Sovereignty,Power and Resistance

This article will analyse the three conceptualapproaches to sovereignty which prevail in thecontemporary discourse, and which can besummarily identified as follows: firstly,sovereignty is the notion which accounts forboth the form and the source of politicalpower, then sovereignty is a function of law,and lastly, sovereignty manifests itself as aform of resistance. This conceptual overview ofthe theoretical elaborations on sovereigntywill show that what is named as sovereignty infact indexes, above all, an oscillation betweenthe impossibility of self-presence and thedrive to achieve such self-presence, and that,in spite of, or maybe even by virtue of thisoscillation, it nonetheless succeeds insustaining the political discourse, if only inthe guise of a performative suspension of thenation as immanent community.     

Le juge constitutionnel,self-made man du bon usage des droits de l'homme

Sans résumé     

Ion mobility spectrometry of drugs of abuse in customs scenarios: concentration and temperature study.

A custom-built ion mobility spectrometer has been used to obtain the IMS spectra of cocaine, heroin, amphetamine sulfate and LSD at different drug concentrations and desorption temperatures. Practical detection limits for these four drugs were obtained as a function of desorber temperature and for heroin as a function of analysis time. Spectral and ionization interferences for each of the four drugs of interest were determined. Spectral interferences by innocuous materials are few; ionization interferences occur only at very high ratios of the mass of innocuous material to that of the drug of interest.     

Determination of drug levels in larvae of Lucilia sericata (Diptera: Calliphoridae) reared on rabbit carcasses containing morphine

This study concerns the determination of morphine concentrations in fly larvae reared on rabbits administered different concentrations of morphine and a correlation between concentrations of the drug in larvae and tissues. Three rabbits (R1, R2 and R3) were given dosages of 12.5, 25.0 and 50.0 mg/h of morphine over a 3 h period via continuous ear artery perfusion. These dosages and time of perfusion were calculated to create tissue concentrations of morphine similar to those encountered in human death due to overdose. Morphine blood level plateau was attained after 1 h of perfusion. A fourth rabbit was used as a control. To evaluate drug concentrations, tissues were sampled using a coelioscopic technique. Approximately 400 eggs of Lucilia sericata, all of the same age category, were placed in eyes, nostrils and mouth of each rabbit carcass. Larvae and puparia were regularly collected from each rabbit for toxicological analysis. The concentrations of the drug in the tissues sampled were determined to be similar to those normally encountered in human overdoses and were correlated with the dosage of morphine that had been administered. Morphine was detected in all larvae and pupae fed on tissues from carcasses administered morphine, except for puparia from the colony fed on the R1 animal which received 12.5 mg/h dosage of morphine. All samples from the control rabbit were negative for morphine. Concentrations of morphine in larvae reared on rabbit carcasses containing morphine were 30 to 100 times lower than the concentrations found in the tissues. A correlation between the tissue concentrations and larval concentrations was found in only 3rd instar larvae (80 to 140 h following hatching). No correlations were found between administered dosages, tissue concentrations and younger larvae, prepuparial larvae or puparia.     

Is local politics local? French evidence

Abstract. In advanced democracies, are local political decisions determined by local events? Or are they really shaped by national forces? For the United States case, the evidence on this question is mixed. For the French case, the focus here, the evidence is also mixed, but less hard. In fact, for cantonal elections, in many ways archtypical local affairs, relevant systematic findings are virtually absent. We ask whether the cantonal elections of the Fifth Republic can be better understood as national, rather than local, contests. Our analysis leads us to the conclusion that the basic answer is, ‘yes’. There appear several theoretical reasons for this, which we give an account of. Further, we go on to show that cantonal races can actually serve as barometers to forecast upcoming national races.     

Reviews

Robert V. Daniels, Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1985, xiii + 411 pp. £22.75.

Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Detente. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1984, 268 pp. £9.95.

Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience. Politics and History Since 1917. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, xiii + 222 pp. £15.00.

Shugo Minagawa, Supreme Soviet Organs: Functions and Institutional Development of Federal and Republican Presidia and Standing Commissions, Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press, 1985, xxi + 346 pp., 5000 yen.

Pekka Sutela, Socialism, Planning and Optimality. A study in Soviet economic thought (Helsinki, The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters). Commentationes Scientiarum Socialium vol 25. 1984, 230 pp. No price.

Christopher T. Saunders, ed., East‐West Trade and Finance in the World Economy. London: Macmillan, 1985, ix + 338 pp., £30.00.

P. T. Wanless, Taxation in Centrally Planned Economies, London & Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985, xi + 141 pp., £16.95.

Christopher Coker, NATO, the Warsaw Pact and Africa, London: Macmillan for RUSI, 1985, xii + 302 pp. £25.00.

Ellen Jones, Red Army and Society: A Sociology of the Soviet Military. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985, xviii + 230 pp. £18.00.

Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia. Ideology and Industrial Organization, 1917–1921, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984, x + 222 pp., $19.95.

Teodor Shanin, Russia as a ‘Developing Society’: The Roots of Otherness: Russia's Turn of Century, Volume 1, Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 1985, XVI + 268 pp., £27.50 h/c, £8.95 p/b.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Law and Soviet Reality, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985, Law in Eastern Europe series No. 30, 234 pp., Dfl. 135, U.S. $45.50, £34.50.

James M. Swanson, Scientific Discoveries and Soviet Law: A Socio‐historical Analysis. Gainesville, Florida, University of Florida Press, 1985, viii + 150 pp. $11.00.

Martin Fincke, ed. Handbuch der Sowjetverfassung, vols. I and II. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1983, XVI + 1336 pp. including index and synopsis of Constitutions. Vol. I DM 236.00. Vol. II DM 270.00.

Laszlo Antal, Gazdasagiranyitsai és pénzügyirendszerunk a reform útján (The Changes in Our Economic Policy and Monetary System in Connection With the Reform). Budapest, Kozgasdasagi es Jogi Konyvkiado, 1985, 326 pp. 72 forints.

Harold Lydall. Yugoslav Socialism: Theory and Practice. London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1984, 302 pp. £18.50.

Saul Estrin, Self‐management: economic theory and Yugoslav practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, x + 264 pp., £27.50.

Nora Beloff, Tito's Flawed Legacy, Yugoslavia and the West: 1939 to 1984. Victor Gollancz Ltd, London 1985, maps, bibliography, index; 287 pp; £12.95.

Adam Bromke, Eastern Europe in the Aftermath of Solidarity. Boulder: East European Monographs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York. 1985. viii + 206 pp. $29.00.

Stanley M. Max, The United States, Great Britain and the Sovietisation of Hungary, 1945–48. Colorado: Eastern European Monographs, 1985, 195 pp. $26.00.

Phillip J. Bryson, The Consumer Under Socialist Planning: The East‐German Case, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984, x + 206 pp. £33.95.

Roy Allison, Finland's Relations with the Soviet Union 1944–84. London and Basingstoke: (Macmillan in Association with St Antony's College, Oxford), 1985. ix + 211 pp. £25.

Paolo Spriano, Stalin and the European Communists, London, Verso, 1985. 315 pp. £16.95.

Gwyn Prins ed, The Choice, Nuclear Weapons versus Security. (London, Chatto and Windus, Hogarth Press, 1984, xvii + 251 pp. £12.95 hardback, £6.95 paperback.)

Anthony Arnold, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective (Revised and enlarged edition). Stanford University, Stanford, Ca, Hoover Institution Press, 1985, xix + 179 pp. $10.95 (paperback).

Nish Jamgotch, Jr. ed. Sectors of Mutual Benefit in U.S. ‐ Soviet Relations. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1985, xxii + 254 pp. £35.00 (hardback).

John Massey Stewart and Alan Wood, Siberia: Two Historical Perspectives, The Great Britain‐USSR Association and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies: London, 1984, 50 pp. £4.50 (UK), £4.95 (elsewhere in Europe), £6.25 (Rest of World [airmail]).

Tatyana Mamonova, ed. Women and Russia. Feminist Writings from the Soviet Union, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984. xxiii + 273 pp. £19.50 h/b £5.95 p/b.

D. V. Filat'ev, Katastrofa Belogo dvizheniya v Sibiri: Vpechatleniya ochevidtsa. Paris: YMCA‐Press, 1985. 142 pp.

The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences ed., Information Bulgaria, A Short Encyclopaedia of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, translated by Sofia Press Agency, Pergamon Press, Oxford 1985, 976 pp, index, bibliographies, maps, tables, £98.

Robert Weiner, Romanian Foreign Policy and the United Nations. (New York: Praeger, 1984), 206 pp. $28.95).

Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century. (Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1985). vi + 346 pp. £25.00.

John N. Stevens, Czechoslovakia at the Crossroads. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, xiv + 349 pp., $35.00.

Karel Vítek, Problémy man?elské rovnováhy. [Problems of marital equilibrium] Prague, 1985, 284 pp. p/b K?s 26.00.