for prostitution are perceived amongst those surveyed. Law enforcement workers are a group that, because of the profession they do, maypotentially have the most frequent contact with human trafficking offenders. At thesame time, they are a part of society, so doubtlessly they are influenced by commonlyoccurring stereotypes and schemas. That is why it is essential to diagnose the methodsof perception of victims of human trafficking by law enforcement officers. The methodin which a victim of this crime is perceived may have a large significance, firstly for thesubjective treatment of aggrieved women, and secondly for prosecutors.The research results indicate that, in the opinion of the surveyed, victims arecharacterised above all as naive and submissive. Quite often, the respondents alsoindicated the aggrieved individuals had weak psyches, and were mindless and fearful.Excluding a few qualities characterising victims in a neutral manner, the vast majoritywere negatively coloured, putting the victim of human trafficking in a bad light. Theywere perceived as compliant, overly trusting, mentally weak and passive. On severaloccasions, answers appear in which victims were presented as greedy, devious womenwho had been lost to rapacity. In the question about the character qualities of victims,several people indicated their external appearance, which might signify a strongconnection between victims of the discussed crime and an attractive appearance. Mostlikely this is due to the fact that the researched form of human trafficking is linked withthe sexual sphere.The main source for acquiring knowledge on the subject of human traffickingwas acknowledged by the respondents as being the media as well as any training theyhad undergone. This may seem disturbing since the image of human trafficking inthe media, other than the fact it is heavily oversimplified, strongly relies on genderstereotypes which can affect perceptions and thus the way victims of human traffickingare processed. Other than this, a significant majority of police officers (84%) andborder guards (81%) had undergone training on the subject of human trafficking.Equally important is that a very small number of respondents had had in their lives anycontact with victims of human trafficking (17% of surveyed border officials and 35%of police officers). Despite this, almost everybody had deep-rooted definite beliefs todo with victims of female trafficking. Most of these convictions are therefore based onstereotypes.Amongst the respondents, there was a widespread conviction that victims of humantrafficking are predominantly women (around three quarters of all respondents). For thesurveyed, a victim of human trafficking is most often an aggrieved person forced intoprostitution – respondents said this form of crime was the most frequently occurring. A significant majority of the respondents acknowledged that the female-victim did notknow that they would be working as a prostitute. Most likely this is linked to the fact thatvictims of female trafficking are presented above all as young, inexperienced and naivegirls. This is at odds with the image of a calculating prostitute who knew the goal of herjourney. It is worth mentioning too about the distribution of answers to the questionin which surveyed police had to answer if it is more appropriate to quickly interrogatevictims or to grant them time to think. Almost 70% of those surveyed admitted theythought it more appropriate to quickly interrogate the victim. Particularly substantial were the justifications for the respondents’ choice of answers. Their analysis allows usto conclude that the respondents perceive victims of human trafficking instrumentally– above all, they see them as a tool for the effective prosecution of those committing human trafficking. This is shown by the fact they judged it important to interrogate thevictim as quickly as possible so that they could gather evidence. Some of the officersalso expressed their negative attitude to victims by accusing them of the possibility ofscheming, the susceptibility for lying or a desire for revenge on the perpetrators. Examining the research evidence suggests this is reflected in relation to the practicalconsequences of the perceptions of victims of human trafficking by law enforcementofficials as passive, naive and helpless women. Namely, these kinds of thoughts maylead to one of these victims, whose qualities fit with the commonly-held stereotypes,being identified by a law enforcement representative. Similarly, help may only be givento those people who the officers believe “really” need and deserve it (i.e. they fit theimage of a defenceless helpless “ideal” victim). Reaching law enforcement agencies andbeyond – such as the justice system – may only be achievable by those victims that fitthe stereotypes, while other people may be ignored – for example, those who had beenused for something other than sex, or older people, the active or those not physicallyattractive.

The successful creation of Attac France: The role of structure and agency

This article highlights that both structure and agency were important in the successful creation of the social movement organization, Attac France. The combination of three favorable structural factors – the existence of aggrieved individuals, the presence of movement entrepreneurs with resources and the existence of a large opportunity for mobilization – constituted a necessary condition for the emergence of Attac. However, these structural factors did not create Attac. Rather, fruitful interactions between the movement entrepreneurs (mainly the editorial team of Le Monde Diplomatique) and the potential recruits (mostly the readership of Le Monde Diplomatique) allowed for the swift creation of the organization. Thus, what created Attac was a successful communication between ‘masses’ and ‘elites’, their agreement on goals, and on organizational setup.

Suing Putin: Patterns of Anti-Government Litigation in Russia, 2000-2008

This paper examines litigation patterns in two categories of court cases, in which Russian government agencies are sued by individuals or companies: lawsuits against unpaid monetary obligations of Russian government agencies, and lawsuits brought by the victims of wrongful actions or decisions of federal government officials. It argues that despite Russia's turn away from democracy and despite their deep cynicism about judiciary, Russians increasingly use courts to fight for their rights and that judges are willing to rule in their favor in many cases. Moreover, the conditions are ripe for the expansion of anti-government litigation, as Putin’s successor, current Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev, attempts to bring more transparency into the judicial system.Proliferation of anti-government litigation in Russia is possible because the ruling regime faces conflicting goals. On the one hand, it wants to make courts “user-friendly” to promote economic growth and social peace. This is why it does not roll back the scope of judicial protection of individual rights and tolerates judicial decisions, which are contrary to the wishes of the President or Prime Minister. Yet Russia’s rulers are unable to improve judicial performance overnight. On the other hand, they encourage government officials to abuse individual rights: extorting bribes, exploiting subordinates and torturing enemies is acceptable as long as officials are loyal to the regime. Yet rulers are unable to capture courts to cover up unlawful government actions. As a result, Russian courts order federal government to pay billions of rubles in compensation to aggrieved individuals and companies.

Contexts for Mobilization: Spatial Settings and Klan Presence in North Carolina, 1964–1966

Ethnic competition theory provides considerable insight into the localized contexts within which ethnic solidarities intensify and contribute to increased conflict, but gives less guidance as to how the spatial dynamics of such contexts impact the rise of sustained ethnic mobilization. Using the case of the Civil Rights–era Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, the authors show that threat/competition dynamics were tied to distinct dimensions of spatial context and then root these spatial effects in social processes. Specifically, the authors demonstrate that mobilization was facilitated by the presence of opportunities for connections within and across counties, through which information about the klan could spread to other aggrieved individuals. These findings suggest that more attention be paid to the mesolevel contexts within which reactive political contention emerges.

Trying to adhere to the ADA: understanding “mental disability” in hiring personnel

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has done a great deal to address the problem of discrimination against individuals with disability. In fact it is considered to be the most influencing civil‐rights legislation to come down in the last 25 years. In the Fiscal Year 2002, the EEOC received 15,964 charges of disability discrimination. The EEOC resolved 18,804 disability discrimination charges in FY 2002 and recovered $50.0 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals. While the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has had a positive effect since it was enacted in 1992: in 2000, 22 per cent of employed people with disabilities report encountering job discrimination as opposed to 36 per cent in 1996. This article examines what is Mental Disability and discusses what questions regarding mental disability can be asked when managers are hiring salespeople.

Accountability of the accountancy bodies: the peculiarities of a British accountancy body

The UK accountancy bodies, enjoying Royal Charters, exercise considerable social power. They act as statutory regulators for the auditing and the insolvency sector. Their regulatory activities (e.g. disciplining members) have a potential to blemish the name and reputation of their members and can bring the accountancy bodies into dispute with their members. In liberal societies, a common understanding is that the aggrieved individuals may be able to take legal action to correct perceived injustices. However, as this paper shows, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has asserted, and the courts accepted that they themselves have no powers to intervene in the internal affairs of the ACCA. Such powers, the ACCA established, are reserved for an official known as the ‘Visitor’, who may be appointed by the Lord Chancellor's Department on behalf of the Sovereign/Crown. The ACCA has relied upon this legal precedent, which it helped to create, to prevent an aggrieved member from airing his grievances in courts. However, eventually the legal precedent became problematic for the ACCA, as it had the potential to directly enmesh the state in the governance of the ACCA. At this point, the ACCA sought reversal of the legal precedent. The case illuminates the politics of accountability and shows the manner in which one of the UK accountancy bodies mobilised its resources to enact a very particular kind of accountability.

Forum Shopping for Human Rights

The article analyzes a growing trend in international human law: the submission of petitions by aggrieved individuals to multiple human courts, tribunals, or treaty bodies, each of which is authorized to review the petition and to determine whether the individuals? have been violated. Most commentators have viewed this practice of shopping for human rights as a danger to be avoided. This article questions that conventional wisdom and offers in its place a re-envisioning of the human petition system. Although efficiency, finality and other concerns weigh against some varieties of duplicative review, this article argues that forum shopping, if properly regulated, will enhance the development of international human law. Forum shopping is the only way that many aggrieved individuals can receive a complete review of the violations allegations in their petitions, and it serves the further salutary function of encouraging jurists on human tribunals to engage in a dialogue to harmonize the content of legal rules shared by more than one treaty. The article first examines the haphazard approach to forum shopping that States have adopted in various human treaties, and it discusses two different strands of case law that together create incentives for individuals to forum shop for a favorable human ruling. The article then critiques the established view that forum shopping is harmful to human law, and it identifies in a comprehensive way the theoretical justifications for and against the practice of forum shopping. Building upon this theoretical analysis, the article then develops a comprehensive proposal for reforming the current approach to forum shopping and discusses alternative ways in which the proposal can be implemented into practice.

Cultural strategies of agenda denial: avoidance, attack, and redefinition

Agenda-setting is a key component in the democratic process if political outsiders are to have their concerns taken seriously. However, their efforts sometimes fail for reasons other than insufficient resources or incompetent leaders: opponents often succeed in keeping new issues from ever reaching the agendas of decision-makers. This is the first book devoted to examining why some issues proposed by aggrieved individuals or groups are denied access to policy agendas. It develops a theoretical framework for the study of agenda setting and agenda denial, emphasizing the cultural strategies opponents use to impede and defeat policy initiatives, and examining specific strategies of avoidance, attack, and redefinition that explain why certain issues don't receive consideration. The book contains seven case studies that examine the policy process from the perspective of the strategies opponents of policy initiatives use and demonstrate that agenda denial can result when opponents succeed in portraying initiatives as threats to widely held world views and identities. Four cases involving federal agencies show how the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Food and Drug Administration have kept issues off their own agendas, how the accounting profession has avoided SEC regulation, and how pro-life forces kept the French abortion pill off the FDA agenda. Two cases focusing on public health issues examine why national health insurance has never made it onto the federal agenda and how local agencies in Texas prevented residents of minority neighborhoods from obtaining clean water. Finally, a case from outside the U.S. shows how Kurt Waldheim's Nazi past failed to become an issue in his campaign for President of Austria. While most books emphasize issue initiators, Cultural Strategies of Agenda Denial makes a unique addition to the agenda-setting literature by focusing on the actions of opponents and emphasizing the political importance of cultural resources and culturally constituted ideas to the ongoing debate in political science concerning how open and democratic our system really is.

Some Observations on the Law of Evidence. The Competency of Witnesses

Courts of last resort now seldom reverse a ruling on the competency of witnesses.' Convinced, and rightly so, that they cannot learn from the record all the circumstances which influenced the decision below, they usually let it stand, even when the transcript alone might suggest another conclusion. Trial courts, in their turn, to a greater extent than formerly prefer to admit the evidence of infants, insane people, and mental defectives, and leave the jury to estimate its value. Perhaps this is because exclusion has heretofore worked particular hardship in prosecutions for crimes against children and the insane, where the only evidence available was that of the victim.2 Now these aggrieved individuals may testify even when the gist of the action, as in statutory rape,3 or the title of the action, as where a lunatic sues by his next friend,4 indicates their infirmity. The infirmity alone does not render them incompetent. In all jurisdictions witnesses must show that they possess