Victim-related aspects of homicide of elderly persons in the catchment area of the Bonn Forensic Medicine Institute]

The present study examines the circumstances of 19 homicides involving 10 males and 9 females 60 years of age or older, which were submitted to the Bonn Institute of Forensic Medicine for autopsy. The incidence of these homicides sharply decreased by age. The causes of death were blunt force injuries alone or in combination in 8 cases and strangulation in 5 cases, thus reflecting the importance of the direct physical assault. Defense wounds were found in only 6 cases. The deceased unexceptionally suffered from diseases of the cardiovascular or respiratory system. Robbery or family/partner conflicts accounted for the vast majority of motives. Both, the most common location for homicide being in the victim's own residence and the high proportion of neighbours, acquaintances and relatives among the assailants underline that violence in the close social context endanger the elderly more than conventional violent street crimes. In the victims of homicide the elderly were represented in a smaller proportion than their percentage in the population at large. Over the 8 years of the present study there was no increasing tendency in the homicide rate in the elderly population.     

Dimensions of democracies

Nomination: Arguments in favour of 'Democracies_—' by Manfred G. Schmidt, p.193
Reflections: Dimensions of democracy by Arend Lijphart, p.195     

Electoral engineering in Chile: the electoral system and limited democracy

On the eve of Chile's transition from military to elected government, the outgoing regime enacted an electoral engineering project intended to conserve the constitutional order it encoded in 1980. An analysis of 1989 and 1993 general elections shows that the way votes are translated into seats favors, as intended, the second largest electoral block, the Chilean Right. This bias, along with the number of appointed senators and the special majorities required for constitutional amendments, gives the Right a minority veto power on any reform initiative. Moreover, the electoral system produces incentives for parties, candidates and voters that enhances this balance of power. The role that the electoral system plays in Chile therefore consolidates a limited form of democracy, rather than a liberal one.     

Christian Müller: Das vertragstheoretische Argument in der Ökonomik

Politische Vierteljahresschrift -     

Political performance and types of democracy: Findings from comparative studies

Abstract. This essay explores the relationships between political performance profiles and major types of democracy from a comparative perspective. The article focuses attention mainly on the political performance of majoritarian and non-majoritarian government, democracies with small and large numbers of veto players, hybrid regimes, presidentialism and parliamentary government, referendum democracy and representative government, and established as apposed to partial democracies. The findings point to relatively robust and significant patterns of relationships between performance and type of democracy. Types of democracy are important constraints and represent at the same time enabling conditions of policy choices. However, a caveat must be added: types of democracy do not determine policy choices and they also do not determine the outcome of these choices.     

Abusive Pediatric Thoracolumbar Fracture Due to Forced Hyperextension: Case Report,Biomechanical Considerations,and Review of the Literature

Pediatric thoracolumbar fractures are rare due to the physiological differences which afford greater resilience to the immature spine. Most pediatric thoracolumbar fractures occur as the result of high energy trauma, such as motor vehicle accidents, and modes of reasonable accidental injuries are limited by age and developmental capabilities of the child. These fractures can occur as the result of inflicted blunt force trauma and child abuse, and in most cases, the mechanism of injury to the spine is not known. We report the death of a 29-month-old man due to blunt force trauma to the back and forced hyperextension of the thoracolumbar spine causing fracture of the fourth lumbar (L4) vertebral body. A complete forensic examination revealed a previous healing fracture of the anterior aspect of the L4 vertebral body, with acute disruption of the anterior longitudinal ligament overlying the fracture site, complete fracture of the vertebral body, and fatal retroperitoneal hemorrhage. We present a review of the biomechanical considerations of the pediatric spine, a survey of pediatric spinal fractures, and a review of the literature on pediatric abusive thoracolumbar fractures. In this case, there was never a provided explanation for how the injury occurred; however, understanding the biomechanics of the pediatric spine allowed for the determination of the mechanism, force required to produce this specific pattern of abusive spinal injury, and the manner of death.     

Can a contractarian be a paternalist? The logic of James M. Buchanan’s system

We consider the simplest version of a jungle economy à la Piccione-Rubinstein, wherein as many agents as goods are assumed, agents consume at most one indivisible good, and a transitive strong power relation exists. We first study the wilderness of jungle equilibria, i.e., whether they are Pareto-minimal (an allocation is Pareto-minimal if it is impossible to reduce the welfare of one agent without increasing the welfare of another). We show that jungle equilibria are not necessarily Pareto-minimal. We then study and characterize the set of Pareto-minimal jungle equilibria. Second, we tackle the case of equally powerful people, in contrast to the assumption that the power relation is asymetric. Assuming specifically a transitive weak power relation, we show that jungle equilibria exist, but that they are not always unique, nor Pareto-optimal. We also provide conditions under which those equilibria are Pareto-minimal.

     

The Influence of Religious–Political Sophistication on U.S. Public Opinion

Scholarly accounts of elite–mass communication often suggest that political sophistication is a necessary condition for adopting the attitudes of partisan elites. Some have also suggested that political knowledge promotes religious–political issue constraint among religious identifiers. This paper contributes to the political sophistication literature by piloting and testing a new measure, religious–political sophistication (RPS), assessing knowledge of church teaching on particular political issues. Using original measures launched on the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show that for evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, RPS (in conjunction with frequent church attendance) depresses support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Moreover, I argue that assessing RPS this way is not fatally contaminated by unsophisticated respondents interpolating that their clergy must share their political positions. Results suggest religion-and-politics scholars should adopt RPS measures to gain a greater understanding of the unique sources of political communication upon which religious identifiers draw.     

Seek Help from Teachers or Fight Back? Student Perceptions of Teachers’ Actions during Conflicts and Responses to Peer Victimization

Previous research has shown that teachers’ actions when addressing conflict on school grounds can shape adolescent perceptions regarding how well the school manages victimization. Our objective in this study was to determine how these perceptions influenced the likelihood that adolescent students would react to victimization scenarios by either seeking help from school authority or physically fighting back. Vignettes describing two events of victimization were administered to 148 ethnic minority adolescents (Latino, African American, and Asian backgrounds; 49% female) attending an urban high school with high rates of conflict. Positive perceptions of teachers’ actions during conflicts—assessed via a questionnaire tapping how teachers manage student conflicts both generally and in a specific instance of strife—predicted a greater willingness to seek help from school authority, which in turn negatively predicted self-reported aggressive responses to the victimization scenarios. Path analysis established the viability of this indirect effect model, even when we controlled for sex, beliefs about the acceptability of aggression, and previous levels of reactive aggression. Adolescents’ perceptions of teachers’ actions during conflicts are discussed in relation to social information processing models, improving student–teacher relations, and decreasing aggression at schools.     

A Broad Alliance of Civil Society Organizations on Climate Change Mitigation: Political Strength or Legitimizing Support?

One hundred and one very different organizations joined together prior to the election for the Norwegian parliament in 2013 in order to make climate change mitigation the most important issue in the election campaign. The alliance (CE2013) agreed on six political demands relating to mitigation. In this article, we categorize the 101 organizations and discuss their identity and objectives according to these demands. The analysis demonstrates that even though a broad variety of organizations joined the campaign, their commitment was rather weak. Few of the organizations justify their involvement in CE2013 by all six political demands, hence demonstrating that climate change mitigation is a valence issue.