The ambiguities of political terrorism in Central America

Abstract

Over the last ten years left‐wing terrorism in Central America has spawned a number of related and opposed phenomena. Right‐wing terrorism has become very active but has degenerated into pseudo‐left‐wing terrorism and finally into gangsterism. Examples of this are the alleged Chacon group in El Salvador and the related activities of the Zimeri gang in Guatemala. Non‐Central American factors have also come into play, such as connections with the PLO and the activities of Cuban exile groups. This situation has made it extremely difficult to label any individual act of terrorism as being related to the Right or to the Left.     

Beyond ‘Constitutionalism Beyond the State’

For contemporary constitutional theory, the key challenge posed by globalization undermines the traditional link between constitutionalism and the state: in response to multi‐level governance, theories of constitutionalism beyond the state have been advanced. This focus on levels obscures more fundamental epistemological questions raised by globalization about the nature of constitutionalism itself. Critical analysis of three leading schools of constitutionalism beyond the state – supranational, societal, and new constitutionalism – highlights their shared assumptions with state‐based thought regarding the separation between economics and politics, and the necessarily hegemonic character of constitutionalism. However, globalization intensifies critique of these assumptions, and questions their translation to the transnational context. An alternative scholarly fault line to the state/non‐state cleavage emerges between working within and transcending the politics of constitutional knowledge produced during the nation‐state era. A broader globalization perspective reveals the extent to which such processes of constitutional rethinking are under way through developments in the global South.     

The servant of two masters: Electoral incentives in the Scottish Parliament

Scholars have pointed out the potential impact of different electoral systems on the incentives for representatives to cultivate personal versus party reputations. The mixed-member proportional system (MMP) allows us to examine the effects of electoral systems on legislators’ incentives. Scholars have argued that MMP may be the ‘best of both worlds’; however, MMP may lead to competing demands on list representatives if they are also allowed to run as constituency candidates, as happens in the Scottish Parliament. I show that this leads to different levels of committee activity—which I use as a surrogate for party activity—from constituency Members of Scottish Parliament (MSPs), pure-list MSPs (who are elected via the party list and do not run in constituencies), and dual-candidate list MSPs (list MSPs who also run in constituencies), and that the proximity of elections also affects committee activity for those who run in constituencies.     

Multivariate analysis for estimating the age of a bloodstain

Our objective is to provide crime laboratories with a technique for estimating the age of a bloodstain. Toward that goal, we have used multiplexed, real-time RT-PCR (or qPCR) to determine the relative stability of different-sized segments of the same RNA species as well as differences in stability between two different RNAs' change over time in bloodstains. Our results indicate that a multivariate analysis of the changing ratio of the different RNA segments can be used to differentiate between samples of different ages in the defined population. Bloodstains from 29 of 30 donors could be partitioned into different ages using this technique. Although further improvements will be required before this approach can be implemented in crime laboratories, the multivariate analysis holds promise of providing a reliable approach for temporally linking a bloodstain to the commission of a crime or excluding a bloodstain as being irrelevant to the case in question.