The making of land ownership: land titling in rural Colombia – a reply to Hernando de Soto

Hernando de Soto’s best-selling book The Mystery of Capital argues that economically disadvantaged countries lack institutional arrangements that can spur economic development and capital growth. This article questions de Soto’s institutional economist account. It draws on a 14-month ethnographic study performed at two rural field sites in Colombia and in the central government office responsible for promoting land programmes designed to improve the living conditions of rural communities. This study, which focuses on the daily practices of public officials and rural campesinos, suggests the importance of the title document, and in particular the public deed, for land ownership. It describes the process by which landownership is created by the issuance of the land title document and highlights some important elements and untended consequences that are often neglected in this process of making land a legal and economic asset.     

Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity

Political Behavior - Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed...     

Public perceptions of crime seriousness in Israel:: native-born versus new immigrants

The broad consensus generally found with regard to public perceptions of crime seriousness has been shown to reflect “consistency” in relative rankings rather than “absolute agreement” in ratings among sample groups. The present study compared the crime seriousness perceptions of native-born Israelis with those of two groups of new immigrants (one from the former Soviet Union and the other from Ethiopia). Questionnaires including 30 different criminal offenses for evaluation were distributed by means of face-to-face interviews to a representative sample of the Israeli adult population. As expected, the three groups provided very similar rankings of offenses but much less absolute agreement (ratings). It is suggested that the significant gaps in the perceptions of the groups stem from “culture conflict” (Culture Conflict and Crime, Social Science Research Council, New York, 1938), that is, differences in the social and cultural norms of the immigrants’ countries of origin and those prevailing in the absorbing society.     

The executive on the battlefield: government amendments and cartel theory in the Chilean Congress

This article argues that cartelised coordination inside Chilean congressional committees is important for understanding the success rates of presidential initiatives. By way of an analysis of the amendment process undertaken both in the Chamber and Senate committees in the Chilean Congress during 2006–10, the authors review the approval patterns of legislative amendments. The analysis suggests two chief findings: coordination between government parties and the executive is crucial for the success of amendment; and the opposition’s success in generating legal transformations depends on the construction of inter-coalition alliances. It is hoped that the perspective offered here will contribute to the current literature on cartel party theory in Latin America.     

The International Monetary Fund,Party System Institutionalization,and Protest in Latin America

Extant studies have documented a positive correlation between country participation in International Monetary Fund–sponsored programs and collective protests in Latin America. However, anecdotal evidence indicates that there is a great deal of variation in the number of protests in recipient countries across the region. This article provides a theoretical argument that explains how the fund interacts with the level of party system institutionalization to affect the level of protest. The main prediction is that the level of protest decreases in recipient countries when the level of party system institutionalization is high. Empirical results from a sample of 16 Latin American democracies observed from 1982 to 2007 provide strong statistical and substantive support for the main hypothesis.     

The detection of clandestine graves in an arid environment using thermal imaging deployed from an unmanned aerial vehicle

The Middle East is one of the world regions that has frequently suffered from armed conflicts that resulted in mass burials. However, the detection of clandestine graves in such an arid environment by deploying remote sensing payload on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has received little attention. The present study used a UAV equipped with a thermal sensor aimed at narrowing down the search area of possible gravesites in the arid climate of Kuwait. The enclosed research area, which includes both control and experimental mass graves, was imaged for 18 months. The variation in topsoil temperature and soil moisture between the graves and their surroundings was evaluated. The results of the analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of thermal imaging techniques in detecting heat produced from buried sheep carcasses and detecting the change in grave soil moisture for our research environment for 7 and 10 months, respectively. The buried animals significantly influenced the topsoil temperature (p = 0.044), while the height from which the images were captured had an insignificant effect on the measured temperature within the range tested (p = 0.985). Furthermore, there was a negative correlation (−0.359) between grave temperature and the calculated soil moisture. The results from these cost- and time-effective search methods presented in this study confirm their potential for the detection of burial sites in an arid environment.     

Review of analytical methods for screening and quantification of fentanyl analogs and novel synthetic opioids in biological specimens

Fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and other novel synthetic opioids (NSO), including nitazene analogs, prevail in forensic toxicology casework. Analytical methods for identifying these drugs in biological specimens need to be robust, sensitive, and specific. Isomers, new analogs, and slight differences in structural modifications necessitate the use of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), especially as a non-targeted screening method designed to detect newly emerging drugs. Traditional forensic toxicology workflows, such as immunoassay and gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC–MS), are generally not sensitive enough for detection of NSOs due to observed low (sub-μg/L) concentrations. For this review, the authors tabulated, reviewed, and summarized analytical methods from 2010–2022 for screening and quantification of fentanyl analogs and other NSOs in biological specimens using a variety of different instruments and sample preparation approaches. Limits of detection or quantification for 105 methods were included and compared to published standards and guidelines for suggested scope and sensitivity in forensic toxicology casework. Methods were summarized by instrument for screening and quantitative methods for fentanyl analogs and for nitazenes and other NSO. Toxicological testing for fentanyl analogs and NSOs is increasingly and most commonly being conducted using a variety of liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC–MS)-based techniques. Most of the recent analytical methods reviewed exhibited limits of detection well below 1 μg/L to detect low concentrations of increasingly potent drugs. In addition, it was observed that most newly developed methods are now using smaller sample volumes which is achievable due to the sensitivity increase gained by new technology and new instrumentation.