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The interchange fees associated with debit and credit cards have long been a controversial issue in the retail payments system. These fees are paid by a merchant to the cardholder's [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2010.00631.x Byline: Patrick Bernhagen (*), Neil J. Mitchell ([dagger]) Abstract: We examine the commitments of transnational corporations to human rights, labor, environmental, and anti-corruption standards. Modeling commitment as a function of the nature of the firm's business activities and conditioned by neighborhood and audience contexts, we investigate adherence to the principles entailed in the UN Global Compact program by the world's 2000 largest companies. Our results suggest that the decisions to participate in and to take steps to comply with the Global Compact are influenced by the characteristics of the firm as it adapts to its institutional and political environment. Signing up to the program increases the likelihood of firms developing human rights-related company policies and receiving positive external assessments of their performance. Author Affiliation: (*)University of Aberdeen and Center for the Study of Civil War, PRIO ([dagger])University of Aberdeen

The central Red Sea, an oceanic basin floored by Miocene evaporites reaching kilometers in thickness in places, is at an early stage of development, where seafloor spreading has geologically only recently replaced continental rifting. Surveys using a high-resolution multibeam echo sounder around Thetis Deep, a new spreading center, have revealed a remarkable series of structures resembling viscous gravity flows, which are here interpreted as originating from flowage of the evaporites laterally unloaded by axial rifting and other processes developing the relief of the deep. The flow margins are marked by stream-wise lineaments and some apparently rotated markers. Their fronts in the floor of the deep are rounded in plan view and profile. Their surfaces contain small, closely spaced features resembling extensional faults. In one area below declining gradients, the surface contains along-slope ridges and valleys typical of compression folds (ogives). Flow-parallel lineaments and extensional faults lie, respectively, parallel and orthogonal to the direction of maximum seabed gradient. Movement is apparently heterogeneous, at least in part because of varied blocking by relief in underlying basement observed protruding between flows. Flowage is currently transporting materials into the floor of the deep where they have the potential to become incorporated into the young oceanic crust by repeated eruption of axial lavas over them. In the light of these new data, we reexamine the possibility and implications of flowage in the South Atlantic marginal evaporites, in particular, whether flowage contaminated early oceanic crust in such areas. doi: 10.1130/B26518.1

Quantitative cross-national research on human rights violations and repression has made considerable progress in identifying and eliminating economic and political factors that influence the use of torture and killing by governments. Warfare tends to increase violations, democracy--notably full democracy--and trade tends to inhibit violations. Where motives have been considered, this research has generally assumed a strategic motivation for government use of repression. Repression is employed to counter threats from the opposition as represented by the presence of warfare. Less attention has been given to the effect of implementation on levels of repression. Theory suggests that agents are likely to make a substantial independent contribution to the level of repression, if given the opportunity. In this article we develop this argument and present cross-country comparative evidence that suggests that agents' opportunities for hidden action measured by perceived levels of financial corruption substantially influences the incidence of torture in a political system, after controlling for the strategic motive of governments and the other factors found influential in earlier research. We show that the results are robust and not sensitive to alternative modeling, measurement, and research-design decisions., In this article we examine government use of human rights violations as a policy, shaped by the goals of both principals and agents. While treating these violations as a policy [...]

The authors seek to explain the membership of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC). Focusing on human rights violations abroad, the Caucus offers few incentives for representatives to join this organization, yet it consistently has a large membership. Drawing on theoretical literature on Congress and interest groups, the authors argue that members' policy motivation and the subsidizing role of national and transnational human rights interest groups account for the decision to join. Documentary and interview evidence for House members in the 107th and 108th Congresses support these arguments. The results have substantive and theoretical implications for the study of the CHRC, the interactions between members of Congress and interest groups, and the study of congressional caucuses generally. Keywords: Congress; congressional caucuses; Congressional Human Rights Caucus; foreign policy; human rights; interest groups; NGOs

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00681.x Byline: Lynn Bennie (1), Patrick Bernhagen (1), Neil J. Mitchell (1) Abstract: This article examines corporate participation in the UN Global Compact programme. Using data on the world's 2,000 largest companies, we address the question of why companies voluntarily assume the programme's responsibilities and promote the rights of 'global citizenship'. Our analytic approach is to view transnational corporate political behaviour as a result of firm-level decisions shaped by country-level variation in political audience effects. Drawing on earlier research on more conventional forms of corporate political activity, we expect factors influential in the standard model of firm political activity to determine participation in the Global Compact. In addition, we argue that this highly visible, less instrumental dimension of a firm's political behaviour is driven by efforts to build a good environmental and human rights reputation with its audience of external actors. The importance of environmental and human rights concerns depends on the substance of the firm's business activities, the availability of investment and 'exit' options, and the home audience's bias towards the UN and human and environmental rights. We find support for political factors as well as firm and industry-level characteristics influencing the decision to participate in the Global Compact. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Aberdeen Article History: (Accepted: 16 November 2006)

Sexual violence is a category of human rights violation and the article discusses sexual violence committed by government security forces focusing on the issue of delegation.

Democracy and the protection of human fights generally go together, but not in India. India is an outlier in the cross-national research that aims to explain human rights performance. Using state-level subnational data and drawing on the approaches pioneered at the cross-national level, the authors examine the reasons for the outlier status. Their findings suggest that the aggregate wholenation human rights and democracy scores misrepresent the political experience of much of India. The authors find that participation, political parties, and the level and nature of opposition threat help us understand the incidence of human rights violations within India. Keywords: India; human rights; subnational politics; elections

The question of how turbidity currents erode their beds is important for understanding how submarine canyons develop, how they maintain continuity in tectonically active margins to ensure sediment bypass, and for knowing how knickpoints (reaches of anomalously steep gradient) record tectonic information. The problem is potentially more complex than fluvial erosion, because flow vigor is also affected by the flow entraining ambient water and incorporating or depositing suspended load, which can significantly affect its excess density. However, in canyon sections where the total sedimentary mass passing through the canyon is much larger than the locally excavated mass, the solid loads of eroding currents change little during passage down-canyon. Canyon morphology can then potentially reveal how gradient and other factors affect erosion rate. Simple bed erosion models are presented herein, which are analogous to the detachment- and transport-limited erosion models of fluvial geomorphology, which predict that the channel topography should advect or diffuse (smooth out), respectively. Data sets from continental slopes off Alaska, New Jersey, Oregon, Chile, the Barbados accretionary prism, and published maps from other areas show these tendencies. Although knickpoints may arise from spatially varied resistance to erosion, some of those described here lie upstream of faults or anticlines and within uniform turbidites, implying that they can advect upstream. A forward numerical model is developed for knickpoints in the southern Barbados accretionary prism, which appear to have been created in a simple manner by the frontmost thrusts. If the erosion rules are applied continuously, the channel profiles are well represented with both advective and diffusive components. If a boundary condition of nondeposition/erosion is imposed on the base of the knickpoint slope (representing scour associated with a hydraulic jump, for example), the upstream profiles can be reproduced solely by diffusion. In these channels, the threshold stress for transport or erosion is probably small relative to stress imposed by the currents, because modeling shows that a threshold sharpens the knickpoint lip rather than rounds it. For the other, mostly smaller, knickpoints studied, however, the lip varies from sharp to rounded. This varied morphology could arise from a number of influences: effects of flow acceleration, differing threshold stress, differing sediment flux affecting flow power, or depth-varying substrate resistance to erosion. Despite the diversity of forms, upstream migrations imply that erosion can be enhanced where flow is more vigorous on steep gradients, implying that the body rather than the head of turbidity currents is responsible for erosion in those cases. Also discussed is how bed failure, quarrying, and abrasive scour lead to knickpoint evolution in submarine channels that is analogous to that in fluvial channels, but also likely differences are noted. Keywords: accretionary prisms, tectonically active continental slopes, submarine canyon morphology, stream bed erosion.

High rates of Holocene sedimentation in a lake spanning the Thingvellir rift zone of western Iceland provide an unusual opportunity to study the interaction of tectonic and magmatic processes on time scales of thousands of years. Lake Thingvallavatn is oriented SW-NE, parallel to the trend of normal faults and fissures, which extend northeast from Hengill, a central volcano system. Thingvallavatn's lake sediments provide a continuous high-fidelity record of tectono-magmatic processes. Chirp subbottom profiler and sidescan records, together with sediment core information, enabled us to improve constraints on lake stratigraphy since the emplacement of a postglacial lava at 9.1 [+ or -] 0.3 ka. This lava, together with three younger horizons, enabled detailed study of the main tectonic and magmatic events. A major Hengill volcanic event, which controlled the development of the present-day lake morphology, occurred at 1.9 ka, with the eruption of a scoria cone within the lake (Sandey). During this event, the Nesjahraun lava was erupted into the southern part of the lake, the Sandey scoria cone was formed, and major faulting and subsidence occurred in the northern part of the lake, resulting in the formation of an asymmetrical rift. Within the southern part of the lake, a deformed sequence of sediments aged 2.9-1.5 ka, between undeformed younger and older sediments, indicates that liquefaction phenomena are associated with the emplacement of the Nesjahraun lava. Analysis of fault displacement reveals that the total throw summed over all faults across the width of the rift zone is approximately constant (110-130 m) along the long axis of the rift. We estimate an extension rate on the faults of 3.3-8.2 mm [yr.sup.-1] since 9.1 ka, assuming fault dips of 60-75[degrees], which represents 17%-43% of the total plate boundary extension estimated from global plate motion inversion. We speculate that the remaining extension must either be taken up elsewhere in Iceland, for example in the eastern rift zone or along the South Iceland seismic zone, or that extension estimated over the last 9 k.y. underestimates the long-term extension rate due to incomplete sampling of the episodic magmatic component. Keywords: neotectonics, dikes, subsidence, normal faults, Iceland, liquefaction.

Since Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action (1965), it is impossible for political scientists to conceive of political participation without reference to his powerful argument linking numbers of participants, public goods, and participatory outcomes. What is puzzling is the poor empirical support for this argument in the domain where it should work best, namely explaining business political activity. Olson thought his arguments principally applicable to economic groups, and for the empirical development of his arguments Olson drew heavily on business interests, the most active segment of the interest group community. We explore these arguments with business political activities data by examining the statistical performance of various measures of market structure in determining business political activity, and find little empirical support. We do offer an alternative basis for business behavior lodged in both private and collective goods that preserves business rationality and also helps explain not only the amount of business political participation but the modes of business participation.

Export of pelagic carbonate tests from surface waters and their deposition at the seafloor plays a significant role in the C[O.sub.2] cycle and ability of the oceans to absorb atmospheric C[O.sub.2]. Sediment [sup.230]Th and [sup.3]He measurements have been interpreted as evidence that significant lateral advection of pelagic material occurs in the water column, leading to marked spatial variations in deposition rates and, in particular, to significant focusing of deposits on the Pacific equator. We report spatially continuous stratigraphy from two 1000 km seismic lines that show evidence of depositional anomalies near the equator. Accumulation rates were apparently enhanced locally by a factor of two, similar to the proposed modern sediment-focusing factors, but the anomalies are surprisingly patchy over the 20 m.y. period analyzed--they are not confined to an equatorial region, and they are not necessarily found on adjacent seismic profiles. These intermediate-scale anomalies are >~100 km across and represent areas of seafloor that received more deposits for one period, less in following periods, and vice versa. Variogram analysis was used to determine how the spatial scales of deposition changed over the Neogene. The period when the spatial scale of depositional variability was largest correlates with hiatuses in drill cores, a correlation that we interpret as caused by enhanced and spatially heterogeneous carbonate dissolution at that time. The study suggests that seismic stratigraphy has the potential to reveal spatial patterns related to unsteady bottom-water flow and chemistry. Keywords: pelagic carbonate seismic stratigraphy, sediment focusing, pelagic carbonate dissolution, Pacific Ocean circulation, variogram analysis.

In this article we evaluate the influence of democracy on perceived levels of corruption. We argue that the control of corruption depends on the compensation and accountability of public officials, and on an open and competitive economy. We analyze the influence of democracy, controlling for the influence of other political and economic factors including federalism, economic development, and economic competition. The findings for the importance of economic factors are consistent. The finding in earlier research that federalism increases corruption is not robust. The findings for democracy are influenced importantly by the way that democracy is measured, but we do find that citizens' repetitive participation in competitive elections increases the control of corruption. In doing so, we move beyond the composite indices of democracy in constructing an alternative compound measure of democracy, which we argue is likely to be useful in other research contexts, Does democracy reduce corruption as well as contribute to international peace, to the observance of human rights, and to commitments to the environment (Davenport, 1999; Neumayer, 2002; Poe & Tate, [...]

Despite the fact that domestic and foreign corporations, along with trade associations, are some of the most politically active groups in the United States, earlier research has identified a substantial number of firms that are politically inactive. Using fresh data collected from the 2000 election cycle for the Fortune 1000 and the Forbes top foreign investors, we examine business soft money, lobbying expenditures, as well as PAC contributions, in exploring economic, institutional, and political factors that might explain the choice of political activity or inactivity. This article goes beyond earlier research in several ways. Previous research has focused on PAC contributions rather than a fuller range of activities, and it has not included association political activity in the analysis of firm-level behavior. Also, the influence of other actors in the political system, notably environmental and citizen groups, has not been systematically examined. Theoretically, these data allow us to examine the countervailing power thesis, the institutionalists' arguments about the nature of foreign business behavior, and the unexplored collective action questions that business associational activity poses--are firm and associational activities complements or substitutes?

An ITER TF model coil conductor (DP4) was examined to determine electromagnetic and mechanical AC loss under transverse cyclic loading.

Marine conservation is examined as an important but underrepresented component of New Zealand's environmental policy. Conservation strategies are also discussed, including sustainable development, preservation, processes that address ecosystems as well as individual species, and land rights of indigenous peoples.

An evaluation of a special cryogenic press constructed to study the electrical and mechanical characteristics of full-size ITER conductor samples under transverse, mechanical loading conditions is presented. A superconducting dipole coil is used to provide the required magnetic field for magnetization measurements. The results, obtained after several tens of full loading cycles, indicate a significant reduction of the cable coupling loss time constants after a number of cycles.

Research was conducted to examine the mechanical and electrical characteristics of full-size ITER multistrand Nb3Sn cable-in-conduit conductor samples under transverse, mechanical loading. The transverse magnetic force that takes place when the conductors are used in a coil was simulated. A summary of findings derived with up to several tens of full loading cycles are presented.

Research was conducted to examine the mechanical and electrical properties of full-size ITER-CS cable samples under transverse, mechanical loading. Fatique tests were conducted including loading the conductor from zero up to 260 kN for a large number of cycles to investigate the evolution of n-tau adn R(sub c) under realistic ITER lifetime conditions. Results of the mechanical calculations and the electromagnetic losses and interstrand contact resistances are presented and discussed.

New Hawaii-MR1 sonar data show that the southernmost Mid-Atlantic Ridge joins the South American-Antarctic Ridge by an obliquely opening rift and overlaps Spiess Ridge, the westernmost segment of the Southwest Indian Ridge, with no evidence for a transform fault. The junction is therefore neither ridge-fault-fault nor ridge-ridge-ridge. We speculate that growth of Spiess Ridge adjacent to the triple junction has caused this complexity and discuss more generally the origins of distributed deformation at oceanic triple junctions.

Corporate political action committees (PACs) are the focus of much research on corporate political activity. Political scientists, economists, and sociologists have explored the determinants of PAC formation and PAC spending by advancing and to some extent testing hypotheses concerning the size of corporations, the regulation of industries, government procurement, social connections, and corporate cultures. Progress has been made in sorting through these hypotheses, although the amount of explained variance remains relatively modest. We define the dependent variable in three ways: the decision to form a PAC, the amount to be contributed, and the number of candidates to be supported. With data largely drawn from Fortune 500 companies for the 1987-1988 election cycle, improved firm-level measures of regulation, and the inclusion of political as well as economic factors influencing corporate decision-making, we develop and provide substantial support for a politically constrained, profit-maximizing model of corporate political activity.

The [Nb.sub.3]Sn cable-in-conduit 40kA, 13 T conductors proposed for the next generation ITER tokamak are being tested by the construction of a 600 MJ solenoid and a 80 MJ race track coil. The conductors are being manufactured in a world wide collaboration, with task sharing among the four partners of the ITER project. To date, the qualification and [approximately]20% of the procurement of of the [Nb.sub.3]Sn strands is complete. Several hundred meters of dummy copper cable and short lengths of superconducting cable are available. The production of jacket sections is advanced and the two jacketing lines are set up for production. The manufacture of 98 tonnes of cable-in-conduit conductors will be completed in autumn 96.

Image histograms are useful for revealing the relative proportions of geological components in a scene, but these proportions are commonly obscured by the variability caused by signal fading (image speckle). This variability can potentially be reduced by deconvolution because a scene's PDF is related to the Rayleigh log-PDF and PDF of backscatter strengths via a convolution integral. A simple deconvolution algorithm is demonstrated by separating a submarine lava flow from its adjacent sediments in a side-scan sonar image histogram.

The lobbying practices of foreign business interests in the US are investigated to determine if foreign-owned firms follow the political practices in their home countries or if they adapt to those of the host country. Data on political action committee allocation strategies during the 1987-88 election period show that foreign companies adapt to the political economy of the host country.

This article examines business donations to the Conservative Party during the Thatcher era. It argues that these donations cannot be treated as equivalent to PAC (political action committee) contributions in the United States. On the basis of data collected for the largest 500 British firms, the article argues that beyond market characteristics, it is also important to look at the motivations of businessmen and what the party can do to encourage donations. This represents an alternative explanation to Useem's influential inner circle thesis for why firms contribute to the Conservative Party.

There is no rhadamanthine solution to the problem of comparing the research performance of departments, and there is no shortage of interest in the topic. Institutionally, a favorable ranking provides [...]

Byline: Rodney McAdam, Renee Reid, Richard Harris, Neil Mitchell The aim of this paper is to conduct an empirical study of innovation incorporation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) as a key sustainable source of competitive advantage, by controlling for key technological and organisational determinants. Large-scale changes in technology, markets and in large organisation strategies have resulted in the need for many SMEs to radically re-examine and modify their approaches to innovation management. This study uses a grounded SME innovation model, developed from earlier studies, as the basis of a questionnaire survey of 2086 SMEs in the UK. The results indicate that innovation was most strongly related to government grant aid, firm size, industrial sector, and the approach taken by the firm to organise how it develops products and processes.

The College Board convened a committee of political scientists with diverse country expertise and experience teaching introduction to comparative politics for the purpose of evaluating the existing Advanced Placement Program* (AP*) Comparative Government and Politics. The committees gathering provided the opportunity for instructors to systematically reevaluate the structure and content of the introductory comparative course.

The relationship of government and insurgent violence and also how it is modified by differences in geography and by differences in the local political and social context are investigated using the data from the conflict in Nepal. The results show that an involved citizenry, as measured by participation and social capital, can prevent conflict and create conditions where it is less likely for government forces or insurgents to select violence.

The submarine canyons of the Atlantic continental slope have some common morphological properties to river networks, such as inverse power-law relations between channel gradient S and contributing area A. It is noted that this stream-power erosion law can be constructed for a submarine erosion. The origins of morphologic differences between different submarine canyon systems are discussed.

Why does the relationship between a government and its citizens deteriorate to violence? Large-N cross-national quantitative analyses of human rights violations have found an inverse relationship between democracy and violations. These analyses, however, have not been able to address the central finding of an influential subnational analysis of democracy that stresses the importance of a single dimension of democracy, social capital. In this article we combine these two streams of research with fresh data from the Mexican states to investigate how and why democracy inhibits violations. Theoretically, we connect a policy interest in protecting human rights to politicians' office-seeking goals and to the level of social capital. Empirically, our data allow us to disentangle two principal components of democracy, elections and social capital, and include important control variables, notably ethnic diversity, which have been largely left out of the cross-national analyses. Our central finding is that the electoral components rather than social capital produce important consequences for the protection of citizens' human rights.

An analysis of the distribution and structure of mass public beliefs related to nuclear security and nuclear energy issues in the United States and Great Britain is presented. Findings provide evidence of a hierarchical model of policy beliefs with differential adjustments based on situational conditions and raise questions about the kind of geopolitical and institutional conditions.

Corporate political activity is usually operationalized and analyzed as financial contributions to candidates or political parties through political action committees (PA Cs). Very little attention has been paid to other [...]

The commitment to human rights goals is an explicit and well-publicized feature of U.S. foreign policy. U.S. human rights policy performance is evaluated by examining the relationship between the distribution of U.S. foreign assistance and the human rights records of recipient countries. This study, in addition to including more recent data for a larger number of countries, goes beyond earlier studies by comparing the degree of human rights violations between recipients and nonrecipients of U.S. aid and by comparing the performance of those countries that receive a large amount of U.S. assistance and those that do not. The consistent finding of the various analyticaL approaches used in this paper is that stated human rights policy goals are not being achieved.