Public Policy Commons^™

Migration And Conflict, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations is ill-equipped to prevent, much less end, intrastate conflicts. Today’s conflicts and an explosive mix of other interrelated causes—including violence, famine, extreme poverty, climate-related disasters and political oppression—have led to a global migration and population-displacement crisis. This article examines the intersection of conflict and migration. It presents the data on migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and exposes the rise of extreme nationalist tendencies in the West—in particular, Europe, where several measures to stem the flow of refugees have been imposed. The article concludes with a warning about global poverty and marginalization—a prescription for violent conflict …

North African Regular And Irregular Migration: The Case Of Libya, Mustafa O. Attir

New England Journal of Public Policy

Because of its geographical size and location, Libya has for centuries been a transit county for human movement across the region. Thus, its experience with immigrants has a long history. In the early 1970s, Libya became a destination for foreigners seeking jobs. Some entered the country legally, others illegally. All came to work, live, and send remittances back to their families. During the 1990s, when many migrants used Libya as a transit country for crossing the sea to Europe, the European Union started negotiating with the Libyan government to curb the flow of irregular migrants. In 2011, the country joined …

Gendering Migration: Women, Migratory Routes And Trafficking, Nicolamaria Coppola

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines international migration from a gender perspective. It asserts that migration can be empowering for women, and at the same time it may exacerbate their vulnerabilities, including abuse and trafficking, particularly when migrants are low skilled or irregular.

European Immigration Controls Conforming To Human Rights Standards, Yannis Ktistakis

New England Journal of Public Policy

The European continent has for some years been facing increased pressure from migration. In 2010, Europe, in comparison with the other continents, was expected to host the largest number of migrants: 69.8 million migrants representing 32.6 percent of the total flow of migrants (213.9 million international migrants). This pressure has caused the two main European organizations, the Council of Europe and the European Union, to act decisively for the protection of migrants. Although the European legal order offers a high standard of human rights protection—having adopted, over the decades, the relevant instruments and developed effective mechanisms—the two European organizations have …

The Mediterranean Refugee Crisis: Heritage, Tourism, And Migration, Marxiano Melotti

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Mediterranean Sea has become a huge cemetery: many thousands of migrants have lost their lives trying to cross it in search of a better future. In 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees reached Europe through irregular means, but almost 4,000 went missing and probably drowned. In 2016, 364,000 arrived in Europe and more than 5,000 were lost en route. The arrivals in Italy by sea were 181,436 in 2016 and 119,369 in 2017. While UN organizations and EU governments seem unable or unwilling to face this epoch-making drama, the culture industry has begun to exploit it. Migrant …

Introduction, Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

America faces a reckoning, a crucible of what Reinhold Niebuhr observed more than eighty years ago. Our democratic principles and traditions are imperiled by the power of financial oligarchs and unfettered money flows, which have contributed to massive inequality that, in turn, has given rise to political unrest and a sense of cultural unmooring.

The articles presented here are both descriptive and normative, setting forth a complex social problem with seemingly bottomless proportions and then offering a design or set of remedial actions to alleviate them. Drawing on my professional experience going back to the mid-1970s, I wrote these pieces …

Undimmed By Human Tears: American Cities, Philanthropy, And The Civic Ideal (1992), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Commissioned by the Council on Foundations in 1992 at a time when urban concerns had fallen off the national agenda, this article contains summary recommendations of an investigation into the response of grantmakers and urban policy experts after the deadly violence that occurred in Los Angeles that spring. An April 29 state-court acquittal of police officers accused of using excessive force against Rodney King had sparked two days of burning and looting throughout South Central Los Angeles, an area hard-hit by job loss and plant closings that over the previous twenty years had become demographically and economically transformed. Once an …

Improving Impact: Collaborative Multi-Party, Multi-Sector Engagement (2011), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Most people do not realize the full implications of the fact that we live now in an era marked more by networks than hierarchies. Nowadays, power is distributed across boundaries and borders, rather than concentrated in one place—be it a physical setting, demographic group, industrial sector, or professional discipline. Thanks to systems thinking and the ubiquity of digital tools and platforms, there are many more opportunities for lawmakers, policymakers, and economic institutions to collaborate with concerned citizens on critical public issues, thereby breaking the grip of lobbyists, third-party intermediaries, and the power elite. On top of that are recent breakthroughs …

Editor’S Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

I have known Marcy Murninghan since the early 1980s when she worked for the late Robert Wood, once president of the University of Massachusetts system, then superintendent of Boston Public Schools during the heyday of court-ordered desegregation. During this tumultuous period in Boston’s history, Murninghan played a significant role, tasked by Wood to plan and direct the structural reorganization of the department.

Since then her career has taken many turns. She has churned out a plethora of reports and analyses for foundations, universities, the corporate world, and media monoliths. The result is a formidable body of work, from which the …

A Framework For Good Ownership And Good Governance (1999), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article encapsulates a more extensive analysis that was commissioned by The Boston Foundation’s board of trustees in December 1998 to investigate its investment practices and identify ways in which its asset management decisions might be brought into fuller alignment with its charitable purpose—without conceding earnings or undermining its philanthropic fiduciary responsibility. The undertaking was spurred by the leadership of Robert A. Glassman, co-founder and co-chair of Wainwright Bank and a trustee of The Boston Foundation (TBF) since 1985, who took the reins from David Rockefeller Jr. in 1995 as chair of TBF’s investment committee. The research project built on …

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Such is the unpredictability of Trump’s streaming executive orders that much of what I write may be irrelevant by the time this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy goes to press. But the articles in this issue will not lose their pertinence, no matter what the administration does. Indeed, given its predilection for “alternative facts,” they assume a greater relevance and consequential significance.

This issue of the journal has three parts. The first part had its origins in a conference on extremism held at the Center for Study of Intractable Conflicts (CRIC), Harris Manchester College Oxford in …

The Apocalyptic Imagination And The Fundamentalist Mindset, Charles B. Strozier

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the psychological meanings of the apocalyptic imagination in what I call a fundamentalist mindset. That mindset has its own long history but is newly relevant in the nuclear age. We no longer need God to bring about ultimate destruction. There are many facets of the fundamentalist mindset (for example, its intense literalism), but the focus in the article is on two: its kairotic sense of time and its rampant paranoia. These two facets interact synergistically around violence that is experienced by those who revel in it as moral in a totalistic sense. Killing becomes healing. The evil …

Syrian Civil Society During The Peace Talks In Geneva: Role And Challenges, Zedoun Alzoubi

New England Journal of Public Policy

Syrian civil society witnessed a new birth in 2011 following decades of hibernation due to oppression. The fast growth and maturity of civil society organizations gave them the opportunity to occupy a formal space in the ongoing peace talks in Geneva. The presence of the Women’s Advisory Board, the Civil Society Support Room, and the recently established Experts Room during the peace talks in the Palais de Nations allows them to influence the negotiation process. This article is the first published documentation of the role of civil society in the peace process and the challenges that face these talks.

Israel And Palestine: The Demise Of The Two-State Solution, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

A two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with a Palestinian state along the lines of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, the “mandated” settlement for decades, is no longer either a viable outcome or one that can be implemented. In the past fifty years, the “facts on the ground” have changed, but, perhaps more important, so too have “facts in the mind.” The geopolitical landscape in the Middle East bears little resemblance to “facts” back to 1967. The context of negotiations has changed at least four times: first, after Gaza’s spin-off in 2006; second, after the Gaza …

Why We Have The Center For The Resolution Of Intractable Conflict In Oxford, John, Lord Alderdice

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Center for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict (CRIC) was formally established at Harris Manchester College by a decision of the Governing Body of the College in 2013 to facilitate research, teaching and training, seminars and conferences, and direct engagement in situations of political violence and long-standing community conflict in various parts of the world.

The CRIC is a very young institution, but already it is having an impact out of proportion to its size and modest resources. This is because the issues we are addressing have a heightened public profile and also because of the quality and leading-edge of …

The Growth Of Isis Extremism In Southeast Asia: Its Ideological And Cognitive Features—And Possible Policy Responses, Kumar Ramakrishna

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines the radicalization of young Southeast Asians into the violent extremism that characterizes the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). After situating ISIS within its wider and older Al Qaeda Islamist ideological milieu, the article sketches out the historical landscape of violent Islamist extremism in Southeast Asia. There it focuses on the Al Qaeda-affiliated, Indonesian-based but transnational Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, revealing how the emergence of ISIS has impacted JI’s evolutionary trajectory. The article surveys major explanations of how radicalization into violent extremism (RIVE) occurs, setting the stage for the ensuing discussion of two features of …

Inclusiveness, Foresight, And Decisiveness: The Practical Wisdom Of Barrier-Crossing Leaders, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article previews a study under way to compare and contrast the attitudes, thinking, and action of leaders around the world who manage to bridge social divisions in their respective locales with those who work within their own groups. After briefly describing the planned assessment of their forms of social cohesion and empathy, the article examines the practical wisdom of effective actors in the social world and how it contrasts with academic knowledge for insight into how wise practitioners think about what they are doing. It also looks at the history of the conception of practical wisdom. Finally, examples of …

A Policy-Oriented Framework For Understanding Violent Extremism, Wael Haddara

New England Journal of Public Policy

Violent extremism represents a serious challenge to open and democratic societies. This article presents a framework for understanding violent extremism in the context of “lone-wolf” attacks in Western societies. The framework combines social, political, and psychological factors and highlights the importance of integrating the available evidence from multiple disciplines to develop cogent, effective policy. Specifically, in addition to a broad survey of motivational factors, the article draws on terror management theory to provide insight into the interaction between religiosity and violence.

Counterextremism programs are most successful at mitigating the risk of violence when they are focused on behavior, rather than …

Suicide Terrorism: Performance Violence As Public Plunge, Gregory Saathoff

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the relationship between the social psychology of the individual and the final abyss of suicide terrorism. The boy on the high dive is a metaphor for the fearful pause before the leap. For a young child, the dive is exciting and dangerous: the fearful pause is somewhat analogous to thoughts and feelings before the terrorist’s catastrophically destructive contemplated homicidal/suicidal behavior. If we think about the leap itself, there may be a better analogy. Is there any corollary to a specific group of suicide completers? What can be learned from others who have contemplated and undertaken perhaps the …

What Is The Colombian Peace Process Teaching The World?, Andrés Ucrós Maldonado

New England Journal of Public Policy

For more than five decades Colombia has suffered a relentless and devastating war that has taken a greater toll than that of many major wars around the world. For the past four years the Colombian government and the left-wing guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (FARC-EP) have been engaged in peace talks with the aim of putting an end to the armed struggle. During the negotiation, the two parties have developed innovative strategies and techniques that are informing debates on security, human rights, peace making, peace building, and international law at the regional and global levels. The aim of …

Understanding The Appeal Of Isis, Lydia Wilson

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has proven to be persistently successful in attracting people from all over the globe to join in its state-building and state-defending enterprise. This article explores the messages it has crafted, from the utopian to the militarily defensive, and the techniques it uses to propagate these messages (including on social media), which includes some historical comparisons to communism and Nazism. It goes on to provide initial research findings from the field to show how their message is working among (a small percentage of) the target audience, sketching the theory of identity fusion to argue that it …

Geographies Of Absence: Radicalization And The Shaping Of The New Syrian Territoriality, Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

New England Journal of Public Policy

In November 2015, the United States and the Russian Federation convened the main international stakeholders engaged in the Syrian conflict to broker the Vienna Accords. The unfolding political process culminated in the issuing of UN Security Council Resolution 2254. Since then the situation has evolved rapidly, ushering in a new outlook for the resolution of the six-year-old civil war. The conflicting parties in Syria have not yet fathomed the momentum of this deal. Some progress has been made as part of successive attempts to establish a “cessation of hostilities,” but there have not yet been any major breakthroughs because the …

The Search For Meaning: Survivors’ Children And Their Choice Of A Life In The Law, Rose Zoltek-Jick

New England Journal of Public Policy

Rose Zoltek-Jick is an associate teaching professor and the associate director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University School of Law, Boston. She delivered the following talk in Boston on January 23, 2017, during Northeastern’s annual Holocaust Awareness Week.

Foundations Of U.S. Stature And Security In The World, Winston Langley

New England Journal of Public Policy

How may the stature and security of the United States, so passionately a concern for many and so profoundly important to the character and direction of our emerging global society, be pursued responsibly? This question is the burden of this article, in which the author examines and rejects a number of policy options to the challenges he sees Washington now facing. He rejects these policy options because he finds them miscast, incomplete, counterproductive, or representative of symptoms rather than causes. He suggests, instead, how the United States might advance its interests and the global interests and predicts a rather unwelcoming …

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Along with two literary essays, the articles in this issue of the journal address local, national, and international public policy questions. On the literary level, one article discusses whether arguments from an older era over a white writer’s presumption that he can accurately articulate black voices and experiences, itself an unconscious bias, can throw light on racial issues roiling college campuses and other arenas of public discourse today; the second, more mellow and reflective, ponders the incongruities and congruities that surface when the author explores how the meaning of the word home depends on one’s personality as he prepares to …

The Place Where You Are, Gabriel O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

We moved to 21 Sparks Street in Cambridge in 1974. A bright yellow triple decker with a red door, it stood at the head of a dead end populated by worker cottages that had once been home to servants who worked up the road on Brattle Street. It housed three women. The oldest, Mrs. Crowley, ancient even then, lived on the third floor. Her daughter, Louise, known to me forever as Mrs. Sughrue, lived on the second floor with her adult daughter, Cathy. Before renting the first floor apartment to my parents, Mrs. Sughrue invited them up to her place. …

New York Revisited (1992), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …

Introduction: Turning Pages, Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Pages, essays, and books pile up in libraries while pixilated words and paragraphs get packed away on hard disks or float in clouds: permanence versus ephemera. Yet, as underfunded libraries turn into media centers and as digital backup options proliferate, who can tell what pages will last and for how long. These essays have long been stored in volumes of the New England Journal of Public Policy (NEJPP) or made available on the journal’s website. This collection sets them in a fresh context and gives them an opportunity to reach new readers in a format that shows how …

Foreword, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Throughout the tenures of five U.S. presidencies, eight UMass presidencies, six governors, and five UMass Boston chancellors, Shaun O’Connell has regularly produced scintillating essays distilling the essence of several books, “bundled,” as it were, because of common themes that run through their pages, into masterful expositions—profound, reflective, social critiques that invariably tie knots between fiction and nonfiction and a range of pertinent public policy issues. His extraordinary ability helps us understand that the best poets and novelists and nonfiction authors give us glimpses into the complex machinery of the human psyche and often imbed economic and social policy issues before …

Two Nations: Homeless In A Divided Land (1992), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, by Thomas Byrne Edsall with Mary D. Edsall; Why Americans Hate Politics, by E. J. Dionne, Jr.; A Far Cry from Home: Life in a Shelter for Homeless Women, by Lisa Ferrill; Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics, by Suzanne Garment; Songs from the Alley, by Kathleen Hirsch; Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, by James Davison Hunter; Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, by Jonathan Kozol; Parliament of …