The impact of within-party and between-party ideological dispersion on fiscal outcomes: evidence from Swiss cantonal parliaments

The impact of the fragmentation of executive and legislative bodies on the level and composition of government expenditure is a feature of politics that has attracted considerable attention from economists. However, previous authors have abstracted from two important concepts: ideology and intra-party politics. In this paper, we account for these two phenomena explicitly, and make two main contributions. First, we show that both intra- and inter-party ideological dispersion matter in explaining the level of sub-national public spending. Therefore, it is improper to consider parties as monolithic entities. We also show that ideological dispersion matters especially for current expenditures, and not so much for investment expenditures. To do so, we construct a panel database (2003–2010) comprising data from a survey that quantifies the policy preferences of party members who were candidates in Swiss elections.     

Elections and Deceptions: An Experimental Study on the Behavioral Effects of Democracy

Traditionally, the virtue of democratic elections has been seen in their role as means of screening and sanctioning shirking public officials. This article proposes a novel rationale for elections and political campaigns considering that candidates incur psychological costs of lying, in particular from breaking campaign promises. These nonpecuniary costs imply that campaigns influence subsequent behavior, even in the absence of reputational or image concerns. Our lab experiments reveal that promises are more than cheap talk. They influence the behavior of both voters and their representatives. We observe that the electorate is better off when their leaders are elected democratically rather than being appointed exogenously—but only in the presence of electoral campaigns. In addition, we find that representatives are more likely to serve the public interest when their approval rates are high. Altogether, our results suggest that elections and campaigns confer important benefits beyond their screening and sanctioning functions.     

Security sector reform,gender and local narratives in Burundi

This paper maps the difficulties with operationalising the gender discourse described in the peace accord and post-conflict documents, which guide Burundi's peace-building process, through local women's narratives from the security forces. The author claims that due to limited international and local investment, the local women involved in the security forces initiate small practical changes by referring to their vision of femininity, while theoretically legitimising these demands by linking them to the international human rights discourse in order to survive in an overwhelmingly masculine arena. International organisations and donors’ focus on traditionally feminine and softer areas, such as reconciliation and reintegration programmes, together with local elites’ tendency to view gender as an ‘add-on’ contribute to this development.     

Sex Determination from the Frontal Bone: A Geometric Morphometric Study

Sex estimation in human skeletal remains when using the cranium through traditional methods is a fundamental pillar in human identification; however, it may be possible to incur in a margin of error due because of the state of preservation in incomplete or fragmented remains. The aim of this investigation was sex estimation through the geometric morphometric analysis of the frontal bone. The sample employed 60 lateral radiographs of adult subjects of both sexes (30 males and 30 females), aged between 18 and 40 years, with mean age for males of 28 ± 4 and 30 ± 6 years for females. Thin‐plate splines evidenced strong expansion of the glabellar region in males and contraction in females. No significant differences were found between sexes with respect to size. The findings suggest differences in shape and size in the glabellar region, besides reaffirming the use of geometric morphometrics as a quantitative method in sex estimation.     

Acute Aortic Dissection Diagnosed after Embalming: Macroscopic and Microscopic Findings

A 58‐year‐old man died suddenly in Madagascar and poisoning was suspected. The body was embalmed after death and the general state of preservation was good. We found a major aortic dissection with a large false lumen from the aortic root to the common iliac arteries and a hemopericardium with formalinized blood clot. The intimal tear was on the ascending aorta, and an intramural hemorrhage was noted at the right coronary artery, attesting to a retrograde dissection. Microscopic studies confirmed aortic dissection with extensive intramural hemorrhage and also confirmed the retrograde dissection to the right coronary artery with a reduction of 90% of the true lumen. Classically, aortic dissection occurs in individuals with hypertension and individuals with genetic disorders of collagen formation. The diagnosis is often first established at the postmortem examination. Aortic dissection is therefore dealt with largely in necropsy studies. The usual cause of death is rupture into the pericardial sac. One case of bloodless dissection has been reported but the sudden death was explained by acute myocardial ischemia secondary to dissection of the left coronary artery. In our case, we found major hemopericardium and also intramural hemorrhage at the right coronary artery. We were able to make the diagnosis of aortic dissection and exclude the suspicion of homicide 15 days after death and after embalming.     

Long Bone (Humerus,Femur, Tibia) Measuring Procedure in Cadavers

In this work, we present a measuring methodology for long bones of the limbs (humerus, femur, and tibia) of human corpses. Measurements of cadaveric height and long bone lengths were conducted on 72 corpses (20 females and 52 males) from the School of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Additionally, these measurements were compared with those taken from dry bones of a subsample of individuals. Our results show marginal differences (TEM% = 0.59) between cadaveric and dry bone measurements, resulting from different osteometric technical procedures. This note outlines the measuring methodology, which will be subsequently used to create regression formulas for stature estimation.     

Anthropological Facial Approximation in Three Dimensions (AFA3D): Computer‐Assisted Estimation of the Facial Morphology Using Geometric Morphometrics

This study presents Anthropological Facial Approximation in Three Dimensions (AFA3D), a new computerized method for estimating face shape based on computed tomography (CT) scans of 500 French individuals. Facial soft tissue depths are estimated based on age, sex, corpulence, and craniometrics, and projected using reference planes to obtain the global facial appearance. Position and shape of the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears are inferred from cranial landmarks through geometric morphometrics. The 100 estimated cutaneous landmarks are then used to warp a generic face to the target facial approximation. A validation by re‐sampling on a subsample demonstrated an average accuracy of c. 4 mm for the overall face. The resulting approximation is an objective probable facial shape, but is also synthetic (i.e., without texture), and therefore needs to be enhanced artistically prior to its use in forensic cases. AFA3D, integrated in the TIVMI software, is available freely for further testing.     

A New Tool for Coding and Interpreting Injuries in Fatal Airplane Crashes: The Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool Application to the Air France Flight AF447 Disaster (Rio de Janeiro–Paris), 1st of June 2009

For investigation of air disasters, crash reconstruction is obtained using data from flight recorders, physical evidence from the site, and injuries patterns of the victims. This article describes a new software, Crash Injury Pattern Assessment Tool (CIPAT), to code and analyze injuries. The coding system was derived from the Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS). Scores were created corresponding to the amount of energy required causing the trauma (ER), and the software was developed to compute summary variables related to the position (assigned seat) of victims. A dataset was built from the postmortem examination of 154/228 victims of the Air France disaster (June 2009), recovered from the Atlantic Ocean after a complex and difficult task at a depth of 12790 ft. The use of CIPAT allowed to precise cause and circumstances of deaths and confirmed major dynamics parameters of the crash event established by the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority.     

On the Distinction Between Epistemic and Metaphysical Buddhist Idealisms: A Śaiva Perspective

Modern scholarship has often wondered whether Indian Buddhist idealism is primarily epistemic or metaphysical: does this idealism amount to a kind of transcendental scepticism according to which we cannot decide whether objects exist or not outside of consciousness because we can have no epistemic access whatsoever to these objects? Or is it rather ontologically committed, i.e., does it consist in denying the very existence of the external world? One could deem the question anachronistic and suspect that with such an inquiry we project onto Ancient and Medieval India a distinction that remains profoundly alien to it, were it not for a few preserved texts where Indian authors themselves distinguish between two such kinds of idealism within the Buddhist philosophical tradition. As already pointed out by Dan Arnold, this is the case in the commentary by Manorathanandin on Dharmakīrti’s Pramā?avārttika; but the difference between two varieties of Buddhist idealism is also alluded to in Hindu sources, both Mīmā?saka and ?aiva. The present article offers a new analysis of Manorathanandin’s short and somewhat ambiguous distinction, and it examines in this connection some important remarks found in the works of the ?aiva nondualists Utpaladeva (c. 925–975) and Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025). It shows that according to these authors, in fact the epistemic version of the Buddhist argument in favour of idealism is already metaphysical insofar as it necessarily involves a denial of the existence of the external world, and it attempts to assess the faithfulness of this ?aiva interpretation to its Buddhist sources.