How State Capacity Varies within Frontier States: A Multicountry Subnational Analysis

While there is a growing literature on state formation and the rise of state capacity over time, this literature typically deals with differences between countries, neglecting the fact that state formation also occurs differentially within a country over time. This article examines legacies of state formation spatially, by looking at variation within “frontier” states—countries that in recent centuries have extended rule over new territories adjacent to their core regions. Frontier zones are found to have ongoing lower levels of public order and deficient public goods provision. Several theories are examined to explain this discrepancy, including internal resettlement, costs of monitoring and enforcement, and the relationship between settlers and the indigenous population. It is argued that the formation of strong social institutions among settlers leads to resistance to attempts to impose governance over frontier regions, and to “select for” lower fiscal capacity and lower provision of public goods.     

Laws without teeth: An overview of the problems associated with corruption in Ukraine

This paper presents an overview of the current problems of corruption in Ukraine. It provides an example of specific corruption practices in the country and describes the general provisions related to the fight against corruption in Ukraine. The paper presents preliminary results of a pilot study of corruption in Ukraine to examine the impact of corruption on thefinancial markets. We support the proposition of Claessens, Djankov, andKlingebiel (2000) that the development of financial institutions and the improvement of financial market services in a nation can be viewed as indicators of the effectiveness of the economic, political, and legal reforms and the dedication of the government to these reforms. The paper ends with a discussion of the role of the international community in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.     

Writing and the flesh of others

Prologue: Feminism and Fictocriticism in Australia The article that follows makes use of a selection of psychoanalytic writings to explore what theoretical writing on intertextuality so often occludes: that is, the dynamics of the passionate dimension of intertextual practices, by which I mean the fantasies of writers (and readers) that attend the actual practices of literary borrowings, in.uences, apprenticeships, and hauntings—by other writers, by the music of words, by memories. For the author may be dead, but writing subjects are very much alive and embodied—capable of moving and being moved, of remembering and forgetting, of relationships both real and imaginary with other writers living or dead, of love and of murder.     

On money and memory: Political economy of cross-border engagement on the politically divided Armenia-Turkey frontier

Complicated historical memories and mutual distrust coupled with decades of Cold War separation have prevented the Iron Curtain from lifting on the border between Turkey and Armenia. Indeed the end of the Cold War has seen tension between these two countries escalate further over the conflict between the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and the republic of Azerbaijan. Turkey, having allied itself with Azerbaijan in this dispute, has made diplomatic engagement with Armenia conditional on the settlement of this conflict. Paradoxically, despite a trade and transport blockade imposed on Armenia by Turkey and Azerbaijan, economic ties in the region have not disappeared. This discrepancy between the political and diplomatic rhetoric and the economic and developmental realities on the ground motivates the present study. Drawing from the Armenian context the study illustrates how the tension between political interests and business interests are manifested and managed in Armenia. Generalising from this study, the work presented here maintains that weak cross-border governance capacities in the developing world can influence abilities to utilise, leverage and manage globalisation and, further, in politically divided regions they can undermine prospects of constructive engagement between the conflicting sides. It argues that the promotion of liberal statehood in developing countries characterised by small governments does little to assist the development of cross-sectoral links between the public and private sectors within a region, such cross-sectoral links being important ingredients in the promotion of cross-border regionalism.     

Patient inducement, provider priorities, and resource allocation in public mental health systems

Public mental health systems are increasingly facing demands from the criminal justice system and social services agencies to provide services and support in cases in which mental illness contributes to crime, homelessness, or poverty. In this article we analyze how policies from outside public mental health systems affect resource allocation within these systems, using examples from criminal justice. These policies use two types of mechanisms: inducing patients to consume treatment (by offering rewards or imposing penalties) and inducing clinicians to provide treatment (by creating priorities). We propose a classification of these social policies based on whether they affect demand through rewards or penalties or supply through priorities. We then relate the classification to data on patients treated in public systems to evaluate the current prevalence and potential for growth in these outside demands. These inducements impose a set of nonobvious costs on other patients who are not targeted by the policies. Furthermore, they create incentives for both patients and providers to modify their behavior in order to take advantage of rewards, avoid penalties, or better compete for resources with prioritized patients. We consider some policy implications for avoiding unintended consequences of these policies.     

Headspace gas chromatographic determination of ethanol: the use of factorial design to study effects of blood storage and headspace conditions on ethanol stability and acetaldehyde formation in whole blood and plasma

Our headspace gas chromatographic flame ionization detection (HS-GC-FID) method for ethanol determination showed slightly, but consistently, low ethanol concentrations in whole blood (blood) in proficiency testing programs (QC-samples). Ethanol and acetaldehyde were determined using HS-GC-FID with capillary columns, headspace equilibration temperature (HS-T degrees ) of 70 degrees C and 20 min equilibration time (HS-EqT). Full factorial designs were used to study the variables HS-T degrees (50 degrees -70 degrees C), HS-EqT (15-25 min), ethanol concentration (0.20-1.20 g/kg) and storage at room temperature (0-6 days) with three sample-sets; plasma, hemolyzed blood and non-hemolyzed blood. A decrease in the ethanol concentration in blood was seen as a nearly equivalent increase in the acetaldehyde concentration. This effect was not observed in plasma, indicating chemical oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde in the presence of red blood cells. The variables showed different magnitude of effects in hemolyzed and non-hemolyzed blood. A decrease in ethanol concentration was seen even after a few days of storage and also when changing the HS-T degrees from 50 to 70 degrees C. The formation of acetaldehyde was dependent on all the variables and combinations of these (interactions) and HS-T degrees was involved in all the significant interaction effects. Favorable instrumental conditions were found to be HS-T degrees of 50 degrees C and HS-EqT of 15-25 min. The ethanol concentrations obtained for the range 0.04-2.5 g/kg after analyzing authentic forensic blood samples with a HS-T degrees of 50 degrees C were statistically significantly higher than at 70 degrees C (+0.0154 g/kg, p < 0.0001, n = 180). In conclusion, chemical oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde in the presence of red blood cells has been shown to contribute to lowered ethanol concentrations in blood samples. Storage conditions before analysis and the headspace equilibration temperature during analysis were important for the determination of blood ethanol concentrations.