The Restriction of Judicial Investigative Remand in Russia: The Role of Cultural Values in Citizen Acceptance and Perceived Fairness

In 2001, the Russian Criminal Procedure Code was substantially reformed and replaced the 1960 Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR. One major reform element was a revocation of the trial judge's authority to remand a case for additional investigation, which had been allowed by the Soviet criminal procedural code. Our study examined citizen support for limiting the judge's remand authority. A self‐report survey was administered to a representative sample of the Russian Federation (N=1,640) during the summer of 2006. Structural‐ equation modeling was used to analyze the results. Two research hypotheses were evaluated: 1) citizens with a collectively‐oriented value system would reject the reform as unfair, and 2) those with individualistically‐oriented values would perceive it as fair; both were validated. More than one‐half of respondents (62.3%) reported the reform as unfair. Collective social values still prevail in Russian society and influence citizen support for the adoption of adversarial criminal procedural reforms. However, we also found individualistic values are increasing in younger age groups and among males.     

Unintended Consequences of EU External Action

ABSTRACT

There is a gap in IR and EU scholarship concerning unintended consequences in an international context, leaving this important phenomenon understudied. To fill this gap, a conceptualisation of unintended consequences is offered, and a set of common research questions are presented, highlighting the nature (what), the causes (why) and the modes of management (how) of unintended consequences of EU external action. The Special Issue contributes to the study of the EU as an international actor by broadening the notion of the EU’s impact abroad to include the unintended consequences of EU (in)actions and by shedding new light on the conceptual paradigms that explain EU external action.     

Attitudes Toward Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Moscow,Russia

This study examines attitudes towards violence against women among the populace in Moscow, Russia using data drawn from the Moscow Health Survey. Information was obtained from 1,190 subjects (510 men and 680 women) about their perceptions of whether violence against women was a serious problem in contemporary Russia, and under what circumstances they thought it was justifiable for a husband to hit his wife. Less than half the respondents thought violence was a serious problem, while for a small number of interviewees there were several scenarios where violence was regarded as being permissible against a wife. Being young, divorced or widowed, having financial difficulties, and regularly consuming alcohol were associated with attitudes more supportive of violence amongst men; having a low educational level underpinned supportive attitudes among both men and women. Results are discussed in terms of the public reemergence of patriarchal attitudes in Russia in the post-Soviet period.     

Justice Concerns Can Feed Nationalistic Concerns and Impede Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: How Victim Sensitivity Translates into Political Attitudes

We investigated how victim sensitivity and news media exposure conjointly contribute to the formation of political attitudes in the context of the euro crisis. Study 1 (N = 208) showed that observer-sensitive individuals were more likely and victim-sensitive individuals were less likely to support solidarity with countries in need of financial support. These correlations were mediated by affective components of political attitudes, namely nationalistic concerns, resentment about and empathic concerns with debtor countries. In Study 2 (N = 51), using a pre–post within-subjects design, we showed that framing the euro crisis in an ‘exploitation frame” (compared to a ‘solidarity frame’) in news media reports was more likely to trigger nationalistic concerns and, consequently, decrease support of solidarity in victim-sensitive individuals compared to their less victim-sensitive counterparts. These results are in line with the SeMI model and previous findings that victim sensitivity is linked to fear of being exploited in intergroup relations.     

A Novel Application of a Cryosectioning Technique to Aid Scat Hair Microanalysis

Scat hair presents a diverse profile of hairs for morphological assessment that may find versatile applications in wildlife forensic investigations. Successful morphological assessment of scat hair microstructure, however, depends on a robust sectioning methodology. We assessed the feasibility and efficacy of a cryosectioning technique compared to that of a gold standard hand‐sectioning technique. Scat hairs were embedded in paraffin wax and hand‐sectioned, while cryopreserved scat hairs were sectioned with a cryostat. The results showed that cryosectioning preserved the pristine morphology of the scat hair and provided cross sections more amenable to high‐resolution imaging of hair internal microstructure than hand‐sectioning. The cryosectioning technique may find novel applications as a more reliable and robust technique to aid (i) scat hair internal microstructure analysis for cross‐referencing with species identification keys in wildlife forensic studies and (ii) downstream toxicological analysis in wildlife forensic studies as hair biochemistry is not altered during cryopreservation.     

Suicide in the Greek penal system and the problem of various limitations in relevant studies

Suicides in prison are not merely self-destructive acts or a "cry for help." They reflect the inherent need for freedom and the repercussions of imprisonment. SPACE statistics on suicides in prison reveal a rate above 10 per 10,000 in 10 European countries, 4 of which have a rate above 20. Greek data do not appear in all SPACE statistics. This fact has stimulated the present paper. Unpublished data obtained from the Greek Ministry of Justice reveal that Greece belongs to the group of countries with a rate below 10 in 1995 (the year of SPACE statistics). However, the suicide rates fluctuated widely in Greece from a low rate of 3.2 per 10,000 prisoners (convicted, on remand, or hospitalized) in 1982 to the incredibly high rate of nearly 40 in the year 1979 (11 suicides, 10 of which occurred in prison hospitals). A review of the literature indicates that various limitations mentioned in relevant studies lie in the unreliability of data (doubts about the validity of official statistics, missing data in archives, missing files on the victims, suicide in juvenile institutions not always recorded separately, etc.). The research emphasizes the importance of improving suicide statistics (recording, clearing up the incidents of deaths that are recorded without specification of cause, etc.) in order to plan and enforce suicide prevention and intervention strategies that seem to "work" in a particular milieu and are not debatable (e.g., the use of "suicide proof" cells).     

Representative Democracy as a Necessary Condition for the Survival of a Federal Constitution

It does not follow from the supposition that the union is beneficialthat its terms would go unchallenged by its members. The argumentin this article suggests that federal stability (robustness)requires for itself a well-functioning democratic process, whichsatisfies a fairly restrictive condition. A necessary conditionfor the resiliency of the federal regime is a representativedemocracy; furthermore, it is the representative democracy inwhich rewards to the representatives are only in part vestedin their parochial constituencies, while in the other part comeform other sources, e.g., from an oversized at-large coalition.The requirement to the democratic process is, of course, onlya necessary, not a sufficient condition for the federal success.Yet, we argue in this essay that only the states with well-developed(properly institutionalized) democratic electoral competitionhave a chance to form a resilient federal union and sustaintheir federal constitutional arrangements not just in form,but in their political practice as well.     

The Impacts of Different Regulatory Regimes on the Effectiveness of Public Procurement

The combination of two reforms in Russia, reform of public-sector entities and of public procurement, enables us to estimate the results of a transition from rigid to more flexible regulations in public procurement (PP). We consider two public universities in 2011–2012. The procurements of one university were regulated by rigid Federal Law during the entire period; the procurements of the other university were regulated by Federal Law until June 2011 and then by a more flexible regulation. Using the difference-in-differences methodology, we assess how the transition to this new regulation affects the main PP parameters. We show that more flexible regulation leads to a decline in bid competition but improves contract execution.