Microscopic examination of Guaraná powder--Paullinia cupana Kunth]

Guaraná is a product from the seeds of the Amazonian liana Paullinia cupana that is also cultivated since a couple of years. It is rich in caffeine and serves in Brasil for the production of stimulants, soft drinks, and sweets. In the drug scene it is sometimes trafficked as natural stimulant or drug surrogate. Microscopic examination shows the presence of starch and tannins and provides a simple, quick and cheap method to distinguish guaraná from drugs of abuse.     

Thinking the law with and against Luhmann,Legendre, Agamben

After the failure of all enterprises in legal ontology, and after the success of all enterprises in legal system internal theodicy, the field of legal theory is now open to receive a range of more complex, less universalist, less politicised, but also more personally shaped, more fragile suggestions. My article focusses on three such ways of dealing with the law question: the work of Pierre Legendre, a French psychoanalyst and specialist of the history of administrative law and Christian religion, the work of Niklas Luhmann, the recently deceased founder of a new German schoolof sociological systems theory, and that of Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher whose re-opening of the discussion on the Benjaminian notion of bare life and its relationship to law has provoked worldwide attention. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The importance of discretion for welfare services to minorities: Examining workload and anti-immigration attitudes

Migration influx in Western countries resulting in increasingly diverse societies results in more complex situations for bureaucrats in their client interactions in welfare organizations. The role of discretion for services to clients has received much attention in the public administration research and therefore this study explores the relation among perceived workload, anti-immigration attitudes, perceived discretion, and perceived difficulty in working with migrants. The paper examines the function of perceived discretion as moderator or mediator variable in this constellation. The relations are examined by using structural equation modelling based on a survey among Swedish welfare bureaucrats (N = 1,319). The results show that heavier perceived workload increased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult and that greater perceived discretion decreased the likelihood of experiencing work with migrants as difficult. The results suggest that perceived discretion functions as a mediator for the relation between perceived workload and difficulty in work with migrants: potentially functioning as a ‘buffer’ for organizational pressure. We also found that bureaucrats who hold negative attitudes towards migrants were more likely to express their work with migrants as more difficult. This paper contributes to the public administration literature by increasing our knowledge on how discretion has significance in relation to when bureaucrat's behaviour is determined by specific organizational and personal factors.     

Taxing Higher Incomes: What Makes the High-Income Earners Consent to More Progressive Taxation in Latin America?

When do high-income earners get ‘on board’ with the fiscal contract and accept paying a larger share of the tax burden? Progressive taxes perform particularly poorly in developing countries. We argue that the common opposition of the affluent to more progressive taxation is not merely connected to administrative limitations to coercively enforce compliance, but also to the uncertainty that high-income earners associate with the returns to taxes. Because coercion is not an option, there is a need to convince high-income earners to ‘invest’ in the public system via taxes. Trust in institutions is decisive for the fiscal contract. Expecting that paid contributions will be used in a sensible manner, high-income earners will be more supportive of progressive income taxation. We study tax composition preferences of a cross-section of Latin American countries using public opinion data from LAPOP for 2012. Findings reveal that higher levels of trust in political institutions strongly mitigate the opposition of the affluent towards more progressive taxation.     

Any Publicity or Good Publicity? A Competitive Test of Visibility- and Tonality-Based Media Effects on Voting Behavior

When examining media effects on voting intentions, scholars of political communication have either focused on visibility- or tonality-based effects. Our study compares these effect models, asking whether the explanations are complementary or competitive; it goes beyond previous studies by considering interactions between media cues and voters’ attitudes. We draw on panel survey data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) that is combined with content analysis data of the main evening news broadcast in Germany. Findings show that visibility- and tonality-based effects are similar in potency, but tone-based effects are more contingent on attitudes toward parties and candidates. Both types of cues can backfire: higher visibility and more positive tonality can have negative effects on some attitude groups, which is in part moderated by the expectations about government coalitions. We find that visibility and tonality are rather complementary cues that both influence voting behavior. Implications are discussed.     

Screening and detection of amphetamine derivatives in biological stains

A GC/MS-method is described for the screening, detection and determination of the commonly used drugs amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA, MDMA and MBDB in small blood samples and bloodstains using solid phase SPE columns and a pipetting robot (Gilson Aspec XL). The detection limits are in the order of 0.03 to 0.08 microgram/L and the correlation factors between 0.9982 and 0.9998. Furthermore the stability was investigated covering a storage time of 64 days. The method has proven useful in forensic cases with only small sample volumes or bloodstains.     

European Editors of Economics Journals—A General Discussion

In a final inquiry at the end of the Conference on Editorial Policies the three editors, Bruno S. Frey (Kyklos), Manfred J. Holler (Homo oeconomicus), and Jürgen G. Backhaus (European Journal of Law and Economics), were asked to comment on their editorial policies. They answered by explaining the challenges they were or still are confronted with, which strategies they have already developed to go on and of course what they have learnt from the deliberations at this conference. In their statements they referred to their preceding paper presentations, and the contributions by Wolfgang Bergsdorf, who is the chief editor of Die Politische Meinung, and Peter Senn.     

Benevolent Governance and Fiscal Federalism in Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Teutscher Fürsten Stat</Emphasis> (1656): Comment on Erik S. Reinert

The author comments on Erik S. Reinert’s presentation held at the 17{th} Heilbronn Symposion in Economics and the Social Sciences in June 2004.     

Mass homicide and suicide deadliness and outcome

A study of 98 lone, rampage killers in the United States from 1949 to 1999 found that those who were killed by police officers killed and wounded more victims than those who completed suicide who, in turn, killed or wounded more victims than those who were captured. Those rampage killers who completed suicide were less likely to be judged schizophrenic and more likely to be killing present or former co-workers.     

A Quandary Concerning Immanence

A stationary eddy that constantly re-forms in the riverbed of the evolution of Western normative institutions, Legal Critique dates back, beyond modernity, to the beginning of the so-called Common Era. But critique also shapes the historical review of earlier phases of this evolution, and this not only as a method of the examination of sources, but also as a transferential displacement that tends to project into history the divides and aporias which define a present political situation. Unsurprisingly, this proceeding betrays more about current conceptions than it reveals about those of the past. The fate of the philosophical topic of immanence and transcendence and that of the proto-modern politics inaugurated by the distinction of God’s absolute versus ordered power offer a significant case in point. Certain critical orientations find in the long and complex history of these divides merely their own anticipated echo. Yet, the split between the adepts of an Aristotelian universe rooted in the being of the good and the followers of Spinoza, accustomed to absolute power and immanent causality, resists such simplifications and warrants a new examination.