Need,justice and central–local relations: The case of social assistance in China

Social assistance is increasingly promoted as a means of tackling poverty. However, in established democracies stable delivery has often proved difficult because of tensions between national and local government, the former desiring comprehensiveness and uniformity, the latter requiring flexibility to meet local needs. These issues are explored in the context of China and Dibao, the world's largest social assistance system, with three questions posed: Do similar tensions exist in China as in the Western world? How are they resolved and what is the nature of the political compromise? How do recipients fare? Policy analysis in a village in south‐central China reveals similar tensions. A regime in which local government employed discretion to prioritize social stability over poverty alleviation has been replaced by an inherently unstable system based on surveillance of officials and local cadres who now prioritize their personal security over the needs of applicants.     

Dealing with corruption: the next steps

The 1997 White Paper from the British Government's Department for International Development (DFID) was specific in identifying the role of governance now being addressed by international and national donors: “improving governance can ... improve the lives of poor people directly. It is also essential for creating the environment for faster economic growth. Both aspects can be compromised by corruption, which all governments must address. In developing countries it is the poor who bear proportionally the heaviest cost“ (DFID, 1997, p. 30). Dealing with corruption is thus a priority both in terms of who it most affects and in terms of which objectives of governance — including participatory and responsive government and economic growth — it constrains. Although it has long held a specialist academic interest, corruption has become the subject of growing practitioner attention which means that the focus on corruption is beginning to move significantly from theory to practice and the practical. While there is substance to the belief that fire-engines cannot be designed without a thorough understanding of the fire they are intended to put out, there is also a sense in which the pervasiveness and tenacity of the current fires of corruption are such that action rather than refining theories and processes is what is now required. To paraphrase an analogy made by a senior British civil servant about the general issue of identifying policy — that corruption “is rather like the elephant — you recognise it when you see it but cannot easily define it” (quoted in Hill, 1997, p. 6) — is also to suggest that, while theorising may help draw up longer-term approaches to dealing with corruption, there is enough information and experience to develop best practice proposals for more immediate implementation and for developmental strategies that link to the longer-term approaches. This article addresses some of the issues of this agenda which seeks to develop, for those actively involved in anti-corruption initiatives, frameworks within which to consider realisable and cost-effective shorter-term anti-corruption strategies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Forensic value of 14 novel STRs on the human Y chromosome

We identified and characterized 14 novel short-tandem-repeats (STRs) on the Y chromosome and typed them in two samples, a globally diverse panel of 73 cell lines, and 148 individuals from a European–American population. These Y-STRs include eight tetranucleotide repeats (DYS449, DYS453, DYS454, DYS455, DYS456, DYS458, DYS459, and DYS464), five pentanucleotide repeats (DYS446, DYS447, DYS450, DYS452, and DYS463), and one hexanucleotide repeat (DYS448). Sequence data were obtained to designate a repeat number nomenclature. The gene diversities of an additional 22 Y-STRs, including the most commonly used in forensic databases, were directly compared in the cell line DNAs. Six of the 10 most polymorphic markers include the newly identified Y-STRs. Furthermore, these novel Y-STRs greatly improved the resolution of paternal lineages, above the level obtained with commonly used Y-STRs, in the European–American population.