Understanding success and failure of anti-corruption initiatives

This paper focuses on the success and failure of anti-corruption initiatives; focusing mainly on those in developing countries. Through a review of extant evidence, it finds a very mixed picture within which there is widespread failure; albeit sometimes only partial failure. As a result, anti-corruption as a field can struggle to gain attention and resources among competing development initiatives. In reviewing that field we find that, while some progress has been made ?C for example in integrating risk assessments into programs and in learning from political economy analysis ?C there is little actual focus on the ??missing middle??: the interventions themselves and how they can be made to work better. In analyzing those interventions, we argue that projects mostly fail because of over-large ??design-reality gaps??; that is, too great a mismatch between the expectations built into their design as compared to on-the-ground realities in the context of their implementation. Successful initiatives find ways to minimize or close these gaps. Effective design and implementation processes enable gap closure and improve the likelihood of success.     

Altersdiskriminierung aus verfassungs-, verwaltungs- und europarechtlicher Sicht

Fragen der Altersdiskriminierung als spezielle Form einer Ungleichbehandlung bestimmter Personengruppen aufgrund ihres Alters rücken immer mehr in den Mittelpunkt der rechtlichen und rechtspolitischen Diskussion. Dabei handelt es sich um Aspekte, die nicht aus einer ausschlie?lichen innerstaatlich verfassungsrechtlichen Perspektive, sondern mehr und mehr in ihrer unionsrechtlichen Dimension betrachtet werden müssen. Die Problematik der Altersdiskriminierung ist zudem an einer Schnittstelle unterschiedlicher Zielrichtungen einzelner Verwaltungsrechtsbereiche angesiedelt.     

Strategic agricultural trade policy interdependence and the exchange rate: A game theoretic analysis

Strategic Agricultural Trade Policy Interdependence is modeled using a game theoretic framework. The model distinguishes between the European Community, the United States and a politically passive rest-of-the-world. Particular emphasis is placed on the effect of the exchange rate on the equilibrium outcome of this game. Without compensatory payments to those with the highest political influence, the results suggest that only modest reform is possible. With compensation, liberalization occurs but free trade is not obtained. Simulations also indicate that the U.S. gains incentive to reduce protection given a depreciation of the dollar, while incentive to liberalize trade policies decreases as the dollar appreciates. Research was supported by Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station project 14065 “Economic Integration and Disintegration in Europe: Implications for U.S. Agriculture.”     

Freundeskreise und Cliquen im frühen Jugendalter

Jugendliche sind auf vielfältige Weise in ihre Gleichaltrigenwelt eingebunden. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz untersuchen wir die Freundeskreise von Jugendlichen, ihre Einbindung in Cliquen, die damit einhergehende sozio-emotionale Befindlichkeit der Jugendlichen und ihr abweichendes Verhalten. Dazu befragten wir 111 etwa 14-jährige Brandenburger Jugendliche mit standardisierten Instrumenten. Mehr als die Hälfte der Jugendlichen berichteten, dass sie in Cliquen eingebunden sind, von denen die meisten gemischtgeschlechtlich sind. Jugendliche ohne Cliqueneinbindung hatten einen kleineren Freundeskreis, trafen sich seltener mit anderen und fühlten sich einsamer und weniger sozial akzeptiert als Jugendliche, die sich einer Clique zurechneten. Jugendliche mit Cliquen hatten innerhalb ihrer Cliquen mehr gemischtgeschlechtliche Beziehungen als außerhalb ihrer Cliquen, was dafür spricht, dass Cliquen den Weg zu gemischtgeschlechtlichen Beziehungen im frühen Jugendalter bahnen. Zusätzlich wurden Cliquenbeziehungen gegenüber anderen Beziehungen als unterstützender und spaßorientierter beschrieben. Mitglieder gruppenkulturell problematischer Cliquen, die sich durch Konformitätsdruck nach innen und Provokationsbereitschaft nach außen auszeichneten, neigten zu abweichendem Verhalten wie Unterrichtsstörungen, Devianz und ernsthaften Prügeleien. Die Mitglieder in unproblematischen Cliquen ähnelten hinsichtlich des geringen Ausmaßes an abweichendem Verhalten den Jugendlichen ohne Cliquen. Jugendliche bekommen durch ihre Cliquen zwar einerseits viele positive Entwicklungsimpulse, andererseits bilden Konformität einfordernde und provokative Cliquen einen problematischen Kontext für die Entwicklung abweichenden Verhaltens.     

Recently introduced Y-SNPs improve the resolution within Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b in a central European population sample (Tyrol, Austria)

Three recently described Y-chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (Y-SNPs) were typed in a sample of 135 men from Tyrol (Austria). These SNPs define sub-clades of haplogroup (hg) R1b. The derived states of U152 (hg R1b3h) U106 (R1b3i) and U198 (R1b3i1) were found within the Austrian R1b population sub-sample (N = 42) in 9 (21.4%), 25 (59.5%), and 1 (2.4%) individuals, respectively. Only 8 (19.0%) of the hg R1b Y-chromosomes remained unresolved. These novel SNPs proved to be promising tools for distinguishing R1b lineages in the evolutionary as well as in the forensic context.     

Moral Reminders Do Not Reduce Symptom Over-Reporting Tendencies

Is presenting patients with moral reminders prior to psychological testing a fruitful deterrence strategy for symptom over-reporting? We addressed this question in three ways. In study 1, we presented individuals seeking treatment for ADHD complaints (n = 24) with moral primes using the Mother Teresa Questionnaire and compared their scores on an index of symptom over-reporting (i.e., the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, SIMS) with those of unprimed patient controls (n = 27). Moral primes slightly decreased SIMS scores, but the effect was not significant. In study 2, we took a different approach to activate moral categories: we recruited individuals seeking treatment for ADHD complaints and asked some of them to sign a moral contract (i.e., prime; n = 19) declaring that they would complete the tests in an honest way and compared their scores on the SIMS and standard clinical scales measuring self-reported psychopathology with those of unprimed patient controls (n = 17). Again, we found no convincing evidence that moral cues suppress symptom over-reporting. In study 3, we gave individuals from the general population (N = 132) positive, negative, or neutral moral primes and implicitly induced them to feign symptoms, after which they completed a brief validated version of the SIMS and an adapted version of the b Test (i.e., an underperformance measure). Again, primes did not affect over-reporting tendencies. Taken together, our findings illustrate that moral reminders are not going to be useful in clinical practice. Rather, they point towards the importance of studying contextual and individual difference factors that guide moral decision-making in patients and may be modified to discourage symptom over-reporting.     

Duplications of the Y-chromosome specific loci P25 and 92R7 and forensic implications

In the present study, we demonstrate that two commonly used Y-chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), P25 and 92R7, are paralogous sequence variants (PSVs) originating from segmental duplications and that at least one of the sequence variants in each group of loci is polymorphic. Several methodologies were used in order to detect the SNP alleles and the PSVs of the loci. All results obtained with the various typing techniques supported the conclusion. The allele distributions of the binary markers were analysed in more than 600 males with seven different haplogroups. For P25, the ancestral allele C was found in several samples from different haplogroups. The derived allele A was always present with an additional C variant. Haplogroup P was defined by the derived allele A at the 92R7 locus. However, the ancestral allele G was always associated with an A variant due to the duplication.     

Investigations concerning the threshold value between endogenous and exogenous GHB (liquid ecstasy)

The article describes critical investigations concerning the threshold value between endogenous and exogenous concentrations of gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB/"liquid ecstasy") in human blood. The values of GHB in the blood samples of 50 blood donors and 50 postmortem cases were measured with a validated gas-chromatographic/mass-spectrometric procedure according to the guidelines of the GTFCh (Society of Toxicological and Forensic Chemistry). GHB-concentrations were found to range between 0.11 and 1.56 mg/L (mean value 0.54 mg/L/standard deviation 0.37 mg/L/coefficient of variation 68.4 %) in the donors' blood, and between 2.2 and 116 mg/L (mean value 32.4 mg/L/standard deviation 25.6 mg/L/coefficient of variation 79 %) in the postmortem samples, respectively.