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Purpose: The study draws upon three accounts to examine post-truth politics and its link to accounting. In studying Petrobras, a Brazilian petrochemical company embroiled in a corruption scandal, the authors draw upon a politics of falsity to understand how different depictions of similar events can emerge. The authors depict Petrobras' corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures during the period of corruption juxtaposed against the Brazilian Federal Police investigation (the Lava Jato/Car Wash Operation) and Petrobras' response to the allegations of institutional corruption. Design/methodology/approach: The data set consisted of 56 Petrobras reports including Annual Reports, Financial Statements, Sustainability Reports and Form 20-Fs from 2004 to 2017, information disclosed by the Brazilian Federal Police concerning the Lava Jato Operation and media reports concerning Petrobras and the corruption scandal. The paper employs a discourse analysis approach to depict and interpret the accounts. Findings: Through examining the connection between ontic accounts and ontological presuppositions, the authors illustrate a post-truth logic underpinning accounting, due to the interpretive, contestable and contingent nature of accounting information. Consequently, the authors turn to the “ethics of the real” as a response, as citizen subjects must be cautious in how they approach accounting and CSR disclosures. Originality/value: Rather than relying on simplistic true/false dualities, the authors argue that the “ethics of the real” provides a courageous position for citizen subjects to interrogate the organisation by recognising the role of discourse and disclosure expectations on organisations in a post-truth environment. The study also illustrates how competing, contingent accounts of the same timeframe and events can emerge.

Purpose: This paper examines the 2012–2013 Starbucks tax crisis in the United Kingdom (UK) as an anatomy of tragedy. The tragedy in relation to Starbucks is the displacement of an opportunity to examine the relationship between financial capital and national capitalisms. The paper illustrates how the crisis displaced opportunities for substantive critique concerning financial capital, national capitalisms, multinationals, taxation and society. Design/methodology/approach: As a critical, discursive intervention, the paper examines how rhetoric was employed in 157 media articles published in six UK newspapers and on two news portals (both in print and online). The paper employs rhetorical redescription to the document archive, presenting the finding and analysis as a play in the style of an Aristotelian tragedy. Findings: Analysis of the Starbucks approach to transfer pricing identifies misunderstandings of accounting, taxation transfer pricing, and ‘‘resolution” and how the media's construction of Starbucks as immoral, anti-British, potentially illegal operated to confuse the politics. The effect of these misunderstandings and confusion was to take attention away from a politics concerning financial capital valorisation and national capitalisms (jurisdictions raising tax revenue for government spending and social services). Originality/value: First, the paper explores the politics of displacement to illustrate the metonymic concealment of the primary identity of the political. Second, Aristotelian tragedy is employed to study and present methods of displacement. Third, the empirics are depicted in a dramatic format to illustrate how rhetorical interventions by the media and actors displaced the political focus away from financial capital and national capitalisms.

AbstractAlthough evidence shows that territorial disputes fundamentally shape relations among states, we know surprisingly little about when territorial claims are made. We argue that revisionist states have incentives to make territorial claims when the great powers that manage the system are in crisis. We identify five main sources of systemic instability and develop measures of each of them, demonstrating that the majority of territorial claims in Europe are drawn at times when regional great powers are embroiled in crisis, for example, 1848 or 1870 during the nineteenth century. The claims that emerge at these times are not necessarily among states involved in the crises that generated turmoil (e.g., Prussia and France in 1870). We use a newly developed spatial measure of historical boundary precedents in Europe from 1650 to 1790 to demonstrate that the effect of this known spatial correlate of where claims are drawn matters only when the European system is in crisis. We further demonstrate that this claim-timing pattern is general to the global system of states. In the appendix we corroborate our explanation of our findings with a detailed case study of the territorial claims that led to the contemporary Italian state's formation.

AbstractSince trade must cross borders, to what extent do border walls affect trade flows? We argue that border walls can reduce trade flows. Even if the objective is to only stem illicit flows, border walls heighten “border effects” that can also inhibit legal cross-border flows. Using a gravity model of trade that reflects recent developments in both economic theory and econometrics, we find that the creation of a wall is associated with a reduction in legal trade flows between neighboring countries. We provide a battery of evidence that suggests this reduction is not simply a function of worsening bilateral relations. Our findings have implications for understanding how governments have taken measures to assert sovereign control of their borders in an age of increasing economic globalization.

Abstract:This article examines how the institutional design of borders affects international trade. The explore variation in the effects of borders by comparing new international borders that follow precedent and thus have a prior institutional history with new international borders that lack such an institutional history. The former minimally disrupt—or restore—previous economic networks, while the latter fundamentally disrupt existing economic networks. A variety of empirical tests show that, consistent with this institutional perspective on borders, new international boundaries that follow precedent are associated with significantly faster recovery and greater increase in subsequent trade flows. By contrast, when new international borders are truly new, they disrupt local economic networks, introduce new transaction costs, and impose higher adjustment costs on states, which the authors show to have long-term deleterious effects on trade.

This article examines how the institutional design of borders affects international trade. The authors explore variation in the effects of borders by comparing new international borders that follow precedent and thus have a prior institutional history with new international borders that lack such an institutional history. The former minimally disrupt—or restore—previous economic networks, while the latter fundamentally disrupt existing economic networks. A variety of empirical tests show that, consistent with this institutional perspective on borders, new international boundaries that follow precedent are associated with significantly faster recovery and greater increase in subsequent trade flows. By contrast, when new international borders are truly new, they disrupt local economic networks, introduce new transaction costs, and impose higher adjustment costs on states, which the authors show to have long-term deleterious effects on trade.

AbstractViolent nonstate groups are usually weaker than the states they target. Theory suggests that groups carefully condition their choice of tactics on anticipated state response. Yet scholars know very little about whether and how groups strategically plan attacks in anticipation of state response. Scholars do not know if and under what conditions groups employ violent tactics to provoke or avoid a forceful state response, although extant theory is consistent with both possibilities. Relatedly, there is little systematic evidence about why groups choose terrorist or guerrilla tactics and how this choice relates to anticipated state response. I develop a theoretical and empirical model of the interaction between groups and states that generates unique evidence on all three fronts. Using data on attacks in Western Europe from 1950 to 2004, I show that guerrilla attacks are sometimes associated with provoking forceful state response, whereas terrorist attacks are generally associated with avoiding forceful response. Groups effectively choose their tactics to avoid forceful state responses that are too damaging for themselves but provoke forceful responses that disproportionately harm civilians. These findings survive several robustness and model specification tests.

Abstract:The authors study the influence of domestic political dissent and violence on incumbent dictators and their regimes. They argue that elite with an interest in preserving the regime hold dictators accountable when there is a significant increase in terrorism. To pinpoint the accountability of dictators to elite who are strongly invested in the current regime, the authors make a novel theoretical distinction between reshufflingcoups that change the leader but leave the regime intact and regime-changecoups that completely change the set of elites atop the regime. Using a new data set that distinguishes between these two coup types, the authors provide robust evidence that terrorism is a consistent predictor of reshuffling coups, whereas forms of dissent that require broader public participation and support, such as protests and insurgencies, are associated with regime-change coup attempts. This article is the first to show that incumbent dictators are held accountable for terrorist campaigns that occur on their watch.

The authors study the influence of domestic political dissent and violence on incumbent dictators and their regimes. They argue that elite with an interest in preserving the regime hold dictators accountable when there is a significant increase in terrorism. To pinpoint the accountability of dictators to elite who are strongly invested in the current regime, the authors make a novel theoretical distinction between reshuffling coups that change the leader but leave the regime intact and regime-change coups that completely change the set of elites atop the regime. Using a new data set that distinguishes between these two coup types, the authors provide robust evidence that terrorism is a consistent predictor of reshuffling coups, whereas forms of dissent that require broader public participation and support, such as protests and insurgencies, are associated with regime-change coup attempts. This article is the first to show that incumbent dictators are held accountable for terrorist campaigns that occur on their watch.

AbstractDemocracies are more supportive of US positions on important votes in the UN General Assembly than of nondemocracies. Is this because democracies share common perspectives, or does this pattern reflect coercion? Since 1985, US law has stipulated that the US State Department identify important votes and that aid disbursements reflect voting decisions. To unravel these alternative explanations, we introduce a strategic statistical model that allows us to estimate voting preferences, vulnerability to influence, and credibility of linkage, which are theoretical quantities of interest that are not directly observable. The results reject the hypothesis of shared democratic values: poor democracies have voting preferences that are more oppositional to US positions than autocracies, and they are more willing than autocracies to take symbolic stands that may cost them foreign aid. Democracies support US positions, however, because US aid linkages are more credible when directed toward democratic countries. Splitting the sample into Cold War and post–Cold War segments, we find that the end of the Cold War changed the way US linkage strategies treated allies and left- and right-leaning governments, but the effects of democracy remained constant.

AbstractLittle existing work has systematically examined the factors that help terrorist groups survive or contribute to their failure. State support for terrorist groups is commonly thought to be a factor that helps groups to survive. I demonstrate with newly collected data that state sponsorship is not always helpful to terrorist groups. The resources provided by sponsors increase a group's ability to maintain itself internally. However, when a group has a sponsor that provides it with safe haven, the risk of the group being forcefully eliminated by the target increases. I argue that sponsors that provide safe haven can have incentives to provide information to the target about the groups to avoid potential costs from target military operations within their territory. The key empirical findings suggest that state sponsorship is a less serious problem for target states than many previously thought.

AbstractWe argue that new international borders are rarely new. We propose that when states choose new borders they use previous administrative frontiers to solve a difficult short-term bargaining problem and a long-term coordination problem. With a unique new set of data collected specifically for this project, we systematically examine the new international borders of the twentieth century resulting from secession, partition, and the use of force. New international borders, we find, are drawn not according to principles of “nationalism” or defensible borders, but rather according to previous administrative frontiers. How borders are drawn has important consequences for international stability: borders drawn along previously existing internal or external administrative frontiers experience fewer future territorial disputes and have a much lower risk of militarized confrontation if a dispute emerges.

This study used telemetry to determine spawning behavior and subtidal habitat use of horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus. We attached combined acoustic and radio transmitters to 12 gravid female horseshoe crabs at Ted Harvey Beach and 12 at North Bowers Beach (both on the western shore of Delaware Bay) over a 5-d period before peak spawning on the new moon. Horseshoe crabs were acoustically tracked and radio-tracked daily for 8 d during both high tides and during the incoming dominant (higher) high tide. All horseshoe crabs were relocated at least once, and 83% of females spawned from two to six times (x= 3.35, SE = 0.18). Of these females, 85% spawned on two to five consecutive nights (x= 3.31, SE = 0.59). Most (95%) females spawned on the beaches where they were initially tagged. Typically, the shoreline used by an individual for spawning ranged from 70 to 1,160 m (x= 351 m, SE = 38 m). Between spawning events, horseshoe crabs remained 50–715 m offshore (x= 299 m, SE = 57 m) from their established spawning beaches. Following the new moon, all but one (96%) moved out of range of our survey area, which extended approximately 1 km from the shoreline. Multistate mark–recapture models were used to estimate recapture probabilities and daily probabilities of spawning and departure from the vicinity of the spawning beaches. The probability of recapture by acoustic telemetry was high and estimated to be 0.95 (95% confidence interval, 0.73–0.99). Horseshoe crabs equipped with acoustic and radio transmitters have high rates of recapture, can be tracked continually, and can be relocated in both foreshore and inshore habitats.

Describes a process for transferring and setting an image used on stage from Adobe Photoshop 7 to the Adobe Illustrator 10. Features of the Illustrator; Easiest way to merge the multiple layers of a source image; Large format printers needed in order to set a printable area; Types of color mode.