Regionalism,personalism, ethnicity,and violence: parties and voter preference in the 2010 parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan

On the basis of interviews, census data, and precinct-level electoral results from the October 2010 parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan, this paper examines the influences on the party vote in Kyrgyzstan. Instead of traditional socioeconomic variables, this study finds that regionalism (North vs. South), ethnicity, personalism, and violence offered the most compelling explanations of party preference in Central Asia's most competitive election. The paper also examines the contextual factors that constructed and filtered voter demand, from Kyrgyzstan's political and economic conjuncture in 2010 to its unusual party system and electoral rules.     

Using Stated Preferences and Beliefs to Identify the Impact of Risk on Poor Households

Whilst the importance of uncertainty in shaping economic behaviour of poor households is widely acknowledged, empirically identifying the impact of risk is difficult. By using data on risk preferences and perceptions of risk collected through hypothetical questions in combination with more traditional measures of a household's ability to deal with risk, this article identifies the impact of risk on production decisions. It shows both that data on stated preferences and beliefs can be usefully utilised to explain household behaviour, and that risk has a significant impact on the production decisions of poor households.     

Agenda-Setting and Priming in Prime Time Television: Crime Dramas as Political Cues

The effects of agenda-setting and priming are well established in regard to the news media. Considerably less attention has been paid to these phenomena in entertainment media, in spite of the fact that entertainment media enjoy larger audiences than do news media and often address political topics. This article argues that the psychological mechanism hypothesized to lead to agenda-setting and priming effectsthat is, changes in construct accessibilityapplies as equally to entertainment media as it does to news media. Moreover, we contend that the frequency, consistency, and duration of entertainment media treatments of political issues encourage chronic accessibility of those issues. We test these hypotheses looking at television crime dramas as a source of political information. Using data from two controlled laboratory experiments and the 1995 National Election Study Pilot Study, we demonstrate that viewing crime dramas significantly increases concerns about crime and that these concerns significantly affect viewers' opinions of the president. The NES Pilot Study data suggest that these effects are restricted to frequent viewers of crime dramas, supporting a chronic accessibility model of agenda-setting and priming. These findings extend our growing understanding of how non-news sources of political information contribute to the construction of political attitudes.     

The evolution of authoritarian rule in Algeria: linkage versus organizational power

This article draws on the Algerian regimes of Chadli Benjedid and Abdelaziz Bouteflika to critically evaluate Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s dimension of linkage. The paper shows that, despite the intensification of the country’s ties to the European Union (EU) from one regime to the other, the willingness and ability of Brussels to put democratizing pressure on Algiers decreased rather than increased. This development challenges Levitsky and Way’s thesis and the importance they place on linkage in relation to their other dimensions of leverage and organizational power. The article concludes that: strengthening linkage does not always result in greater EU or Western democratizing pressure; the balance of importance Levitsky and Way strike between their dimensions is open to question; and, the EU has grown less willing to press for political change in Algeria.     

Contested views of expertise in children’s care and permanence proceedings

In this article, we consider different perspectives on who is best able to provide relevant and helpful expertise in public law cases where the long-term care of children is under consideration. Opinions vary and sometimes conflict on the respective importance of legal, child development, and lay understandings. These opinions relate to views on rights, appropriate procedures, decision-making processes, and the effects of decisions on children. Firstly, we summarise literature relevant to the knowledge and skills of three key groups of decision-makers within the Scottish child care system: legal professionals, child care professionals and lay decision-makers, and outline literature about guardians ad litem and their counterparts. We then discuss issues of expertise emerging from a study exploring the reasons for, and impact of, the appointment of safeguarders (who, in Scotland, perform a similar role to guardians). We conclude that there may be an increasing tendency for disagreement and a lack of clarity about who brings the most relevant and helpful expertise to hearings; this may have negative effects for children.     

A two-level model for evidence evaluation

A random effects model using two levels of hierarchical nesting has been applied to the calculation of a likelihood ratio as a solution to the problem of comparison between two sets of replicated multivariate continuous observations where it is unknown whether the sets of measurements shared a common origin. Replicate measurements from a population of such measurements allow the calculation of both within-group and between-group variances/covariances. The within-group distribution has been modelled assuming a Normal distribution, and the between-group distribution has been modelled using a kernel density estimation procedure. A graphical method of estimating the dependency structure among the variables has been used to reduce this highly multivariate problem to several problems of lower dimension. The approach was tested using a database comprising measurements of eight major elements from each of four fragments from each of 200 glass objects and found to perform well compared with previous approaches, achieving a 15.2% false-positive rate, and a 5.5% false-negative rate. The modelling was then applied to two examples of casework in which glass found at the scene of the criminal activity has been compared with that found in association with a suspect.     

Guidelines for postmortem protocol for ocular investigation of sudden unexplained infant death and suspected physical child abuse

Postmortem examination is a cornerstone in identifying the cause of unexplained sudden death in children. Even in cases of suspected or known abuse, an autopsy may help characterize the nature of the abuse, which is particularly important in the forensic autopsy of children in the first 3 to 4 years of life when inflicted neurotrauma is most common. Forensic examinations are vital in cases that might otherwise be diagnosed as sudden infant death syndrome. The ocular autopsy in particular may demonstrate findings that were not appreciated on antemortem clinical examination. This protocol for postmortem examination of the eyes and orbits was developed to promote more consistent documentation of findings, improved clinical and forensic decision making, and more replicable and coherent research outcomes.     

An initial evaluation of stable isotopic characterisation of post-blast plastic debris from improvised explosive devices

A number of two-way radios, similar to those which have been employed to initiate Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), were acquired from a commercial supplier and grouped into four pairs. Samples of plastic material were collected from five distinct regions of each radio and analysed by Infrared and Raman spectroscopy to identify the nature of the material. One radio of each pair was then subjected to detonation with a commercially available plastic explosive. The combination of radio and explosive was considered to be representative of the components of an IED. Following detonation, fragments were recovered and, where possible, identified as specific sampling points of the radio.A combination of δ²H and δ¹³C stable isotopic analysis of material from each of the five sampling points was found to provide a pattern which was characteristic of a given radio and provided a means to associate pairs of radios. When few fragments were recovered, no positive association could be made between the fragments and the paired, undamaged radio. This was attributed, in part, to manufacturing variation in the radios. However, when three or more post-blast fragments were recovered it was possible to associate these with the paired, undamaged radio with a high degree of certainty.