Child Sexual Abuse Perpetrated by Women: Case Series and Review of the Literature

The literature on child sexual abuse (CSA) perpetrated by female sexual offenders (FSOs) is exiguous, and many studies have focused on judicial databases. The present retrospective study, instead, analyzed clinical and judicial data of a group of both victims and alleged FSOs, to additionally include women who have not been convicted by the criminal justice system, but who hold strong clinical suspicions of being perpetrators of CSA. The medical records and the Court files of 11 children and their eight suspected FSOs have been collected and critically reviewed in light of the literature to date. This approach allowed for a deeper understanding of the relationship between child and FSO. The authors hypothesize that the victims’ severe psychopathological outcomes were a result of a failure to develop appropriate attachments with their prospective caregivers, which could have been damaged by the pathological relationship with FSOs, who were the victims’ caregivers.     

ICC Pre-Trial Chamber Allows Victims to Participate in the Investigation Phase of Proceedings

The decision rendered by the International Criminal Court (ICC)Pre-Trial Chamber I on 17 January 2006 allows victims to beinvolved in ICC proceedings at an early stage of the investigation.The Prosecutor, who has filed an appeal against this decision,has consistently argued that the right of victims to participatein the proceedings does not cover the investigation phase. Itis argued that the impact of this decision goes far beyond theissue of victims’ participation in the investigations;it has general implications for the balance of power betweenthe judiciary and the prosecution in proceedings before theICC.     

SUBSTITUTING COMPLEMENTS

The presence of multiple sellers in the provision of (nonsubstitutable)complementary goods leads to outcomes that are worse than thosegenerated by a monopoly (with a vertically integrated productionof complements), a problem known in the economic literatureas complementary oligopoly and recently popularized in the legalliterature as the tragedy of the anticommons. We ask the followingquestion: how many substitutes for each complement are necessaryto render the presence of multiple sellers preferable to a monopoly?Highlighting the asymmetries between Cournot (quantity) andBertrand (price) competition and their dual models, we showthat the results crucially depend on whether firms compete bycontrolling price or quantity. Two substitutes per componentare sufficient when firms choose price. However, when firmschoose quantity, the availability of substitutes, regardlessof their number, is ineffective. Considering more complex casesof multi-complementarity, we ask the related question of howmany complements need to be substitutable and offer commentson equilibrium prices and quantities under different scenarios.     

Tolerance and the Law

Analyzing the legal dimension of tolerance in the field of international law (especially in international U.N. Declarations and Covenants on human rights), the author emphasizes how the principle of tolerance implies not merely a legal system "agnostic" to religious truth but also the development of minorities and the principle of non-discrimination in a democratic system. Non-discrimination appears to be particularly important in the face of the current phenomena of religious extremism and intolerance; development of a multicultural society is recognized in the U.N. Declaration against Intolerance and Discrimination of 1981.     

Public Co-Financing of Private Sector's Investments: Subsidiarity and Corruption

The literature on corruption makes unclearpredictions on the relations betweensubsidiarity principle, according to whichpublic decisions should be done at thelower level government possible, andcorruption of public officials. In thispaper, we compare two alternative regimes,centralised vs. decentralised, forthe public co-financing of privateprojects. We show that, in the absence ofcorruption, the two regimes give the same results. Borrowing from the Chamberlin's analysis ofmonopolistic competition and from therent-seeking literature, we introducecorruption in the model as a selling costfor the private suppliers. We show that acentralized regime causes higher corruptionlevels because of the higher number ofprivate suppliers of competing projects. Asa result, a central government tends tohave a higher level of public capitalexpenditure than two (equally corruptible)regional governments.     

Representative Assemblies in Early Modern European State-Building: Evidence from Four Experiences

The article reassesses the role played by parliaments and other representative structures in the European state-building processes. It points to a need of going beyond the traditional antagonist conception of the relationships between rulers and social forces rooted in comparative historical political science, substituting it with a theory grounded in the concept of political exchange. A preliminary analysis of four cases (Brandenburg-Prussia, Dutch Republic, Poland, and Sweden) is conducted, with the purpose of singling out the “internal” determinants — that is, institutional properties of the assemblies — that allowed them to integrate into the institutional framework of the states in formation, or that hindered such an integration. These determinants are found to consist in three main factors: organisational centralisation, working autonomy, and a significant interdependence relationship with a distinct and relatively autonomous governmental centre.     

How do universities shape founding teams? Social proximity and informal mechanisms of knowledge transfer in student entrepreneurship

This paper investigates informal mechanisms of knowledge transfer (KT) from a local university to entrepreneurial teams comprising students and recent graduates. While the extant literature on university-industry KT largely focuses on formal mechanisms aimed at stimulating entrepreneurial initiatives in high-tech (HT) sectors, it overlooks the effect of university-industry KT on nascent entrepreneurship in low-medium tech (LMT) sectors. To fill this gap in the literature, we carry out a mixed-method analysis that exploits a dataset of 154 new business ideas (and 535 team members) presented at a business plan competition in Rimini from 2010 to 2017. Our findings highlight a robust relationship between educational field and the R&D intensity of entrepreneurial projects: students take advantage of the knowledge acquired at university to develop entrepreneurial projects with higher technological content than those planned by non-graduates. Furthermore, the empirical evidence shows that the local university nurtures the formation of ties among students and recent graduates enrolled in the same courses and fosters their efforts to launch new ventures. Finally, the qualitative analysis identifies relevant and non-traditional mechanisms of KT that are being exploited by nascent entrepreneurs to develop their business ideas in the LMT and HT sectors.

     

Experimental Study of Bite Mark Injuries by Digital Analysis

Abstract: This study was based on a morphometric analysis of bite marks starting from the quantitative definition of the anterior teeth by the geometric acquisition of the “injuries,” using bite marks impressed on pig skin and plastic. Each mark was photographed and acquired. A dedicated program automatically supplied the values of the shape factors and the areas of the pattern geometric figures. The values obtained for the homologous samples were compared to the heterologous values. Statistical comparison was made of the sets by linear regression, determining the correlation coefficient and the determination coefficient for each value. Results showed only 4.8% and 2% of overlap between homologous and heterologous values. This study was carried out in attempting to quantitatively define the anterior teeth of the human dentition and the procedure described and the results obtained support the advantage of morphometric studies and computer‐aided programs in this study of bite marks.     

International Organizations ICTs Policies: E‐Democracy and E‐Government for Political Development

New technologies provide new channels of access to political information and participation in decision‐making processes. This assumption is clearly important in the action plans and policies of International Organizations (World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, United Nations), which have assumed a leadership role in the reform of political institutions. Starting from an analysis of the reasons that have brought the state and processes of institution building back into focus, this paper will reconstruct the International Organizations' vision of the transformative potential of new information technologies and their activity in this field. Particular attention will be devoted to e‐democracy and e‐government as policies to build democracy in developing countries.