Are You A Terrorist? Comparing Security Screening for Iraqi Asylum Seekers in the United States and Sweden

How can countries balance demands for national security while remaining committed to humanitarian protection? In 2016, the United States and European Union agreed to resettle significant numbers of refugees. Some politicians, including President Trump, argued that refugees are a security threat, even though there are few refugees connected to terrorism. This article investigates how the United States and Sweden screened for terrorism with Iraqi asylum seekers from 2003‐2013, in order to discover how states balance protection and security. This study finds significant policy convergence in three areas (security checks and databases, interagency cooperation, and safety valve programmes), but retains different definitions of terrorism. Policy convergence was driven by international law, UNHCR guidance notes, and international conferences. The study concludes by discussing the policy implications for “extreme vetting” and the use of future safety valve programmes.

Policy Implications

• From 2003‐2013, both the US and Sweden added new security checks, databases, and interagency cooperation. One lesson is that in response to perceived security threats, states often add new layers of bureaucracy and technologies, resulting in slower, more burdensome processes.
• To overcome these barriers, both the US and Sweden created safety value immigration programmes to relieve the pressure from overwhelming demand from Iraqi asylum‐seekers. Policymakers should consider the strategic use of safety valve programmes to speed up processing, allocate additional resources, and provide temporary protection without revising the wider immigration systems.

     

Global Warming Risk Perceptions in India

Few studies have focused on global warming risk perceptions among people in poor and developing countries, who are disproportionately impacted by climate change. This analysis conducts a comprehensive assessment of global warming risk perceptions in India using a national sample survey. Consistent with cultural theory, egalitarianism was positively associated with global warming risk perceptions. In addition, perceived vulnerability and resilience to extreme weather events were also two of the strongest factors associated with global warming risk perceptions. While worry was positively associated with risk perceptions, it accounted for only a small proportion of the variance, unlike studies in developed countries. Finally, the study also collected global warming affective images. The most common responses were “don't know” or “can't say” (25%), followed by “pollution” (21%), “heat” (20%), and “nature” (16%). The study finds that the predictors of global warming risk perceptions among the Indian public are both similar and different than those in developed countries, which has important implications for climate change communication in India.     

Determinants of Charitable Donations to Large U.S. Higher Education,Hospital, and Scientific Research NPOs: New Evidence from Panel Data

We provide improved evidence on effects that fund-raising, government support, and program revenue of U.S. higher education, hospital, and scientific research nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have on donations to those NPOs and provide improved estimates of price elasticities of donations to, and donor demand for output of, those NPOs. Applying econometric tests, we find the best-specified model is two-way fixed effects, which controls for organization-specific and time-specific factors. Results suggest that U.S. higher education, hospital, and scientific research NPOs fund-raise to the point where the marginal fund-raising dollar brings in zero dollars of donations, donor demand for output of hospitals and scientific research NPOs is price inelastic and price elastic, respectively, and results are not sensitive to specification of price.     

The Devils in the Detail: Some Reflections on Contracting for Social Care by Voluntary Organizations

This paper explores the political origins and the process of introduction of the community care policy in the United Kingdom. The particular concerns of voluntary organizations in the face of the new responsibilities conferred upon them by legislation and their expectations of likely outcomes are examined. Evidence from a recent research study undertaken as part of the ESRC's Contracts and Competition Programme is then employed to draw up a preliminary balance sheet of the actual experience of voluntary bodies, their role in the operation of community care policy and their changing relationships with other agencies and the users of services.     

Bayesian estimation of the latent dimension and communities in stochastic blockmodels

Statistics and Computing - Spectral embedding of adjacency or Laplacian matrices of undirected graphs is a common technique for representing a network in a lower dimensional latent space, with...     

Dyadic Interaction: Greater than the Sum of its Parts?

The study of dyadic interaction plays a major role in infancy research. To advance conceptually informed measurement of dyadic interaction and integration across studies, we examined factor structure of individual parents' and infants' measures and dyadic measures from face‐to‐face interactions in two samples of 6‐month‐old infants and their parents: mothers from a demographically heterogeneous sample (N = 164), and mothers and fathers (N = 156) from a Caucasian middle‐class sample. Results suggested that a) individual and dyadic measures, and parents' and infants' behaviors contribute independent information, b) measures of both valence and process are needed, c) there are context‐general and context‐specific qualities, and d) structure of dyadic interaction is more similar among mother–infant dyads from independent samples than between mother–infant and father–infant dyads within the same sample. Future research should use multiple measures incorporating valence, temporal processes, contextual influences, and behaviors of individual partners along with dyadic measures to adequately assess the quality of dyadic interaction.