Policy processes sans frontières: interactions in transnational governance of global health

Policy Sciences - National policy on global health (NPGH) arenas are multisectoral governing arrangements for cooperation between health, development, and foreign affairs sectors in government...     

A rising generation of Europeans? Life‐cycle and cohort effects on support for ‘Europe’

Despite much research on age and attitudes, it remains unclear whether age reflects accumulated life experience or conditions prevailing during an individual's formative years – that is, a life‐cycle effect or a cohort effect. In respect to attitudes towards the European Union (EU), the issue is particularly important. Although many analyses indicate a correlation between age and support, the relationship has not been adequately theorised and extant analyses have generated contradictory results. In this article, theoretical expectations for both life‐cycle and cohort effects on support for the EU are developed and tested using a cross random effects model. This not only identifies the nature of an age‐support relationship, but also highlights substantial generational differences in attitudes towards European integration and explains the inconsistencies in extant empirical analyses.     

Reviews

Jean‐Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié. BEN LADEN: LA VÉRITÉ INTERDITE (Paris: Denoël, 2001).

Leo Panitch, RENEWING SOCIALISM: DEMOCRACY, STRATEGY, AND IMAGINATION (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001).

The global question in an Urban World*

David Harvey, SPACES OF HOPE (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

Liberatory Urbanism vs. Control of Public Space

Jeff Ferrell, TEARING DOWN THE STREETS: ADVENTURES IN URBAN ANARCHY (New York: Palgrave/St. Martin's Press, 2001).

Jamie Peck, WORKFARE STATES (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).

Patrick Colm Hogan, THE CULTURE OF CONFORMISM: UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CONSENT (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001).

Regin Schmidt, RED SCARE: FBI AND THE ORIGINS OF ANTICOMMUNISM IN THE UNITED STATES (University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000).

DOKUMENTE ZUR GESCHICHTE DER KOMMUNISTISCHEN BEWEGUNG IN DEUTSCHLAND [Documents on the History of the Communist Movement in Germany]. Reihe 1945/1946, 6 vols. Edited by Günter Benser and Hans‐Joachim Krusch, K.G. Saur Verlag, Munich 1993–1997.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe Januar bis Dezember 1855. Hans‐Jürgen Bochinski, Martin Hundt et al. (eds.), GESAMTAUSGABE (MEGA) Sec. I, Vol. 14 (Berlin: Akademie‐Verlag, 2001).

Frank Rosengarten, THE WRITINGS OF THE YOUNG MARCEL PROUST (1885–1900): AN IDEOLOGICAL CRITIQUE (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

Three short works on Cuba

1. Lilah Rosenblum, A TIME FOR CHANGE: RETHINKING US‐CUBA POLICY (Washington Office on Latin America [WOLA], Washington, D.C. 2002). 75pp

2. WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN CUBA. Report of the United States Delegation to the 2002 Exchange Between U.S. and Cuban Labor and Employment Lawyers, Neutrals, and Trade Unionists. Sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee [c/o Eisner & Hubbard, P.C., 113 University Place, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003] and the U.S. Health Care Trade Union Committee. 32pp.

3. Debra Evanson, WORKERS IN CUBA: UNIONS AND LABOR RELATIONS (The NLG/Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice, Detroit, 2002). 105pp.     

Bureaucratic justice: the incarceration of mainland Chinese women working in Hong Kong's sex industry

Since Hong Kong's return to the People's Republic of China (PRC) there has been a significant rise in the number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong, including women crossing the border to engage in sex work. Sex work itself is not a crime in Hong Kong, but related activities, like soliciting, are prohibited. Sex work is treated as work for immigration purposes, and visitors who engage in work without an employment visa are breaching their conditions of stay. More than 10,000 mainland Chinese women have been arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced in recent years, causing the correctional population to expand beyond capacity. The authors examine the experiences of 58 incarcerated women in their encounters with the Hong Kong criminal justice system and find that women are processed in a highly routinized bureaucratic manner. They consider the purpose served by the largely bureaucratic form of justice that has emerged in response to migrant sex workers in Hong Kong.     

Breath alcohol concentration determined with a new analyzer using free exhalation predicts almost precisely the arterial blood alcohol concentration

A new breath alcohol (ethanol) analyzer has been developed, which allows free exhalation, standardizes measured exhaled alcohol concentration to fully saturated water vapor at a body temperature of 37 degrees C (43.95 mg/L) and includes a built-in self-calibration system. We evaluated the performance of this instrument by comparing standardized alcohol concentration in freely expired breath (BrAC) with arterial (ABAC) and venous (VBAC) blood alcohol concentrations in fifteen healthy volunteers who drank 0.6 g of alcohol per kg body weight. The precision (coefficient of variation, CV) of the analyzer based on in vivo duplicate measurements in all phases of the alcohol metabolism was 1.7%. The ABAC/BrAC ratio was 2251+/-46 (mean+/-S.D.) in the post-absorptive phase and the mean bias between ABAC and BrAC x 2251 was 0.0035 g/L with 95% limits of agreement of 0.033 and -0.026. The ABAC and BrAC x 2251 were highly correlated (r=0.998, p<0.001) and the regression relationship was ABAC = 0.00045 + 1.0069 x (BrAC x 2251) indicating excellent agreement and no fixed or proportional bias. In the absorption phase, ABAC exceeded BrAC x 2251 by at most 0.04+/-0.03 g/L when tests were made at 10 min post-dosing (p<0.05). The VBAC/BrAC ratio never stabilized and varied continuously between 1834 and 3259. There was a proportional bias between VBAC and BrAC x 2251 (ABAC) in the post-absorptive phase (p<0.001). The pharmacokinetic analysis of the elimination rates of alcohol and times to zero BAC confirmed that BrAC x 2251 and ABAC agreed very well with each other, but not with VBAC (p<0.001). We conclude that this new breath analyzer using free exhalation has a high precision for in vivo testing. The BrAC reflects very accurately ABAC in the post-absorption phase and substantially well in the absorption phase and thereby reflects the concentration of alcohol reaching the brain. Our findings highlight the magnitude of arterio-venous differences in alcohol concentration and support the use of breath alcohol analyzers as a stand-alone test for medical and legal purposes.     

The role of confirmation bias in suspect interviews: A systematic evaluation

Purpose. The three studies presented in this paper systematically examined the effect of expectations of guilt on interviewer questioning style, confession, denial rates, and suspects' verbal behaviour during interview. Method. Undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the three studies. In Study 1, 61 participants formulated questions that they wanted to ask a suspect to determine whether or not they cheated on a task. Prior to formulating their questions, participants were led to believe that the suspect was likely to be guilty or innocent. In Study 2, 45 ‘innocent’ and ‘guilty’ participants were accused of cheating on a task and were interviewed with either guilt‐presumptive questions or neutral questions. In the final study, 58 participants listened to a selection of audiotaped interviews from Study 2. They then rated various aspects of the suspects' verbal behaviour. Results. As hypothesized expectations of guilt resulted in the formulation of more guilt‐presumptive questions even when participants were free to generate their own questions (Study 1). A significant association was found between suspect guilt/innocence and whether they confessed or denied, although there was no association between questioning style and confession or denial rates (Study 2). However, as expected, ratings of independent observers who listened to tape recordings of the suspect interviews indicated an influence of questioning style on the suspects' verbal behaviour whereby a self‐fulfilling prophecy effect occurred (Study 3). Conclusions. These results indicate that expectations of guilt can indeed have an effect on questioning style and that this in‐turn can lead to a self‐fulfilling prophecy effect.