Democratic backsliding and the media: the convergence of news narratives in Turkey

This article presents how the rise of Justice and Development Party (AKP) to political power in Turkey transformed journalists’ professional practices as to lead to a decline in the plurality of opinions presented in the media. After AKP’s second electoral victory in 2007, political trials, property transfers, and dismissals wrapped in a discourse of punishment and purge of the “nation’s enemies” destabilized long established power hierarchies of secularists, religious-conservatives, Kurds, and leftists in Turkey. The destabilization was caused by the state’s changing attitude toward these identity groups, and in the media it lead to shifts in journalists’ status positions and emotions. Varying professional responses triggered by these shifts explain the convergence to a dominant singular political narrative in the media. This argument builds on narrative evidence collected between 2012 and 2014 via in-depth interviews, newspaper articles, and journalists’ memoires. With a from-below account, the article presents the effects of destabilized hierarchies on journalistic practice. In the example of media, it invites scholars to rethink contemporary democratic backsliding in terms of the links between state actors and non-state actors, on the one hand, and social actors’ power positions, political identities, and professional practices, on the other.

Exposing the legal and bureaucratic underpinnings of gentrification: Municipal property transfers through alley closures in Washington, DC

Scholars acknowledge that property ownership is fundamental to gentrification and that the privatization of public property can exacerbate market-based speculation on urban land. However, few have closely examined how the transfer of municipal property occurs. This article examines the political, legal, and bureaucratic preconditions for the acquisition of municipal land, which underpins gentrification. Drawing on the example of municipal alley closures in Washington, D.C. during the 1970s, this article traces how private developers acquired public land in downtown neighborhoods like the West End. It also traces how residents tried to oppose this acquisition of public property. In following West End residents’ failed attempts to retain control over the use and value of land in their neighborhood, this article exposes the legal and bureaucratic barriers that ordinary urban citizens face in interrupting the processes that contribute to gentrification.

Accounting Implications of Blockchain - A Hyperledger Composer Use Case for Intangible Assets

Blockchain technology, commonly associated with bitcoin cryptocurrency, attracted large amounts of investment, attention, and analysis. In addition to attracting the attention of investors, speculators, and regulators, implications for financial practitioners and organizations are increasingly apparent. Financial transactions, property transfers, audit and attestation services, supply chains, and numerous other areas of industry are continuing to integrate blockchains into operations. This paper bridges the gap between the technical concept of blockchain andrelevance to the accounting field. By distilling technical components of blockchain into understandable components, practitioners and other users of this research are poised to better understand, explain, and apply salient concepts. This paper proposes a Hyperledger Composer use case method through which practitioners and researchers can familiarize themselves withblockchain concepts using an interactive demonstration of an accounting integration for intangible assets. Addressing the growing need for increased awareness, this paper builds anecessary skillset with blockchain technology and applications.

The Law

This chapter looks to the other branch of the legal profession: the attorneys and solicitors. Attorneys and solicitors dealt directly with the client and cover a vast range of legal matters, including wills, property transfers, and other affairs that usually do not need to be tested in court. Attorneys were much more numerous than barristers in Regency England. The social standing of attorneys relative to the gentry, the clergy, and other genteel professions was also open to doubt. They certainly lacked the prestige of barristers. Indeed, attorneys seemed little better than school-teachers or the better sort of shopkeeper: respectable enough in their way, but not a career for the younger sons of the gentry. However, as the chapter shows, attorneys were also considered a rather gentlemanly profession, and many gentlemen indeed prospered by becoming one.

The Patterns Behind Change

This chapter argues that the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) played a fundamental role in western Europe’s economic development. The EMP emerged in northwestern Europe in the late medieval period as a result of the Catholic Church’s promotion of marriage based on consensus, the rise of labor markets, and specific institutions concerning property transfers between generations that encouraged wage labor by women. This combination of factors resulted in a demographic regime embedded in a highly commercial environment, in which households interacted frequently with labor, capital, and commodity markets. The authors also discuss possible long-term consequences for human capital formation and institution building, which are elaborated upon in later chapters of the book.

Czech Republic

During World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the territory comprising the modern-day Czech Republic (previously part of the independent country of Czechoslovakia), creating the Protectorate of Moravia and Bohemia. All Jews in the Protectorate became subject to German jurisdiction and anti-Jewish laws, including German laws on expropriation of Jewish property. Immediately after the war, Czechoslovakia enacted legislation invalidating property transfers made during Nazi occupation. The measures were short-lived, however, because the country fell under Communist rule that resulted in a second wave of confiscations from all persons. It was not until after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that new immovable property restitution laws were enacted for private and communal property. The Czech Republic endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

Slovakia

During World War II, Slovakia (previously part of the independent country of Czechoslovakia) became a vassal state of Nazi Germany. Roughly 70,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia. Immediately after World War II, Czechoslovakia enacted legislation invalidating property transfers made during Nazi occupation. The measures were short-lived, however, because the country fell under Communist rule that resulted in a second wave of confiscations from all persons. It was not until after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that new immovable property restitution laws were enacted for private and communal property. In 2002, Slovakia entered into an agreement with the Jewish community of Slovakia to accept a sum amounting to 10 percent of the estimated value of unrestituted Jewish heirless property, as payment for heirless property that had previously reverted to the state. Slovakia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

US tariffs will test trade alliances and architecture

Significance The USTR will subject 284 more products worth 16 billion dollars to public comment. President Donald Trump is intensifying his efforts to return manufacturing to the United States by imposing steep tariffs on industrial imports from leading trading partners including China, the EU, Canada, Mexico and Japan. China’s finance ministry announced it would impose matching tariffs on 545 categories of US imports from the same date. Tit-for-tat retaliation and belligerent rhetoric are exacerbating concerns about the broader challenge to the global trade regime. Impacts North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations are unlikely to conclude in 2018, increasing the chance of US withdrawal. Trade splits with allies will damage Washington's ability to coordinate efforts to confront China on unfair intellectual property transfers. Globally integrated manufacturing supply chains and financial markes will cause US-China trade actions to impact firms in many countries. Cross-border investment fell by 23% in 2017 according to the United Nations -- another fall is likely this year due to the trade conflict.

In the king’s shadow: Petitioner-donors of eighth–ninth century Pāla copper plate land grant charters

Six early copper plate charters of the Pāla dynasty of eastern India introduce petitioners requesting the reigning king to grant tax-free land to either a Buddhist monastery or a temple of Viṣṇu or Śiva established by them. The structure and content of such charters are similar to yet somewhat distinct from contemporary copper plates recording direct land grants made by the Pāla kings. By analysing the representation of petitioners in different segments of a copper plate inscription, the article shows that they are the primary donors seeking the king’s ratification of property transfers made by them. Consequently, in acknowledgement of their role in the donative act, the term petitioner-donors has been coined to refer to them. What enriches the group of Pāla petitioner-donors is the presence of both royal and private individuals, one of whom was the ruler of a Southeast Asian kingdom. On the basis of the profile of the six petitioner-donors, the article classifies them into three distinct categories, each of which registered its donative activity at a different locus within the Pāla domain. A comparative analysis of the eulogies (praśastis) of the petitioner-donors shows how the power balance was worked out between them, on the one hand, and the Pāla kings from Dharmapāla to Gopāla II, on the other, in the period between the late eighth century and the third quarter of the ninth century.