A shrinking state? Politics,economics and private health care in Thailand

This article explores the political and economic forces involved in the development of privatization policies within the health care sector in Thailand. It is suggested that many of the motivating factors behind private sector growth are outside of the health sector; the general macroeconomic environment and tax incentives have stimulated private sector expansion. Within the Ministry of Public Health a preoccupation with improving care in rural areas and an unclear policy line on the private sector has facilitated this expansion. Only recently has private sector growth come to the policy agenda. During this lag period a number of interest groups have developed. It will be difficult to overcome these entrenched interests in order to change policy direction. Meanwhile, problems of rapid cost inflation and inequity face the Thai health care system. Although this case study focuses upon the health care sector in Thailand it would appear relevant both to other sectors and to other countries. The relationship between development models based upon pro-private, pro-market tenets and the establishment of a satisfactory social policy is questioned.     

Suicide: a ten-year retrospective study

Suicide is a complex phenomenon associated with psychological, biological, and social factors, claiming approximately 30,000 lives each year in the United States. We retrospectively reviewed all cases referred to the Medical Examiners' Office/Forensic Pathology Section at the Medical University of South Carolina from January 1988 to December 1997. The cases of suicide totaled 678. All of the cases were analyzed as to age/race/sex, method of suicide, time of year, and toxicological results. Files were also reviewed to determine if the victim left behind a suicide note. The ages ranged from 12 to 94 years; males comprised 79.5% of the victims, and whites 78.3%. The male to female and white to black ratios were both 3.9:1. The most common methods were gunshot wounds, accounting for 64.6% of the cases. No correlation existed with time of year, and the number of cases was not increased around major holidays. The group of victims 65 years and older and the pediatric group under the age of 18 were also examined separately.     

Effects of face-to-face restorative justice on victims of crime in four randomized,controlled trials

The growing use of restorative justice provides a major opportunity for experimental criminology and evidence-based policy. Face-to-face meetings led by police officers between crime victims and their offenders are predicted to reduce the harm to victims caused by the crime. This prediction is derived not only from the social movement for restorative justice, but also from the microsociology of interaction rituals (Collins, 2004). Four randomized, controlled trials of this hypothesis in London and Canberra, with point estimates disaggregated by gender, tested the prediction with measures of both successful interaction ritual (apologies received and their perceived sincerity) and the hypothesized benefits of the ritual (on forgiveness of, and reduced desire for violent revenge against, offenders, and victim self-blame for the crime). The meta-analyses of the eight point estimates suggest success (as victims define it) of restorative justice as an interaction ritual, and as a policy for reducing harm to victims.     

Enforcing the Climate Regime: Game Theory and the Marrakesh Accords

This article reviews basic insights about compliance and "hard" enforcement that can be derived from various non-cooperative equilibrium concepts, and evaluates the Marrakesh Accords in light of these insights. Five different notions of equilibrium are considered – the Nash equilibrium, the subgame perfect equilibrium, the renegotiation proof equilibrium, the coalition proof equilibrium, and the perfect Bayesian equilibrium. These various types of equilibrium have a number of implications for effective enforcement: (1) Consequences of non-compliance should be more than proportionate. (2) Punishment needs to take place on the Pareto frontier, rather than by reversion to some suboptimal state. (3) An effective enforcement system must be able to curb collective as well as individual incentives to cheat. (4) A fully transparent enforcement regime is not unconditionally a good thing. It is concluded that constructing an effective system for "hard" enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol is a formidable task that has only partially been accomplished by the Marrakesh Accords. In practice, however, the design of the compliance system for the climate regime had to balance a desire to minimize non-compliance against other important goals, including the need for due process.     

Emotional Variables in Adolescence,and Their Stability and Contribution to the Mental Health of Adult Men: Implications for Early Intervention Strategies

This longitudinal study documented the stability of the emotional of a sample of males from adolescence (age 14) through young adulthood (age 19) and into middle adulthood (age 48). Using the Offer Self-image Questionnaire (OSIQ), the Hess and Henry Identity Test, and the Symptoms Checklist (SCL-90), distinct emotional traits were found in 67 adolescent males that were important in determining their mental health status in adult life (age 48). The results clearly demonstrated that certain adolescent emotional states tend to remain a problem in adulthood as well. Intervention work that could be done in order to change any adverse trajectories set by these variables was discussed.     

Sweden

European Journal of Political Research -