How social capital enables or restricts the livelihoods of poor peri-urban farmers in Mexico

Poor farmers in peri-urban territories are subjected to the gradual transmutation of their livelihoods while they try to escape from poverty and adapt to an increasingly urban environment. Social capital seems to influence the outcomes of such livelihoods, and might expand chances and choices to improve poverty status, but also to follow their own paths. This article explores the mechanisms through which this capital enables or restricts such livelihoods in two peripheral municipalities in Mexico. The findings highlight the importance of informal institutional and non-institutional mechanisms in regulating access to, and distribution of, resources in peri-urban territories.     

State–defence industry relations in the European context: French and UK interactions with the European Defence Agency

While many have noted that EU member states have different preferences over the prospect of an integrated EU defence, analyses that specifically explore state–industry relations in the definition of EU defence-industrial issues, and in the evolution of the Common Security and Defence Policy in general, are lacking. This is surprising, given that different configurations of government–industry relations have represented a persistent impediment to European defence-industrial cross-border collaboration. This article investigates how state–defence industry relations impact on member states’ preferences towards the EU defence-industrial framework. Based on the case studies of the interaction of France and the UK with the European Defence Agency, this analysis focuses on the difference between public and private defence firms’ governance settings as the crucial explanatory variable accounting for diverging member states’ preferences in this domain.     

Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan

Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. International players in the process choose to compromise on ratherunfavourable terms, saving the façade of demobilisation thanks to the formal disbandment of the militias incorporated under the Ministry of Defence, but in fact allowing thousands of militias to continue operating throughout the country. The article shows how the very limited impact of DDR and even more so DIAG was already obvious in the early stages of the process and was deliberately ignored. The article concludes that the compromise could at least have achieved some limited aims, such as delegitimising the militias, had not many of their leaders been allowed to compete successfully for parliamentary seats shortly afterwards.     

Reflections on International Criminal Justice

Judge Cassese presents arguments in favour of the use of international courts in order to punish war crimes. He argues that the application of justice through a court is better in certain circumstances than amnesties. He examines the merits of international courts rather than national courts, but acknowledges that at present there are several major stumbling blocks to an effective international criminal justice system.     

A decision model for the study of public bureaucracies

In this paper the concept series of decisions is introduced and defined as the total number of decisions made in the attainment of a goal. The series are analytically divided into two types of decisions, programming and implementation—the first ones are those made during the process of converting policy goals into programs, and the second, those made during the implementation of the programs. The distinction is important because different actors and institutions are involved in the two phases. It is hypothesized that the relation between the time of programming decisions and the time of implementation of decisions tends to be zero the less effective and the less numerous the organizations participating in the programming phase. A list of factors which could be useful in the process of testing and modifying the hypothesis is presented. The division of health environment of the health ministry of Colombia is used to exemplify the concept of series of decisions, and to show the utility of the analytical distinction between programming and implementation decisions.The field work for this study was done in 1970 under the sponsorship of the Division of Research in Epidemiology and Communications Sciences (RECS) of the World Health Organization. The research was conducted at the Ministry of Public Health of Colombia. I am very grateful to Dr. Antonio Ordonez Plaja, Minister of Public Health at the time of the research. Without his continuous help, encouragement and understanding, this work would not have been possible.     

Allele frequencies of nine STR loci--D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, CSF1PO,TPOX, TH01, F13A01, FESFPS and vWA--in the population from Alagoas,northeastern Brazil

The polymorphism of nine STR loci has been studied in a sample of 598 individuals from the population of Alagoas, Northeastern Brazil. Determination of the allele frequencies as well as of several commonly used statistics in forensic and paternity testing were defined. The most polymorphic loci were TH01 and D7S317. The exact test demonstrated that the nine loci analyzed in the population have no deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (P > 0.05).