The present contribution presents event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings related to the processing of Swedish word accents. These results are then discussed and further analysed in the context of models of word activations and phonological neighbourhoods. It has previously been seen that word accents (either a low tone (accent 1) or a high tone (acc

This paper reviews the growing literature on “state capacity” in political science and related disciplines and proposes a new conceptualization of state capacity. The paper argues that most existing definitions and theories of state capacity are too closely tailored to explaining a particular set of outcomes – such as economic growth – which limits the applicability of the concept of state capacit

Relying on three new indicators of the information capacity of states, this paper provides new evidence on the ability of states to collect and process information about the territories and populations that they govern. The three indicators are (a) the availability of a reliable census, (b) the establishment of a permanent government agency tasked with processing statistical information about the

Recently several distinct literatures have thematically converged around the topic of non-European state-making: political scientists – both comparativists and international relations scholars, historical sociologists, comparative and world historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and others, have begun to interest themselves in state making or state formation in non-European settings, and also

Since the German reform of asylum law in 1993, statistics indicate a significant decrease of protection claims and an increasing number of deportations. This article presents relevant domestic legislation and international agreements contributing to this development It focuses on how domestic and international law interact to inhibit or end the presence of protection seekers on German territory. I

Having left their home country, 18 million refugees and other protection seekers cannot exert their rights to democratic participation. As a consequence, they are deprived of all influence on a legal instrument of existential importance for them, namely the grant of asylum. Can the exclusion of refugees from the framing of aliens legislation be justified?The analysis carried out in this text proce

This text aims at exploring the relationship between a more equitable sharing of the responsibility for protection seekers and the normative framework on refugees and immigration already existing in Europe.

The revised version of the Swedish Aliens Act contains a specific category providing protection for persons who fear persecution on account of their sex. Benefits afforded under this category, however, fall short of those under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In order to eval

Are foreign ministers punished for their performance in office, or when the country loses a war? The literature has increasingly recognized the importance of individual leaders when explaining foreign policy outcomes. Several scholars have focused on the survival of leaders as an important predictor of war onset, which has created an interest in predicting the survival of heads of governments. We

Why are some states more corrupt than others? Previous research explaining corruption suggests that multiparty governments are associated with higher levels of corruption since it is difficult for voters to hold parties in such cabinets accountable. Drawing on the literature on coalition governance, we suggest that a lack of government corruption has more to do with the ability of other key politi

The relationship between international migration and the welfare state is a hotly contested topic: some scholars argue that migration will, in the long run, erode support for the welfare state; others argue that the welfare state has inherent qualities that insulate it from such erosion. We place this debate in historical perspective by exploring the period when the latent tension between cross-bo

The idea that two objects can coincide—by sharing all their proper parts, or matter—yet be non-identical, results in the “Problem of Coincident Objects”: in what relation do objects stand if they are not identical but share all their proper parts? One solution is to introduce material constitution. In this paper, I argue that this is ad hoc since, first, this solution cannot be generalized to solv

This article presents a corpus-based analysis of stance (e.g. Biber, 2006; Biber and Finegan, 1989; Biber et al., 1999; Conrad and Biber, 2000) in a specialized corpus of annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Annual reports and CSR reports are key genres of business public discourse. Annual reports are primarily addressed to shareholders and investors, and include both legally-

The main objective of this paper is to challenge the treatment of first-person epistemic and evidential complement-taking predicates (CTPs) in Martin and White’s (2005) APPRAISAL theory, and to offer suggestions for improving the model. Based on the combined results of a corpus-based analysis of CTPs and of a psycholinguistic experiment, we demonstrate that several co-textual and situational facto