Social Media Influence on Diplomatic Negotiation: Shifting the Shape of the Table

Social media is changing not only the atmosphere in which international negotiations take place; it is also changing the very substance of the deals. Because of the pace and proliferation of social media, negotiators must read “weak signals” early on—and anticipate a quickly organized, highly motivated opposition. However, diplomatic negotiators still lack the tools to engage in this sort of anticipatory strategy design. This article examines two recent cases, one involving the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the other involving a German Constitutional Court’s ruling on the European Central Bank’s Public Debt Purchasing Program, in which social media had a highly disruptive, unanticipated impact on international negotiations—to the point of forcing negotiators’ hands—and suggests institutional remedies to better anticipate the catalytic impact of advancing technology on diplomatic interactions.     

Correlates of Childhood vs. Adolescence Internalizing Symptomatology from Infancy to Young Adulthood

In light of its associations with child and adolescent health and well-being, there remains a need to better understand the etiological underpinnings and developmental course of internalizing symptomatology in children and adolescents. This study leveraged intensive longitudinal data (N?=?959; 49.6?% females) to test the hypothesis that internalizing symptoms in childhood may be driven more strongly by family experiences whereas internalizing symptoms in adolescence may derive more uniquely from familial loading for affective disorders (i.e., maternal depression). We evaluated the relative contributions of (a) family experiences (b) maternal depression, and (c) peer influences in testing this hypothesis. The results indicated that family predictors were more strongly correlated with childhood (relative to adolescent) internalizing symptoms. In contrast to previous findings, maternal depression also exhibited stronger associations with childhood internalizing symptoms. Although often overlooked in theories concerning potential differential origins of childhood vs. adolescent internalizing symptomatology, peer experiences explained unique variation in both childhood and adolescent internalizing problems.     

The Developmental Significance of Adolescent Romantic Relationships: Parent and Peer Predictors of Engagement and Quality at Age 15

From a longitudinal sample (n = 957; 49.9% male; 77.3% White/non-Hispanic) of participants studied from infancy through age 15, adolescents’ depth of engagement in, and quality of romantic relationships were predicted from early and contemporaneous parent–child interactive quality and peer social competence. High quality maternal parenting and peer experiences prior to and during adolescence tended to be negatively associated with the depth of engagement in this domain for the full sample, yet positively associated with the quality of adolescents’ romantic relationships for the sub-set of individuals currently dating at age 15. Results reconcile contrasting views of the origins of romantic relationship engagement and quality and the positive versus negative developmental salience of romantic relationships in adolescence.     

The Bosphorus Ruling of the European Court of Human Rights: Fundamental Rights and Blurred Boundaries in Europe

The recent case of Bosphorus Airlines v Ireland provided theEuropean Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with an opportunity torefine further its relationship with the EU. In particular,the ECtHR was called upon to clarify when States could be heldresponsible for actions taken under the banner of the EU. Thisarticle examines the status quo prior to the Bosphorus judgment,and then scrutinises the judgment itself, focusing particularlyon the use and scope of the doctrine of ‘equivalent protection’to determine State responsibility. The doctrine as outlinedin Bosphorus is applied to some likely scenarios involving EUaction and its relative merits and disadvantages are discussed.The article also briefly addresses the further global implicationsof the judgment, namely for the legal accountability of theUN Security Council and the ongoing issue of responsibilityof international organisations under international law.     

Justice for All? Factors Affecting Perceptions of Environmental and Ecological Injustice

Moving beyond the typical focus on individual injustices, we examine individual-level and contextual factors affecting perceptions of justice with regard to the environment. Specifically, we examine decision-making procedures pertaining to environmental resource use and harms across groups of people; the distribution of environmental harms; and the direct treatment of the natural environment (i.e., procedural environmental justice, distributive environmental injustice, and ecological injustice, respectively). To test our hypotheses, we use data from a survey administered to a cohort of first-year college students at a southeastern university. Results demonstrate that environmental identity and perceptions of the extent to which the university context encourages sustainability consistently enhance perceptions of all three types of justice. Other factors differentially affect each type of justice. We discuss the importance of the patterns that emerge for environmental and sustainability education and speculate on the implications of moving from thinking about (in)justice related to the environment as an individual issue to one of the collectivity.     

Presidential Candidates and State Crime: Views of Some U.S. College Students

This is a preliminary investigation of hawkish public opinion, understood as criminogenic in that it provides political support for state crimes of aggressive militarism. Our critical criminology approach treats public support for, or acceptance of, state aggression as part of criminogenic political culture. Despite growing interest among critical criminologists in broader perspectives on state crime and the politics of culture, there has been no work on this topic. Our survey of 53 criminal justice students at a liberal arts college finds both hawkish (militarist) and dovish (peaceful) beliefs and preferences regarding U.S. policy and the two major 2008 presidential candidates, Obama and McCain. We investigate whether authoritarianism helps explain hawkish opinions, but find little evidence for that expectation. We find evidence of respondent underestimation of the hawkishness of U.S. politics. We also find extensive evidence of dovish policy preferences, such as approval of diplomacy, a major attraction to Obama.     

Learning about “the curse”: An anthropological perspective on experiences of menstruation

Learning about menstruation typically focuses on providing education about the biology and reproductive functions of a woman. This approach ignores individual variations of experience and the social influences in managing the menstrual event. A qualitative study of 20 women was conducted to explore how women learnt about the menstruation and its effect on their lives. With reference to medical discourse and medical anthropology, three themes will be examined: pollution, rites of passage, and the concept of secrecy and social seclusion. These themes are used to explore the role of menstruation in the emergence of female identity, the forces around women that influence their beliefs, and how these women manage their bodies. Some reference is made to the effects of menstruation on a woman's physical and mental health, sexual relationships, and perceived constraints during leisure time. A more phenomenological approach to menstruation should be considered by policymakers interested in “educating” young women about menstruation, where the emphasis should be on addressing women's experiences and concerns.     

The Social Context of Responses to Injustice: Considering the Indirect and Direct Effects of Group-Level Factors

Whether individuals evaluate a distribution of outcomes to be unfair and how they respond to it depends upon the social context and their perceptions of why the objective injustice occurred. Here we examine a general feature of the situation that highlights what is often overlooked in distributive justice research: the impact of the group. We conceptualize such impact in terms of the group value model of procedural justice (Lind and Tyler, 1988) and in terms of collective sources of legitimacy (Walker and Zelditch, 1993). The former highlights how the extent to which one feels valued by the group may enhance perceptions of distributive justice (net of actual outcomes) and thus ameliorate the impetus to respond to objective injustice. The latter considers how the dynamics of group influence may reduce the propensity to respond behaviorally to perceived injustice. Our analysis shows how procedural justice and legitimacy (in the forms of authorization and endorsement) may affect attributions in a work setting, and, in turn, influence individuals' justice perceptions and reactions. By combining these elements, we chart for the first time the relative impact of two factors representing elements of the group on an individual's evaluation of and response to distributive injustice.     

Validation and implementation of the PowerPlex 16 BIO System STR multiplex for forensic casework

The PowerPlex 16 BIO multiplex short tandem repeat (STR) system contains the 13 CODIS loci (FGA, TPOX, D8S1179, vWA, D18S51, D21S11, TH01, D3S1358, CSF1PO, D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, and DS5S818), plus two pentanucleotide repeat loci (Penta D and Penta E) and the sex-identifying locus. Amelogenin. The PowerPlex 16 BIO System is optimized for use with the Hitachi FMBIO gel imaging systems. A consortium of seven independent laboratories collaborated to perform the studies defined by the FBI standards for performing a developmental validation, including the evaluation of sample concordance, percent stutter determination, nonprobative casework, precision, sensitivity, mixture determination, effect of substrates, the impact of environmental insults, and species specificity. All samples tested for concordance were consistent except for one sample from the Virginia Division of Forensic Science database that displayed discordance at D13S317, a locus whose primer sequence was altered. Stutter values were comparable to those of other STR multiplex systems, the precision was comparable to other multiplexes analyzed by gel electrophoresis, the DNA profiles were unchanged by the substrate upon which the blood samples were placed, and the nonprobative casework samples re-typed for the PowerPlex 16 BIO System were consistent with previous typing results. When greater than 0.125 ng of DNA was placed into the PowerPlex 16 BIO System amplification reaction, a full profile was generated by all laboratories. The mixture study results were comparable to those reported for other multiplex systems, the environmental study demonstrated a loss of larger molecular weight loci when samples were incubated at elevated temperatures for a prolonged period of time, and the only notable cross species hybridization was observed with primate DNA samples. This extensive validation work performed demonstrates that the PowerPlex 16 BIO System provides STR data of a quality comparable with other PowerPlex STR multiplex kits as well as other widely used STR multiplexes and is thus suitable for evidentiary casework analysis as well as database sample profiling.