Model power or reference point? The EU and the ASEAN Charter

Several scholars have suggested that ASEAN's institutionalization can be attributed to the EU's influence as a ‘model power’. The notion of the EU as a model power is premised on the assumption and belief that Europe's history of regional cooperation presents a viable blueprint for other regions. This article argues that the EU exerts some power over ASEAN—but merely as a ‘reference point’. The EU's influence is not an active one; the organisation essentially serves as a passive reference point for ASEAN. The obvious and arguably most important example of this referencing is the framing of the ASEAN Charter in 2007. This article disagrees with scholars who reduce ASEAN's institutionalization to an imitation of the EU form without the substance. Instead, it shows how ASEAN has innovated as a regional organization through its Charter and Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission.     

Establishing Trust in the Illegal Wildlife Trade in China

This study focusses on the role of trust in the illegal distribution of protected wildlife in China. This research attempts to contribute to the literature by disentangling the establishment of trust within the illegal wildlife trade based on ethnographic fieldwork between 2011 and 2016. Both traders and consumers are resorting to mechanisms of trust to foster exchange and to increase credibility of their agreements. This study discusses the existence of such mechanisms of trust within wildlife trafficking networks that are rather characteristic of illegal wildlife trade in China.

     

电子政府能促进责任性吗?——14个国家的网站公开性与政府责任比较分析

在信息技术引发的全球压力下,公共行政领域基于网络技术的采用创造了一个新的"政府-公民"界面.然而,电子政府是否将明确地导致一个更透明、更具互动性、更开放,因而是更有责任的政府一直是一个核心问题.针对14个国家,应用全球压力对官僚政治变化影响的框架,基于网站公开性和责任问题展开经验研究.研究表明,即使全球范围国家的整体责任等级有所提升,但在基于网络的技术典型地保持和加强现存实践的条件下,不同国家官僚机构问的责任差异依然存在.电子政府是否能促进责任性,首先依赖于人们参照什么类型的官僚机构.就当前全球化对公共官僚机构的影响而引发的关于全球趋同(global convergence)与国家异化(nationaldivergence)问题的争论而言,电子政府的广泛实践只是提供一个实践趋同而非结果趋同的案例.     

Correction to: Examining the effects of teen dating violence prevention programs: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Journal of Experimental Criminology - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-020-09456-5     

The New Panopticon? Examining the Effect of Home Confinement on Criminal Recidivism

Due to its versatility within the criminal justice system, home confinement has broad appeal as a sentencing option. This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of house arrest and electronic monitoring on the recidivism of adult offenders. Fourteen effect sizes (from 11 studies) that present recidivistic outcomes were quantitatively pooled, and separate meta-analyses were conducted on varying categories of recidivism severity to assess the differing impact of home confinement. The findings suggest that home confinement helps adult offenders successfully reintegrate into the community upon release from closed custody and deters future offending. Implications for correctional policies and practices toward home confinement as a community-based prevention strategy to supervise offenders are discussed.     

Service providers' reactions to intimate partner violence as a function of victim sexual orientation and type of abuse

In this online vignette study, a national sample of domestic violence shelter service providers (N = 282) completed a 10-item questionnaire about a woman experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Scenarios varied in terms of couple sexual orientation (heterosexual or lesbian) and type of abuse (physical or nonphysical). Results indicate that although participants did not overtly discriminate against a woman in a lesbian relationship, they were less likely to perceive her as a victim, and their acceptance of a lesbian as a client was more dependent on their comfort with her than was the case for a woman in a heterosexual relationship. Type of abuse, as expected, had a main effect on many questions, with physical abuse taken more seriously than nonphysical abuse. Scores on the Attitudes Toward Lesbians subscale (Herek) were unrelated to responses. Implications for service providers are discussed.     

A simplified clustering method for novice narcotic chemists

Statistical classification remains the most useful statistical tool for forensic chemists to assess the relationships between samples. Many clustering techniques such as principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis have been employed to analyze chemical data for pattern recognition. Due to the feeble foundation of this statistics knowledge among novice drug chemists, a tetrahedron method was designed to simulate how advanced chemometrics operates. In this paper, the development of the graphical tetrahedron and computational matrices derived from the possible tetrahedrons are discussed. The tetrahedron method was applied to four selected parameters obtained from nine illicit heroin samples. Pattern analysis and mathematical computation of the differences in areas for assessing the dissimilarity between the nine tetrahedrons were found to be user-convenient and straightforward for novice cluster analysts.     

Gas chromatographic method validation for the analysis of major components in illicit heroin seized in Malaysia

Apart from routine analysis of total morphine content required by the criminal justice system, quantification of other major components in illicit heroin has not been considered by the Malaysian enforcement laboratory. In order to quantify various other cutting agents in addition to alkaloids, a gas chromatographic (GC) method was developed to facilitate simultaneous quantification of eight target analytes commonly found in illicit heroin seized in Malaysia within a 12 min run time. The validation results demonstrated high selectivity with the use of an HP Ultra 2 capillary column. Different solvents were studied and methanol:chloroform (1:9) proved best for sample dissolution. The method was repeatable and reproducible. The study ranges covering 50-150% of the preferred concentrations of the eight analytes obtained r(2)>0.9997. Limits of detection up to 6μg/mL were also obtained and the method achieved 99-102% recovery. The capability of the method in heroin profiling was verified using samples from ten case samples.     

Dental age assessment of southern Chinese using the United Kingdom Caucasian reference dataset

Dental age assessment is one the most accurate methods for estimating the age of an unknown person. Demirjian's dataset on a French-Canadian population has been widely tested for its applicability on various ethnic groups including southern Chinese. Following inaccurate results from these studies, investigators are now confronted with using alternate datasets for comparison. Testing the applicability of other reliable datasets which result in accurate findings might limit the need to develop population specific standards. Recently, a Reference Data Set (RDS) similar to the Demirjian was prepared in the United Kingdom (UK) and has been subsequently validated. The advantages of the UK Caucasian RDS includes versatility from including both the maxillary and mandibular dentitions, involvement of a wide age group of subjects for evaluation and the possibility of precise age estimation with the mathematical technique of meta-analysis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the applicability of the United Kingdom Caucasian RDS on southern Chinese subjects. Dental panoramic tomographs (DPT) of 266 subjects (133 males and 133 females) aged 2-21 years that were previously taken for clinical diagnostic purposes were selected and scored by a single calibrated examiner based on Demirjian's classification of tooth developmental stages (A-H). The ages corresponding to each stage of tooth developmental stage were obtained from the UK dataset. Intra-examiner reproducibility was tested and the Cohen kappa (0.88) showed that the level of agreement was 'almost perfect'. The estimated dental age was then compared with the chronological age using a paired t-test, with statistical significance set at p<0.01. The results showed that the UK dataset, underestimated the age of southern Chinese subjects by 0.24 years but the results were not statistically significant. In conclusion, the UK Caucasian RDS may not be suitable for estimating the age of southern Chinese subjects and there is a need for an ethnic specific reference dataset for southern Chinese.     

Governing the Economic Transition: How Taiwan Transformed its Industrial System to Attain Virtuous Cycle Development

This study explores the transitional processes of Taiwan's innovation system over the past half century, evolving from being rooted in traditional industries to attaining development in a virtuous cycle of development. Our approach is inspired by the Arena of Development theory and acknowledges the system of transformation failures, in which we highlighted the types of failures that might impede economic progress and how they were overcome in the evolutionary targeting of Taiwan's industrial development. Our findings demonstrate that the success of Taiwan's economic transition is targeted on, and evolves with, a series of macrolevel policies in the early phase of development; mesolevel institutional mechanisms to attain the industrial emergence settings; and, in pursuit of the virtuous cycle of development, the microlevel collaboration platform. We attribute the success of Taiwan's industrial system to this series of systematic government interventions. This study provides novel and salient normative principles that guide transformational policymakers in governing transitional processes of innovation system.