Political Conditions In Countries Research Articles

The potential harms of the Tor anonymity network cluster disproportionately in free countries

The Tor anonymity network allows users to protect their privacy and circumvent censorship restrictions but also shields those distributing child abuse content, selling or buying illicit drugs, or sharing malware online. Using data collected from Tor entry nodes, we provide an estimation of the proportion of Tor network users that likely employ the network in putatively good or bad ways. Overall, on an average country/day, ∼6.7% of Tor network users connect to Onion/Hidden Services that are disproportionately used for illicit purposes. We also show that the likely balance of beneficial and malicious use of Tor is unevenly spread globally and systematically varies based upon a country's political conditions. In particular, using Freedom House's coding and terminological classifications, the proportion of often illicit Onion/Hidden Services use is more prevalent (∼7.8%) in "free" countries than in either "partially free" (∼6.7%) or "not free" regimes (∼4.8%).

The Influence of Protectionism on Cross-Border Acquisitions: The Importance of Legitimacy

This study investigates the impact of host country protectionism on the completion likelihood of an announced cross-border acquisition. Adopting a legitimacy perspective, I identify and test boundary conditions at the firm and national levels to study the relationship between protectionism and cross-border acquisition completion. I hypothesize that in host countries with a high level of protectionism, as reflected by the level of non-tariff barriers, cross-border acquisitions are less likely to be completed. I also propose that the relationships between protectionism and acquisition outcomes are influenced by critical host and home country's political conditions such as political constraint, political affinity and government ownership.

Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Geographically Indirect Immigration to the United States

"This article examines the little-studied phenomenon of indirect geographic migration to the United States, or the movement of persons whose country of last permanent residence differed from their country of birth. Over 8 million records of legal immigrants to the United States were studied for the period 1972-1987. Geographically indirect migration is shown to be important, amounting to as many as 86,136 persons during a single year. Primarily because of the dislocations of Southeast Asian refugees from their homelands and their subsequent admittance to the United States, indirect immigration increased during the 1980s. Moreover, again somewhat due to refugees, the patterns of geographically indirect movement changed during recent years. Political conditions in countries of birth appear to be important in explaining these patterns, as well as the age and skills of the indirect migrants themselves."

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...

This analysis compares the incidence of war involvement by countries with comparatively more and less political freedom. It examines the proposition that political freedom promotes peace, as suggested by R. J. Rummel, in its monadic form. Its results indicate that this proposition tends to be contradicted or unsupported, if we focus only on monadic relationships, if we refer to wars from a more distant past, if we include wars of an extrasystemic nature (i.e., colonial and imperialist wars) or if we assess political freedom cross-sectionally (i.e., comparing a country's political conditions with those of its contemporaries). On the other hand, it is suggested that this proposition tends to be confirmed, if we focus only on dyadic relationships, if we refer to the more recent past, if we exclude extrasystemic wars, or if we assess political freedom longitudinally for each country (i.e., comparing a country's freedom status in terms of its own present or past political conditions). Thus some of the discrepant findings in the literature can be explained by these different analytic choices.