Classifying political regimes

This study presents a classification of political regimes as democracies and dictatorships for a set of 141 countries between 1950 or the year of independence and 1990. It improves existing classifications by a better grounding in political theory, an exclusive reliance on observables rather than on subjective judgements, an explicit distinction between systematic and random errors, and a more extensive coverage.     

Evaluating the forensic informativeness of mtDNA haplogroup H sub-typing on a Eurasian scale

The impact of phylogeographic information on mtDNA forensics has been limited to the quality control of published sequences and databases. In this work we use the information already available on Eurasian mtDNA phylogeography to guide the choice of coding-region SNPs for haplogroup H. This sub-typing is particularly important in forensics since, even when sequencing both HVRI and HVRII, the discriminating power is low in some Eurasian populations. We show that a small set (eight) of coding-region SNPs resolves a substantial proportion of the identical haplotypes, as defined by control-region variation alone. Moreover, this SNP set, while substantially increasing the discriminating efficiency in most Eurasian populations by roughly equal amounts, discloses population-specific profiles.     

Autosomic STR population data in two Caribbean samples from Colombia

In this work, a sample of 124 unrelated individuals from San Andres Island and Santa Marta City (Colombia) was studied for the nine STRs included in the AmpFlSTR Profiler kit (CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D13S317, FGA, TH01, TPOX and vWA). Although these two populations are geographically apart, San Andres is an Island in the middle of Caribbean Sea (about 480 miles northwest the Colombian mainland) and Santa Marta City located in the coast, exact test showed no differentiation between both population samples (P=0.39445+/-0.0805). Therefore, allele frequencies and parameters of forensic interest were estimated for the global sample.     

Postmodern Global Governance and the Critical Legal Project<Superscript>1</Superscript>

The crisis of the New Deal constitutions and the shift to ?biopolitical’ forms of global governance in the late 20th century have dramatically disturbed the epistemological groundings and the political locations of contemporary critical legal movements. In epistemological terms, the emergence of the ?biopolitical’ has rendered transparent the impossibility of the binaries that have thus far sustained critical legal theories. With the divide between ?inside’ and ?outside’, ?base’ and ?superstructure’, ?state’ and ?society’, ?society’ and ?law’, no longer operative, critical legal movements have to outgrow their legal realist ?roots’. Could deconstruction provide here a viable option? Confronted by an order of governance that is now both ?global’ and ?imperial’, critical legal movements cannot recover a politics through such ephemeral theories. Rather, the future of critical legal movements must be located in an affirmation and promulgation of radically new constitutional principles which would confront the realities, but also harness the emancipatory potential, of the ?biopolitical’ horizon [eds.].     

Analysing the Impact of Price Shocks in Rural Economies: Do Household Responses Matter?

We analyse the impact of higher food prices on rural households in Tanzania focusing on the often neglected role of households’ behavioural responses. We introduce a new framework which considers the production response jointly with substitution effects in consumption and takes into account households’ market participation choices. Taking into account behavioural responses on consumption and production can significantly alter the sign and magnitude of the welfare impact in the long run.