Reviews

Certain Fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment By Tim Etchells, 1999. New York: Routledge

Up Your Ass Written by Valerie Solanas, Directed and Presented by George Coates, Performance Works at P.S. 122, New York City, February 7–25th, 2001

Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera Edited by Mary Ann Smart. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

The Garden An installation by Paul McCarthy, Dietch Projects, New York City

39 MICROLECTURES: in proximity of performance by Matthew Goulish, London: Routledge, 2000     

Changing Relations between Government and Citizen: Administrative Law and the Work of the Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman

This article examines the individual complaint‐taking role of the Australian Commonwealth Ombudsman over a 28 year period between 1977–2005. This study was conceived through a curiosity to determine how a 30 year old administrative law institution is reacting to accommodate a dramatically altered legal, political and economic environment. The suspicion was that, in the absence of legislative amendment to its jurisdiction and role, the Commonwealth Ombudsman must strategically change due to the demands of these external forces. The overall quantitative finding from the data analysis is that the internal strategic direction of the Commonwealth Ombudsman is indeed altering. In terms of dispute resolution it is increasingly using its discretionary powers to turn individual complainants back to government departments/agencies. The data analysis reveals that this administrative law institution is shifting from a reactive individual complaint taker to a proactive standard setter for government administration. This article suggests that this movement may impact upon citizen ‘rights’ or perceptions of their rights to have their individual complaints heard against government. This in turn may have a ripple effect for notions of democratic accountability and the relationship between the citizen and the state.     

Repression Technology: Internet Accessibility and State Violence

This article offers a first subnational analysis of the relationship between states' dynamic control of Internet access and their use of violent repression. I argue that where governments provide Internet access, surveillance of digital information exchange can provide intelligence that enables the use of more targeted forms of repression, in particular in areas not fully controlled by the regime. Increasing restrictions on Internet accessibility can impede opposition organization, but they limit access to information on precise targets, resulting in an increase in untargeted repression. I present new data on killings in the Syrian conflict that distinguish between targeted and untargeted events, using supervised text classification. I find that higher levels of Internet accessibility are associated with increases in targeted repression, whereas areas with limited access experience more indiscriminate campaigns of violence. The results offer important implications on how governments incorporate the selective access to communication technology into their strategies of coercion.     

Human Security and Managing Financial Crises: Can Human Security Be Effectively Managed?

Could the negative human security effects during the 1997 FinancialCrisis in East Asia have been mitigated? To shed light on thisquestion, we examine the reasons for the onset of the financialcrisis, the internal and external factors, and the InternationalMonetary Find's (IMF's) involvement/conditionality and how thisaffected the economies at the micro and macro level. The emphasishere is on the micro level, i.e. individuals and businesses.Our main conclusion is that one definite policy mishap was thatIMF loans were in part not available immediately when needed,and were focused on servicing debt payments. Because of this,some businesses with full order books were unable to find thenecessary working credits that could have helped them pull throughthe crisis, which in turn led to unnecessary bankruptcies.     

Switzerland – Really Europe's Heart of Darkness?

Immigration is a prominent and contested global topic of contemporary politics. Several recent popular votes targeting migration such as the minaret initiative, the automatic deportation initiative, and most recently the vote on “mass immigration”, evoke however the impression that Switzerland sets particularly harsh standards in migration policy. Based on historical evidence on Swiss migration policy making and comparative analyses on current cantonal integration policy outputs, I argue that ‐ while far from being a new phenomenon ‐ immigrant scepticism has become a more relevant factor of Swiss migration policy making than ever. Yet, immigration and immigrant scepticism do not only challenge direct democratic Switzerland, but all destination countries of immigration.     

Mitochondrial DNA control region population data from Macedonia

Mitochondrial DNA sequences of the entire control region were analyzed in 200 unrelated individuals from Macedonia. A total of 163 different haplotypes were found as determined by 177 polymorphic sites. The probability of a random match was calculated as 1:121 (0.83%). The basic phylogenetic structure of the Macedonian population as derived from its haplogroup distribution is in agreement with other West-Eurasian populations. Upon publication, the population data are going to be available in the EMPOP database (www.empop.org) [W. Parson, A. Dür, EMPOP—a forensic mtDNA database, FSI:Genetics 1 (2) (2007) 88–92; W. Parson, A. Brandstätter, A. Alonso, N. Brandt, B. Brinkmann, A. Carracedo, et al., The EDNAP mitochondrial DNA population database (EMPOP) collaborative exercises: organisation, results and perspectives, Forensic Sci. Int. 139 (2–3) (2004) 215–226.].     

Landmark reforms

After more than one hundred years, the future of a unified Probation Service looks bleak in the face of current proposals by the Ministry of Justice to open up the market for rehabilitation services to new providers from the private, voluntary and community sectors.     

Efficiency in Banking: Empirical Evidence from the Czech Republic

The paper examines the cost efficiency of the Czech-banking system in the 1990s by applying the distribution free approach model. Reported results indicate that foreign banks were on average more efficient than the other banks, although their efficiency was comparable with the ‘good’ small banks’ efficiency in early years of their operation. Based on the estimated results it is argued that early privatisation of state-owned commercial banks and more liberal policy towards foreign banks in the early stage of transition would have enhanced the efficiency in the banking system.