Waiting for Godot: Sustainable development,international trade and governance in environmental policies

The current environmental crisis calls for a sustainable style of development and draws attention to a new ecological dimension in social life that poses hitherto unforeseen challenges to the social sciences and to the everyday concerns of citizens, governments and private interests. Consequently, it is appropriate to attempt a critical overview of governance issues around the formation and implementation of environmental policies designed under the framework of sustainable development. After a brief introduction on how global perceptions about sustainable development have evolved, this article subsequently focuses attention on the main thrust of the emerging international environmental regime, and the multilateral environmental treaties embodied in it. Specific governance issues pertaining to environmental policies are also critically reviewed, particularly interrelations with the trade regime. The article concludes by spelling out some comments on research issues for the future, with a view to charting the environmental governance agenda lying ahead of us.     

Batuque: African Drumming and Dance between Repression and Concession, Bahia, 1808–18551

In this essay I will discuss some of the meanings acquired by black revelry under slavery. Given the restrictions of the available sources, I discuss above all the attitudes and the views of masters, policemen, journalists and politicians towards the batuque. For this reason I have chosen those festive manifestations which are more African or seen as such by these individuals. I intend to point out particularly what changed and what did not during the first half of the nineteenth century in attitudes towards the batuque, which here generally means black percussion music usually accompanied by dance.     

COPARENTING ARRANGEMENTS IN A JURISDICTION WITH STATUTORY GUIDELINES

Some states have recently moved away from the traditional winner-loser model of child custody to one focused on coparenting. Under the old approach, divorce decrees typically "awarded" custody to one parent while relegating the other to a "visitor" with poorly defined status. The new system is premised on the child's need for a continuing relationship with both parents and promotes this goal by upgrading the noncustodial parent's status and time-share, assigning substantive rights and responsibilities to both parents. To give effect to the shared parenting idea, Texas adopted joint custody and statutory visitation guidelines legislatively. The policy covers all major aspects of parental rights and duties with great specificity (not just child support, for which all states must have guidelines). It applies equally to divorce and paternity cases. Judges are authorized to deviate from standard visitation guidelines but must state a rationale for doing so on request. Parties may also negotiate and agree to arrangements at variance with the guidelines, subject to approval by the court. This article describes the statutory regime in Texas and its implementation in the family court system. Based on a sample of divorce and paternity cases in the state's largest jurisdiction, it documents innovative court interventions and a wide array of coparenting and support arrangements.     

Administration, Governance, and Policy Tools in Welfare Policy Implementation

Landmark welfare reform legislation passed in 1996 has been operating by legislative extensions since its expiration in September 2002. At this writing, reauthorization has been derailed by controversy over various legislative proposals. In this article, we contribute to the welfare policy debate by studying the importance of specific policy tools and the role of public administration in the dramatic fall in welfare caseloads from 1996 to 2000. Using administrative and survey data on welfare programs in 44 states, we test our theory that caseload reduction is a function of administrative commitments, policy design, and administrative actions linked to five sets of governance variables: environmental factors, client characteristics, treatments, administrative structures, and managerial roles and actions. We find strong evidence that administrative action to move clients into work, coupled with administrative commitments, can provide important links between policy goals and policy outcomes.     

The Treaty of Amsterdam: Challenges of Flexibility and Legitimacy

The paper reviews key aspects of the new constitutional framework for the European Union, once the Treaty of Amsterdam has been ratified, in the light of the core challenges of managing flexible integration in an enlarged Union and securing adequate legitimacy for the integration project. Reviewing briefly the general debates on flexibility, and its relationship to different constitutional and political futures for the Union which are suggested by those involved in the debates, the paper examines the principal provisions governing what is termed 'closer cooperation' within the new Union treaties. The emphasis is placed on the framework provisions of the TEU, and those in the First Pillar. It is noticeable that the Treaty takes a 'non-ideological' approach to flexibility, eschewing direct support for those who interpret flexibility as meaning more or less integration in the future. It provides a framework for future cooperation which is likely to be too restrictive to be workable, except in very limited circumstances. However, particular instances of flexibility are provided in the Treaty, in the form of the opt-outs from the new free movement title and the communitarisation of Schengen for the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, and some might even describe these as 'pick-and-choose'. The paper concludes by reviewing the flexibility debate against the background of the ongoing legitimacy challenge for the Union, arguing that, as currently conceived, flexibility is more to do with balancing political interests than with securing or enhancing legitimacy.     

Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Movers Scale in a French-Canadian Population

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study that draws upon a collaborative research strategy and has two main objectives: 1) Translating and adapting into French the Measure of Victim Empowerment Related to Safety (MOVERS scale) (Goodman et al. Psychology of Violence, 5(4), 355-366, 2015a); 2) Validating the French version of the MOVERS scale in a population of French-Canadian women receiving shelter services. The French-Canadian MOVERS (FCM) was administered to 189 women receiving shelter services in the province of Québec (Canada). The factorial structure, reliability and validity of the FCM were tested. This paper highlights that the FCM replicates the three dimensions found in the original version (Goodman et al. Psychology of Violence, 5(4), 355-366, 2015a), displays significant correlations with measures of depression, anxiety and stress, self-esteem, perceived social support, satisfaction with life and self-efficacy, and has overall good reliability estimates. The FCM is a valid and reliable scale to assess safety-related empowerment among women receiving shelter services. Furthermore, the scale provides interesting opportunities to shelter workers, which will be discussed in the paper.

     

Analysis of 16 Y-chromosomal STRs in an African descent sample population of Chocó (Colombia)

We studied and established a database and some parameters of forensic importance were calculated of 16 Y-STR (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I/II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS460, DYS461, GATA-A10, GATA-H4 and DYS635) in a population of 298 unrelated males of African descent of Chocó (Colombia) and a total of 257 haplotypes were identified using the present set of Y-STR markers, of which 224 were represented only once in the database. Twenty-six haplotypes were presents two times, six haplotypes were presents in three individuals and one haplotype in four men. The haplotype diversity was 0.9987 ± 0.0004. By combining the allelic states of the 16 Y-chromosomal STRs we could construct highly informative haplotypes that allowed the discrimination of 86.2% of the samples tested. With this work we established a database of Y-STR and some parameters of forensic importance. This approach represents a very powerful tool for individual identification and paternity testing in forensic genetic.     

The Changing Shape of Intellectual Cooperation: From the League of Nations to UNESCO

This article elaborates on some of the key ideas that gave rise to and animated the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, a body which was among the last permanent organisations of the League of Nations. Although the Commission's efforts to cement intellectual relations among nations often went unappreciated, its proponents considered intellectual cooperation to be the very heart and soul of the League's Covenant. From the outset, the Commission sought to harmonise the world's various intellectual and cultural currents while maintaining respect for diversity. During its life, the Commission also became increasingly aware of the issue of its own cultural particularity and the vital need to incorporate perspectives and traditions other than those in which its origins lay. It was in grappling with these issues, and not just in pursuing its broader mandate, that the Commission can be said to be the forerunner of UNESCO.