Allele frequencies for 13 STR's from two Colombian populations: Bogotá and Boyacá

We present information from populations living in Bogotá and Boyacá, for nine short tandem repeats (STR's) already studied and four new alleles not reported in previous Colombian populations.     

Duplications of the Y-chromosome specific loci P25 and 92R7 and forensic implications

In the present study, we demonstrate that two commonly used Y-chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), P25 and 92R7, are paralogous sequence variants (PSVs) originating from segmental duplications and that at least one of the sequence variants in each group of loci is polymorphic. Several methodologies were used in order to detect the SNP alleles and the PSVs of the loci. All results obtained with the various typing techniques supported the conclusion. The allele distributions of the binary markers were analysed in more than 600 males with seven different haplogroups. For P25, the ancestral allele C was found in several samples from different haplogroups. The derived allele A was always present with an additional C variant. Haplogroup P was defined by the derived allele A at the 92R7 locus. However, the ancestral allele G was always associated with an A variant due to the duplication.     

A bibliometric review of the technology transfer literature

The Journal of Technology Transfer - This study explores academic research on technology transfer (TT) and the related themes. The TT field has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent...     

The Extraterritorial Scope of the Right to Punish

This paper provides a philosophical critique of the principles that govern extraterritorial punishment under international law. It advocates an interest-based theory of punishment that accounts for states’ right to punish offences committed on their territory or against their sovereignty, security or important governmental functions. Yet, it criticizes the states’ well-established right to punish crimes committed extraterritorially on grounds of the nationality of the offender or that of the victim. Indeed, it shows that the arguments on the basis of which these jurisdictional bases are commonly defended either beg the fundamental question they are meant to answer or are simply committed to much broader rules than those currently in force. The last section of this paper examines whether competing justifications for legal punishment based on other grounds have more promise in terms of being able to better explain how the international law currently regulates extraterritorial punishment. It suggests that even refined consequentialist and deontological theories ultimately do not fare as well as the argument advocated here in accounting for certain core intuitions regarding the practice of legal punishment.     

Designing Regulation Across Organizations: Assessing the Functions and Dimensions of Governance

In recent years, regulation scholars and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to the role of inter-governmental organizational design in effective governance. The existing literature on regulatory design has provided important insights into the advantages and disadvantages of alternative structural options. This article synthesizes and builds on that literature by describing a novel framework for characterizing, analyzing, and structuring authority across public institutions. Drawing on examples from a range of jurisdictions, it highlights the value of this framework in identifying the values tradeoffs that should drive policymakers' decisions to choose among competing structural alternatives. The framework is founded on two important points. First, inter-governmental allocations of authority can be structured along three different dimensions. Failing to appreciate the existence of, and differences among, these dimensions can prompt misassessments of the reasons for existing regulatory failures and selection of structural allocations that do not suit the problems intended to be addressed. Second, allocations of authority can, and in many cases should, vary for disparate governmental functions. Differential functional allocations of authority can minimize obstacles to needed structural reforms and tailor inter-governmental relations in ways that best promote chosen regulatory values, such as efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability, as well as how allocational choices may and perhaps should vary depending on the governmental function being performed. Finally, the article suggests how future regulation and governance scholarship can harness this emerging framework to help build a body of empirical evidence upon which policymakers can draw in future regulatory design endeavors.     

The politics of resonance: Transnational sustainability governance in Argentina

Why do private governance initiatives trigger greater participation in one country than another? This article examines the domestic dimension of transnational regulation through a case study of private sustainability governance in Argentina. Drawing from theories of contentious politics, the argument poses that the resonance of transnational private governance is shaped by the semantic compatibility of “incoming” sustainability programs against national political culture. Analyzing the limited participation of Argentine actors in contemporary sustainability initiatives, the article claims that the validity and relevance of sustainability programs is affected by three dimensions of national political culture accentuated over the last decade: a politicized model of state‐society relations, the low visibility of environmental matters, and a widespread anti‐corporate culture. By examining the ideational fundamentals of the “politics of resonance” in Argentina, the article makes a relevant and original contribution to transnational regulation literature, highlighting the need for theoretical accounts and empirical analyses that address domestic and cultural variables as fundamental pieces in transnational norm diffusion and effectiveness.     

Changes in the dimensions of political competition in Europe and their impact on citizens’ engagement via Facebook

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a little-explored area of research, seeking to explain how political changes influence the participation of citizens in the social networks of local governments. In the context of the recent upsurge of anti-system movements and political parties in the European Union, we analyse a new set of data on participation via local governments’ Facebook pages during a turbulent period in European politics. The results obtained show that when a local government is affected by changes in political competition there is a greater degree of citizens’ engagement through social networks. Our analytical framework shows that this increased engagement is directly associated with the vulnerability of political parties, especially when the governing party loses its absolute majority and is constrained or prevented from carrying out political initiatives.     

Political and institutional environment and privatization prices

We study the link between the political and institutional context and privatization sales prices. The latter serves as a measure for assessing the extent to which privatization goals have been met. Whereas this link has been studied theoretically, there are very few, if any, empirical papers on this relationship. We use data from 308 privatizations around the world and apply a cross-country approach, including instrumental variables. We find that while the overall political regime does not matter much for prices, the political processes beyond the basic regime do matter. Institutional context also produces a significant impact on prices. Both results are robust to changes in specification.