How Bureaucracies Listen to Courts: Bureaucratized Calculations and European Law

The European Court of Justice, and courts in general, were key actors in the creation of the European Union (EU). However, they cannot change major policy without political supporters to lobby and litigate for implementation. We argue that part of the resolution of this apparent paradox comes from complementing existing work on the activities of EU courts and litigants with a focus on a third actor: implementing bureaucracies, whose effect on law and politics has not been a focus of studies of EU legal development. Their calculations about whether to pay attention, lobby, and comply shape the impact of the law. Those calculations are variable and patterned; when and how bureaucracies listen to courts varies in predictable ways. We find evidence for this proposition in the case of EU health care services law, both in the secondary literature and in empirical studies of France and Spain.     

Public and private: change and continuity in economy through two meta-fields in society

The current literature on comparative political economy does not seem to consider unifying under a single theoretical framework the analysis of continuity and change in different economic systems. On the one hand, major comparative works derive their theoretical propositions from dynamics in the Western world. On the other, studies that are focused on national trajectories of development are concentrated in cross-national comparisons involving countries with similar characteristics in what concerns strategies of development. In this paper, I argue that all fields in the world of social action are pervaded by two major fields, hereby dubbed ‘meta-fields’: public and private. Both are in a ‘double movement’ to shape each other's boundaries through the definition of social and property rights that regulate access to human capabilities and capital. Public and private are meta-fields because they constrain human action and the organization of social configurations on state and non-state levels.     

Homicide by a Forensic Female Sample in Brazil: A Preliminary Study

The objective of the study was to evaluate the mental status of all women (n = 14) who were acquitted by reason of insanity of charges of murder or attempted murder and committed to a forensic psychiatric hospital in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. All cases were retrospectively examined, including medical files, technical records, and forensic experts' official reports. A conclusive psychiatric diagnosis was established using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV Axis I and II Disorders and clinical and forensic records. The most common diagnosis was schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorders (n = 8; 57.3%). Most victims (n = 12; 75%) were close relatives of the patients. We found that 43% (n = 6) of the patients had a previous history of violent behavior. According to the initial psychiatric forensic evaluation, 5 patients (35.7%) had psychotic symptoms. It is expected that a growing understanding of motivational factors underlying homicidal behavior in mentally disturbed female offenders may further the implementation of effective preventive and therapeutic interventions.     

Soil Fungi: Their Potential use as a Forensic Tool

As a grave is an anomalous environment and differs from its surroundings, criminal investigators employ different techniques for locating, recovering, and analyzing clandestine graves. In this study were identified the fungi found in the soil under corpses in decomposition with an aim at relating the copresence of human remains and different fungal species. Were isolated the fungi in three ways: soil washing, serial dilutions, and moist chamber growth. Dichotomomyces cejpii, Talaromyces trachyspermus, Talaromyces flavus, and Talaromyces sp. were the representative species found—with those belonging to the ammonia group, whose fungi are the first in the succession of cadaver decomposition directly in the ground. The mycobiota found at the present study area clearly differs to mycobiota identified in control sample and from previously described species for other areas of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Further forensic examples of this type are needed to develop fully the detailed use of mycology as a forensic tool.     

A Smaller Military To Fight the War on Terror

The defense budget can be reduced and the U.S. military downsized because (1) the nation-state threat environment is markedly different than it was during the Cold War, and (2) a large military is not necessary to combat the terrorist threat. In fact, the Islamist terrorist threat is relatively undeterred by the U.S. military presence abroad, and U.S. forces abroad, particularly those deployed in Muslim countries, may do more to exacerbate than to diminish the threat. The arduous task of dismantling and degrading the terrorist network will largely be the task of unprecedented international intelligence and law enforcement cooperation, not the application of large-scale military force. To the extent the military is involved in the war on terror, it will be special forces in discrete operations against specific targets rather than large-scale military operations.     

Think Tanks in Iceland

This article maps the landscape of think tanks in Iceland. It shows that think tanks are very few and insignificant in Icelandic policymaking. In the literature, the growth of think tanks in European countries with corporatist pasts has been linked to a change to a more pluralist system of interest representation. The case of Iceland lends support to this claim. In contrast to Scandinavia, corporatism remains entrenched in Iceland. But although there is a very limited market for local think tanks in Iceland, it is nevertheless recognized by political actors that touting policy advice offered by prestigious (international) think tanks can bring political benefits. This is also demonstrated in the article, showing that the influence of think tanks transcends at times national borders.     

环境应急管理机构:使命、境遇及改革

突发环境事件应急管理是各级环境保护行政主管部门的一项重要职责,这项职责目前由国家和一些地方环境保护行政主管部门所属的环境应急与事故调查中心承担。按照有关规定并从现实运行情况看,作为事业单位设置的环境应急与事故调查中心面临着其自身难以突破的困境。本文在剖析其定位、明确其归类的基础上,按照中央关于行政管理体制改革的精神,研究环境应急与事故调查中心的改革问题。     

Welfare Regimes in Latin America: Capturing Constellations of Markets,Families, and Policies

This article presents both a theoretical framework and a methodology that attempt to capture the complex interactions among labor markets, families, and public policy that currently constitute Latin American welfare regimes. Drawing on cluster analysis based on available data for 18 countries, the study identifies three welfare regimes. Two are state welfare regimes: protectionist (e.g. Costa Rica) and productivist (e.g. Chile); one is nonstate familiarist (e.g. Ecuador and Nicaragua). In a region where people's well‐being is deeply embedded in family relationships, closer scholarly attention to how social structures interact with public policy bears not only academic interest but also policy implications, particularly for adapting particular welfare regimes to the local welfare mix.     

Distribution of the AMPFLPs YNZ22, 3′APOB and COL2A1 in the population of Galicia (NW Spain)

Two different electrophoretic methods were used for typing three amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AMPFLPs), (3′ApoB, YNZ22 and COL2A1) in a Galician (NW Spain) population sample. Because of the problems of anomalous mobility for the 3′ApoB system and the intermediate alleles found in the COL2A1 system, the use of automated sequencers and denaturing conditions is recommended for typing these two systems. Nevertheless, simple electrophoretic methods, such as the PhastSystem, can be used for YNZ22 typing. Although intermediate COL2A1 alleles can be distinguished with the sequencers, a binning approach was adopted for comparison purposes. The population sampled was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the three systems using an exact test. This type of statistical analysis is more appropriate when the number of alleles in a system is high. No significant differences with other Caucasian populations were found for the three systems studied. The characteristics of the polymorphisms, shown by 3′ApoB, YNZ22 and COL2A1, reflected in the statistical parameters studied, demonstrate that these AMPFLPs are of considerable interest for forensic purposes.     

The strategic use of dismissal legislation: an empirical analysis using Spanish data

In this paper, we analyse empirically how the legal framework affects the relationship between labour market conditions and dismissals. We use a pseudo-panel of Spanish data from 1987 to 2001. We find that Labour Law reforms have effects on the use of individual and collective dismissals although such effects are much lower than those related to the business cycle. The results also show a strategic use of the different types of dismissals, distorting the work of those institutions involved in dismissals.