Making a Crisis out of a Drama: The Political Analysis of BSE Policy-Making in the UK

Political analysis presents the episode of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) as a crisis, a policy failure and a policy disaster, revealing fundamental problems with the political and administrative system in the UK. Associated with this finding is the view that trust in government has been damaged by the failure to communicate fully the potential risks to the public of eating beef. These conventional judgements are challenged here, on the basis of an exploration of the episode, the findings of the official inquiry into BSE, and the relationship between risk and trust. I conclude that the drama over BSE and variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease does not amount to a crisis, a failure or a disaster, and cannot serve as a critique of the UK political system. Instead, the complexity of the case suggests that it is an intractable policy problem.     

Drugs in oral fluid in randomly selected drivers

There were 13,176 roadside drug tests performed in the first year of the random drug-testing program conducted in the state of Victoria. Drugs targeted in the testing were methamphetamines and Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). On-site screening was conducted by the police using DrugWipe^®, while the driver was still in the vehicle and if positive, a second test on collected oral fluid, using the Rapiscan^®, was performed in a specially outfitted “drug bus” located adjacent to the testing area. Oral fluid on presumptive positive cases was sent to the laboratory for confirmation with limits of quantification of 5, 5, and 2 ng/mL for methamphetamine (MA), methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), and THC, respectively. Recovery experiments conducted in the laboratory showed quantitative recovery of analytes from the collector. When oral fluid could not be collected, blood was taken from the driver and sent to the laboratory for confirmation. These roadside tests gave 313 positive cases following GC–MS confirmation. These comprised 269, 118, and 87 cases positive to MA, MDMA, and THC, respectively. The median oral concentrations (undiluted) of MA, MDMA, and THC was 1136, 2724, and 81 ng/mL. The overall drug positive rate was 2.4% of the screened population. This rate was highest in drivers of cars (2.8%). The average age of drivers detected with a positive drug reading was 28 years. Large vehicle (trucks over 4.5 t) drivers were older; on average at 38 years. Females accounted for 19% of all positives, although none of the positive truck drivers were female. There was one false positive to cannabis when the results of both on-site devices were considered and four to methamphetamines.     

A Decade of Europe? Some Reflections on an Aspiration

This article suggests that Europe faces four primary challenges today. The first relates to democracy, as all the anxieties about the ‘democratic deficit’ in Community are writ even larger in the Union. A second issue is that of liberal legalism. Lawyers have long presumed that the ‘new’ Europe has been integrated ‘through’ law. This article suggests that the role of law is of far less importance to the future of the Union. A third problem, perhaps the most pressing, relates to enlargement. Is the ‘new’ Europe fully prepared for the inevitable shock that will follow the much‐vaunted ‘big bang’? Finally, there is the overarching problem of a continuing lack of ethos, or public philosophy, underpinning public life in the ‘new’ Europe.     

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The paper examines the main components of Mexican agrarian populism, and the attractions of the populist position in the light of the current crisis within the Mexican agricultural sector. It is suggested that the ‘campesinistas’ (agrarian populists) have incorporated various aspects of marxist analysis, but have nevertheless emphasised ways in which their approach pans company with that of most marxists in Latin America. According to writers like Gustavo Esteva, perhaps the leading ‘campesinista’, the peasant economy in the process of developing can co‐exist with capitalism for a protracted period, and considerable doubt exists as to whether the peasant economy is ‘ultimately’ inconsistent with capitalist development. The agrarian populists look to the peasantry in Mexico as a vehicle for rural development, believing that a better understanding of the internal logic of peasant production might facilitate an alternative series of policy measures. The weaknesses of the ‘campesinista’ position are explored, and doubts expressed about the viability of the populist stance as long as Mexico has the option of importing basic foodcrops.     

The rise and fall of Québecois separatist terrorism: A qualitative application of factors from two models

During the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a rise in oppositional political terrorism in Québec committed by individuals and organizations that wanted the province to separate from the rest of Canada. This situation provides an excellent case study that demonstrates the phenomenon that many of the same factors that lead to the rise of terrorism also cause its decline.     

Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

In the last 20 years politics in the rural areas of north India has been transformed by the emergence of non‐Congress parties with strong support among the prosperous strata of the peasantry. Studies of these developments have placed different emphases on the importance of class and caste factors, as well as drawing attention to the existence of blocs of potential support previously alienated from the Congress. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) the defection from the Congress of peasant leader Charan Singh and the formation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in the late 1960s, has been seen as one of the most important examples of these changes in rural politics. The purpose of this article is to examine the formation and initial electoral fortunes of the BKD in one locality, and, at the same time, to assess the applicability, to a local setting, of general explanations of the emergence and success of the party.     

The Effect of Wanted Posters on Prospective and Retrospective Memory

The experiment tested prospective and retrospective memory for a person pictured on a wanted poster. Participants monitored the videotaped activity of a computer lab; one of their duties involved reporting if they saw a computer hacker. Half viewed a wanted poster of the hacker before the monitoring task and half after. For half the participants, the hacker appeared during monitoring and for half not. A diagnosticity ratio comparing the correct prospective memory identifications with false positive identifications showed that a prospective identification was 3.35 times more likely to be accurate than inaccurate. For those viewing the wanted poster after monitoring, the diagnosticity ratio was 1.21. Based on diagnosticity, a prospective identification had more value than a retrospective identification.