Socio‐economic Considerations in Biosafety and Biotechnology Decision Making: The Cartagena Protocol and National Biosafety Frameworks

Article 26.1 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety left open the possibility for member countries to include in their biosafety regulatory processes the assessment of socio‐economic considerations. Countries may also decide to include such assessments as part of their national legislation or regulations for the approval and deliberate release into the environment of genetically engineered technologies. Countries are debating if and how to implement assessment of socio‐economic considerations. This paper contributes to the ongoing policy dialogue by discussing issues related to socio‐economic assessment including scope, timing, inclusion modalities, methods, decision‐making rules and standards, and the integration of socio‐economic assessments in biosafety and/or biotechnology approval processes. This paper also discusses the implications of such inclusion for technology flows and public and private sector R&D. If inclusion is not done properly, it may negatively impact technology flows especially from the public sector and render an unworkable biosafety system.     

The Developmental Pathway from Pubertal Timing to Delinquency and Sexual Activity from Early to Late Adolescence

There is strong evidence that early pubertal timing is associated with adolescent problem behaviors. However, there has been limited investigation of the mechanisms or developmental relationships. The present study examined longitudinal models incorporating pubertal timing, delinquency, and sexual activity in a sample of 454 adolescents (9–13 years old at enrollment; 47% females). Participants were seen for three assessments approximately 1 year apart. Characteristics of friendship networks (older friends, male friends, older male friends) were examined as mediators. Structural equation modeling was used to test these associations as well as temporal relationships between sexual activity and delinquency. Results showed that early pubertal timing at Time 1 was related to more sexual activity at Time 2, which was related to higher delinquency at Time 3, a trend mediation effect. None of the friendship variables mediated these associations. Gender or maltreatment status did not moderate the meditational pathways. The results also supported the temporal sequence of sexual activity preceding increases in delinquency. These findings reveal that early maturing adolescents may actively seek out opportunities to engage in sexual activity which appears to be risk for subsequent delinquency.     

A Vibrant Post‐Revolutionary Egypt Needs World Support

Just as the Arab Spring blossomed, the al‐Qaeda‐led era of terrorism came to an end with the killing of Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistani lair by American special forces. We asked two of the most contentious experts on all things Islamic—Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan—to assess the meaning of these historic moments on the future. Amr Moussa, the leading candidate for Egypt's presidency, and Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, also offer their views. Two top former intelligence agents from MI6 and the CIA look at the next turn of events—the Saudi counter‐revolution.     

Assessing the Overlap in Dating Violence Perpetration and Victimization among South Korean College Students: The Influence of Social Learning and Self-Control

Research has recently begun to identify an overlap of involvement in offending and victimization and a shared commonality of risk factors for both outcomes. Despite this growing body of evidence, this research has yet to have been extended to dating violence in general and in cross cultural samples specifically. Recognizing these gaps in the literature, the current study examines the correlation between psychological and physical dating violence perpetration and victimization among a large sample of South Korean college students. Results from a series of bivariate probit models suggest that there is a strong degree of overlap between dating violence perpetration and victimization and that social learning theory and self-control theory cannot explain away the overlap. Study limitations and implications are also discussed.     

Change blindness can cause mistaken eyewitness identification

The current study investigated the effects of change blindness and crime severity on eyewitness identification accuracy. This research, involving 717 subjects, examined change blindness during a simulated criminal act and its effects on subjects' accuracy for identifying the perpetrator in a photospread. Subjects who viewed videos designed to induce change blindness were more likely to falsely identify the innocent actor relative to those who viewed control videos. Crime severity did not influence detection of change; however, it did have an effect on eyewitness accuracy. Subjects who viewed a more severe crime ($500 theft) made fewer errors in perpetrator identification than those who viewed a less severe crime ($5 theft). This research has theoretical implications for our understanding of change blindness and practical implications for the real‐world problem of faulty eyewitness testimony.     

Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference

Kosuke Imai Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: kimai{at}princeton.edu Gary King Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Elizabeth A. Stuart Departments of Mental Health and Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 North Broadway, Room 804, Baltimore, MD 21205 e-mail: estuart{at}jhsph.edu e-mail: king{at}harvard.edu (corresponding author) Although published works rarely include causal estimates frommore than a few model specifications, authors usually choosethe presented estimates from numerous trial runs readers neversee. Given the often large variation in estimates across choicesof control variables, functional forms, and other modeling assumptions,how can researchers ensure that the few estimates presentedare accurate or representative? How do readers know that publicationsare not merely demonstrations that it is possible to find aspecification that fits the author's favorite hypothesis? Andhow do we evaluate or even define statistical properties likeunbiasedness or mean squared error when no unique model or estimatoreven exists? Matching methods, which offer the promise of causalinference with fewer assumptions, constitute one possible wayforward, but crucial results in this fast-growing methodologicalliterature are often grossly misinterpreted. We explain howto avoid these misinterpretations and propose a unified approachthat makes it possible for researchers to preprocess data withmatching (such as with the easy-to-use software we offer) andthen to apply the best parametric techniques they would haveused anyway. This procedure makes parametric models producemore accurate and considerably less model-dependent causal inferences. Authors' note: Our thanks to Dan Carpenter and Jeff Koch fordata; Alberto Abadie, Neal Beck, Sam Cook, Alexis Diamond, BenHansen, Guido Imbens, Olivia Lau, Gabe Lenz, Paul Rosenbaum,Don Rubin, and Jas Sekhon for many helpful comments; and theNational Institutes of Aging (P01 AG17625-01), the NationalInstitute of Mental Health (MH066247), the National ScienceFoundation (SES-0318275, IIS-9874747, SES-0550873), and thePrinceton University Committee on Research in the Humanitiesand Social Sciences for research support. Software to implementthe methods in this paper is available at http://GKing.Harvard.edu/matchitand a replication data file is available as Ho et al. (2006).     

Reigniting the fire: a contemporary research agenda for social,political and nonprofit marketing

The paper reports on the core challenges faced by the nonprofit, political and social marketing disciplinary areas and suggests a series of research agendas to develop theory and practice to meet these challenges.

• Social marketing's research agenda involves the continued adaptation of the new developments in commercial marketing, whilst building a base of social marketing theory and best practice benchmarks that can be used to identify, clarify and classify the boundaries of social marketing against social change techniques.
• Nonprofit marketing is pursuing the dual research agenda of developing the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship whilst seeking deeper consumer‐based research to understand motivations for charitable behaviour and gift giving.
• Political Marketing's research agenda looks for an increase in the level of background research, core data and market research to use as a basis for developing more advanced theoretical and practical models. In addition, as political marketing is being transferred internationally between a range of political and electoral systems, there is a need for comparative research into both the relevance and effectiveness of these techniques to isolate nation independent and nation dependent political marketing strategies and campaigns.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Introduction: In Defence of Politics

In a world that is increasingly dominated by literary hyperbole there can be no doubt that Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics remains a classic text. Classic not just in the sense that it provides a masterly account of the essence, meaning and fragility of democratic politics but classic in the sense that it is written with a style, verve and passion that is rarely found within political science. If the test of pretensions to ‘a classic’ status is that a book defies the passage of time in terms of significance and argument then Crick's Defence would also make the grade for the simple fact that its arguments remain arguably far more important today than they were when they were first published exactly fifty years ago. This article reflects on the contemporary significance of Crick's Defence by defending politics against an updated set of adversaries in the form of: public expectations, marketisation, depoliticisation, the media, and crises before locating the book within the contours of current debates about public disengagement, the rise of ‘disaffected democrats’ and questions concerning the future and relevance of political science.