Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy

The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.     

Fatah from Below: The Clash of Generations in Palestine

Dominated by a Fatah/Palestinian National Authority coalition, West Bank politics is characterized by authoritarianism, factionalism and an accommodating policy vis-à-vis the Israeli occupier. These features are prominent parts of what Hisham Sharabi called neopatriarchy, a dysfunctional political system that leaves societies internally repressive and externally weak, marginalizing the young and accommodating colonial interests. The resulting alienation and dissatisfaction among young Palestinians have led to two kinds of reaction that bear on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict: a well-organized but leaderless popular resistance, and destructive, spontaneous outbursts of violence. The onus is on the elite to reform the political culture, as liberation from Israeli occupation will not by itself improve the dysfunctional organization of West Bank politics.     

Y-chromosome variation in a Norwegian population sample

Y-chromosome DNA profiles are promising tools in population genetics and forensic science. Here we present DNA profiles of 300 unrelated Y-chromosomes of Norwegian origin. The profile is composed of eight short tandem repeats (STRs) and one single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). In more than 2/3 of the haplotypes the modular structure in the 5' end of the minisatellite locus DYF155S1 was revealed by minisatellite variant repeat PCR (MVR-PCR) These haplotypes were also typed for deletions of fragment 50f2C (DYF155S2). Allele distribution and paternity exclusion parameters are given for each marker. The degree of haplotype diversity and its implication for statistics are evaluated. In the 300 samples 177 different haplotypes were encountered, of which 137 were observed once only. Analysis showed that the main source of variation is within the population. The Fst values were less than 0.015 in general. Haplotype grouping by the SNP demonstrated two haplogroups (Tat/T and Tat/C). Haplogroup Tat/C--found in 5.7% of the present material - is the same haplogroup as encountered in 60% of Finnish males [Am. J. Hum. Genet. 62 (1998) 1171]. Mutation analysis in 150 father/son pairs (a total of 1200 meiotic events) revealed an average mutation frequency of 0.0042 (95% CI 0.0014-0.0097).     

A theoretical model of multiple stigma: ostracized for being an inmate with intellectual disabilities

Even though some people are associated with a single stigmatized group, others are associated with several. In order to shed light on such multiple stigma processes, we propose a theoretical model of ‘multiple stigma’ by describing how two stigma-related categories (having intellectual disabilities and being an inmate) merge into a third stigmatized category (being an inmate with intellectual disabilities) that makes it possible to be ostracized for each of these three. We describe how this extensive ostracism is associated with negative psychological problems and antisocial responses. Consequently, we discuss some possible implications for the criminal justice system and future research.     

Lifetime conviction risk—a synthetic cohort approach

How common are convictions? The stigma of a criminal record can have serious social and financial consequences for the individual. It is a fundamental question in relation to any policy how many people will be affected by it. For example, if it is desirable to make sentencing generally stricter, or restrict ex-offenders' employment opportunities, how many people will that apply to? Little is known about how many people acquire a criminal record over their life-course. In this paper, I apply life-table methods to a synthetic cohort to calculate the lifetime conviction risk. The findings show that a substantial proportion of the population will be convicted of a crime at some point. Not surprisingly, the figures for men are substantially higher than for women.     

Political institutions and academic freedom: evidence from across the world

Public Choice - There is scant systematic empirical evidence on what explains variation in academic freedom. Making use of a new indicator and panel data covering 64 countries 1960–2017, we...     

Political institutions and income (re-)distribution: evidence from developed economies

We discuss the effect of formal political institutions (electoral systems, fiscal decentralization, presidential and parliamentary regimes) on the extent and direction of income (re-)distribution. Empirical evidence is presented for a large sample of 70 economies and a panel of 13 OECD countries between 1981 and 1998. The evidence indicates that presidential regimes are associated with a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, while electoral systems have no significant effects. Fiscal competition is associated with less income redistribution and a less equal distribution of disposable incomes, but also with a more equal primary income distribution. Our evidence also is in line with earlier empirical contributions that find a positive relationship between trade openness and equality in primary and disposable incomes, as well as the overall redistributive effort.     

Size,Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System

The search for the optimal size of political systems is one of the most enduring in political thought. Given the validity of arguments for and against small units, one might expect variation in rearrangements of unit sizes. However, the reform trend is uniform: units, often at the local level, are amalgamated to harvest scale effects. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the argument on economies of scale in the economic costs of running political systems. Our testing ground is a recent Danish reform. It allows us to avoid endogeneity problems often facing researchers of size reforms. The reform was directed by the central government and constitutes an exogenous shock to 239 municipalities, whereas 32 municipalities were left untouched. We thus have a quasi‐experiment with pre‐ and posttreatment observations for both an experiment and a control group. Our findings show that scale effects, measured as administrative costs per inhabitant, are considerable.