A “Slice of Cheese”—a Deterrence-Based Argument for the International Criminal Court

Over the last decade, theorists have persistently criticised the assumption that the International Criminal Court (ICC) can produce a noteworthy deterrent effect. Consequently, consensus has emerged that we should probably look for different ways to justify the ICC or else abandon the prestigious project entirely. In this paper, I argue that these claims are ill founded and rest primarily on misunderstandings as to the idea of deterrence through punishment. They tend to overstate both the epistemic certainty as to and the size of the deterrent effect necessary in order to thus justify punishment. I argue that we should in general expect reasonably humane punitive institutions to lead to better consequences than if we abolish punishment entirely, and I show that, contrary to widespread assumption among critics of the ICC, we should not expect the conditions characteristically surrounding mass atrocity to undermine this presumption. Properly understood, the ICC equals adding another “slice of cheese” to our comprehensive crime preventive system modelled along the lines of James Reason’s Swiss cheese model of accident causation and risk management. Undoubtedly, some future perpetrators will elope through the holes in this layer too, but others will be deterred.     

The Weak Government Thesis: Some New Evidence

Public Choice - This paper presents new evidence on the hypothesis that coalition governments will find it more difficult to keep their budgets in line after an adverse economic shock than do...     

Political Participation Online: The Replacement and the Mobilisation Hypotheses Revisited

This article discusses the state of political participation online more than ten years after the Internet's great popular breakthrough as an everyday medium. Denmark is used as a case study to critically re‐examine the frequently discussed replacement and mobilisation hypotheses on behalf of the Internet. The pure replacement hypothesis is rejected. Instead, it is found that the Internet still supplements rather than replaces other media, even among heavy Internet users. The Internet is one among several media used by ‘media omnivores’, and political participation online supplements rather than substitutes offline participation. More interesting, the mobilisation hypothesis is partly confirmed. Even though some online participation patterns resemble traditional ones, it seems as if the Internet finally is starting to mobilise younger generations. Further, traditional predictors behind political participation, efficacy and social capital seem to have less impact on online political participation. In the end, these findings are related to more overall discussions on the democratising potential of the Internet.     

Dynamic liveness and forgeries detection of the finger surface on the basis of spectroscopy in the 400-1650 nm region

Differentiation of living fingers, fake fingers and fingers from dead bodies was investigated using spectral analysis. For this purpose, reflection and transmission spectra in the wavelength region from 400 to 1650 nm were recorded from living volunteers and corpses. In an additional small test series (one living volunteer, three cadavers), time-resolved spectral images were prepared using reflectance (derived from pulse oximetry). The dynamic differences in the curves (including the absorption changes caused by the blanching effect and the pulse) provide initial approaches for the realisation of systems for liveness detection. Significant differences that would be useful for the integration into fingerprint recording systems of methods to defend against forgeries are discussed.     

Application of the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation and the DNA IQ System to the extraction of forensic casework samples

Robotic systems are commonly utilized for the extraction of database samples. However, the application of robotic extraction to forensic casework samples is a more daunting task. Such a system must be versatile enough to accommodate a wide range of samples that may contain greatly varying amounts of DNA, but it must also pose no more risk of contamination than the manual DNA extraction methods. This study demonstrates that the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation, used in combination with the DNA IQ System, is versatile enough to accommodate the wide range of samples typically encountered by a crime laboratory. The use of a silica coated paramagnetic resin, as with the DNA IQ System, facilitates the adaptation of an open well, hands off, robotic system to the extraction of casework samples since no filtration or centrifugation steps are needed. Moreover, the DNA remains tightly coupled to the silica coated paramagnetic resin for the entire process until the elution step. A short pre-extraction incubation step is necessary prior to loading samples onto the robot and it is at this step that most modifications are made to accommodate the different sample types and substrates commonly encountered with forensic evidentiary samples. Sexual assault (mixed stain) samples, cigarette butts, blood stains, buccal swabs, and various tissue samples were successfully extracted with the BioMek 2000 Laboratory Automation Workstation and the DNA IQ System, with no evidence of contamination throughout the extensive validation studies reported here.     

Sudden death resulting from epidermoid cyst of the brain

Epidermoid cysts of the brain are rare tumor-like lesions, most often of maldevelopmental origin. They are benign in nature, causing symptoms depending on their localization. Surgical resection leads to excellent results. A case is reported of a 68-year-old-man who died suddenly and unexpectedly. Postmortem examination revealed signs of central dysregulation and a bifrontal epidermoid cyst. To the authors' knowledge, death resulting from epidermoid cyst of the brain has not been reported so far.     

Political and institutional determinants of fiscal policy in the European Community

In recent theoretical and empirical research the variation in political and institutional arrangements which may affect the process of national policy formation is examined, in order to explain cross-country differences with respect to fiscal policies pursued. In this paper we build upon this literature and examine whether and how cross-country differences in debt accumulation and public sector size of Member Countries of the European Community during the 1980s can be explained. We conclude that the growth of government debt is positively related to the frequency of government changes and negatively to sound budgetary procedures. In countries with left-wing governments the growth of the share of government spending in total output generally tends to be higher.     

The devil lies in the definition: competing approaches to fossil fuel subsidies at the IMF and the OECD

Fossil fuel subsidy reform has in recent years been addressed by international economic organizations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The two organizations have differed significantly in how they define fossil fuel subsidies. The IMF’s definition constitutes a radical break with previous definitions by including environmental externalities, while the OECD’s is more conventional. The article explores the factors that explain why these international economic organizations have approached fossil fuel subsidies so differently. The exact definition of fossil fuel subsidies is contested. Furthermore, fossil fuels subsidies can be framed in ways that emphasize, respectively, their macroeconomic, fiscal, environmental, and distributive consequences. The article finds that institutional interaction lifted OECD involvement in fossil fuel subsidies to a new level, whereas the impetus to address fossil fuel subsidies within the IMF came largely from the IMF staff. In both cases, the organization’s bureaucracy constituted the most important factor shaping how the organizations addressed such subsidies and hence the main reason why they differ in how they approach fossil fuel subsidies.