Public policies against criminal assets in mexico: challenges and opportunities from the north border states

Crime, Law and Social Change - Given its vast border with the United States, Mexico is a strategic trade and economic development region, which creates significant challenges in combating crime and...     

Twitter thou doeth?

Twitter, which started as a micro-blogging website, is the third most popular social network next to Facebook and My Space. Twitter is increasingly becoming primary means of communication among individuals and businesses. It is now being used in courts for issuing injunctions. However, Twitter “tweets” are also potential litigation minefield for lawyers, businesses and employers. As a social-networking tool, the use of Twitter can raise a variety of legal issues such as the right of publicity, breach of confidentiality, privacy infringement, fraud trademark infringement, copyright infringement, reverse username hijacking, among others.     

Paradoxes of (dis)empowerment in the postcolony: women,culture and social capital in Ghana

Women’s empowerment discourses in Africa involve contradictory desires from women on one hand and society at large on the other. This article argues that the traditional validation mechanisms for women’s identities are crucial avenues for analysing both the conceptions and experiences of empowerment. Drawing on primary ethnographic data, I analyse paradoxes in women’s empowerment discourses in postcolonial Ghanaian societies, where neoliberal discourses thrive side-by-side with collectivist–socialist cultural ideals. Using an example of social capital, gained largely through mothering, I suggest that, because women’s relationships with capital are structured by local socio-cultural and global economic structures and relations, the theorisation and application of the concept of empowerment need to recognise the complicated relationships (with capital) that women negotiate on a daily basis.     

Dynamics of change in internal policy advisory systems: the hybridization of advisory capacities in Germany

Recent scholarship on advisory systems has focussed on the externalization of advisory capacities and sectoral dynamics of change, whereas changes of internal policy advisory systems have not yet been approached systematically. This article proposes an analytical concept for exploring change dynamics in internal policy advisory systems by means of three logics for assessing policy advice (political salience, credibility and representativeness). The approach is illustrated by analysing changes within the internal policy advisory system of the German federal government (1990–2015). The analysis relies on three original datasets on ministerial departments, research agencies and governmental advisory bodies. We find that the internal advisory system of the German federal government is characterized by a differentiated hybridization of advisory logics, which has changed the nature of policy advice.