Controlling Democracy: The Principal–Agent Problems in Election Administration

Election reform has become a major issue since the 2000 election, but little consideration has been given to the issues associated with managing them. In this article, we use principal–agent theory to examine the problems associated with Election Day polling place voting. We note that Election Day voting manifests problems that agency theory shows are difficult to overcome, including adverse selection of and shirking by poll workers. We then examine alternate methods of voting, such as early, absentee, and Internet voting, and show how these reforms can mitigate many of the more severe principal–agent problems in election management.     

'The Rebels Turkish Tyranny': Understanding Sexual Violence in Ireland during the 1640s

This article analyses gendered violence both in the testimonies of English Protestant settlers displaced during the 1641 Irish rebellion and in the pamphlets written shortly afterwards. It argues that, given the settlers' anxiety to highlight their vulnerability and innocence in the face of perceived native Irish barbarism, sexual violence with its suggestions of possible female acquiescence or complicity had an insecure place in their testimonies. Yet contemporary pamphlet writers described the rape of Protestant women as widespread and indiscriminate, using such narratives to question the masculinity of Catholic Irish men. By investigating personal testimonies of the sexual violence suffered by women, as well as the subsequent use of such information in narratives sensationalising the ordeal of Protestants in Ireland in 1641, the complex meanings attached to sexual violence during the mid-seventeenth century can be better appreciated.     

East Timorese Women Challenge Domestic Violence

Timor-Leste's struggle for independence has won it high international profile. Yet there is little known internationally about the role women played in the resistance movement and how independence has affected them. Has democratisation brought women greater freedom and rights? This article argues that some East Timorese women benefited from the construction of a new democratic state by mobilising and unifying in the political space created post-1999. East Timorese women's NGOs allied with international organisations and NGOs to form a campaign against domestic violence. This article takes a constructivist approach, analysing how international norms of women's rights and gender equality have: (1) emerged, (2) reached a tipping point, (3) cascaded and (4) been internalised in a post-conflict, democratising context.     

Pottery Styles during the Early Jomon Period: Geochemical Perspectives on the Moroiso and Ukishima Pottery Styles

Energy‐dispersive X‐ray fluorescence (EDXRF) was used to determine the minor and trace element chemistry of 92 Early Jomon pottery sherds. The sherds came from four contemporary sites in the Kanto region and belong to either the Moroiso or Ukishima style of pottery. Principal components analysis (PCA) and discriminant analysis indicate that there are four major groups in the data set, which correspond to site location. Furthermore, for sites having both Moroiso and Ukishima pottery, the statistical tests indicate that both styles of pottery were made from the same or geochemically similar raw materials. This suggests that both styles were probably made at the same site, and indicates that if the different pottery styles are reflecting ethnic identity, then intermarriage between ethnic groups is occurring. Alternatively, the pottery styles could be reflecting some sort of social interaction between groups.     

An atypical Ancient Egyptian pillow from Sedment el-Gebel: evidence for migrant worker trading and technology

Archaeological artefacts are irreplaceable information resources. Consequently analytical methods must be non-destructive or use the minimum of sample so that an artefact remains accessible and unchanged for future research. The significance and innovation of the current study is the application of micro- and non-destructive analytical methods to an ancient Egyptian pillow in order to gain new knowledge about funerary customs, population composition, trade routes, and technological expertise. In this study, the analytical results highlight the funerary customs of a migrant community within ancient Egypt with an ephemeral technological expertise.     

Can MNCs promote more inclusive tourism? Apollo tour operator's sustainability work

ABSTRACT

Outbound tour operators are key actors in international mass tourism. However, their contribution to more sustainable and inclusive forms of tourism has been critically questioned. Drawing from new institutional theories in organization studies, and informed by the case of one of the largest Scandinavian tour operators, we examine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability work in large tour operators and the challenges faced in being more inclusive. On the basis of in-depth interviews with corporate officers, document analysis and media reports, we show how top-down coercive and normative pressures, coming from the parent company and the host society shape the ability of the daughter corporation to elaborate a more inclusive agenda. However, daughter companies do not merely comply with these institutional pressures and policy is also developed from the ‘bottom-up’. We show how the tour operator's sustainability work is also the result of organizational responses including buffering, bargaining, negotiating and influencing the parent organization. By creating intra and inter-sectoral learning and collaborative industry platforms, MNCs not only exchange and diffuse more inclusive practices among the industry, but also anticipate future normative pressures such as legislation and brand risk. Daughter organizations help shape their institutional arrangements through internal collaborative platforms and by incorporating local events and societal concerns into the multinational CSR policy, especially when flexible policy frameworks operate, and the corporate CSR agenda and organizational field are under formation. However, risks do exist, in the absence of institutional pressures, of perpetuating a superficial adoption of more inclusive practices in the mass tourism industry.