Coming of age in peace,prosperity, and connectivity: Cambodia’s young electorate and its impact on the ruling party’s political strategies

Cambodia’s youthful population is significantly responsible for a recent unexpected decline in the popularity of the Cambodian People’s Party, which has governed since the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. This increasingly young electorate has lived through an era of peace and openness with regular multi-party elections and impressive economic growth resulting in rapid structural change in the economy. Compared to their parents’ generation, this younger generation is better educated, highly mobile, aspires to salaried employment, and is well connected to new sources of information and technology. Because of this, their expectations, aspirations, opportunities, as well as challenges they face are remarkably different from those of older generations. However, Cambodia’s institutions of governance, dominated by personalized and patron–client networks that have been propped up by the ruling elite, has effectively marginalized this emerging youth population. This marginalization from political and economic resources has produced alienation and discontent, which represents a significant political problem for the ruling party’s political strategies.     

Regional distribution of cocaine in postmortem brain of chronic human cocaine users

We measured concentrations of cocaine and its major metabolites (benzoylecgonine, ecgonine methylester, norcocaine, and cocaethylene) in 15 autopsied brain regions of 14 human chronic cocaine users. Only slight differences were observed in concentrations of cocaine and its metabolites amongst the examined brain areas. Although it is likely that some postmortem redistribution of the drug must have occurred, our data are consistent with the possibility that behaviorally relevant doses of cocaine are widely distributed throughout the brain of humans who use the drug on a chronic basis. Consideration should therefore be given to the possible pharmacological and toxicological actions of cocaine in both striatal and extra-striatal brain areas in human users of the drug.     

Gender,ethnic group,and grade differences in psychosocial functioning during middle adolescence?

Prior research has found significant differences between ethnic groups in identity formation. However, most investigations have either failed to include or adjust for SES level differences. To reassess possible differences in psychosocial development between African American, American Indian, Mexican American, and White American 10th–12th grade male and female adolescents (n=123), ethnic groups were compared according to passive-active dimensions delineated in identity, sex role orientation, and locus of control. A series of analyses of covariance (using education level of father and mother as covariates) were computed using ethnicity, grade, and gender in the factorial model as main effects. Consistent with previous research, White adolescents scored significantly lower than the other groups on ideological foreclosure. Overall, however, more similarity than differences between the four ethnic groups were found. Older students were observed to be more psychosocially mature, and males scored higher than females on identity diffusion. Marginal support was gained for the proposed passive-active delineations of the dependent variables.Partial support for this project was provided to Gerald Adams through funding from the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station, Logan, Utah, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Ottawa, Canada.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Department of Psychology, Utah State University. Research interests: identity formation, ego strength and psychosocial maturity in adolescence, interfaith dating and courtship, and ethnic contexts of development.(Visiting Professor, Division of Family Resources, West Virginia University, 1994–1995 academic year.) Received Ph.D. in human development and family studies, Pennsylvania State University. Research interests: personality and social development in adolescence, identity formation, parent-adolescent relationships, and adolescent social problems.     

Forensic Analysis of Human Autopsy Tissue for the Presence of Polydimethylsiloxane (Silicone) and Volatile Cyclic Siloxanes using Macro FT‐IR,FT‐IR Spectroscopic Imaging and Headspace GC‐MS

This study describes effective and straightforward primary and secondary methods for the detection of silicone in human autopsy tissue. The primary method is polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) specific and employs either macro‐attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR‐FT‐IR) spectroscopy for samples with a high PDMS concentration (relative to that of the matrix) or micro‐FT‐IR spectroscopic imaging in a reflection/absorption modality for samples with a low PDMS concentration. Although the secondary method is not PDMS specific, it employs headspace gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection (HS/GC‐MS) for the detection of low molecular weight volatile cyclic siloxanes (VCS), which are characteristic marker compounds for PDMS. Overall, the combined results from the primary and secondary analyses provide reliable evidence for the presence of silicone.     

Legal Compliance in Street‐Level Bureaucracy: A Study of UK Housing Officers

Street‐level bureaucratic theory is now at a fairly mature stage. The focus on street‐level bureaucrats as ultimate policymakers is now as familiar as it is important. Likewise, the parallel sociolegal study of the implementation of public law in public organizations has demonstrated the inevitable gap between law‐in‐the‐books and law‐in‐action. Yet, the success of these advances comes at the potential cost of us losing sight of the importance of law itself. This article analyzes some empirical data on the decision making about one legal concept—vulnerability in UK homelessness law. Our analysis offers two main contributions. First, we argue that, when it comes to the implementation of law, the legal abilities and propensities of the bureaucrats must be taken into account. Bureaucrats' abilities to understand legal materials make a difference to the likelihood of legal compliance. Second, we must also pay attention to the character of the legal provisions. Where a provision is simple, it is more likely to facilitate legal knowledge and demands nothing of bureaucrats in terms of legal competence. Where the provision is also inoffensive and liveable, it is less likely to act as an impediment to legal conscientiousness.     

Representation and participation in child care proceedings: what about the voice of the parents?

In Ireland, the Constitution guarantees very strong rights to parents and the family, and there has been a long and unfortunate history of failures to adequately protect children at risk. As a result, there has been much discussion in recent years about the need to improve legal mechanisms designed to protect the rights of children. By comparison, little attention has been given to establishing whether the theoretically strong rights of parents translate into strongly protected rights in practice. This paper presents new empirical evidence on the manner in which child care proceedings in Ireland balance the rights and interests of children and parents, including the rates at which orders are granted, the frequency of and conditions in which legal representation is provided, and the extent to which parents are able to actively participate in proceedings. A number of systemic issues are identified that restrict the capacity of the system to emphasise parental rights and hear the voice of parents to the extent that would be expected when looking at the legal provisions in isolation.     

Predictive validity of the dynamic risk assessment and management system in individuals with intellectual disability residing in the community

Background. The Dynamic Risk Assessment and Management System (DRAMS) was created to measure dynamic risk in individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID). Steptoe, Lindsay, Murphy, and Young, (2008) examined the construct validity, reliability and predictive validity of the dynamic risk assessment and management system (DRAMS) in offenders with intellectual disability and found that the total DRAMS score and sections on mood, antisocial behaviour and intolerance/agreeableness predicted incidents with a medium effect size for offenders with ID residing in high secure settings.     

The Relational Conception of Practical Authority

I argue for a new conception of practical authority based on an analysis of the relationship between authority and subject. Commands entail a demand for practical deference, which establishes a relationship of hierarchy, vulnerability, and responsibility that involves a variety of signals and commitments. In order for this relationship to be justified, the subject must be under a preexisting duty, the authority’s commands must take precedence over the subject’s judgment regarding fulfillment of that duty, the authority must accept the position and responsibilities of command, and the authority must be sufficiently trustworthy relative to how vulnerable the subject makes herself by deferring. This results in an instrumentalist conception of practical authority that can be favorably compared to Joseph Raz’s influential service conception. The relational conception’s main advantage is that it focuses on the authority as much as the subject, requiring that the authority accept responsibility for the relationship and be sufficiently trustworthy. This allows the relational conception to avoid problems that the service conception faces and illuminates institutional authority.     

‘Two children to make ends meet’: the ideal family size,parental responsibilities and costs of children on two sides of the Iron Curtain during the post-war fertility decline

One of the major corollaries of the post-war fertility boom and decline is that two-child families became common across Europe after the 1970s. Despite the general agreement on the convergence of fertility trends, there is still little understanding of how this change took place in a comparative perspective of Western and Eastern Europe, which at that time were characterised by Cold War tensions of different ideological regimes. This study addresses this aspect by focusing on individual decisions around childbearing, child-rearing and family size. Based on 104 oral histories from Switzerland and Ukraine, this study illuminates that the urban setting provided parents with a similar set of constraints and opportunities, which eventually resulted in strikingly similar perceptions of the costs of childrearing on two sides of the Iron Curtain. Individuals’ motives to postpone first birth in Switzerland and second birth in Ukraine rested on a similar aspiration to invest in the well-being of children by ensuring material security for the family. This aim was increasingly achieved through female labour-force participation and adoption of modern contraception – the pill in Switzerland and abortion in Ukraine. While the timing of returning to the labour market and the share of women working after entering parenthood might have varied across the two contexts, a good mother became increasingly defined in both contexts in terms of providing emotionally and financially for her children. Although the introduction of modern birth control methods allowed couples to plan family size more carefully, it also made Swiss and Ukrainian women increasingly carry the major costs and actual burden of birth control. Altogether, this study challenges the common assumption around the persistence of strikingly different demographic realities in post-war Western and Eastern Europe by uncovering the mechanisms behind the stabilisation of family size around the two-child family ideal.