Suicide by pencil

We report an unusual suicide, committed with a common pencil. A 72-year-old male inflicted himself a penetrating thoracic wound while being hospitalized for a hip prosthesis operation. Although the patient was immediately operated, the cardiac injury appeared to be fatal. Cases of suicidal penetrating wounds of the anterior chest wall are rare and they are mostly inflicted by knives, glass fragments, or other sharp instruments. The potential danger of a pencil should be taken into consideration, especially in psychiatric hospitals and imprisonment facilities. We examined the legislation in Italy and Finland concerning the regulation of privacy in special care institutions.     

Ethnic conflicts and environmental degradation in Central Asia. The Ferghana valley and northern Kazakhstan

This work seeks to demonstrate that the combination of ecological degradation, demographic pressure, and ethnic heterogeneity in Central Asia constitute a serious threat to the future stability of the region. The predominantly rural Ferghana Valley and Northern Kazakhstan suffer from shortages of water and land and from unemployment that leads to extensive out-migration to cities suffering from decline in their Soviet-era industries. The problem in the Ferghana Valley began with Tsarist conquest of the valley in 1876 and the subsequent imposition of cotton cultivation, which was greatly expanded by the Soviet Union. The Ferghana Valley, despite being a natural unit, was divided between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s and 1930s, and remains divided between the independent states. The current population of 11 million is ethnically diverse, with Uzbeks in the majority and increasing most rapidly. Immigration from the Caucasus since 1950 added to the tension. Future peace will depend on such factors as whether the neo-Communist political regime chooses to incite ethnic hostilities, the manner in which land is redistributed, and the outcome of struggles for control of the flourishing narcotics trade. The northern Kazakhstan region was designated a pioneer wheat-growing region by Soviet planners in 1954. Russian and Ukrainian migrants established between 1954 and 1956 are today the predominant population sector, but feel their privileged position threatened by nationalist policies making Kazakh the official language and giving preference in employment to Kazakhs. Resettlement of Kazakhs from Mongolia, China, and Afghanistan in the region and the high Kazakh birth rate increase tensions. Grain production initially grew rapidly, but the mediocre soil and erosion-inducing constant dry winds have caused production to stagnate or decline. Regional disputes within Kazakhstan complicate the situation. Northern Kazakhstan, with its industrial development, is integrated more with the Urals and Western Siberia than with the rest of Kazakhstan. Serious ethnic conflicts in either Kazakhstan or the Ferghana Valley are likely to spill far beyond their local boundaries, embroiling much of the area in hostilities.     

Implementation as communicative action

Many social problems can only be solved through some form of governmental involvement. In this article, a model is formulated for policy implementation. The various criticisms against a top-down model of implementation can be taken into account by conceptualizing implementation as communicative interaction between policy actors and their target groups, each characterized by distinct rationalities (section 4) with important consequences for the likelihood of learning and behavioral change (section 5). As explained in section 3, communicative action is being used to underline that we go beyond the top-down vs. bottom-up distinction, thus doing justice to empirical findings and adopting a post-positivist epistemology. Normatively, this expresses a critical approach to implementation as the continuation of politics with different means.The need for such an approach is illustrated by two case stories (section 2), one about fresh dairy packing in the Low Countries, the other one about nuclear missiles in the United States. Examples from these stories are used in sections 4 and 5 to clarify our model.     

The enactment of public participation in rulemaking: A comparative analysis

This study analyzes the enactment of public participation in rulemaking within the European Union and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries. It relies on an original dataset of administrative procedural acts and administrative laws concerning the making of delegated legislation. As 12 out of 39 countries enacted a procedure of notification, publication, and consultation between 1995 and 2015, the study focuses on courts while controlling for other domestic institutional determinants of legislative adoption and countries’ interdependence. The empirical findings show that countries with a highly independent judiciary system are less likely to enact a comprehensive provision for public participation in rulemaking. This finding highlights a paradox, namely that political systems are more likely to adopt rulemaking to enhance democratic legitimacy if they are characterized by a judicial system that does not actively pursue the legality of rulemaking.     

Diversity of Southeast Asian Capitalisms: Evolving State-Business Relations in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Empirical gaps exist in the literature about diverse forms of capitalism. The first is thematic, involving the incomplete institutional and political account of how the state can, through a series of policies, shape the development of domestic enterprises. The second gap is regional in nature: this literature does not deal with the historical development of firms that have played a central role in industrialising Southeast Asia. One reason for this is that since most existing theories are based on Western contexts, they are theoretically ill-equipped to deal with the concepts of power and state-business nexuses when the political system is not democratic in nature. But state-business ties, where politicians in power distribute government-generated rents on a selective basis, have resulted in diverse business systems such as highly diversified conglomerates, state-owned companies and small- and medium-scale enterprises. This article deals with these theoretical and empirical gaps. To better understand the nature and implications of evolving state-business ties in Southeast Asia, this topic is examined through the lens of regulation theory. To appreciate the complexity and implications of state-business configurations on the political system and forms of enterprise development, a case study of Malaysia is provided.     

From natural to controlled fertility: Mexico, 1950-1980

Mexico's demographic transition was much later and more rapid than the classic transitions of European populations. A careful study of available data sources, especially fertility surveys, allows a detailed understanding of the reproductive process in Mexico, including the nuptiality patterns that influence fertility as well as changes in general and marital fertility. This work assesses the data sources and methods utilized to analyze Mexican fertility in the past, reviews fertility trends before the onset of the transition from about 1940-70, and describes the new reproductive patterns observed since about 1976. Fertility information from the decinnial censuses is not very adequate for measuring fertility levels or trends. Possible estimates based on census information are few and widely scattered in time, and omissions, underregistration, and faulty declarations are common because of the retrospective nature of the census. Census information is highly aggregated so that significant intermediate variables are not easy to assess. But census data are still the only source allowing estimations of fertility levels by areas of residence, administrative entities, and their social and economic characteristics. Mexico's vital statistics are of poor quality, with underregistration and late registration common. Evaluations of the Mexican Fertility Survey (EMF) of 1976-77 indicate that it provides more reliable estimates than the vital statistics or the census. The EMF and the National Demographic Survey (END) of 1982 indicate that the total fertility rate fell by 30.3% between 1974-80, from 6.27 to 4.37. Both the EMF and the END were national level surveys which collected complete fertility histories thus providing longitudinal information on the marital and fertility histories of women aged 15-49. This work uses primarily data from the EMF and END to analyze the period of fertility increase between 1940-60, the period of highest fertility between 1950-70, and the transition from a natural fertility regime to one of fertility control after 1970. The analysis contains 2 major parts, 1 presenting a study of general fertility including age specific rates for generations and periods, final family size of women terminating their childbearing, and the calendar of fertility for women still of fertile age. The 2nd major section focuses on marital fertility using the same indicators but taking into account the relationships between nuptiality and fertility. Comparisons are included between fertility levels based on the major surveys and those implied by the census and vital statistics data.