Latest News Events
Mapping Country Performance-The Olympic Dream
Todd Landman and Paul Mackman
Named ‘The Olympic Dream’, the resource combines existing data on economic and political conditions, medals gained, and human rights performance of these countries. Academics, Non-Governmental Organisations, policy makers, journalists and the general public will be able to map this data across regions, exploring the relationships between all the different types of data. For example, one can now map the relationship between the economic developmental status of a country against the number of medals it won at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Funding for this global project was provided by the Knowledge Transfer Innovation Fund at the University of Essex, and came to be the basis for an even bigger project, which has won a grant from the Econmic and Social Research Coucil (ESRC). The grant is for £99,000 and enables the IDCR to enhance how the wealth of data is displayed.
Dr Andrew Fagan, Director of Academic Studies of the Human Rights Centre wrote The Human Rights Atlas (University of California Press, 2010), which inspired the idea behind the IDCR’s larger project. Dr Todd Landman, IDCR Director, was running data analysis on the subject at the time, and was inspired to create a real ‘Human Rights Atlas’. The interactive map, developed by Mackman Group, incorporates data on socio-economic conditions, legal commitments and indicators of human rights performance, and can be searched, mapped and customised to suit requirements.
Professor Todd Landman says, ‘We’re delighted that the Economic and Social Research Council has funded the development of this invaluable resource. This important data can now be accessed easily by a wide range of people, whether they’re a student, working for the United Nations, a journalist or the general public.’
‘By visualising this data through an accessible online resource, we’re really opening up awareness on this subject, enabling a greater learning about the world.’
To access the Olympic Dream, please CLICK HERE
Research Methods in Ukraine
As part of its ongoing work with The Westminster Consortium for Strengthening Parliaments and Democracy (TWC), the IDCR has designed a guide and training module on research methods for civil society organisations (CSOs) and non-governmental organisations who engage with parliament to provide evidence and policy inputs into the legislative process.
The guide was drafted by Professor Todd Landman, Dr Tom Scotto and Dr Dorothea Farquhar. From 18 October to 20 October Dr. Tom Scotto delivered the training module in Kiev to a selection of participants from civil society and worked with the local TWC programme manager.
Many of the participants came at their research topics from the standpoint of an anomaly, contradiction and injustice in existing Ukrainian constitutional law. Their specific topics included HIV/AIDs in Ukrainian Prisons, Open Government Issues (Urban Planning Documents), Religious Freedom, Women in Politics and the Regulation of Professions.
The goal of the training is to show the value of social scientific research methods for evidence-based policy making and to move beyond purely legal approaches. The training will be delivered in other TWC partner countries.
A Ukrainian site has posted pictures of the event here:
http://www.irs.in.ua/mv/2011/11/blog_290
Google can translate the langauge.
IDCR working with the German Development Institute
This week, the IDCR welcomes Jöerg Faust and Julia Bader from the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn (www.die-gdi.de).
DIE and IDCR are working on a report about the diffusion of democracy in the world.
As the ‘Arab Spring’ turns to the ‘Arab Autumn’, the project examines the processes through which democracy spreads from one country to another or from one region to another.
It conceives of this process as having intentional dimensions (i.e. democracy ‘promotion’ and democracy ‘building’ efforts) and unintentional dimensions (i.e. a spread of shared values about democracy through traditional and new forms of technology) , and provides a ‘state of the art’ review of the evidence base for understanding these processes.
The findings will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and policy makers working on democracy and foreign affairs.
As part of the sessions this week Jöerg Faust, who is Head of Department III: Governance, Statehood & Security at DIE, will present a paper on ‘Citizen Attitudes toward Democracy Promotion’ on Monday at the University of Essex at 5 pm in room 5B.202 (in the Department of Economics). All are welcome to attend.
IDCR hosts Professor David Cingranelli
The IDCR hosted a talk by Professor David Cingranelli today on ‘A Theory of Why Human Rights are Violated’.
His model combines insights from organisational managament and political science and involves a two-stage ‘principal-agent’ model that takes into account government response to citizen preferences and the delegation of authority to government bureaucracy to account for variation in human rights protection around the world.
Professor Cingranelli has been a leading figure in the measurement and analysis of human rights across the world and is one of the architects of the Cingranelli and Richards human rights data project, which can be accessed for free here:
The session was attended by over 70 staff and students at the University.
