Electoral Systems in a Divided Society: The Case of Afghanistan

Electoral systems can be powerful instruments for shaping the content and practice of politics in divided societies, such as Afghanistan; and their design needs to be closely linked to context. This paper explores the suitability of Afghanistan's electoral mechanisms in light of the nation's political system, social divisions, and the process, which led to their adoption. There is no perfect electoral system; and the winners of the country's first-ever presidential election and the subsequent assembly elections face the formidable challenge of transforming Afghanistan from a war torn fiefdom into a nation. Hamid Karzai's victory and Afghanistan's improved, although fragile, security environment appear to represent an important step toward democracy. Yet, elections and electoral mechanisms are a necessary but insufficient means to the introduction and endurance of constitutional democratic government. The legitimacy of Afghanistan's new democratic institutions will rest on the government's progress in producing results, such as disarming the private militias of powerful commanders, some of whom represent sizeable ethnic minorities, and curbing the burgeoning poppy cultivation. An electoral system is but one piece, significant but not the linchpin, of the schema of Afghan political dynamics.     

Family interaction patterns among families with normal,disturbed, and drug-abusing adolescents

The relationships between family interaction patterns and the symptomatology of the individual family member are central to many therapeutic approaches. This study was designed to determine whether family interaction patterns differ significantly among three groups of families defined according to the adolescent offspring's symptoms. Thirty families were evaluated in a one-hour interview while three observers behind a one-way mirror rated verbal behavior and the quality of interaction between father, mother, and adolescent. Assessed behaviors included the ability to reach a decision, decision time, scapegoating, and double-bind messages. In addition, the quality of the family's interaction was assessed at four different times during the interview. The results established that the three family groups did not differ demographically. A comparison of the two disturbed family groups yielded no significant differences, with the exception of the adolescent's presenting problem and behaviors. The normal group was significantly different from the other two groups in frequency of scapegoating of the adolescent and the ability to reach a decision. Additionally, the normal families displayed clearer communication, more freedom of expression, more cooperation, and greater sensitivity among members. Several variables did not discriminate the normal group from the disturbed family groups.Received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. Research interests are adolescent psychopathology as it relates to family, group psychotherapy with adolescents, and use of the therapeutic milieu.     

Preventing HIV transmission via HIV exposure laws: applying logic and mathematical modeling to compare statutory approaches to penalizing undisclosed exposure to HIV

Twenty-four U.S. states have enacted HIV exposure laws that prohibit HIV-positive persons from engaging in sexual activities with partners to whom they have not disclosed their HIV status. There is little standardization among existing HIV exposure laws, which vary substantially with respect to the sexual activities that are prohibited without prior serostatus disclosure. Logical analysis and mathematical modeling were used to explore the HIV prevention effectiveness of two types of HIV exposure laws: "strict" laws that require HIV-positive persons to disclose their serostatus to prospective partners prior to any sexual activity and "flexible" laws that require seropositive status disclosure only prior to high-risk sex (e.g., unprotected anal or vaginal intercourse). These laws were compared relative to each other and to a no-law alternative. The results of these analyses indicate that, under most (though not necessarily all) circumstances, both strict and flexible exposure laws can be expected to reduce HIV transmission risk relative to the no-law alternative, with flexible exposure laws producing the greater reduction in risk. This study demonstrates how logical analysis and mathematical modeling techniques can make an important contribution to the construction of a rational basis for decisions about a highly contested public health policy issue.     

Subterranean successes: Durable regulation and regulatory endowments

Scholars sometimes criticize durable regulatory systems for being costly, inefficient, ineffective, and inequitable. This article reassesses regulation, arguing that a mis-categorization of types of regulatory activity has led critics astray. More specifically, the article observes that regulation “hardened” by being built into infrastructure often ceases to be seen as regulation and its benefits are therefore inappropriately omitted from assessments of regulatory accomplishments. Hardening into one or another durable form can create two important benefits: durable regulation moves some items off the agenda of regulators, conserving resources for other regulatory work; durable regulation also creates regulatory endowments, preserving key bargains struck at the time infrastructure was created and reducing future opportunities for capture. Such endowments can then become the foundation for other regulatory work. Examples from the regulation of drinking water in the United States and brief discussions of road safety and disability regulation illustrate the argument.     

A Raindrop Unfallen: innocence and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre's Paul and Virginia (1788)

The following essay is a creative, and challenging, reflection upon key themes of this special issue. The essay brings Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre's tragic romance, Paul and Virginia (1788), into conversation with an artistic response, Julia Margaret Cameron's 1865 photograph. Paul and Virginia is the tale of two children on the idyllic Ile de France, whose love encodes an eroticised innocence. Cameron's rendition offers a visual re-imagining of the fairy tale. In her appreciation of text and image, Carol Mavor negotiates a space between critical and poetic writing. Mosaic-like in form, evocative fragments of prose, poetry and images, are brought together to reflect upon the elusive nature of seduction, desire and innocence—especially among women, mothers and children. This experimental work uses artistic expression to enable us to think differently about the Victorians' troubling legacy of eroticised innocence, and explores new ways to describe inner experience.     

Does a commodity economy enrich the few while ruining the masses? Differentiation among petty commodity producers in guatemala

In this paper I discuss the way in which rural artisans in one municipio of Guatemala organize production and how this organization impedes the differentiation of the artisanal population into owners and workers. I show that categories of owners and workers exist in the municipio, but that these categories do not reproduce themselves as classes; instead, they reproduce each other through the life cycle. In order to explain this phenomenon, I look at internal relations of production, the external environment of large‐scale capital, and the role of migration and the stale in the creation of a permanent Guatemalan proletariat and in the creation of an undifferentiated artisanal economy.