The Chinese in space: the third man in the fourth battlefield?

This commentary piece explores the several ramifications of China's October 2003 successful manned space mission, when the People's Republic of China became the third nation, following the lead of the USA and the Soviet Union, to independently launch a manned space mission. While the achievement resulted in prestige and justifiable pride in China, the potential ‘dual use’ of space for military purposes remains speculative, and is of concern to Washington's ‘Blue Team’, suspicious of China's possible aggressive intentions. While China's space efforts include militarisation, it remains an open question as to whether it intends to fully develop space weapons against a background of its belief that the USA already has ‘abundant power’, especially in space. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Die beschr?nkte K?rperschaftsteuerbefreiung gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen als im europarechtlichen Sinn staatliche Beihilfe?

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwieweit die grunds?tzliche K?rperschaftsteuerbefreiung nach dem Wohnungsgemeinnützigkeitsgesetz anerkannter gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen für den Kernbereich ihrer wohnungswirtschaftlichen T?tigkeiten in einem Spannungsfeld zur europ?ischen Beihilfenproblematik steht.     

Alcohol involvement in violence. A study from a Danish community

All cases of assaults with violence (n = 1639) from a well defined area were registered for 1 year. A positive alcolmeter test (% greater than 0.2) was registered in 488 cases (29%). A further 216 patients (13%) were found under the influence of alcohol according to a simple clinical judgement. In nine of ten manslaughter and murder cases alcohol was involved. Young men, 19-29 years of age, comprised the majority of victims. Of the episodes of violence 66% took place during the weekend. In 250 cases the alcohol concentration surpassed 1.5%. Almost 50% of the violence episoded took place in or around restaurants. Blunt violence was concerned in 73% of the episodes. Gunshot was registered in five cases, stabbings in two cases.     

Marktvermittelte Massenkunst

Zusammenfassung Der Artikel zeigt, dass Max Horkheimer und Theodor W. Adorno in ihrer Kulturindustriethese die empirischen Befunde von Alexis de Tocquevilles Kunstdiagnose demokratischer Gesellschaften ihrer eigenen Manipulationsperspektive subsumiert haben. Ihre Theorie der Kulturindustrie nahm in Tocquevilles Kunstsoziologie des zweiten Amerikabandes ihren Anfang. Mittelma?, Publikumsorientierung, unterhaltender Charakter und soziale Indifferenz sind sowohl den marktvermittelten künstlerischen Produkten der Demokratie Tocquevilles als auch den kulturindustriellen Produkten Horkheimers und Adornos gemein. Fordert der demokratische Mensch Tocquevilles inhaltliche Selbstbezüglichkeit seines Alltags in künstlerischen Produkten und verliert das Kunstwerk somit seinen sublimierenden Charakter, sind die kulturindustriellen Produkte bei den Frankfurtern analog durch eine Verdoppelung der Realit?t und den damit einhergehenden Verlust ihres gesellschaftstranszendierenden Gehalts gekennzeichnet. Da bei Tocqueville die Demokratie als Lebensform zutiefst mit individuellem Wirtschaftsstreben verknüpft ist, k?nnen die Sp?tkapitalisten Horkheimer und Adorno die empirischen Befunde seiner Analyse marktvermittelter Massenkunst zu ihrer Manipulationshypothese kapitalistischer Herrschaft ausbauen. Es ist von einer „integrativen Adaption“ von Tocquevilles Kunstdiagnose durch die Frankfurter die Rede, da das Identische der Kulturindustrie Horkheimers und Adornos der Integriertheit der demokratischen „h?fischen Gesellschaft“ Tocquevilles, das Nicht-Identische der Kunst in der bürgerlichen Sozialphilosophie der pers?nlichen Freiheit des franz?sischen Aristokraten entspricht.

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Summary Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s theory of culture-industry is based on the sociology of art in Alexis de Tocqueville’s second volume of Democracy in America. The article shows how Horkheimer and Adorno subsumed the empirical findings of Tocqueville’s art-diagnosis of democratic societies under their own culture-industrial manipulation perspective. Aiming at the average audience, mediocrity, public taste, entertaining interest and social indifference are characteristics of the market-mediated artistic products of Tocqueville’s democracy as well as of the products of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture-industry. Tocqueville’s democratic person demands self-reference regarding the content of her or his everyday life in art and, as a result, the work of art loses its sublime character. Analogue to this, the culture-industrial products analyzed by the Frankfurt School theorists duplicate the reality and therefore lose their society transcending content. Since Tocqueville’s democracy is fundamentally connected to the economic effort of the individual, Horkheimer and Adorno can extend his empirical findings of commercial popular art within their own late-capitalistic manipulation hypothesis of capitalist power. The concept of the identical („Das Identische“) in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s culture-industry corresponds to Tocqueville’s tyranny of unanimity in democratic societies; the concept of the non-identical of art in the bourgeois social philosophy to the personal freedom of the French aristocrat.

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Résumé L’article montre que dans leur thèse de l’industrie de la culture, Max Horkheimer et Theodor W. Adorno ont repris les résultats empiriques du diagnostic de l’art des sociétés démocratiques mené par Alexis de Tocqueville. Leur théorie de l’industrie de la culture a pris son origine dans la sociologie de l’art du deuxième tome de la Démocratie en Amérique de Tocqueville. Le juste milieu, l’orientation vers le public, le caractère divertissant et l’indifférence sociale se retrouvent aussi bien dans les produits de l’art dans la démocratie chez Tocqueville, que dans les produits de l’industrie de la culture chez Horkheimer et Adorno. L’homme démocratique de Tocqueville exige des produits artistiques une référence intrinsèque à son quotidien, ce qui fait perdre à l’œuvre d’art son caractère sublimatoire. Les produits de l’industriede la culture se caractérisent de manière analogue chez les Francfortois par un dédoublement de la réalité et par la perte concomitante de leur contenu par lequel la société se trouve transcendée. Comme la démocratieest chez Tocqueville intimement liée à une aspiration individuelle vers l’échange économique, les capitalistes tardifs Horkheimer et Adorno peuvent utiliser ces résultats empiriques pour l’esquisse de leur propre thèse de la manipulation capitaliste. Le caractère intégré de la „société courtoise“ démocratique chez Tocqueville (à savoir le caractère non identique de l’art dans la philosophie sociale bourgeoise) correspond alors au caractère identique de l’industrie de la culture chez Horkheimer et Adorno.

     

A Dyadic Analysis of Partner Violence and Adult Attachment

Studies of individual attachment features have linked insecure attachment to intimate partner violence (IPV), but these studies have neither taken into account couple-level factors nor evidence of high rates of dual-partner perpetration. The current study examined three forms of IPV as a function of both partners’ adult attachment characteristics in order to better understand the maintenance of relationship violence by using a dyadic statistical design. Heterosexual couples (n = 163) were recruited from the community. Results suggest that one’s own attachment avoidance and a partner’s attachment avoidance and anxiety was associated with perpetration of physical assault. Similarly, one’s own attachment avoidance and a partner’s attachment avoidance and anxiety was associated with perpetration of psychological aggression. Attachment anxiety influenced one’s own perpetration of sexual coercion and their partner’s perpetration. Thus, functional analysis of violence in terms of attachment and risk regulation may afford targeted interventions to certain types of couples.     

Explaining the birthright citizenship lottery: Longitudinal and cross‐national evidence for key determinants

In the modern nation‐state, birthright citizenship laws – jus soli and jus sanguinis – are the two main gateways to sociopolitical membership. The vast majority of the world's population (97 percent) obtains their citizenship as a matter of birthright. Yet because comparative research has focused on measuring and explaining the multiple components of citizenship and immigration policies, a systematic analysis of birthright citizenship is lacking. We bridge this gap by analyzing the birthright component in prominent databases on citizenship policies and complementing them with original data and measures. This allows us to systematically test institutional and electoral explanations for contemporary and over‐time variation in birthright citizenship. Institutional explanations – legal codes and colonial history – are consistently associated with limitations on birthright law. As for electoral explanations, specific electoral powers – Nationalist, Socialist and Social‐Democratic parties – rather than the traditional left/right‐wing divide, are linked with reforms in birthright regimes.     

Forensic science standards in fast-changing environments

Regulatory trends in forensic science point strongly to the need for exhaustive testing of all findings and tools. At the same time a number of jurisdictions suggest a judicial test for the admissibility of novel scientific evidence. But in fields such as computers and cellphones, the rate of change is faster than the normal times required for peer-reviewed publication. One route to admitting less-than-perfect findings from forensic science is via a re-evaluation of the role of expert evidence and in particular pre-trial meetings between experts.     

Norms and Political Payoffs in Supreme Court Recusals

Political Behavior - In times when the public and scholarly debates around the effects of norms on political decision making are at their height—and in light of the argument that government...     

Translating Justice: The International Organization of Constitutional Courts

What is the international organization of national constitutional courts? This article develops a theoretical framework to analyze this question and tests it empirically with original data of translated opinions. Justices of different nations form an emerging epistemic community, which is congealed due to common practices as well as to competition and selectiveness throughout the judicial career. Opinions translated into English as the lingua franca are pivotal for communication within this epistemic community. Through engaging in a transnational judicial dialogue, and particularly as far as this dialogue concerns legal citations, this community uses international law as a key guide to finding equilibrium solutions at national and international levels. Five sources of international law overwhelmingly dominate. In addition, we find evidence in the collegial game within the different courts for the existence of a transnational epistemic community of Supreme Court justices.