Forensic analysis of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT): implementation of a screening and confirmatory analysis concept is hampered by the lack of CDT isoform standards

The aim of the study was to test combinations of commercially available carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) assays for their usefulness as screening and confirmatory CDT analysis systems. A set of 292 serum samples from routine CDT analysis was analyzed by two assays based on anion-exchanger microcolumn CDT and non-CDT fractionation followed by a turbidimetric immunoassay (ChronAlcoI.D. and %CDT TIA) and a high-performance liquid chromatography with on-line sample preparation (ClinRep CDT on-line). The CDT analysis results were divided into four groups based on the test-specific borderlines of the compared methods: NN with negative CDT results by both tests, PN with positive screening but negative confirmation results, NP with negative screening and positive confirmation results, and PP with positive results by both tests. Regardless of the test combination and whether applying the lower or upper limits of the borderlines, approximately one-third of contradictory (positive screening and negative confirmation or vice versa corresponding to groups PN and NP) were obtained. This was not due to analytical outliers (only 6 of 292 serum samples). Indeed, parametric and non-parametric ANOVA analysis pointed to different calibrations and/or recoveries of the three CDT assays. Our data give again evidence for the urgent need of an international CDT isoform standard material. At this time, we cannot recommend a combination of the three tests for screening and confirmatory analysis in forensic CDT testing.     

Beating Social Democracy on Its Own Turf: Issue Convergence as Winning Formula for the Centre‐Right in Universal Welfare States

Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre‐right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre‐right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre‐right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre‐right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian universal welfare states ought to benefit social democracy when it comes to issue voting on welfare issues. It is argued in this article that centre‐right parties can beat social democrats by credibly converging to its social democratic opponent on issues of universal welfare. Issue ownership voting to the benefit of centre‐right parties will then be strongest among voters perceiving the centre‐right to have converged to social democracy and perceiving the centre‐right as issue‐owner. Using Danish National Election Studies, 1998–2007, the article shows that the Danish Liberal Party outperformed the Social Democrats on traditional welfare issues among those voters perceiving the Liberals to be ideologically close to the social democrats. The findings help us to understand why centre‐right parties have recently turned into serious competitors on social democracy's turf: the universal welfare state.     

Erbguth, Wilfried/Schlacke, Sabine:Umweltrecht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Firing Back at the Backfire Effect: The Influence of Mortality Salience and Nullification Beliefs on Reactions to Inadmissible Evidence

Two studies were conducted to explore psychological factors that contribute to the influence of inadmissible evidence (i.e., the backfire effect) on jurors' verdicts. On the basis of hypotheses derived from terror management theory, we predicted that reminders of mortality, in contrast to an aversive control topic, should lead participants to be less punitive when confronted with inadmissible (as opposed to admissible) evidence, when participants were either situationally induced or dispositionally prone to follow their personal sense of justice. In Study 1, control participants who scored high on a measure of nullification beliefs, and thus were prone to relying on their own sense of justice rather than the law, exhibited the backfire effect. However, reminding participants of their mortality reduced the damaging influence of inadmissible evidence. Study 2 extended these findings by showing parallel effects with a manipulation of nullification proneness via judicial instructions. The implications of these factors on the judicial process are discussed.     

Das institutionelle Erbe des „Treuhand-Regimes“ in Ostdeutschland: Zentralisierung oder Auflösung in der bundesstaatlichen Normalverfassung?

The unification of Germany in 1990 deeply affected the traditional structure and mechanisms of the former West German federal state. The grave and deeply rooted economic problems in East Germany as well as the strong position of the federal government and the relative weakness of the East German state governments during the economic transformation made it highly possible that a centralization within the federal state even beyond East Germany would occur. Empirical research on the privatisation agency ‘Treuhandanstalt’ and its successor organisations, which is presented in the article, demonstrates what development the relationship between the federal and the East German states has taken in this policy area since 1990. The article further analyses if the centralization thesis can be confirmed and what can generally be concluded about the essential characteristics of the current federal system.     

Examination of acetone findings in suspected drug-facilitated sexual assaults: A case series

Acetone presence in human biological specimens can result from exogenous administration or endogenous production, resulting from diabetes, dietary composition, alcoholism, and stress response. Victims of drug-facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA) are understood to experience enhanced stress. At the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences (HCIFS), DFSA drug testing includes analysis of volatile compounds, ethanol, methanol, isopropanol, and acetone, by headspace gas chromatography/flame ionization detection. The prevalence of acetone-positive specimens in DFSA casework has been observed to exceed that of other human performance case types. In this report, DFSA cases received between 2019 and 2021 (n = 393) were reviewed and 41 acetone-positive cases were detailed. Overall, nearly 11% of the DFSA cases had acetone-positive blood or urine specimens, where 3% identified acetone only, 6% identified acetone and other drug(s), and 2% identified acetone, ethanol, and other drug(s). Acetone concentrations ranged from 0.010 to 0.147 g/100 mL in urine. Other drugs such as nor-carboxy-Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol, amphetamine, methamphetamine, ethanol, and benzoylecgonine were commonly detected. Elevated stress response encountered during DFSAs may facilitate the mechanism behind enhanced acetone production leading to increased identification. Limited availability of victim medical history precludes understanding the contribution of other disease states or physiological conditions. Nonetheless, the identification of acetone in DFSA specimens supports its potential as a biomarker of trauma in forensic toxicology casework and warrants future research within the community.     

Voters' wrath? Policy change and government popularity

Recent research suggests that voters are bad at responding in a meaningful way to policy events when deciding for whom to vote. Voters rely on so‐called “blind retrospection”, punishing governments for events outside politicians' control. However, another core aspect of the blind retrospection perspective has not been put to the test: are voters unable to respond to policy decisions that clearly are under the politicians' control? We construct a unique large‐N dataset on legislative changes in German old age pensions and unemployment protection to see if cutbacks and expansions lead to lower/higher support for the government. Our data are exceptionally fine‐grained and allow us to track the policy‐vote link for 416 months from 1977 to 2013 with a total of 329,167 respondents. We find substantial support for the notion that voters react in a meaningful way to policy changes, but also that they can be distracted by high‐profile, extreme events.     

The Politics of Governance Ratings

ABSTRACT

Some international organizations, and most prominently the World Bank, play a leading role in the supply of cross-country governance ratings. The paper draws on interviews of World Bank staff to understand why the World Bank produces cross-country comparable indicators and to bring to light the current controversies within the World Bank about existing indicators and future work on governance indicators. It also attempts to explain why so many external users rely on the Worldwide Governance Indicators, despite the limitations of these indicators and the large number of more meaningful, alternative indicators available. It argues that both robust and meaningful indicators and more qualitative research are necessary to give better reform advice to developing countries.     

Cooperation is What India Makes of It – A Normative Inquiry into the Origins and Development of Regional Cooperation in South Asia and the Indian Ocean

Successful multilateral economic, political or security cooperation as best exemplified by organizations such as the EU or ASEAN invites the question why comparable organizations have never been established in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Rim, two geo-strategically important world regions. This article foregoes political-realist arguments and offers an alternative explanation for the failure of regional multilateralism in those two regions by using the social-constructivist framework of norm localization. This framework, based upon third-generation norm diffusion, provides a new analytical toolbox for analysing the general puzzle why one region may accept a particular norm while rejecting another. Arguing the case for the existence of a special South Asian regional variation of multilateralism which is termed ‘Panchsheel-multilateralism’, the article examines the process of the localization of the global norm regional multilateralism and analyses how this norm became institutionalized in the form of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). The main argument of the article is that the global norm of regional multilateralism has been localized into a principally Indian influenced model of multilateralism, based on the latter’s cognitive prior. Consequently, there has virtually never been room for any genuine multilateral cooperation, while tangible cooperative results are found in the bilateral domain only.