Reversal sign on ante- and postmortem brain imaging in a newborn: report of one case

A 16-day-old female newborn was admitted to the emergency department after cardiopulmonary arrest. Total-body radiographs and non-enhanced CT of the brain showed fracture of the right clavicle, pericerebral hemorrhage and brain damage with reversal sign. The infant died on the day of her hospital admission. Because child abuse was suspected, a medicolegal autopsy was ordered by the legal authorities. Prior to autopsy, total-body MRI and CT were performed. Results of the ante- and postmortem investigations were compared with each other and then with the autopsy findings. Postmortem brain imaging showed persistence of the reversal sign. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case describing hypoxic ischemic damage of the brain parenchyma on antemortem CT and persisting on postmortem imaging in a child abuse case.     

Post-mortem changes of the middle ear: multislice computed tomography study

Six dry skulls were studied by multislice computed tomography (MSCT). They had not previously been prepared, and were natural skeletonized remains. All had been found in the soil. Examination focused on the temporal bones and the ear structures. In all cases, either disruption of the ossicular chain or absence of some ossicular bones were noted. The authors concluded that the fragile ossicles were disrupted in the post-mortem state, and were not indicative of ante-mortem pathology. These observations illustrate the ability of MSCT to visualize taphonomic changes. To further illustrate these findings, we present the results of MSCT performed on an exhumed body. The left ossicular bones were missing and the right ossicular chain was disrupted. With the development of forensic radiology, structures as tiny as the ossicles can be examined. However, the radiologist who performs post-mortem imaging must be familiar with taphonomic changes to avoid interpretation as ante-mortem or peri-mortem traumatic injuries. This could potentially have considerable judicial impact, especially in the study of exhumed bodies.     

Small Firms’ Formalisation: The Stick Treatment

Firm informality is pervasive throughout the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods. The literature on encouraging formalisation has predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of formalisation and has found negligible impacts of such policies. In this paper, we focus on a stick intervention, which to the best of our knowledge is the first one in a developing country setting that deals with the most direct and dominant form of informality, that is registration with the tax authority with a direct link to the country’s potential revenue base and thus public goods provision. We implement an experiment in which randomly selected firms are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating that the firm is not registered and the consequential punishment if the firm fails to register. We find that the intervention increases the rate of registration among treated firms, while firms located in the same market but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. We also find that only larger revenue firms at baseline respond to the threat and register. Our findings have at least two important policy implications: i) the enforcement angle, which could be an important tool to encourage formalisation; and ii) targeting of government resources for formalisation to high-end informal firms. The effects are generally small in levels and this leaves open the question of why many firms still do not register.     

Accelerating down a Road to Nowhere: On Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams

In Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams implore those on the left not to fear automation but rather to harness it in order to overturn neoliberalism. However, their argument is built upon a controversial philosophy which goes unnamed in the body of the text: accelerationism, the first principles of which would overthrow the very understanding of human nature on which Western democracy has operated for centuries. Their vision also entails a way of doing politics and designing policy which radically differs from representative democracy and grassroots movements as they seek to engineer consent and to form a revolutionary vanguard—not just to overthrow capitalism, but to embark on a journey of continually re-engineering humanity itself.     

The political cost of public–private partnerships: Theory and evidence from Colombian infrastructure development

Infrastructure public–private partnerships (PPPs) eschew traditional public management to provide distributive goods worldwide. Yet, in Colombia, the context of our study, both the promise of and voters' experience with PPPs hinder incumbent parties in elections when theories of distributive politics expect otherwise. We argue that negative experiences with PPPs introduce a sociotropic turn in individual voting: bad experience crowds out the possibility that promising a new project will improve a voter's own welfare. Studying what are, to our knowledge, all 109 Colombian PPP projects between 1998 and 2014, and over 8,700 individual survey responses, our evidence shows that vote intention for the incumbent executive or his party decreases as experience with more PPPs in respondents' districts increases. Our analysis and results introduce an important agenda for research into the political significance of these legacies of new public management.     

Political Responses to the Economic Crisis: Is it Different this Time?

Responding to the financial and economic crisis that began in 2007‐2008 – commonly called the Great Recession – has been a challenging and pressing problem for many governments, but in particular, for the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. These countries have experienced their most severe economic downturn since the 1930s. In this issue of the SPSR, we asked a set of prominent scholars to discuss and revisit several of the key existing results and expectations in comparative political economy in light of the events observed so far. While it is still too early to come up with a full understanding of the political dynamics in motion, this set of contributions provides a series of interesting observations and results that should stimulate further debate and research. In the remainder of this introduction, we both announce things to come and put them into context.