A New Measure of Policy Spending Priorities in the American States

In this paper, we develop and test a general measure of policyexpenditures in the American states. Our approach is to constructa spatial proximity model of yearly state program spending.The empirical analysis reveals that state spending patternsvary along a clear and readily-interpretable unidimensionalcontinuum which differentiates policies that provide particularizedbenefits to needy constituencies from policies that providebroader collective goods. Based upon standard evaluative criteria,the variable created from our model possesses some highly desirablecharacteristics. And, it compares favorably to other measuresof state policy activity. The net result is a yearly score foreach state which summarizes that state's spending across allmajor program areas. More generally, we believe that our variablecan be interpreted as valid and reliable representational measurementof state policy priorities. In this capacity, it could occupyan important position within models of state politics. Author's note: Many colleagues provided useful feedback on earlierversions of this paper. We particularly appreciate the excellentcomments and suggestions from Robert Erikson, Richard Fording,Kim Hill, David Lowery, Andrea McAtee, and George Rabinowitz.We would also like to thank Daniel Lewis and William Myers fortheir assistance with the data collection. The yearly statepolicy priority scores obtained from the unfolding analysis,along with the data used to create the scores, the SAS macroto carry out the unfolding procedure, and all other supplemental materialsare available on the authors’ web sites: http://polisci.msu.edu/jacobyand http://polisci.msu.edu/schneider. All these materials arealso available on the Political Analysis Web site.     

Developing the meat grab

‘Meat grabbing’ describes actually existing land deals undertaken for industrial meat production, either directly in the form of animal housing and stocking (confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs), or indirectly in the form of monocrop grain and oilseed production for livestock feed. Meat grabbing is also a concept for analyzing the relationships between industrial meat regimes, food security politics and the global land rush, relationships which have not yet been sufficiently considered in research or in policy. Using China's reform-era meat revolution as an analytical case, this paper proposes meat grabbing as a concept with three broad goals: (1) to show how industrial meat complicates notions of food security and of food security land grabs, (2) to incorporate social inequalities and environmental injustices into the conceptualization and measurement of land deals and (3) to expand dispossession's domain to include relationships between people and agroecosystems. This is an initial exploration of the content and framing of meat grabs, intended to synthesize its core features and raise questions for further study.     

Is a Federal European Constitution for an Enlarged European Union Necessary? Some Preliminary Suggestions using Public Choice Analysis

In order to guarantee a further successful functioning of the enlarged European Union a Federal European Constitution is proposed. Six basic elements of a future European federal constitution are developed: the European commission should be turned into a European government and the European legislation should consist of a two chamber system with full responsibility over all federal items. Three further key elements are the subsidiarity principle, federalism and the secession right, which are best suited to limiting the domain of the central European authority to which certain tasks are given, such as defense, foreign and environmental policy. Another important feature is direct democracy, which provides the possibility for European voters to participate actively in political decision making, to break political and interest group cartels, and to prevent an unwanted shifting of responsibilities from EU member states to the European federal level.     

Enlargement processes and distributional conflicts: The politics of discriminatory membership in the European Union

This paper examines discriminatory membership in the European Union from a game-theoretical perspective. I argue that discriminatory membership enables the enlargement of international organizations with heterogenous member states. EU members impose discriminatory measures on new members to redistribute enlargement gains from new members to particularly negatively affected EU members as to render expansion pareto-efficient. The empirical findings of a probit analysis on the EU accession negotiations and outcomes of all five EU enlargement rounds support the theoretical claim. The EU grants acceding states restricted membership rights if distributional conflicts emerge. Moreover, the candidate’s bargaining power and the possibility of alternative compensation schemes influence the enlargement outcomes.     

Integration, Ethnizität und Bildung

Societal integration of Turkish immigrants with higher education does not go hand in hand with cultural assimilation. Educational success is accompanied by the individual-strategic integration of German and Turkish identity attributes, because new diversity management concepts of international organizations are offering new career opportunities. The process of social-emotional integration is ?selective“ as well, because socialization of Turkish students in German educational institutions leads to disaffection with their ethnical heritage and their social connections to German communities remains incomplete. Questions of cultural-authentic integration, connected with a strong bias for individualism, are answered by a new culture of immigration beyond class and ethnic community. Communicative Integration, enabled by public discourse, is causing a distancing from German and Turkish lifeworlds. Turkish immigrants with a higher education do not accept a categorization of themselves through ethnic characterization; instead they construct hybrid identities, posttraditional communities, and active trust through the process of reflexive integration.     

Fatal intoxication due to dothiepin

An ingestion of an unknown quantity of Harmomed (dothiepin and diazepam) capsules in a suicide is described. The authors report a new and fast method of analysing and determining the dothiepin concentration in postmortem specimens. Quantitation of dothiepin, and its metabolite desmethyldothiepin was performed by ethyl acetate extraction from alkalinized body fluids before GC-MS analysis. The analyses were performed without any complex sample clean-up steps and with little sample material. Postmortem concentrations of dothiepin, desmethyldothiepin, diazepam and desmethyldiazepam in body fluids are given. The proposed method is a rapid procedure for analysis in cases of deliberate poisoning with the antidepressant drug dothiepin.     

Application of mtDNA sequence analysis in forensic casework for the identification of human remains

In four forensic cases of unidentified skeletal remains investigated in the last year, we were able to attach three to missing persons. In one case we could show that the discovered bone sample did not fit to a missing child. The method for mitochondrial DNA analysis for the routine identification of skeletal remains was established in our institute by typing bone samples of defined age obtained from Frankfurt's cemetery. Reproducible results were obtained for bones up to 75 years old. For analysis the bone samples were pulverised to fine powder, decalcified and DNA was extracted. From the DNA we amplified a 404-bp fragment from HV-1 and a 379-bp fragment from HV-2 of the mtDNA control region. After sequencing of the PCR products, the results were compared to the Anderson reference sequence and to putative maternal relatives.