Disarming Somalia: lessons in stabilisation from a collapsed state

International efforts to resolve the Somali crisis have foundered on one central paradox: the restoration of state institutions is both an apparent solution to the conflict and its most important underlying cause. Somalis tend to approach disarmament and demobilisation—two central pillars of the ‘state-building’ process—with the fundamental question: who is disarming whom? If the answer threatens to entrench unbalanced and unstable power relations, then it may also exacerbate and prolong the conflict. In this paper, the authors examine disarmament and demobilisation initiatives from southern Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland. In southern Somalia, externally-driven disarmament and demobilisation initiatives in support of successive interim ‘governments’ have been widely viewed with suspicion and alarm. In Somaliland and Puntland, Somali-led, locally owned efforts have achieved a degree of success that can be instructive elsewhere. The authors conclude that conventional international approaches to ‘state-building’ in Somalia must be reassessed—notably that security sector issues must be treated not as a purely ‘technical’ issue, but as an integral part of the political process.     

Identification of fentanyl derivatives

An interpretative approach to the identification of fentanyl homologs and analogs is presented. The techniques employed are liquid/liquid extractions; capillary gas chromatography; and infrared, mass, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectral characterization. Spectral data are presented for eight fentanyl derivatives of clandestine origin.     

The Opportunistic President: How US Presidents Determine Their Legislative Programs

The president is the most influential policy actor in US politics, and his legislative program greatly influences Congress's agenda. Yet little research has focused on what factors affect the president's choices when constructing his agenda. We develop a theory that determines when a president will include an issue in his program. We hypothesize that presidents structure their agendas around the congressional calendar for consideration of expiring laws and salient issues. Using data over 28 years and across 12 policy areas, we find presidents build their programs around these policymaking opportunities. We assert that presidential agendas are less driven by individual priorities than previous accounts have concluded.     

Complex scientific testimony: How do jurors make decisions?

Critics of the civil jury system question whether jurors can adequately evaluate complex expert testimony. Based on current models of research in persuasion, we hypothesized that when expert testimony is complex, factors other than content will influence persuasion. Participants, serving as mock jurors, watched a videotaped trial in which two scientists provided evidence on whether PCBs could have caused a plaintiff's illness. The complexity of the expert's testimony and the strength of the expert's credentials were varied in a 2×2 factorial design. After watching the videotape, mock jurors rendered a verdict and completed a number of attitude measures related to the trial. Overall, consistent with our prediction, we found that jurors were more persuaded by a highly expert witness than by a less expert witness, but only when the testimony was highly complex. When the testimony was less complex, jurors relied primarily on the content of that testimony, and witness credentials had little impact on the persuasiveness of the message.