Negotiating Access to Land in Nepal

In a rural agrarian economy like that of Nepal, land has traditionally been a primary source of livelihood and security, as well as a symbol of status. Thousands of poor farmers are completely dependent on land for their livelihoods, yet not all of them have access to or control over this fundamental resource. Negotiation for access to land has been a lengthy and complicated process. It remains so in the changed political context of Nepal, where increasing numbers of emerging actors need to be considered, often with conflicting claims and counterclaims. In this context the traditional ways of thinking need to be revised, both with regard to the negotiating process and the mechanisms of land reform, to accommodate the country’s recent and ongoing massive socio-economic transformation.     

Citizenship education in divided societies: teachers' perspectives in Northern Ireland

This article aimed to investigate in what ways teachers' developing understandings of citizenship education in a divided society reflect discourses around national citizenship and controversial issues. Based on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 post-primary teachers in Northern Ireland undertaking an in-service programme in citizenship, findings indicate that the controversial nature of past conflict maintains its sensitivity in the educational context though other categories of potential exclusion, such as race and sexuality, compete for space in educational discourse and teaching. Few teachers used controversial issues identified as challenging hegemonic beliefs as an opportunity for role modelling citizenship. However, teachers rarely explored the complex interlinkages between traditional and alternative categories of exclusion. It is argued that this may render teachers' understandings of citizenship and societal conflict disconnected, which in turn may hinder the potential for citizenship education to address societal divisions and to promote active peace in the long term.     

Diagnosis of a captive-bolt injury in a skull extremely destroyed by fire

The authors report on a combined suicide of a 71-year-old farmer who fired a shot to his forehead with a livestock stunner before burning himself. As the fire was fueled by a pile of firewood it burnt for many hours, thus, causing subtotal incineration of the body. The remaining bones were calcined and reduced to a residual mass of only 3 kg. In spite of the extreme destruction, a circular bone defect corresponding to the site where the captive-bolt had entered the skull could be identified in the frontal squama. The example of this suicide is used to illustrate the problems of distinguishing between mechanical and thermal fractures. As expected, the attempted isolation and amplification of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA for the purpose of identification was not successful.     

Steuerung jenseits von Hierarchie

The paper sheds new light on recent debates about governance and approaches contemporary problems of governing from the perspective of contemporary theories of power. The concept of “soft governing” is developed in order to capture horizontal mechanisms of power intentionally used to govern beyond formalised hierarchies characteristic of processes of governance. The paper describes in particular the horizontal forms of governing through discursive practices, argumentation and symbols and the ways in which they interact. The example of campaigns against female genital mutilation is introduced in order to illustrate possible forms of governing beyond hierarchy.     

The Janus‐Face of Negociation Democracy. The Effects of Consensus Democracy,Direct Democracy and Decentralization on State Intervention in Swiss Cantons

Dieser Beitrag analysiert die Varianzen der quantifizierbaren Staatstätigkeit in den 26 Schweizer Kantonen der 1980er und 1990er Jahre. Im Mittelpunkt der erklärenden Grssen stehen dabei Formen der Verhandlungsdemokratie, insbesondere der Konkordanz, dezentraler Entscheidungsstrukturen und direktdemokratischer Beteiligungsrechte. Wir zeigen, dass die Erweiterung des Konzeptes der Verhandlungsdemokratie auf weitere Staatsorgane neben der Regierung zur analytischen Unschärfe fhrt, da die verschiedenen Ausprägungen der politischen Machtteilung mit unterschiedlichen Wirkungen auf den Umfang des ffentlichen Sektors verbunden sind. Während die Konkordanz im Sinne der parteifrmigen Organisation politischer und sozialer Konflikte tendenziell die staatliche Intervention begnstigt, zgeln konstitutionelle Vetospieler die Staatstätigkeit, indem direktdemokratische Mitwirkung und dezentrale Machtteilung dem Staat Fesseln auf der Einnahmen‐und Ausgabenseite anlegen.     

Politische Institutionen und die Entwicklung generalisierten Vertrauens. Ein internationaler Vergleich

Trust functions as an instrument for establishing long-term and mutually beneficial cooperative relationships. In this paper we investigate the sources of generalized trust. The main focus of the research is the role of the political-institutional context in allowing trust-based relationships to form, controlling for the attributes and motives of individual agents. The central contention of the paper is that political institutions that support norms of fairness, universality, and the division of power contribute to the formation of inter-personal trust. Using data from the World Values Survey we run multi-level models to test for links between differences between the responses of individuals in various countries and the trust-supporting context, in terms of different institutional configurations. Alongside individual resources and attitudes, aspects of social integration and other sociodemographic characteristics, we test for significant effects of contextual factors — such as the influence of formal rule-of-law institutions, social inequality, and the division of power or pluralistic democratic procedures. The study comes to the conclusion that universalistic, impartial and power-sharing institutions increase the prospects for the development of generalized trust.