State Building as a Source of Islamic Political Organization1

Previous research on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has been limited in providing a generalizable theory of its origins and systematically account for the cross‐national variation in the prevalence of Islamic movements. Following a state‐centered approach, this study argues that state‐building activities are a primary origin of Islamic movements. Regimes adopt religious symbolism and functions that legitimate the role of Islam in the public sphere. State incorporation of religion thus creates Islam as a frame for political action, with increased access to mobilizing resources and better able to withstand repression and political exclusion. To provide an explicit and systematic test of cross‐national variation, data on 170 political and militant organizations across the region are analyzed. Results indicate that state incorporation of religion is a crucial factor in the religiosity of movement organizations. Mixed effects of political exclusion and repression are found. No support is found for theories of economic grievances or foreign influence as causes of Islamic mobilization. In sum, analysis suggests that a state‐centered perspective is the most fitting account of political Islam.     

Institutions and Policies for Pro‐poor Agricultural Growth

Global experience with pro‐poor growth and empirical work spanning India, Malawi and Zimbabwe demonstrates the importance of agricultural growth for poverty reduction in poor rural areas, while also pointing to the need for complementary non‐farm sector growth. Theoretical arguments, historical evidence and livelihoods modelling in poor medium‐potential rural economies suggest that, contrary to thinking dominating much of current development policy, subsidies to relieve critical seasonal credit and cash restraints and reduce market and input supply uncertainties need to help in ‘kick‐starting’ agricultural markets if increased smallholder productivity in food‐grains is to drive rural non‐farm growth. Establishing the base conditions for these to work, designing and implementing them to be effective, and then phasing them out are major challenges facing policymakers.     

Robust Methods—Some Examples of Their Use

We describe several analyses in which robustness considerations have proved relevant. These examples exhibit the importance of (a) graphic displays as aids to formulating a preliminary model; (b) summary statistics that reduce the influence of outliers, that (c) give added opportunities of detecting relationships, and (d) are not unduly sensitive to granularity in the observations; and (e) techniques that pay due attention to anomalies in the data that superficially may appear to be negligible but that can obscure important effects. Finally, we make some general comments on the advantages and disadvantages of robust methodology.     

Markov models of mite movements

Continuous time Markov models were used to analyse data from two bioassays to investigate the influence of β-fraction, a by-product of hop processing, on the two-spotted spider mite. The models were fitted to aggregate counts of the numbers of live and dead mites on treated and untreated halves of discs cut from leaves of hop and French bean plants. Some of the rate parameters were time dependent. Although not all parameters could be estimated precisely, the analysis enabled the quantitative effects of treatment over time to be estimated with reasonable precision. The estimated treatment effects were largely insensitive to the assumed values of other parameters. The first bioassay showed a progressive initial response to increasing concentration of β-fraction, although data at the intermediate concentration appeared anomalous. The second bioassay showed similar responses on hop and French bean leaves, with a stronger repellent effect on the lower leaf surface than on the upper surface.     

A machine learning analysis of drought and rural population change on the North American Great Plains since the 1970s

Population and Environment - Machine learning techniques have to date not been widely used in population-environment research, but represent a promising tool for identifying relationships between...     

Overwhelming Casualties: Medical Ethics in a Time of Terror

Codes of ethics and ethics guidelines define standards of professional conduct, and ways to prioritize or balance ethical principles when these appear to be in conflict. In 1991 an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars met at the University of Toronto to discuss these problems in a Workshop on Ethical Considerations in Scholarship and Science. A document, “The Toronto Resolution”; (TTR), was developed, providing twelve principles for incorporation into scientific and scholarly codes, with the object of ensuring that professionals in science recognize the potential consequences of their work in the broader social context. To examine the extent to which existing codes are consonant with The Toronto Resolution's 12 principles, a content analysis was conducted on the codes of 21 Ontario‐based scientific and scholarly organizations. Criteria used in the content analysis were standardized and determined to be reliable. Only a weak correspondence was found between the contents of the codes of the scientific and scholarly organizations surveyed here and the principles set out in TTR. In particular, guidelines on specific social issues such as environmental effects or conflict resolution are scarcely mentioned at all. This study encourages consideration of The Toronto Resolution by the ethics committees of scientific and scholarly associations, as codes are revised or as new interpretations of principles in the codes evolve.