Attack of the killer acronyms: the future of information technology law

This paper looks at the field of information technology (IT) law and its reliance on the buzzwords, jargon and acronyms that tend to alienate serious discussion about some of the deeper socio‐legal issues involved. It is often easy to become confused by the terminology and the technology, which has led to some non‐issues receiving too much interest (the year 2000 bug for example) and some valuable and worthy topics being almost ignored. Some writers and researchers may be tempted to neglect the field because of a lack of understanding of the technology, which may eventually lead to the end of IT law as a serious field of research. This paper will attempt to re‐ignite the jurisprudential debate about the future of IT law research, teaching and practice by looking at the possible trends emerging from the literature.     

Why some countries are immune from the resource curse: The role of economic norms

The political resource curse – the detrimental effect of natural resource dependence on democracy – is a well-established correlate of authoritarianism. A long-standing puzzle, however, is why some countries seem to be immune from it. We address this issue systematically by distinguishing two kinds of economies: contract-intensive, where individuals normally obtain their incomes in the marketplace; and clientelist, where individuals normally obtain their incomes in groups that compete over state rents. We theorize that the institutionalized patronage opportunities in clientelist economies are an important precondition for the resource curse, and that nations with contract-intensive economies are immune from it. Analysis of 150 countries from 1973 to 2000 yields robust support for this view. By introducing clientelist economy as a prerequisite for the resource curse, this study offers an important advance in understanding how nations democratize.     

On Value Security and the Overall National Security System

The universality of human nature determines the universality of values and its particularity determines the diversity and plurality of values that is the fundamental determinant of security problems among different value systems. In a narrow sense, value security refers to a situation in which value concepts of a state, region, or a nation, social class are not under threat from the external adversaries, which is called conceptual value security. In a broad sense, value security refers to the consistency between the system of realistic value security and that of conceptual value security. National value security encompasses both value security in a nation-state and security of national values, in which the former is featured by the recognition and acceptance of a prevailing value in a nation-state, and the latter is characterized by the sovereignty of national values. Due to the fact that the issue of value system is a meta-theoretical one and the security of conceptual value system is part of cultural security, value security holds a core position in cultural security and is an important component of overall national security system. Additionally, value security embodies the security of value pursuits and value criteria in different spheres of the overall national security system and therefore, it is also an indispensable and flexible support to the overall national security.     

At the end of a fairy tale: romantic relationships in female juvenile offenders

This study explores romantic relationships among female juvenile offenders. The entire female population of a juvenile detention center at the moment of the study participated in a semi-structured interview. Using a semi-structured interview, the girls answered questions on four main topics: (a) available dating partners before entering the detention center; (b) dating partner preferences; (c) intimate relationships within the center; and (d) romantic relationships. A 34-item scale was also used to assess their dating partner preferences. Most girls depicted dysfunctional families and a reduced range of dating options, many involving male offenders. Most participants had also been precocious in their relationships and experienced victimization at the hands of their intimate partners. Implications to prevent female involvement with criminal and violent men are discussed.     

Euvoluntariness and just market exchange: moral dilemmas from Locke’s Venditio

It is a maxim of Public Choice that voluntary exchanges should not be interfered with by the state. But what makes a voluntary market exchange truly voluntary? We suggest, contra much of the economics literature, that voluntary exchange requires consent uncoerced by threats of harm, but that this is not sufficient. In particular, a person pressured to exchange by the dire consequences of failing to exchange—e.g., dying of thirst or hunger—is still coerced, and coerced exchange cannot be voluntary. The weaker party’s desperation gives the other party unconscionable bargaining power. We argue for a distinction, based on a neologism: in the case of coercion by circumstance but not by threat, exchange is still voluntary in the conventional sense, but it is not euvoluntary (i.e., truly voluntary). We will argue that all euvoluntary exchanges are just, while non-euvoluntary exchanges may or may not be unjust; that in competitive markets all exchanges are just, even those that are not euvoluntary, while in bilateral monopolies some exchanges are neither euvoluntary nor just. We will propose a mental device, the “fictitious negotiation”, to determine the just price in non-euvoluntary market exchanges. A primitive version of these ideas can be found in a little known monograph by John Locke, which we will analyze in detail.     

Identifying the bandwagon effect in two-round elections

Albert Heckscher (1857–1897) was a Danish lawyer. In his dissertation (Bidrag till Grundlæggelse af en Afstemningslære), accepted in 1892 at the University of Copenhagen, Heckscher dealt with numerous issues related to voting, especially those related to vote-aggregation in parliaments, courts and committees. He knew the works of Condorcet and Borda quite well, and analyzed many topics that would nowadays fall into the domain of the theory of social choice. These include Condorcet-cycles, differences between Condorcet-effective rules and the Borda rule, strategic voting, the influence of the voting order under the parliamentary voting rules, the likelihood of single-peaked preference profiles, and the problems created by non-separable preferences. Heckscher’s treatment of the Judgment Aggregation Paradox is especially noteworthy. Although Kornhauser and Sager (Yale Law Journal 96: 82–117, 1986) are usually mentioned as the inventors of this problem, Heckscher’s earlier treatment confirms the suspicion that the problem is not of recent origin. Numerous issues studied in the post-Arrowian theory of voting may already be found in Heckscher’s dissertation; some of them have become subjects of systematic study only in the twenty-first century. It is argued that Albert Heckscher, the unknown nineteenth century Danish lawyer, deserves a place in the pantheon of the theory of social choice alongside his better known contemporaries Charles Dodgson and E. J. Nanson.     

Public affairs in Hungary today: summarized through the eyes of a practitioner

This is not an academic overview on public affairs in Hungary, as this has already been written very well by many others. I would like to share my views and experience as a practitioner and give a quick insight into how public affairs is regarded in my country and how it developed after the change of the political system in Central and Eastern Europe. I will refrain from explaining what public relations or public affairs entails as I think this is unnecessary for anyone reading this. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.