How Europe Shapes the Nature of the Belgian Federation: Differentiated EU Impact Triggers Both Co-operation and Decentralization

This paper disentangles the impact of various dimensions of European integration on different aspects of the Belgian federal polity. We discern two opposite trends. While the institutional embeddedness of Belgium as an EU member state results in domestic centralizing tendencies and co-operative political practices, economic integration stimulates political pressures for regional autonomy, contributing to further divergence and hollowing out of the federal level. We conclude by arguing that the EU clearly affects territorial politics in Belgium, but, as the European causes are multidimensional, that also the effects, albeit substantial, will be diverse.     

After post-development

Along with ‘anti-development’ and ‘beyond development’, post-development is a radical reaction to the dilemmas of development. Post-development focuses on the underlying premises and motives of development; what sets it apart from other critical approaches is that it rejects development. The question is whether this is a tenable and fruitful position. Taken up first in this article are major overt positions of post-development—the problematisation of poverty, the portrayal of development as Westernisation, and the critique of modernism and science. The argument then turns to discourse analysis of development; it is argued that, in post-development, discourse analysis from a methodology turns into an ideology. Next the difference between alternative development and ‘alternatives to development’ is examined. The reasons why this difference is made out to be so large are, in my interpretation, anti-managerialism and dichotomic thinking. The article closes with a discussion of the politics of post-development and a critical assessment.     

Down and Out: Laboring under Global Capitalism

The text and photographs in this photo essay are excerpted with permission from Down and Out: Labouring under Global Capitalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), by Jan Breman and Arvind N. Das (text) and Ravi Agarwal (photographs).     

Leaking Superpower: WikiLeaks and the contradictions of democracy

While US government agencies endorse and support the democratic potential of the internet and social media overseas, the criticisms of the WikiLeaks disclosures of US diplomatic cables reveal the bias in relation to transparency and democracy. This poses a wider problem of connectivity combined with hegemony. This paper discusses what the criticisms of the WikiLeaks disclosures reveal. After discussing the enthusiasm about ‘hyper-connectivity’, the paper turns to the WikiLeaks disclosures, and next spells out global ramifications of the leaked cables, the problems of transparency and hegemony, frictions between democracy and democratisation, and the role of banks blocking donations to WikiLeaks.     

Roman Law in Roman Britain: An Introductory Survey

This article is the first attempt to analyse the condition of Roman law in Roman Britain for more than thirty years. It is intended as an introduction to the subject and a point from which further research can be done. The article briefly describes current knowledge of the effectiveness of Roman law in Roman Britain, relying upon not only traditional Roman law sources but also a large number of epigraphic sources. Based upon an analysis of these, it may be said that Roman law played an important role in the daily life of Roman Britain. It was not only associated with the Roman conquerors, but it was also used by Romanized native inhabitants of the island. It is even possible that the foundations laid down by the Romans influenced the later development of medieval Welsh law.     

Swedish rape offenders — a latent class analysis

Sweden has witnessed an increase in the rates of sexual crimes including rape. Knowledge of who the offenders of these crimes are is therefore of importance for prevention. We aimed to study characteristics of individuals convicted of rape, aggravated rape, attempted rape or attempted aggravated rape (abbreviated rape+), against a woman ≥18 years of age, in Sweden. By using information from the Swedish Crime Register, offenders between 15 and 60 years old convicted of rape+ between 2000 and 2015 were included. Information on substance use disorders, previous criminality and psychiatric disorders were retrieved from Swedish population-based registers, and Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify classes of rape+ offenders. A total of 3 039 offenders were included in the analysis. A majority of them were immigrants (n = 1 800; 59.2%) of which a majority (n = 1 451; 47.7%) were born outside of Sweden. The LCA identified two classes: Class A — low offending class (LOC), and Class B — high offending class (HOC). While offenders in the LOC had low rates of previous criminality, psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders, those included in the HOC had high rates of previous criminality, psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders. While HOC may be composed by more “traditional” criminals probably known by the police, the LOC may represent individuals not previously known by the police. These two separated classes, as well as our finding in regard to a majority of the offenders being immigrants, warrants further studies that take into account the contextual characteristics among these offenders.

Key points

• Rape, aggravated rape, attempted rape or attempted aggravated rape (rape+) are increasing in Sweden.
• The majority of those convicted of rape+ are immigrants.
• LCA identifies two classes of rape+ offenders: LOC and HOC.

     

Toward High‐Quality Divorce Agreements: The Influence of Facilitative Professionals

Studies have reported that mediation has higher settlement rates than litigation. The quality of these agreements as experienced by the parties as well as the processes that contribute to this subjective experience remains underexamined, however. In a large, representative, and multidisciplinary study of divorcing couples, we studied the relationship between the practices of lawyers and mediators and the quality of agreements experienced by their clients. We used multiple regression analysis to reveal that divorce mediation is significantly more likely than litigation to produce high‐quality divorce settlements. Furthermore, we found that high‐quality divorce agreements were more likely to occur when mediators and lawyers were perceived to have worked facilitatively. In addition, we found that pre‐divorce conflict levels were inversely correlated with the quality of agreements. Which party initiated the divorce, the parties' gender, and the type of legal divorce did not explain variances in the quality of the agreements. In this article, we also discuss the training and practice implications of our findings.     

Design,development and validity testing of the gang affiliation risk measure (GARM)

This study aimed to create a measure of risk for gang affiliation, for use in the UK. A pilot stage invited gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants between the ages of 16–25 years to retrospectively self-report on 58 items of risk exposure at the age of 11 years. Based on performance of these items, a 26-item measure was developed and administered to a main study sample (n = 185) of gang affiliated and non-gang affiliated participants. Categorical Principal Component Analysis was applied to data, yielding a single-factor solution (historic lack of safety and current perception of threat). A 15-item gang affiliation risk measure (GARM) was subsequently created. The GARM demonstrated good internal consistency, construct validity and discriminative ability. Items from the GARM were then transformed to read prospectively, resulting in a test measure for predictive purposes (T-GARM). The T-GARM requires further validation regarding its predictive utility and generalisability. However, this study has resulted in the first measure of gang affiliation, with promising results.     

Exploring public values implications of the I-Corps program

This paper examines how the concept of public values can be operationalized in an ongoing public initiative to stimulate innovation in an emerging technology. Our study focuses on Innovation Corps (I-Corps)—a program initiated in 2011 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to accelerate the process of commercializing science-driven discoveries. The I-Corps method has since spread rapidly across multiple US agencies. Separately, there has also been heightened attention to the early anticipation and mitigation of the implications of emerging science and technology. Drawing on the case of nanotechnology, the paper considers how public values related to nanotechnology commercialization can be integrated alongside the fast start-up procedures embedded in I-Corps. We use a public values framework to pose societal impact questions that can be probed in parallel with the current I-Corps process, highlighting values such as identification of societal problems that the technology might potentially address; types of potential customers likely to be overlooked; groups who might oppose the application as well as those who might support it; and potential environmental, health, and safety risks. The paper discusses the challenges of adding specifications related to equity as well as safety in efforts to foster rapid commercialization and considers how these can be integrated within the I-Corps approach.