Suicidal Drug Overdoses in New Mexico: A 5‐year Retrospective Review

To better understand the changing toxicology trends in suicidal drug overdoses in the setting of an increased national trend of multidrug overdoses, a retrospective review of electronic records from New Mexico's Office of the Medical Investigator database was performed between 2008 and 2012 to assess the drug type and current risk factors in suicide deaths. Information on demographics, circumstances, suicide risk factors, toxicology findings, and death certificates was collected and analyzed. Three hundred and forty‐two suicide cases of suicide overdoses were identified. Decedents were predominantly female (61.8%). Scene investigation revealed risk factors including suicide ideation (47.4%), previous suicide attempts (38%), and suicide note (38%). Psychiatric illness was present in 72% of cases, with depression being the most common illness. Chronic pain was seen in 27.2% of cases. Most deaths were attributed to multiple drugs (76%). Utilizing the toxicology information will assist in creating public awareness and provide a framework to support targeted efforts to attempt to prevent future suicides.     

Lobbying in the sunshine—hiding behind transparency?

Lobbying in Israel was unregulated for 60 years. Scholars have decried the fact that high value is attached to the written decree, but implementation does not necessarily follow: quite a few laws have remained at symbolic level in Israel. There were two unsuccessful bills submitted to legislate lobbying regulation: first by Knesset Member (MK) Merom in 1993 and the second one by MK Naot in 2001. The bill submitted by MKs Yechimovich and Sa'ar in 2007 resulted in passing the Israeli lobbying regulations in 2008, but the Lobbyist Law displayed unexpected characteristics, and there was a 500% growth in lobbyist numbers. In 2012, a scandal shook the Israeli lobbying world as a crew from the Israeli Channel 2's investigative show Uvda (‘Fact’) infiltrated the training program of the Gilad Government Relations & Lobbying firm. Following the Channel 2 exposé, the Speaker of the Knesset MK Rivlin instructed Knesset employees to immediately forbid the entrance of all lobbyists to areas heavily used by MKs. These steps, taken almost 4 years after that the Knesset had passed a weak Lobbyist Law, scoring 28 points according to the Center of Public Integrity score, did not create more transparency but only set certain restrictions on the lobbyists' movements in the Knesset building. In 2013, MK Koll submitted a bill to further regulate the lobbying followed by another bill by MKs Yechimovich and Tsur in 2014. However, these bills were thrashed as the Knesset was dispersed in December 2014. This paper would analyze the bills from 1993, 2001, 2007, 2013, and 2014 by measuring their strength according to the Center of Public Integrity Index in order to explore the path that resulted in passing the Lobbyist Law in 2008 and in the following developments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the agency of Africa in climate change negotiations: the case of REDD+

Emerging climate change regimes, such as the mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), are increasingly aiming to engage developing countries such as those in Africa, in sustainable development through carbon markets. The contribution of African countries to global climate negotiations determines how compatible the negotiated rules could be with the existing socioeconomic and policy circumstances of African countries. The aim of this paper is to explore the agency of Africa (African States) in the global climate change negotiations and discuss possible implications for implementing these rules using REDD+ as a case study. Drawing on document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews, our findings suggest that although African countries are extensively involved in the implementation of REDD+ interventions, the continent has a weak agency on the design of the global REDD+ architecture. This weak agency results from a number of factors including the inability of African countries to send large and diverse delegations to the negotiations as well lack of capacity to generate and transmit research evidence to the global platform. African countries also perceive themselves as victims of climate change who should be eligible for support rather than sources of technological solutions. Again, Africa’s position is fragmented across negotiation coalitions which weakens the continent's collective influence on the REDD+ agenda. This paper discusses a number of implementation deficits which could result from this weak agency. These include concerns about implementation capacity and a potential lack of coherence between REDD+ rules and existing policies in African countries. These findings call for a rethink of pathways to enhancing Africa’s strategies in engaging in multilateral climate change negotiations, especially if climate change regimes specifically targeted at developing countries are to be effective.     

Is Rule by Majorities Special?

One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issue median of voter preferences. If popular control and political equality are core democratic values, they can be rendered as requirements on a collective choice rule, involving resoluteness, anonymity, strategy-proofness and responsiveness. These requirements entail that the collective decision rule be a percentile method. If we then add a requirement of impartiality, as exhibited in a collective choice rule which would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance, then the issue-by-issue median is uniquely identified as a fair rule. Hence, majorities rule is special. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered.     

政治儒学与民主

现代中国思想史在总体上充斥着对许多中国传统文化和思想——尤其是儒学——的拒绝和批判。二十一世纪初,儒学和自由主义在中国的命运和前途似乎开始改变。当今中国一位著名的儒家学者蒋庆反对将西方式的民主引入中国。另外一位在当代中国富有影响力的学者康晓光也如此认为,他倡议用儒家的"仁政"来代替民主。另一方面,二十世纪著名的新儒家学者们却完全接受在西方演化而来的民主宪政。尽管已有半个世纪之久,但徐复观所宣扬的以及1958年《宣言》所体现的政治儒学思想,对我们今天仍具有启示意义,并回荡在我们心中。蒋庆和康晓光提出的将儒学作为中国的意识形态的建议,不是中国政治改革的长远之道。     

The Democratic Duty to Oppose Brexit

What should be the position of democrats in response to the Brexit referendum? Many urge a duty to accept the result. This article argues the contrary. If someone is a UK citizen, has a belief that leaving the European Union will be damaging to the common good of the UK and is a convinced democrat, then that person has a duty to oppose Brexit. Neither of the two principal reasons for accepting the result—a claim of popular sovereignty or of parliamentary sovereignty—imply a duty not to continue to oppose. Arguments from political equality for simple majority rule do not apply when the alternatives are ill defined. More generally, popular sovereignty presupposes and does not replace constitutional democracy, and in a parliamentary democracy there is always a continuing right to oppose.     

Regularization of Irregular Migrants and Social Policies: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

This paper examines the social policy implications of the regularization of irregular immigrants. As an act of legal integration regularization arguably is about irregular migrants’ inclusion into mainstream social and legal structures and, as a corollary, has important implications for migrants’ access to social rights. Based on a recent comparative study of regularizations and their impact in seven EU Member-States, the study finds that access to social rights associated with regularizations indeed are reported as the most important impacts of regularization by regularized migrants themselves, next to access to work and related welfare entitlements.