Just Evidence: The Limits of Science in the Legal Process

Both opponents and proponents of the death penalty express faith in science and in DNA evidence to justify their positions. This article examines the production of forensic evidence as a social activity and suggests that tendencies toward bias and error may not apply symmetrically in inculpation and exoneration contexts.     

Stewardship of quality of care in health systems: Core functions,common pitfalls,and potential solutions

National Ministries of Health in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) have a key role to play as stewards of the quality agenda in their health systems. This paper uses a previously developed six‐point framework for stewardship (strategy formulation, intersectoral collaboration, governance and accountability, health system design, policy and regulation, and intelligence generation) and identifies specific examples of activities in LMICs in each of these domains, pitfalls to avoid, and possible solutions to these pitfalls. Many LMICs now have quality strategies with clear vision statements. There are good examples of quality agencies and donor collaboration councils to coordinate activities across different sectors. There are multiple options for accountability, including public reporting, community accountability structures, results‐based payment, accreditation, and inspection. To improve health system design, available tools include decision support tools, task‐shifting models, supply chain management, and programs to train quality improvement staff. Policy options include legislation on disclosure of adverse events, and regulations to ensure skills of health care providers. Lastly, health information tools include patient registries, facility surveys, hospital discharge abstracts, standardized population and patient surveys, and dedicated agencies for reporting on quality. Policy‐makers can use this article to identify options for driving the quality agenda and address anticipated implementation barriers.     

Marx and Engels's Electoral Strategy: The Alleged versus the Real

In a recently published collection of interviews with “the most prominent scholars in comparative politics since World War II,” Adam Przeworski revealed that his writings from the 1980s on Social Democracy served a political end, that is, to defend it from critics such as Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs, and Luxemburg. His co-authored book, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (1986), still a classic in the sub-field, claims that none other than Frederick Engels sanctioned Social Democracy's quintessential stance, the peaceful or parliamentary road to socialism. A close reading of Paper Stones reveals, however, that it misrepresents—sometimes in quite blatant fashion—the views of not only Engels but Marx as well. This involves the omission of contradictory evidence from many places in the Marx–Engels corpus, the same text, the same page or even the next sentence. Przeworski's reinvention of Marx and Engels duplicates what Edward Bernstein did more than a century ago in his quest to revise their views. Paper Stones excludes evidence that challenges its central finding that the reformist outcome for European Social Democracy was inevitable—a claim, therefore, that can only remain hypothetical.     

Power to the parishes ‐ a (missed) opportunity

Parish and town councils form the lowest tier of local government in England, but have been left out of government proposals for a new duty for local authorities. The proposed new duty will give local authorities wide‐ranging power to promote economic and social well‐being. Unlike principal authorities, it is likely that these grass‐roots councils will have to rely on their power under s.137 to spend on activities outside their specific powers. This article reviews the findings of a recent national survey which was designed to assess the extent to which parishes are constrained by current s.137 arranagements.     

Abstracts section

The theme of poverty eradication is now again at the top of the development policy agenda. In November 2000 the UK Department for International Development (DfID) published an important White Paper on International Development with the title Eliminating world poverty: a challenge for the 21st century. The World Bank World Development Report for 2000/2001 also takes poverty as its theme with the title Attacking poverty. It is interesting to note that the World Bank has bracketed the decade of the 1990s with the 1990 World Development Report simply entitled Poverty. After many conflicting theories of economic development, the basic problem of poverty in developing countries is now being addressed in a much more holistic way, as is exemplified in the following articles. It should be noted that two of these act as introductory articles to a special issue of a journal on this topic. The article by Lustig and Stern introduces the December 2000 issue of Finance and Development whose overall title is ‘How we can help the poor’ and the article by Baulch and Hoddinott introduces the August 2000 issue of the Journal of Development Studies entitled ‘Economic mobility and poverty dynamics in developing countries’. These special issues contain articles on poverty in addition to the ones abstracted here. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

War without end: the domestic economic fallout of empire

While the effects of the Bush doctrine on our relations in the world and our civil liberties at home have received widespread scrutiny, there has been relatively little attention paid to its effects on our domestic economy. This is surprising in light of Paul Kennedy's thesis that empires tend to overextend themselves militarily, depleting their revenue‐generating and productive capacities at home and making them vulnerable to decline in relation to nations whose economies are rising. This article brings together many threads of a discussion about the economic impacts of war that have been scattered across disciplines, buried in government documents and in the reports of government watchdogs groups, or are just beginning to emerge in the press, and suggests some areas for investigation that are being ignored. Far from “protecting our American way of life,” the garrison state the Bush administration is building may in fact be leading to our political and economic decline.