Organizing Civil Society in Russia and China: A Comparative Approach

Despite their authoritarian tendencies, the current regimes in Russia and China have both actively promoted stronger civil societies. This article explores this apparent paradox for insights both into the meaning of civil society and into the nature of governance in these two regimes. It argues that the social organizations that make up civil society both inhabit and construct a public sphere where individuals assist in their own governance. Recognizing that administered societies cannot compete in a globalizing economy, these regimes look to social organizations to perform functions previously left to the state, but at the same time use similar repertoires of regulation, revenue control, and repression to ensure such organizations do not transgress acceptable boundaries. Still, different notions of state–society relations in the two countries have led to different patterns of social organizations in the two countries. In Russia, a sharp distinction between state and society has contributed to a government strategy that seeks to dominate the public sphere leaving little room for autonomous civic action. In China, by contrast, deeply embedded institutionalized accounts see state and society as overlapping spheres of activity, creating pyramid-like structures encompassing both state-based and more autonomous organizations, and allowing more room for negotiation between the two.     

Housing vouchers in the United States,great Britain,and the Netherlands: Current issues and future perspectives

Abstract

We compare the current U.S. housing voucher program with the British housing benefit and the Dutch housing allowance programs. After presenting the theory behind income‐related housing support, which underpins both the U.S. and European systems, we compare the three programs with respect to their scope (the budgeted versus the entitlement approach), the relationship between housing support and rent levels, the poverty trap, moral hazards, and administrative problems.

The United States can learn from Great Britain and the Netherlands that a full entitlement program can best promote equity, but given the present political and economic climate, it is unlikely that Congress will adopt such a program anytime soon. Great Britain and the Netherlands can learn from the United States how to design a more efficient tenant subsidy program, one that provides incentives to find less expensive units and promotes family self‐sufficiency through enhanced job‐seeking behavior.     

Challenging the boundaries of democratic inclusion? Young people's attitudes about the distribution of voting rights

In theoretical debates about the quality of democratic rule, the core question concerns membership, and the adequate constitution of the demos: who is entitled to participate in choosing political representatives? This article enhances the predominantly normative debates on democratic inclusion and boundary making by taking an empirical perspective and analysing attitudes of 16–18-year-old teenagers regarding preconditions for the distribution of voting rights. Based on data stemming from 13 focus groups conducted in three Austrian cities in spring 2010, our findings show that principles related to both competence (autonomy, knowledge) and community (showing concern, being subjected to the law) matter when it comes to democratic boundary making. Furthermore, the study reveals that, in trying to explain the formation of juvenile attitudes about boundary issues, institutions are relevant when related to the conjunctive experiences manifested in the group-specific habitus: while young immigrants argue more inclusionarily than natives in terms of community-related preconditions, especially as far as the roles of language and citizenship are concerned, students argue more exclusionarily than apprentices when it comes to competence-related preconditions, especially civic education. Boundary making affects social groups independent of national origin or citizenship and can therefore be considered a permanent process beyond international migration.     

The urbanisation of justice movements? Possibilities and constraints for the city as a space of contentious struggle

Have urban areas become strategic sites for the formation of justice movements? A justice movement is conceptualised as geographically extensive mobilisations that achieve a degree of territorial fixity at different spatial scales. It is proposed that a number of factors can encourage organisations implicated in this movement to make the urban arena a key front in their struggle to achieve justice. These factors include the intensification of urban inequalities, increased political opportunities resulting from the devolution of state capacities to sub‐national levels of government and new actors interested in pursuing innovative strategies and tactics. This hypothesis is tested through a comparison of movements in three different cities: Los Angeles, USA; Rotterdam, Holland; and Toulouse, France. The findings show that, despite the fact that new actors have begun to mobilise in these three cities around justice issues, they have experienced different degrees of territorialisation. The divergent outcomes are explained by the particular state–civil society power relations found in each of the cities. Thus, the paper concludes that, though the factors in our hypothesis may encourage actors to initiate urban justice movements, the degree of their territorialisation ultimately depends on local state–civil society power relations.     

Deaths related to chemical burns

The authors present a series of 6 deaths due to the uncommon cause of chemical burns. Of the 6 deaths due to chemical burns, 4 deaths were due to ingestion of a chemical, 1 death was caused by chemical burns of the skin, and 1 death resulted from rectal insufflation of a chemical. Seven additional cases where chemical burns may have been a contributing factor to the death or an incidental finding are also presented. Four cases are related to an incident involving chemical exposure during an industrial explosion. Three cases involve motor fuel burns of the skin. Two cases concern a plane crash incident, and 1 case involved a vehicular collision. Cases are derived from the records of the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office and those of the authors' consultation practices. Each of the cases is presented, followed by a discussion of the various mechanisms of chemical injury.     

Legal aspects of cloud security

Enterprise (large organisation) computing workloads are moving from ‘on-prem’ to ‘in-cloud’ increasingly quickly, and the cloud is forecast to account for almost half of enterprise IT by 2026, up from 10% today. But the benefits of the enterprise cloud need to be weighed against increasingly burdensome duties around cloud and data security. This comment piece provides a checklist of the sources of enterprise cloud security duties and a checklist of best practices to manage them.     

Validation studies in forensic odontology – Part 1: Accuracy of radiographic matching

As part of a series of studies aimed at validating techniques in forensic odontology, this study aimed to validate the accuracy of ante-mortem (AM)/postmortem (PM) radiographic matching by dentists and forensic odontologists. This study used a web-based interface with 50 pairs of AM and PM radiographs from real casework, at varying degrees of difficulty. Participants were shown both radiographs as a pair and initially asked to decide if they represented the same individual using a yes/no binary choice forced-decision. Participants were asked to assess their level of confidence in their decision, and to make a conclusion using one of the ABFO (American Board of Forensic Odontology), INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organisation) and DVISys? (DVI System International, Plass Data Software) identification scale degrees. The mean false-positive rate using the binary choice scale was 12%. Overall accuracy was 89% using this model, however, 13% of participants scored below 80%. Only 25% of participants accurately answered yes or no > 90% of the time, with no individual making the correct yes/no decision for all 50 pairs of radiographs. Non-odontologists (lay participants) scored poorly, with a mean accuracy of only 60%. Use of the graded ABFO, DVISYS and INTERPOL scales resulted in general improvements in performance, with the false-positive and false-negative rates falling to approximately 2% overall. Inter-examiner agreement in assigning scale degrees was good (ICC = 0.64), however there was little correlation between confidence and both accuracy or agreement among practitioners. These results suggest that use of a non-binary scale is supported over a match/non-match call as it reduces the frequency of false positives and negatives. The use of the terms “possible” and “insufficient information” in the same scale appears to create confusion, reducing inter-examiner agreement. The lack of agreement between higher-performing and lower-performing groups suggests that there is an inconsistency in the cognitive processes used to determine similarity between radiographs.