Development of a capillary zone electrophoresis method including a factorial design and simplex optimisation for analysis of amphetamine, amphetamine analogues, cocaine, and heroin

A capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) method was developed for the analysis of amphetamine and 13 amphetamine analogues. A full factorial design was used to screen for important design variables (i.e. carrier electrolyte concentration, pH, and separation temperature), and a modified simplex was employed in a final optimisation step. The resolution values of the target compounds were used as responses in the screening and optimisation phases. This approach made it possible to control the effects of the design variables on the separation of the target compounds. The best results were obtained using a 100mM Tris/phosphate buffer (pH 3.1) at a separation temperature of 10 degrees C, and the analysis time was 23 min under these conditions. After slight modification, the method also enabled baseline resolution of the most commonly encountered amphetamine derivatives, as well as cocaine and heroin, within 7 min. There was a linear relationship between peak area and concentration for all substances, with correlation coefficients in the range of 0.9975-0.9999. Moreover, the technique was repeatable and exhibited relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) values in the ranges of 0.01-0.11% and 0.54-1.60% for relative migration time and corrected peak area, respectively. Lastly, the method was successfully applied to analyse street samples.     

All Quiet on the Eastern Front? Media Images of the West and Russian Foreign Political Identity1

National and foreign political identities are discursively constructed, not least through the media. Starting from the contention that Europe serves as the main Other used to define the idea of Russia, this article uses media texts (online and press) to analyse how Russia is constructed as a foreign policy actor in relation to Europe and the ‘West’ more generally. In so doing, the article draws on three discourses around Russia’s foreign policy: ‘Russia as Europe’; ‘Russia as part of Greater Europe’; and ‘Russia as Alternative Europe’. The article suggests that discursive developments in the 2000s have paved the way for a return of Cold War discourses in characterising relations between Russia and the West.     

Transnational organized crime challenges for future research

This essay and review seeks to assess the state of empirical research on transnational organized crime, drawing on a review of the English language academic literature. It identifies major themes and research questions as well as methodological approaches, and summarizes key findings. It also addresses challenges to meaningful research, arguing that internationally coordinated research projects will be necessary in the future to arrive at the insights necessary to inform theory and policy.     

Sentencing guidelines and penal aims in Minnesota

H. Richard Uviller, Virtual Justice: The Flawed Prosecution of Crime in America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, xvii + 318 pp.     

European monetary policy and the ECB rotation model

This paper analyses the voting power of individual members of the ECB Governing Council and, in particular, that of the Executive Board in the light of recent information published by the ECB. Using the randomization scheme based on the multilinear extension of games, we modify the standard analysis in three ways. First, we include heterogeneous preferences of the Governing Council members. Second, we address the agenda-setting power of the ECB president. Third, we take into account the dynamic decision setting. We show that the rotation model is able to stabilize the position of the core countries of the euro area.     

Regulating government (’s share): the fifty-percent rule of the federal constitutional court in Germany

Some numbers in the political sphere seem to be chosen rather arbitrarily. One example might be the rule set out by the Second Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court in 1995 that the overall tax load on assets must be limited to 50% of the yield on those assets. This rule was understood by many as a general principle for taxation. The article first sketches the socio-political climate under which the rule originated: a rise of neo-liberal thought met with the inability of the political institutions to reform the German welfare state with its ever-growing expenses. The Constitutional Court’s intervention is interpreted as a reaction to this stagnation in politics. An analysis from the perspective of Constitutional Law, however, reveals that the 50% rule cannot be convincingly based on the German Basic Law, and instead must be seen as a political move of the Court. But this move did not follow an economic rationality, either; for an optimal government’s share can only be determined in relation to the economic performance of a country and not by fixing it generally at a maximum of 50% of GDP. The demise of the 50% rule already began four years later. In 2006, finally, the Senate moved away from the individual rights-based approach of 1995 to a more general assessment, taking also into account an increasingly globalized tax competition. The reason for this clear-cut change in the Court’s jurisprudence can be found in a change of the socio-political and institutional parameters, thus witnessing to the effect of the political climate on court decisions. The analysis also shows that the rule was created and abandoned only on the basis of an “introverted” legal discussion, economic arguments hardly playing any role in the process. The new line of the Senate, however, might guarantee for a better integration of economic science into tax policy by exchanging fixed limits for a “discursive” model, demanding from the tax legislator better reasons for higher taxes.     

History lessons for today's housing policy: the politics of low-income housing

History offers valuable lessons to housing policymakers. For those who would devise new low-income housing programs during today's trying economic circumstances, it is helpful to study the strategies that succeeded in achieving low-income housing programs in past difficult times. This article, History Lessons for Today's Housing Policy, examines the political processes that led to the adoption of new low-income housing policies during four political crises. The four crises were the Great Depression of the 1930s, the post-World War II housing shortage, the urban crisis of the 1960s, and the policy crisis of the 1970s. Among other history lessons, the article reveals that well-organized political support, especially from large institutions, is crucial to achieving distinctly different new programs; that decentralized programs are more politically resilient than centralized programs; that programs that appeal to the nation's broad middle-class are most popular; and that policy research is valuable but that politics trumps research.