Parties and their Leaders. Does it matter how they match? The German General Elections 2009 in comparison

The ‘personalization of politics’ hypothesis assumes that personalization takes place in election campaigns, in the mass-media, and in the calculus of voting. We claim that the distinction between person/leader and organization implicitly assumed by the personalization hypothesis does not capture how voters observe politics. In contrast, our hypothesis is that evaluation criteria regarding parties and leaders are not in competition but reinforcing. This hypothesis is investigated by looking at the relevance of party and leader evaluations for vote choice in the German Federal Elections in 1998, 2002, 2005, and 2009. The results show that party evaluation matter more than leader evaluation and, more importantly, a match of parties and their leaders with regard to general evaluations determine vote choice as good as single evaluations together.     

Medical evaluation of the victims of the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster

A cloud of carbon dioxide gas, with an estimated volume of 1 km3 was released from Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake in Cameroon, Africa, causing 1700 to 2000 human fatalities as well as killing thousands of livestock and wild animals. At the request of the Cameroonian Government, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the U.S. Department of State sent a multidisciplinary team which included 2 forensic pathologists to assist the Government of Cameroon in investigating this natural disaster. The medical evaluation was concentrated in 3 areas: the autopsy of human and animal fatalities, examination and interview of survivors, and examination of the scene of the disaster. Toxicologic specimens were obtained at autopsy, and numerous samples of lake water were collected. The autopsy findings were consistent with asphyxia. The results of chemical analyses excluded many volatiles but not carbon dioxide as the toxic agent. The exact source of this gas continues to be a subject of a heated geologic debate, but fermentation of organic materials in the lake water has been eliminated on the basis of C14 isotope studies. This investigation underlines the value of forensic pathologists in epidemiological studies and in the examination of living persons.     

The experimental search for free riders: Some reflections and observations

Public Choice - The presence of the incentive to free ride in ‘pure situations’ has not heretofore been contested, and we would have expected that choice settings could be designed in...     

Cases of fatal poisoning in post-mortem examinations at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Greifswald--analysis of five decades of post-mortems

Apparently, fatal poisoning as cause of death are still rarely found in unnatural deaths investigated in the institutes of forensic medicine. In the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Greifswald, 10-15% of the post-mortem autopsies displayed an intoxication during the last several decades with a possible decreasing tendency. Thirteen thousand eight hundred and nineteen autopsies were carried out in our institute-situated in a low populated rural area-during the last 50 years with the confirmed death cause intoxication in 1,589 times. In this study, especially the intoxication causes and the substance classes of the poisonous agents have been investigated. In addition, we analyzed the frequency of intoxications as well as sex and age of the deceased. Surprisingly, CO-intoxications were found most frequently with an incidence of 49% followed by alcohol intoxications with 21%. The latter was not unexpected taking into account the habits of the local population. Medical drugs and narcotics take only the third place, although the abuse of modern narcotics drugs is already visible even in the far east of Germany. The spectrum of substances which are abused, taken accidentally or deliberately is continuously changing, reflecting scientific progress in the pharmaceutical industry as well as fashion tendencies. Therapeutic use is almost always followed by abuse. Our results confirm prior experience concentrating mostly on other poisons like heavy metals or herbicides, etc. In addition, we could demonstrate the influence of political conditions on use and distribution of illegal drugs in Germany. Our study clearly demonstrates that insufficient equipment or analytical methods are no longer the reason for any problems uncovering lethal intoxications. They are rather due to insufficient investigations of the corpses (without considering the possibility of an intoxication as differential diagnosis) and to frequent mistakes of the prosecutor's office in death without signs of physical violence. These facts may explain the above mentioned decreasing tendency of intoxications, but they also clarify that this tendency probably does not correspond to reality.     

State budget stabilization fund adoption: Preparing for the next recession or circumventing fiscal constraints?

The high rate of budget stabilization fund adoption during the 1980s is often attributed to the 1980–1982 recession. In this view, states adopted funds to prevent a recurrence of the fiscal crises experienced during that recession. An alternative hypothesis is that some funds adopted during this period were intended to circumvent tax and expenditure limit laws. We find that states with TELs in place were significantly more likely to adopt statutory funds, but were significantly less likely to adopt funds with stringent deposit and withdrawal rules, suggesting that some funds were adopted to circumvent existing fiscal constraints.     

Self-interest,public interest,and public health

Although the activities of physicians, as represented by the AMA, have long been viewed from a self-interest perspective by economists, public-health processes have not been subjected to such an examination. But just as the conduct of ostensibly charitable hospitals cannot be examined independently of the interests of the physicians who staff them, so too, we think, the conduct of public-health bureaus should not be examined in isolation from the interests of the medical community that they represent. An interest-group interpretation of public health would look to the ways in which public-health processes increase the aggregate demand for medical services, thereby generating quasirents for specialized input suppliers. We have explored in preliminary fashion some ways in which public-health agencies may advance the collective interests of physicians, though we would be the first to acknowledge that much work remains to be done on this topic.We are grateful to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for financial support.     

Traditional Versus Internet Media in a Restricted Information Environment: How Trust in the Medium Matters

Political Behavior - We use original survey data from Malaysia to explore differences in how traditional and digital media shape the attitudes and behavior of citizens. In closed, and even...