Multinational Corporations and Service Provision in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Legitimacy and Institutionalization Matter

This article considers attempts by multinational corporations to provide services in areas of limited statehood. Under which conditions are such attempts effective? We make two arguments: First, they must be legitimate to be effective. Second, the institutional design of the firms’ service provision programs is an important factor for their effectiveness. We assess these arguments by analyzing multinationals in the South African car industry fighting HIV/AIDS, and international mining firms in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo trying to improve public security. The analysis demonstrates that under conditions of legitimacy and high degrees of institutionalization firm programs effectively contribute to service provision in areas of limited statehood.     

Books Received

Criminal Law Forum -     

Dominican Party System Continuity amid Regional Transformations: Economic Policy,Clientelism, and Migration Flows

In the 1980s and 1990s, economic crisis produced ideological convergence in many Latin American party systems. Much scholarship explores how this convergence frequently provoked system change that enabled renewed ideological differentiation, but little research examines instances where convergence persisted without destabilizing the system. Through comparative historical analysis of Dominican continuity amid regional change, this study identifies factors that sustain or challenge party systems. Then, through analysis of Americas Barometer surveys, it assesses the causal mechanisms through which these factors shape support for the traditional Dominican parties. The findings demonstrate that maintaining programmatic and clientelist linkages facilitates continuity. In addition, the article argues that the threats political outsiders pose to existing party systems are constrained when people excluded from the system are divided and demobilized. In the Dominican case, Haitian immigration divides the popular sector while Dominicans abroad sustain ties to the parties, with both migration flows facilitating party system continuity.     

Comparison of methods to determine sex by evaluating the greater sciatic notch: Visual, angular and geometric morphometrics

Sex estimation is the first step for biological profile reconstruction of an unknown skeleton (archaeological or contemporary) and consequently for positive identification of skeletal remains recovered from forensic settings. Several tools have been developed using different osseous structures. With the intention to provide an objective method comparison, we reported the analysis of three different methods (visual, metric and geometric morphometrics) for sex assessment of the greater sciatic notch. One hundred and thirty pelvic bones (45.4% females and 54.6% males) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico Skeletal Collection pertaining to the contemporary Mexican population were analyzed. We used the ROC-analysis to test between desired false positive thresholds (1-specificity) and expected true positive rates (sensitivity) in order to predict the best approach to sex assessment. The comparison of the area under the ROC-curves shows significant differences among visual and metric methods. At the same time, the analysis suggested that higher morphological variation among the sexes is independent of the methodological approach. The results indicate that the metric (angle), with a high percent of indeterminate cases (34.6%), and visual, with 26.2% of the cases allocated as intermediate cases, were poorly accurate; we cannot recommend these techniques for sexing an unknown specimen. On the other hand, the geometric morphometrics approach improves sex estimation in 82.3% of correctly classified individuals with more than 95% of posterior probability. In addition to the method comparison, the major sexual variation of the greater sciatic notch was determined to be located on its posterior border.     

The politics of bank ownership and currency policies in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper argues that state-owned, private domestic, and foreign banks have different preferences for exchange rate policies. More specifically, I posit that governments will be less willing and able to maintain fixed exchange rate arrangements in closed banking systems dominated by government-owned banks than in globalized banking systems with a large presence of foreign banks. The article’s principal claim rests on the notion that ownership structure of the banking system empowers different types of banks, affects their interests, and shapes the responsiveness of government politicians to bank demands. The bank ownership types further influence the stability of the domestic monetary system and financial regulation that are of paramount importance in the determination of exchange rate regimes. An empirical investigation of data on exchange rate regimes for 25 Central and Eastern European countries provides strong support for the theory. The results are robust to alternative estimation techniques, instrumental variable analysis, and the inclusion of several economic and political variables.     

Windenergieanlagen und Freiraumschutz

Zusammenfassung  In Deutschland sind gegenw?rtig über 19.000 Windenergieanlagen installiert. Dies ist klimaschutz- und energiepolitisch zu Recht als Erfolg gewertet worden, hat aber auch erhebliche Konflikte mit dem Immissions-, Natur- und Landschaftsschutz hervorgebracht. Auf die Problemlage hat der Gesetzgeber insbesondere durch Schaffung verbesserter rechtlicher M?glichkeiten für eine r?umliche Konzentration von Windenergieanlagen reagiert. Durch verschiedene h?chstrichterliche Entscheidungen sind die rechtlichen Anforderungen an den Planungsvorbehalt des § 35 Abs. 3 S. 3 BauGB als Korrektiv der gesetzlichen Privilegierung der Errichtung von Windenergieanlagen (§ 35 Abs. 1 Nr. 5 BauGB) mittlerweile in hohem Ma?e pr?zisiert worden. Die M?glichkeiten, das Anliegen des Fl?chensparens auch in die Windenergieplanung zu integrieren, sind aber durch die gegenw?rtige Rechtsetzung noch nicht ausgesch?pft.     

Police response to physical assault and stalking victimization: A comparison of influential factors

The current study uses the National Violence Against Women Survey to examine factors associated with criminal justice system involvement in incidents of male physical violence and stalking against women. While both stalking and physical domestic assault incidents are more likely to be reported to the police if the victim is female or if the offender has used threats, only physical domestic assaults are less likely to be reported to the police when the offender is familiar. Additionally, when considering formal police responses, there are very few similarities across the models for physical domestic assault and stalking. These findings show that physical domestic assault and stalking are two unique types of crimes and should be considered separately in any analysis of factors affecting legal decisions and responses to domestic violence.     

Isolation and identification of unique marker compounds from the Tasmanian poppy Papaver somniferum N. Implications for the identification of illicit heroin of Tasmanian origin

Tasmanian opium accounts for 25% of the world's legal supply of opium straw, and in 1998-99 sufficient numbers of flower pods (66,013) to manufacture ca 500 kg of heroin were stolen. Whilst the heroin signature program has been developed to determine the origin of heroin from other key producers, no such signature currently exists for Tasmanian derived heroin. Tasmanian poppies contain a unique alkaloid, oripavine, which is the source of 'marker' impurities in illicit heroin produced from Tasmanian poppy straw. Treatment of oripavine (500mg) under Thiboumery and Mohr heroin processing conditions, followed by simple evaporative workup afforded 613 mg of a dark orange residue, which upon extensive chromatographic purification yielded oripavine 3-acetate (2) 22 mg; 3-acetyl-N-acetyldesthebaine (3) 35 mg; 3-acetyl-6-methoxy-4,5-epoxyphenanthrene (4) 5.8 mg; 3,4-diacetyl-6-methoxyphenanthrene (5) 27 mg; and 3,4,6-methoxy-5-[2(N-methylacetamido)]ethylphenanthrene (6) 52 mg. Compounds (2-6) are derived from oripavine and are unique to heroin derived from the Tasmanian poppy Papaver somniferum N. Analysis of illicit heroin samples seized from Turkey, Pakistan, Columbia and Myanmar did not reveal any of the aforementioned marker compounds. We have, however, identified four of these marker compounds (3-6) in seized heroin samples from Australia suggesting that they are of Tasmanian origin. Complete details of the isolation and identification of these compounds are provided.