Reviews

Kaunda's Zambia, 1964 ‐ 1991. A Select and Annotated Bibliography compiled by Naomi Musiker.

South African Institute of International Affairs, Bibliographical Series No. 26, Johannesburg. 1993. viii plus 426pp.

Environment, Employment and Development edited by A.S. Bhalla. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1992. x plus 177pp. including bibliography.

Poverty in Developing Countries: A Bibliography of Publications by the International Labour Office World Employment Programme, 1975–91. International Labour Office Bibliography No 12. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1992. viii plus 152pp.

The South African Tripod: Studies in Economics, Politics and Conflict by B. Oden, T. Ohlson, A. Davidson, P. Strand, M. Lundahl, and L. Moritz. Scandinavian Institute of International Studies, Uppsala, 1994. 281pp. including tables and graphs.

Tears of the Dead, the Social Biography of an African Family by Richard Werbner. Baobab Books: Harare and Edinburgh University Press, 1991. xi plus 211pp. including genealogies and illustrations.

The Politics of the National Arts Festival by Kenneth Grundy. Occasional Paper, No. 34, Institute of Social and Economic Research. Rhodes University, Grahamstown. 66 pp. including notes.

The Agrarian Question in Southern Africa and Accumulation from Below: Economics and Politics in the Struggle for Democracy by Michael Neocosmos. Research Report No. 93, The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala, 1993. 79 pp. including notes and bibliography.

The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass by Robert J. Gordon. Boulder, Westview Press, Colorado and Oxford, 1992. xiv plus 304 pp. including maps, tables, notes, references and index.

A Bed Called Home: Life in the Migrant Labour Hostels of Cape Town by Mamphela Ramphele. David Philip: Cape Town, 1993. vii plus 152pp. including illustrations, appendix, bibliography and index.

The Small and the New in Southern Africa: The Foreign Relations of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland since their Independence. A Select and Annotated Bibliography compiled by L.E. Andor. South African Institute of International Affairs, Bibliographical Series No. 25, Johannesburg, 1993. x plus 526pp.     

The PMMA epidemic in Norway: comparison of fatal and non-fatal intoxications

During a 6 month period (July 2010-January 2011) we observed 12 fatal intoxications and 22 non-fatal cases related to the drug paramethoxymethamphetamine (PMMA) in Norway (4.8 mill inhabitants). This toxic designer drug, also known as "Death", is occasionally found in street drugs offered as "ecstasy" or "amphetamine". The present study aimed to evaluate the cause of death, and to compare the PMMA blood concentrations in fatal and non-fatal cases. Methods for identification and quantification of PMMA are presented. The median age of fatalities was 30 years (range 15-50) with 67% males; in non-fatal cases 27 years (20-47) with 86% males. In the 12 fatalities, the median PMMA blood concentration was 1.92 mg/L (range 0.17-3.30), which is in the reported lethal range of 0.6-3.1 mg/L in peripheral blood and 1.2-15.8 mg/L in heart blood. In the 22 non-fatal cases, the median PMMA concentration was 0.07 mg/L (range 0.01-0.65). Poly-drug use was frequent both in fatal and non-fatal cases. The PMA concentrations ranging from 0.00 to 0.26 mg/L in both groups likely represented a PMMA metabolite. Three fatalities were attributed to PMMA only, six to PMMA and other psychostimulant drugs, and three to PMMA and CNS depressant drugs, with median PMMA concentrations of 3.05 mg/L (range 1.58-3.30), 2.56 (1.52-3.23) and 0.52 mg/L (0.17-1.24), respectively. Eight victims were found dead, while death was witnessed in four cases, with symptoms of acute respiratory distress, hyperthermia, cardiac arrest, convulsions, sudden collapse and/or multiple organ failure. In summary, all fatalities attributed to PMMA had high PMMA blood concentrations compared to non-fatal cases. Our sample size was too small to evaluate a possible impact of poly-drug use. A public warning is warranted against use and overdose with illegal "ecstasy" or "speed" drugs.     

Diffusion of Corporate Risk‐Management Characteristics: Perspectives of Chief Audit Executives through a Survey Approach

This study examines how corporate risk‐management characteristics in Australian public universities have diffused under an environment of conflicting management cultures. The findings reveal that corporate risk‐management characteristics have diffused in a pluralist form to satisfy stakeholders of different management approaches across its governance levels as opposed to a unilateral form aligned to the corporate approach. The accepted practice of this adapted version challenges the existing notion that the adoption of corporate control processes in the public sector is problematic, and provides insights into the emergence of a hybrid control process to address the needs of multiple stakeholders. These findings have policy implications for defining a new hybrid governance‐control paradigm for the public sector as an alternative to the corporate‐influenced control paradigm, and provide avenues for further research to confirm the phenomenon with other corporate control processes, public‐sector entities, and if so its impact on effective governance.     

Connecting smallholders with dynamic markets: a market information service in Zambia

Commodity markets have changed significantly in the past two decades, with smallholders increasingly requiring robust market intelligence to understand and secure benefit from the new environment. This article explores the approach to, and lessons stemming from, an IFAD-financed market information service in Zambia. It finds that by locating the service within a pre-existing institution with legitimacy and credibility, the service has secured the interest of a wide range of actors, and has better enabled smallholders and traders to access and utilise relevant, up-to-date, and actionable information to shape decision-making. The article concludes by discussing the key considerations that shaped the institutional analysis, and the issues that will influence the financial sustainability of the service.     

Toward an integration of economic and sociological approaches?

This article answers the question whether sociology of law and law and economics can be unificd into one integrated science. First, it is argued that an integration process inside law and economics has taken place, integrating most schools and partial analyses into one mainstream law and economics. Second, it is argued that there are no natural barriers against an integration of sociology and economics. Purely economic theories cannot and do not exist. What is calledeconomic analysis of law is basically a mixture of, for instance, 70 percent economics, 10 percent sociology, 10 percent psychology, and 10 percent other sciences. In addition, there is no such a thing as a purely sociological concept; concepts are sociological only in the sense that they are invented by people who call themselves sociologists.Nevertheless one should not expect that such a richer social science will lead to fundamentally different predictions and policy recommendations than those derived from the current simplistic economic analysis of law. The aspects studied by sociologists but assumed away by legal economists to date have in most cases no influence on the determination of (optimal) legal rules or on the long-run effects of legal rules.     

Co-determination and the market economy

In this article attention is paid to Böhm's ideas on codetermination and on the related subject of public industrial organization. According to Böhm the government has to take care of the institutional framework of the market economy. The coordinating function of prices has to be improved by competition policy and by monetary and financial policy. Public industrial organization and codetermination based on the parity principle are thought by him to be incompatible with the market economy because they frustrate price formation.     

The Netherlands

European Journal of Political Research -