Embattled authoritarians: continuity and collapse in Central and Southwest Asia

ABSTRACT

Why are some authoritarian leaders able to stave off violent challengers to their rule while others falter? This article analyzes several case studies involving a series of nondemocratic governments and violent non-state actors waging war and posits that different combinations of variables lead to dissimilar outcomes (ranging from “civil war/insurgency”, “regime implosion” or “foreign-based overthrow”, “negotiated peace”, to “strategic advance and retreat”). Accordingly, “embattled authoritarians” require a high level of “political-military aid” over time from a supportive foreign power to effectively combat “violent non-state challengers”. However, it is difficult for such governments to completely escape from “embattled” status, particularly if a supportive foreign power does not exert influence to set parameters for peace between the warring parties and the level of international interference (i.e. political-military aid abetting violent non-state challengers courtesy of other foreign powers) does not recede over time. This article concludes with a forecast on Afghanistan and Tajikistan’s respective futures and discusses how the onset of political instability within the former may serve to destabilize the political situation in the latter.     

Ecological Inference and Entropy-Maximizing: An Alternative Estimation Procedure for Split-Ticket Voting

Publication of King's A Solution to the Ecological InferenceProblem has rekindled interest in the estimation of unknowncell values in two- and three-dimensional matrices from knowledgeof the marginal sums. This paper outlines an entropy-maximizing(EM) procedure which employs more constraints than King's EImethod and produces mathematical rather than statistical procedures:the estimates are maximum-likelihood values. The mathematicsare outlined, and the procedure's use illustrated with a studyof ticket-splitting at New Zealand's first (1996) general electionusing the mixed-member proportional representation system, forwhich official figures provide a check against the EM estimateof the number voting a straight party ticket in each constituency.     

Medical examination of sexually abused children: medico-legal value

The Department of Forensic Medicine (forensic pathology and clinical forensic medicine), Aarhus, Jutland, Denmark, performs examinations of children suspected to have been sexually abused when reported to and requested by the police in Jutland, Denmark. Jutland covers an area of 210,000 km2 with about 300,000 inhabitants in Aarhus. A colposcope initially equipped with an Olympus camera, but now with a video camera attached has been used since 1994. Since 1994 the department has performed more than 100 examinations of children suspected of having been sexually abused. A preliminary study was taken to evaluate all cases from 1995 including the legal outcome. RESULTS: The material included 34 cases with three boys, mean age 11 years, and 31 girls, mean age 8 years, at the time of the examination. The sexual abuse events were fondling including penetration of the vagina, vaginal (14), anal (7), and oral (5) intercourse as well as cunnilingus and nontouching abuses. The medical examination was most often performed more than a week after the abuse. The examination revealed normal findings in 23 cases, nonspecific findings including erytherma in 13 cases, and in only one child was a traumatic lesion with rupture of the hymen seen. The perpetrators were above 25 years of ane and were family members or someone known to the child. Nine perpetrators were convicted at court, of whom three admitted having abused the child. CONCLUSION: A medical examination in cases of sexual child abuse seldom provides a legal proof of sexual abuse. The most important is the story told by the child. Therefore, the examination is a supplement which may support or remain neutral to the story told by the child.     

Skeletal manifestations of bear scavenging

In many partially or fully skeletonized forensic cases, postmortem animal damage is simply attributed to rodents or carnivores; little effort is made to determine the general size or assign a genus to the scavenger. As one of the largest wild carnivores to inhabit mountainous and forested areas throughout the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada, black bears (Ursus americanus) must be considered possible suspects when skeletonized remains are located showing marks of carnivore damage. Since 1995, three cases of known bear scavenging have been referred to the Maxwell Museum's Laboratory of Human Osteology by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator for skeletal analysis. These cases comprise a total of seven individuals, and all of the remains were deposited in high altitude forests of New Mexico along the western border with Arizona with a minimum of 4 months exposure before recovery. When analyzed, all cases shared a similar pattern of element survivorship and damage. We suggest that bears can be distinguished from members of the canid family, the other common scavenger of human remains, based on the representation of skeletal elements at the scene. Rates and patterns of damage are not as accurate as element recovery in the discrimination of scavenger genus. Use of this information should allow forensic anthropologists to better understand the postmortem taphonomic processes that shaped the skeletal remains, and hopefully prevent misdiagnoses of perimortem trauma on elements not typically scavenged by canids.     

An attempt to detect “pregnancy susceptibility” in indigent adolescent girls

Programs for widespread dissemination of birth control information and devices among adolescents are subject to strong resistance from many groups and may be ineffective anyway. An alternative approach to reducing the alarming frequency of unplanned pregnancy among unmarried adolescents might be group or individual counseling for those most susceptible, to unplanned pregnancies. Accurate identification would be necessary to implement this alternative. Developed in this paper is an inferential strategy for identifying in well-defined groups unmarried adolescents who seem susceptible. When carefully evaluated, an inferential strategy, based, on several concepts from Bayesian inference theory, appears remarkably accurate as a means of identification. Besides specific predicReceived her M. A. in education and Ph.D. in psychology at University of Houston. Main interest was adult development. Deceased in 1971.Received his M.D. from Baylor Pediatric internship and residency at University of Michigan Hospital. Main interest is adult development.Received his Ph.D. in psychology at Ohio State University. Main interest is probability (decision) theory.Received her Ph.D. in educational psychology at University of Texas in Austin. Main interest is adult development.Received from M.D. Johns Hopkins, School of Medicine. Main interest is obstetrics and gynecology.Received her M.A. in English at Southern Methodist University. Main interest is research communications.