Top Politicians Research Articles

The limits of concentrated power: Bureaucratic independence and electricity crises in Rwanda

Abstract Rwanda is a posterchild of economic success in twenty-first century Africa. Dominant explanations for the country’s growth use the political settlements framework, asserting that concentrated political power enabled long-term planning. In contrast, this article uses the case of Rwanda’s impressive boom in electricity generation to demonstrate that such concentrated power also distorts policy-making processes, creating a fiscal crisis that jeopardizes Rwanda’s economic transformation. Therefore, this article questions a central premise of the political settlements framework. Concentrated political power in Rwanda enabled rapid and ambitious construction of power plants but resulted in an oversupply crisis, plunging the sector into significant debt and raising the cost of electricity. Rwanda’s political settlement prevented experts from challenging unrealistic targets set by top politicians, which led to a headlong pursuit of electricity generation capacity. To understand this process, we assert the importance of focusing on the bureaucratic/politician relationship, which we label ‘bureaucratic independence’, rather than on the oft-used concept of ‘bureaucratic autonomy’ usually associated with the concentration of political power.

Language as a Tool of Divisive Politics: Perspectives on Foreign Nationals in South Africa

The role of language in a diverse and democratic society is critical for many reasons: first, it serves as a vital tool for the realisation of the right to freedom of expression. Secondly, it brings into confluence two other rights: the rights to dignity and equality. When language has the potential to cause hurt or harm, or incite others towards hatred, discrimination, or violence, then law as an instrument must be relied upon to regulate it. Political rhetoric uttered by top politicians in South Africa does not reflect the truth from a policy perspective; it incites hatred towards foreign nationals, shatters communities as fear and suspicion fill individuals who target foreign nationals and is counterproductive when one thinks of nation-building. The rhetoric exceeds the limits of legally protected speech. In addition, scapegoating foreign nationals for the country's socio-economic woes is not only dishonest but is a form of political corruption.

“El Principal Enemigo Nacional”: Revolutionary Guatemala's Response to Allied Policy toward German Presence in Latin America (1944–1952)

AbstractThis article examines the migration and expropriation policies of Guatemala's revolutionary governments toward Germans present in the country during the postwar years and the start of the Cold War. It reconstructs the challenges around the domestic and international articulations of their strategy. Revolutionary governments’ concerted efforts to confiscate valuable land and condition the return of German-Guatemalans classified as ‘dangerous’ can be interpreted as part of a cohesive plan to regain control of strategic domestic resources for future redistribution. It also reflects financial policies that have both electoral and financial purposes. The article is built around newly available judicial, legislative, and consular (France) Guatemalan sources, along with personal letters from Guatemala's top politicians, and complemented by Mexican, Chilean, Argentine, British, and US diplomatic documents. In methodological terms, this article shows the importance of articulating long-term processes, here the nineteenth-century German presence in Guatemala, in the context of historical junctures such as the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. It also draws attention to the importance of analyzing events on domestic, regional and global scales to understand foreign policy-making. This article enriches an already complex set of global, regional, and domestic interactions of the postwar period, as well as the role of Guatemala during that time.

The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς)

Reviewed by: The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς) Konstantina E. Botsiou (bio) James H. Barron, The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate. New York: Melville House. 2020. Pp. xiii + 482. 21 illustrations. Hardcover $31.67. Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς), Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών[A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. Athens: Metechmio, 2021. Pp. 630. Cloth €18.90. Due to a scarcity of archival sources and the aversion of historians, the foreign and defense policies of the seven-year Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974) have not been systematically researched. Although more widely explored than most of the dictatorship’s foreign connections, Greek-American relations during this period are no exception to the rule. Ideologically driven interpretations or “what ifs” hardly substitute for structured analyses of alliances, animosities, and political decisions. As a matter of fact, they strengthen the superficial perception of the junta as a tragic parenthesis in the history of postwar Greece. This tendency is changing, however, and two recent publications are especially noteworthy. James H. Barron and Alexis Papahelas both present detailed accounts of the dictators’ worldviews and actions. They also offer thorough overviews of the Greek political ecosystem in the 1950s and 1960s, where the future dictators thrived. Various continuities and discontinuities with the earlier period place the dictatorship in a historical context driven by anticommunism—and its local version, εθνικοφροσύνη (ethnikofrosyni)—which the colonels took up as their mission when Greek politicians loosened their grip in the era of international détente. Committed to the zeitgeist of bipolarity, the colonels baptized personal competitors as enemies of the state. Barron’s story of Elias Demetracopoulos’s multiple persecutions by Greek and American officials before and during the dictatorship captivates the reader. Demetracopoulos suffered the various types of character assassination that an [End Page 137] assertive journalist posing inconvenient questions would undergo. A prominent example of his research concerned the stationing of nuclear missiles on Greek soil as a result of the “Sputnik effect.” Demetracopoulos maintained many doubts about the Greek government’s denial of any participation in the US program of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which had involved Italy and Turkey before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He believed that Greek participation in the ICBM program would be vital for alleviating the West’s feeling of technological inferiority after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, which suggested that the American soil became vulnerable to a potential Soviet attack (105–110). The refusal to accept the Greek government’s denials severely damaged Demetracopoulos’s relations with the Greek premier Konstantinos Karamanlis (1955–1963). Similar difficulties awaited Demetracopoulos in the US. His close ties with top American public figures were frequently undermined by unforgiving cold warriors who saw in Demetracopoulos a threat to the dominant narrative of law and order. These contradictions underscore the difference that personality can make in any given historical situation. Barron paints a comprehensive portrait of Demetracopoulos, a devoted journalist who earned exceptional resistance credentials as a teenager during the Axis occupation. He later spent his adult life in the twilight zone between censure and shelter by Greek and American agencies and individuals who ranged from committed friends and acquaintances to various top politicians such as Konstantinos Karamanlis, George Papandreou, and Ted Kennedy. In the 1950s, Demetracopoulos had built a reputation as a trustworthy liaison between the Greek media and the American community in Greece. Shortly after the establishment of the military dictatorship he sought refuge in the US via Denmark, acting out of a justified fear that assassination attempts would no longer be limited to his character. Barron’s book stresses for American audiences the Greek dimension of the Watergate scandal. Fate reserved for Demetracopoulos a crucial part in the history of both the junta and the Nixon administration, since it was he who came to reveal the Nixon administration’s “Greek connection.” According to his reports at the...

Combating the Double Erasure: Can a Jew (Kalimi) be an Iranian in the Islamic Republic?

AbstractSince the 1979 revolution, Iranian Jews have faced two powerful and inherently contradictory calls to compromise their voice and identity. From one side, Israel has consistently held the opinion that as an at-risk community they should be evacuated and resettled. On the other, Iran's revolutionary regime has made “Islamic” a centerpiece of Iranian identity, placing Jewish identity directly at odds with what it means to be an Iranian. For decades, foreign opposition groups have spread baseless and unsubstantiated claims suggesting that Iranian Jews are to be placed in concentration camps or forced to wear yellow stars. At the same time, Iran's top politicians repeatedly peddle anti-Semitic innuendo and promote Holocaust denial conspiracies. Yet such narratives miss the central fact rarely acknowledged in Israel or Western academic and public spheres: Iranian Jews have continued to maintain ownership of their story and narrative as both Iranian and Jewish. This article seeks to analyze the navigation of Iranian Jews between their struggle as a religious minority in the Islamic Republic and maintenance of their autonomous voice as represented outside Iran.

Measuring economic diplomacy using event study method: the case of EU-China summit talks and Airbus stock price changes

Economic diplomacy receives growing interest in the field of international relations research ever since the end of the cold war. Despite the vast number of literature on economic diplomacy, there are not many studies measuring the effect of economic diplomacy quantitatively. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to measure economic diplomacy using the event study method that observes the influence of specific events on stock prices. In this study, the summit talks between the EU and China are selected as specific events that are considered as a form of economic diplomacy, and Airbus stock price, the proxy of the reaction to the economic diplomacy, was observed to verify the influence of it. The study categorized the summit talks by the type of participants whether the top politicians were included or not. The result shows that, among all summit talks, the summit talks between top politicians between the EU and China influence the stock price of Airbus positively, and it is statistically significant.

The Khalkhin Gol Conflict and Japan’s Foreign Policy in 1939 – early 1941 (Review of Japanese Historiography)

The authors look into the history and events of the Khalkhin Gol war through the prism of political and economic processes in East Asia, using rare historical sources that usually fall under the radar of most researchers. The Japanese troops in the Khalkha River area stopped hostilities due to the position of the country’s top politicians. The authors show that decisions of the Japanese government were determined by China's unyielding resistance against the aggression and the difficult economic situation in Japan, which had lost access to a number of foreign markets after 1 September 1939, causing its interest in the Soviet Trans-Siberian Railway as an alternative route for trade with Europe including Germany. Moreover, the authors point out that one of the key factors that prompted Japanese leadership to agree to peace negotiations with Moscow and stop escalating the military aggression against the USSR was the effectiveness of the Red Army’s actions in Khalkhin Gol. At the same time, Japan’s military expenses significantly increased as a result of the Nomongan conflict. However, as the article proves by concrete examples, the Japanese militarists did not fully abandon their plans of a war against USSR. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that by 1941 Japanese military leaders had reached a dead end in their strategic planning against Soviet Union. Their projects turned out to be inefficient for tasks and goals that had emerged as a result of the Red Army’s victory at Khalkhin Gol.

Who Are the “Dark” Politicians? Insights From Self-Reports of German State Parliament Candidates

A growing body of studies is focusing on politicians’ personalities, as the personality of political elites has been shown to affect their behavior. Whereas most research uses the big five framework or HEXACO, only a few studies have been able to capture more “aversive,” “dark”—yet non-pathological—personality traits of politicians. However, these studies refer to top politicians; information on the distribution and the correlates of dark personality traits in the broad mass of politicians is still lacking. Moreover, information on dark personality traits in politicians is usually based on expert ratings; data using self-placement is missing. Based on data from six surveys with candidates running for German state elections in 2021 and 2022 (N[pooled data set] = 1,632), we, to the best of our knowledge, offer, for the first time, insights into politicians’ self-reported socially aversive personality traits. “Dark” personality traits are measured by the political elites aversive personality scale (PEAPS). Results show that German politicians exhibit moderate levels of aversive personality traits. In addition, the extent of candidates’ dark personalities is strongly negatively correlated with honesty–humility, agreeableness vs. anger, and extraversion, while associations with other basic personality traits are much weaker or insignificant. We also find that younger, more right-leaning, and more ideologically extreme candidates report higher levels of aversive personality.

The Fundraiser's Transfer of Personal Data from the European Union to the United States in Context of Crowdfunding Activities

European start-up companies must overcome more ‘transfer hurdles’ when personal data is transferred from the European Union to the US (United States of America) as part of crowdfunding campaign activities. Transfer of personal data is commonly not associated with (small scale) crowdfunding activities. However, the strict rules of the EU GDPR (European General Data Protection Regulation) on safeguarding personal data apply to all companies when data is transferred from the EU to the US - regardless the size of the business.
 This article identifies exchange of personal data that takes place between primarily fundraiser and crowdfunding service provider in different steps of fundraising campaigns. The framework for rewardbased crowdfunding for goods production that is provided by the US based Indiegogo platform is used as example and context. The article highlights by way of example the obligations that must be met by European fundraisers as "data controllers" when personal data is transferred to Indiegogo. No easy solutions are provided by either European Union or national data protection authorities on how to establish an adequate level of personal data protection. Paradigms on how to secure transfer of personal data to third countries are available in form of so-called standard contractual clauses, but still conditions for transfer of personal data from Europe to the US are hard to comply with. Apart from entering into an inter partes agreement on use of standard contractual clauses with the crowdfunding platform provider, a European fundraiser must furthermore make a so-called "transfer impact assessment" to ensure that third party access to personal data is avoided. In the case of transfer of personal data from the EU to the US the fundraiser must consider using encryption of data as a "supplementary measure" to block third party access. Encryption of data is however not suitable for exchange of data in a dynamic crowdfunding campaign so other means for protection of data must be found and applied.
 The reason and explanation for making data transfers from the EU to the US that hard for e.g., fundraisers are thus to be found at interstate level in the relation between the EU and the US. According to EU law, more specifically the GDPR and several of the provision of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, US security legislation authorises a disproportionate access for US intelligence services to citizens' personal data. A solution on manageable transfer of personal data from the EU to the US may be found before the end of 2022, since a new TADP (Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework) is currently being negotiated between EU and US at top politician level. However, the implementation of the TADP may take som time since the EU legislative framework needs adjustments to make the new transfer possibilities operational.

Individual users' participation on political Facebook pages

Social media platforms such as Facebook enable citizens to participate in politics by engaging with content from parties and politicians. Most research has described these activites by means of survey self-reports, smaller sample studies which combined surveys and digital trace data, or larger-scale aggregate digital trace data. The current literature lacks a large-scale descriptive account of individual users' interactions with political content. We analyze a large-scale collection of individual-level Facebook user data from the German federal election year 2017. The data contain millions of interactions by over 2.5 million unique users on 320 Facebook pages of major parties in Germany. They include almost all possible ways to publicly interact with content on these pages and as such cannot be collected today due to newer access restrictions. A large share of users participated only once, especially on the top politicians' pages, or interacted only with a single page. However, we also found a sizeable group of users who were active on many different pages even across party boundaries, and that these users were responsible for a majority of comments and reactions on almost all pages. In addition, there were substantial differences in user participation on the main national party pages and the ones of top politicians on the one hand, and the less prominent pages on the other hand. Our large-scale quantitative description provides context for previous and future smaller-scale in-depth analyses.

Are all politicians the same? Reproduction and change of chief executive career patterns in democratic regimes

AbstractThe scholarship on political careers and recruitment has increasingly focused on the conditions that foster the emergence of new political elites. However, top politicians in democratic regimes often share socio‐economic backgrounds and occupy similar political positions before entering office. Career patterns in politics are relatively stable and tend to reproduce themselves over time; this leads to the persistence of core background traits among the members of the political elite. The lack of profile renewal seems at odds with the claim of democratic theory, which asserts that democratic competition is open, inclusive, and expansive. Despite its relevance, the causal mechanisms behind career patterns’ stability among political elites have received little systematic attention. This article contributes to fill the gap, by focusing on democratic chief executives. First, it clarifies the core concepts for the study of political elites and careers. Second, it proposes an understanding of the formation and stability of chief executives’ career patterns as functions of path‐dependent institutional effects. Third, the work uses this theory to investigate persistence and renewal of the background characteristics of all US presidents, from George Washington (1789) to Joe Biden (2021). The analysis contributes to the literature on elite stability, circulation, and renewal in democracy.

Henriko Valua išrinkimo Abiejų Tautų Respublikos valdovu vaizdavimas lotyniškoje prancūzų poezijoje: „J. de La Gessée“ Henriada ir jos autorius

In 1573, Henry de Valois, Duke of Anjou, was elected as the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and some literary works were published to familiarize the French public with the history of Poland and Lithuania, the geographical and economic situation of the country. Some Polish historical works were translated into French (e.g. the chronicle of Jan Herburt of Felsztin), many poets wrote occasional poems, dedicated to the future king, in French, Polish, and Latin. This article aims to discuss the poem Henrias, dedicated to Henry de Valois, written in Latin by a French poet under the pseudonym Jean de La Gessée, – a rare and completely unexplored work until today. Henrias was addressed not only to the future king but also to the court, the French diplomats and ambassadors of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Henry de Valois is portrayed here according to the tradition of Renaissance epic poetry by using an ethical model of the ruler’s “virtues” and by discussing the ruler’s place in history, linking him both to the mythological origins of the French nation (to the myth of Trojan ancestry), and to the former rulers of Poland and Lithuania (the ruler is depicted here as the successor of their policy). The poet also presented a description of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – the future reign of Henry de Valois – in accordance with the literary tradition of 16th-century representations of Poland–Lithuania. To be noted, this is the first description of Poland–Lithuania in French poetry in Latin and one of the first in all French poetry. The author also wrote an unpublished larger-scale heroic epic Poloniade in French, dedicated to Henry de Valois, but it has not survived. This article also serves as an introduction to the biography and works of this not-well-known poet and discusses the problem of the authorship of his works. It is highly probable that the authorship was so far misattributed and that the author’s name is just a pseudonym of another court poet – talented and highly educated courtier Louis d’Amboise, as shown by the many details, hidden in his poems, including biographical facts (in all his works) and the anagrams of his name (in his Latin poems). Henrias and other Latin poems of this author (e.g. Epigrammatôn … libri duo) show the direct and close contact of the author with the royal entourage, top politicians, and foreign diplomats. It is unlikely that the author was a newcomer protestant Gascon, looking for success in Paris because Henrias was undoubtedly written at the king’s request and was very well paid (as well as the Poloniade). It shows that the author was a Catholic and he was quite familiar with the history and political realities of Poland–Lithuania. Keywords: 16th century; Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; Henri III, Henri de Valois; 1573 ruler election; Latin Lituanica; neo-Latin literature; 16th-century occasional poetry; 16th-century French literature; Henrias; Jean de La Gessée; Louis d’Amboise.

The aging leader: Approaching age as a factor in international relations

This article goes against the grain of traditional approaches in international relations by claiming that a leader’s biological age is a factor in this individual’s execution of foreign policy. The traditional logic of political science that has generally been diminishing the impact of a leader’s individual features on policy for the sake of institutional procedures needs to be reassessed. A common assumption is that an aging king or president, especially those entering the eighth or ninth decade of their lives, are likely to make prudent, balanced, and wise political decisions due to their rich experience. However, this notion lacks sufficient empirical support from history. The physical “wear and tear” of the aging leader, along with their declining psychological functions, are likely to negatively impact their foreign-policy decisions that may fall under the influence of the leader’s information overload, cognitive narcissism, profound stubbornness, as well as their irrational sense of urgency, and their tendency to overcompensate. In democracies, the political tenure of top politicians is limited by constitutional terms or scheduled elections. In authoritarian systems, only the top figure’s death or incapacitation become actual “schedulers” of their political tenure. Although a person’s advanced age should not disqualify him or her from public office, without institutional checks on the leader’s judgements and behavior as well as the critical power of public opinion and the press, the aging authoritarian leader can become unpredictably risky.

The Nature of School-Based Management in Independent Schools in the State of Qatar: An Analytical Study

ABSTRACT In 2003, Qatar launched the initiative for Developing Education, called Education for New Era Reform, based on four principles: independence, accountability, diversity, and choice. Public schools were therefore converted to “Independent Schools” and provided with more resources. We examined the reform’s effectiveness using an interpretive paradigm, employing mixed qualitative methods, and interviewing 28 principals and deputy principals. The results show that the reform gained the most support from top politicians, thus leading to rapid implementation, which led to the schools’ workforce inefficiency in adapting to these changes. Consequently, those responsible for the implementation retreated and diverted from school independence.

Comparing Twitter and Instagram as platforms for party leader communication

While social media have become key in contemporary political campaigns, different platforms feature differing affordances, allowing for varying functionalities. Even more importantly, different platforms are populated by different user groups. As Twitter has received large amounts of scholarly attention, comparisons of how and why different social media platforms are used for political communication are less abundant. This study looks at the differences between Twitter and Instagram as platforms for top politicians, describing and explaining how they allow for interaction with different types of audiences. The study gauges the interaction patterns emerging from activity undertaken by Norwegian party leaders on Twitter and Instagram during the 2017 Norwegian elections and shows how use of these two platforms differ not only in terms of the volume and structure of the activities — but also with regard to what types of other users the party leaders choose to interact with on the studied platforms and why we see differences between them.

Instagram and political campaigning in the 2017 German federal election. A quantitative content analysis of German top politicians’ and parliamentary parties’ posts

ABSTRACT This article compares the communication strategies of party and candidate accounts on Instagram during the 2017 German federal election. Building upon previous research, we conceptualize how the digital architecture of the platform determines its communication norms and how the actual communication practices implemented by parties and candidates follow or violate these norms. Therefore, we analyze how Instagram is used to implement different campaign strategies, focusing on (1) the use of network-related Instagram features-like Hashtags-, (2) text-integrated images, (3) dominant visual themes, (4) visual personalization, and (5) the addressing of policy issues. Since Germany's voting system rewards both candidate- and party-focused campaigning, the country is an ideal case study for an appropriate comparison of party and candidate accounts. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all 581 posts published on party and candidate accounts during the four weeks before the election. The results suggest that parties and candidates used complementary communication strategies instead of relying on a single tactic. We are able showing that parties in parts strategically violated Instagram's communication norms to convey hard-to-visualize policy messages while candidates prefered to post professional personalized posts. The presented findings provide a starting point for future studies on the perceptions and behavioral outcomes of different campaign strategies.

A simulation exercise for incorporating long-term path dependencies in urgent decision-making

Urban policymakers of the 2020s must act within various types of wicked socio-ecological disruptions. Under deep uncertainty and time pressure, they must make decisions which will define the scope of possible actions in the future. Our aim was to develop a research instrument that would enable researchers and practitioners to learn about such policymaking. We designed and ran a half-day simulation exercise, the Policy Operations Room (POR). The participants were the top politicians and a group of senior experts from the City of Helsinki, Finland. The design of the exercise was based on a review of simulation and gaming research literature. The exercise managed to integrate – albeit imperfectly – the utilitarian and emancipatory dimensions in futures studies: it gave the participants the utilitarian possibility to practice decision-making and the emancipatory possibility to critically reflect on decision-making in wicked, science-based scenarios. It also gave the researchers a chance to witness urgent decision-making in action. Issues deserving further attention include the inclusion of social-political complexity in the scenarios and practitioner involvement in the design process of the exercise. All in all, the POR constitutes a unique way of integrating science-based assessment of future path dependencies into science–policy research and interaction.

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL HARMONY, RULE OF LAW AND IMPLICATIONS ON HUMAN SECURITY IN ZIMBABWE


 
 
 Human security has recently emerged as a global issue that requires international cooperation. Moreso, the concepts of political harmony and rule of law have also become a common agenda at many international conferences. Human insecurity in Zimbabwe can be dated back to its colonial past. The colonisation of Zimbabwe by Britain was widely viewed as an attempt by colonisers to introduce a type of monocracy. That marked the initial obstruction to human security for the indigenous people and general lack of cohesion amongst social groups. Currently, Zimbabwe is facing socio-economic challenges which are embedded in the political environment linked to its isolation from the international community through imposition of sanctions for top politicians. The overall objective of this research was to assess philosophical perspectives on the current political situation and rule of law in Zimbabwe and their implications on human security. The research sought to identify the political leadership challenges in addressing human security concerns. To achieve these research objectives, an interdisciplinary approach was used. The methodology for this paper was based on hermeneutics and philosophical analytical models. Results have shown that there is generally an unstable political environment marred with inherent tension due to lack of political harmony and selective application of the law. This paper recommends the need for leadership renewal besides the ideological renewal alongside dialogue and national consensus. Furthermore, the adoption of global village concept emphasizing on democratic principles and political integration could be a possible panacea in addressing the current challenges and ensure human security.
 
 
 

CEO generational differences, risk taking and political connections: Evidence from Malaysian firms

This paper examines the impact of generational differences between Chief Executive Officer (CEOs) with regards to risk taking, proxied by corporate leverage. Further, we investigate whether this relationship is exacerbated or attenuated by political connections. Using a Malaysian dataset for the period 2005 to 2016, we find that Builder CEOs (Generation X, Gen X) are positively associated with corporate leverage, while no significant results are obtained for Seeker CEOs (Baby Boomers). In addition, the positive association is exacerbated if the Gen X CEOs are connected to top politicians in Malaysia. Our additional analyses show that the results are largely driven by duration of political connections and ownership structure of the politically connected firms. This suggests that heterogeneous political connections influence Builder CEOs’ decisions on corporate leverage.

English

The study investigated police officers’ perceptions about corruption in Zimbabwe. The study was informed by Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. A case study design involving a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from sixty-four respondents sampled using a census method of sampling. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and presented on tables and pie charts. The study revealed that police officers were aware of corruption through training, discussions, presentations by bosses and literature. Police officers do not continue to learn about corruption through formal means like workshops. They perceived that corruption existed in the police force; believed that police corruption was due to low salaries, poor working conditions and greediness. Police officers perceived that the existence of corruption in society was due to low salaries, long time in positions of authority and greediness. They also said that corrupt people were usually the rich, the middle class, company owners, top politicians or top management. The factors contributing to corruption in the police force are not due to lack of awareness but relate to power, conditions of service or selfish behaviour or interests. It is recommended that the government improves conditions of service for police officers to reduce corruption.   Key words: Awareness, police officers, corruption, habitus, power, field.