Advisory bodies and morality policies: does ethical expertise matter?

Policy Sciences - Governments and parliaments struggle to design biomedical policies: while research and practice make rapid progress, they often trigger value conflicts. One response involves...     

The other hidden hand: Soviet and Cuban intelligence in Allende’s Chile

The role of Soviet and Cuban covert activities in Allende’s Chile has not been given sufficient consideration. This paper outlines the significant actions that the KGB and the Cuban DGI undertook there, showing that both organizations played important roles in both operating directly against the CIA and by supporting local actors. The results of their efforts, however, may have been negative to Allende’s coalition by focusing on factional or ideological interests. A broad array of sources is brought together to shed light on this historical gap. The result is a new paradigm in which we can consider this dramatic period.     

Scientific Method and the Crimes of the Powerful

Over the past six decades researchers interested in the crimes of the powerful have developed a respectable body of literature. Owing to the empirical and theoretical richness of these contributions, the crimes of the powerful sub-field is ready for critical interventions to be made on the plane of scientific method. Moreover, such interventions have become increasingly necessary owing to the disciplinary hegemony of an orthodox empiricist approach which erects a problematic boundary between empirical representations of the crimes of the powerful and theoretical explanation. To aid a critique of this approach, this paper will employ the scientific framework of classical Marxism to decipher the peculiar problems which flow out of the orthodoxy’s method. It will be concluded that while classical Marxism offers a more rigorous framework for penetrating analyses of the crimes of the powerful, orthodox scholars have nevertheless made significant contributions which should also be utilised in future research.     

Nationhood and Scandinavian naturalization politics: varieties of the civic turn

The neighboring countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway represent three very similar societies that differ markedly with respect to naturalization policy. While the general trend of a civic turn has brought about some of Europe’s strictest residence and citizenship requirements in Denmark, it has left the liberal Swedish policy largely untouched and the Norwegian somewhere in between the other two. How might such divergence in otherwise very similar societies be explained? This article investigates the role different conceptions of nationhood have played. It is argued that different conceptions of nationhood have mattered, but that the national differences have less to do with the normative content of nationhood than with how politicians tend to conceive of the integration process that newcomers must commit to in order to develop a strong sense of national belonging.     

Russia and its Western Neighbours: A Comparative Study of the Security Situation in the Black,Baltic and Barents Sea Regions

Abstract

Since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the security situation of Europe’s eastern ‘frontline states’ has undergone significant changes. In and around the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea, the scope and scale of military activity has grown, as has the frequency of Russian–Western military encounters. Despite the many similarities between the three regions, and despite the increased risk of negative spillover from one region to another, there are also noteworthy regional differences. As of today, the security challenges appear to be more severe and pressing in the southern and central part of the ‘frontline’ than in the northern.     

An oxcarbazepine-related fatality with an overview of 26 oxcarbazepine postmortem cases

We present an oxcarbazepine-related fatality together with an overview of 26 postmortem cases involving oxcarbazepine observed during the period 2001-2006. The fatality case concerned a 27-year-old woman with epilepsy, who was found dead in her bed. Oxcarbazepine and its active metabolite, 10-hydroxycarbazepine, were the only compounds detected. The concentrations of oxcarbazepine were as follows: femoral blood, 2.9mg/kg; muscle, 1.8mg/kg; liver, 0.9mg/kg; gastric content (300ml), 860mg/kg; and vitreous humour, not detected. The concentrations of 10-hydroxycarbazepine were as follows: femoral blood, 66mg/kg; muscle, 40mg/kg; liver, 62mg/kg; gastric content, 27mg/kg; and vitreous humour, 25mg/kg. The analyses were performed by HPLC-DAD after liquid-liquid extraction. Oxcarbazepine intoxication was regarded as a possible cause of death. For the other 26 cases, the 10-hydroxycarbazepine concentrations ranged from 2.2 to 48mg/kg with a median of 25mg/kg.     

A new system for computer aided dental identification in mass disasters

In recent years, several computer programs for dental identification in mass disasters have been developed. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to get access to such programs. The Norwegian police presently utilizes a text retrieval program, NOVA¹STATUS, for detection work. This program is based on the British STATUS ONE program, and it enables the user to find from a large pool of postmortem dental registration one or several sets containing specific information about one tooth or several teeth. The complete relevant set(s) can be displayed for visual examination and comparison. A coding system for dental information has been developed as well as a system for interrogating the computer. This system and its efficiency have been tested on a simulated small scale disaster where various well-known difficulties in dental identification were included.     

Converging Markets

The crucible in this scenario for the international climate regime is the emergence of an effective and liquid international carbon market with participation of private entities. In order to make the carbon market effective a bilateral negotiation track will develop, operating in parallel with the multilateral track under the UNFCCC. The purpose of the bilateral track is to integrate the various emissions trading schemes involving private actors. This bilateral track feeds into the UNFCCC negotiations, which still represents the main arena for the international climate negotiations. Through the bilateral, bottom-up negotiations, a multistage system develops, with differentiated rights and duties, complemented by a package of coordinated support mechanisms. The advantages of such a bottom-up approach prove to be, inter alia, fewer negotiating parties, new negotiation arenas, and a new set of selective incentives. The result is a continuously evolving agreement with the potential to gradually broaden participation and deepen the reduction commitments of the international climate regime. Moreover, the bilateral agreements for linking schemes with private actors also represent a fallback in the event of a collapse in the multilateral negotiations.The article has been written by funding from the Central Research Institute for the Electric Power Industry in Tokyo and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It also represents an output of research financed by the Research Council of Norway, project no. 144768/520. The authors thank all three institutions for the funding, as well as the many participants at the workshops where the ideas in the paper have been presented. Their criticism and suggestions have been very stimulating, indeed.