¡Que se Vayan Todos! Popular Insurrection and the Asambleas Barriales in Argentina

In December 2001, Argentina experienced a decisive crisis. A financial collapse accelerated by the massive flight of capital and the IMF denial of a new loan was followed by a popular insurrection which, by putting forward the slogan ¡ que se vayan todos, que no quede ni uno solo ! forced the resignation of national authorities. Whilst Duhalde's provisional government is negotiating the conditions for international financial support, faced with inflation and the rise of the dollar exchange rate, social mobilisation is expanding in new forms. This paper argues that the popular insurrection of December 2001 opened a space for the reinvention of the political as negative politics, the asambleas barriales constituting one example of this.     

History of childhood abuse and neglect and suicidal behavior at hospital admission

Suicide is a major public health problem. Preventive measures have been sought by identifying risk factors. This study evaluates the association of childhood abuse and neglect with suicidal behavior at the time of psychiatric hospital admission. A total of 120 subjects (72 females; mean age 42.5 +/- 15.6 years old) admitted from August 2006 to July 2007 completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) to assess severity of exposure to childhood maltreatment. Thereof 62 (51.6%) patients presented with suicidal behavior at admission. Patients who had attempted suicide had significantly higher CTQ scores. Regression analysis indicated that shorter illness duration and severity of childhood maltreatment were predictors of suicidal behavior at admission. The study showed that inpatients of a psychiatric unit of a general hospital who experienced severe childhood abuse or neglect were significantly more likely to present with suicidal behavior. History of childhood maltreatment should be evaluated as an associated risk factor of suicidal behavior at admission of psychiatric inpatients.     

US police officers’ knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception: Implications for eradicating erroneous beliefs through training

Abstract

The current study surveyed a random sample of Texas law enforcement officers (n?=?109) about their knowledge regarding behaviors indicative of deception. The officers were not highly knowledgeable about this topic, overall performing at a chance level in assessing how various behavioral cues relate to deception. Confidence in one's skill was unrelated to accuracy, and officers who reported receiving the most training and utilizing these skills more often were more confident but no more accurate in their knowledge of the behaviors that typically betray deception. The authors compare these results to previous studies that have examined officers’ beliefs in other countries and discuss the implication of these results in terms of developing future training programs that may debunk the common misconceptions that officers possess.     

Portable high‐resolution automated 3D imaging for footwear and tire impression capture

The forensic science community raised the need for improved evidence recognition, collection, and visualization analytical instrumentation for field and laboratory use. While the 3D optical techniques for imaging static objects have been extensively studied, there is still a major gap between current knowledge and collecting high‐quality footwear and tire impression evidence. Among optical means for 3D imaging, digital fringe projection (DFP) techniques reconstruct 3D shape from phase information, achieving camera‐pixel spatial resolution. This paper presents a high‐resolution 3D imaging technology using DFP techniques dedicated to footwear and tire impression capture. We developed fully automated software algorithms and a graphical user interface (GUI) that allow anyone without training to operate for high‐quality 3D data capture. We performed accuracy evaluations and comparisons comparing with the commercial high‐end 3D scanner and carried out qualitative tests for various impressions comparing with the current practices. Overall, our technology achieves similar levels of accuracy and resolution with a high‐end commercially available 3D scanner, while having the merits of being (1) more affordable; (2) much easier to operate; and (3) more robust. Compared with the current practice of casting, our technology demonstrates its superiority because it (1) is non‐destructive; (2) collects more evidence detail than casts, especially when an impression is fragile; (3) requires less time and money to collect each piece of evidence; and (4) results in a digital file that can easily be shared with other examiners.     

Administrative Innovations and Accountability Failures: The Termination of the Spanish Telecommunications Agency

We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.     

我国公务员道德建设现状调查

公务员应当是道德的先行者,其德行操守对整个社会的精神文明建设起到至关重要的作用。本调查分析了我国公务员道德建设的现状,并提出了相关建议。建议包括:创新道德知识开发方法,加大政府信息公开力度,将平衡记分卡引入道德评价体系等。     

“Jurisdictional Realization of Law” as Judicium: A Methodological Alternative,Beyond Deductive Application and Finalistic Decision

The proposed reflection intends to present the problem of judicial adjudication as a substantially-axiologically founded autonomous moment on the practical realization of law, and to explore this understanding in confrontation with external exigencies, mostly teleologically determined—hence, beyond strict deductive application, as a (normativistic-positivistic) syllogistic reference of facts to norms, and finalistically determined decision, as an option among possible alternatives to achieve specific aims. The main objective is to enter into a discussion on the methodological meaning of “integrity”, “hard cases” and “right answer”, as presented by Ronald Dworkin, and a critical reflection on the criticism(s) of that approach levelled by Neil MacCormick, so as to confront the relevance of principle and policy arguments, in order to bring about a different methodological approach, an alternative jurisprudentialist conception of adjudication, incorporating a practical-normative constitutive dialectics between legal controversy and legal system, such as that presented by Castanheira Neves. The focus will, then, be the legitimacy of the connection of arguments of principle and consequentialist arguments in adjudication, its selection and its justification, stating, therefore, a specifically assumed judicium, a judicative decision, having the legal system as its horizon of normative reference and of substantial and institutional autonomy.

     

Development of a Validity Scale for the Dissociative Experience Scale-Revised: Atypicality,Structure, and Inconsistency

Psychological Injury and Law - The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), the most commonly used scale for assessing dissociation across settings, lacks a validity scale. In this study, six methods...     

Resilience as the new EU foreign policy paradigm: a pragmatist turn?

This article examines the rise of resilience discourses in EU foreign policy. The European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) refers to building state and societal resilience in its neighbourhood as one of the key strategic priorities of the EU. This article argues that the discourse of resilience that permeates the EUGS chimes well with a pragmatist turn in social sciences and global governance. The EUGS introduces resilience-building alongside an emphasis on flexibility, tailor-made approaches and the need for local ownership, capacity-building and comprehensiveness. More importantly, the new EUGS proposes “principled pragmatism” as a new operating principle in its foreign policy. While this might suggest a more pragmatic EU foreign policy, a closer examination of the EUGS discourse reveals significant tensions between a pragmatic and a principled foreign policy, which undermine the added value of resilience-building as a new foreign policy paradigm.     

Commentary on the Newly Published White Paper Concerning the Rule of Law in China

On February 28, 2008, the State Council Information Office published a white paper entitled China＇s Efforts and Achievements in Promoting the Rule of Law. This document is the first white paper published by the government on China＇s rule of law. It contains eight chapters and six appendices to review China＇s achievements on the road to practicing the rule of law in a compre- hensive way, and to expound the official Chinese policy and position on this is- sue. With some essential points inside, the publication of this white paper is of great significance, especially this year, to China＇s rule of law, human rights prog- ress, and its communication and dialogue with the international community.