Media Discourse and the Quality of Democracy in Serbia after Milošević

Abstract

The article examines the quality of democracy in Serbia via the quantitative analysis of media discourse. It reveals robust competition, participation and accountability in the first decade after regime change, followed by major recent decline, thus showing that expert assessments from influential indices of democracy underrated democratic quality in the former period and overrated it later. Also revealed are the advantages of complementing expert assessments with those based on media discourse. The content analysis examined 1,921 coded items from print and electronic media coverage of major political conflicts at strategic points in the country’s democratisation.     

The stigmatized Italian visionary and the devout French physician: Palma Mattarelli d’Oria and docteur Imbert Gourbeyre*

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the case of an Italian local celebrity, Palma Mattarelli, born in 1825, and stigmatized at the significant age of 33. From that moment on, extraordinary phenomena multiplied around her: ecstasies, visions, ‘holy’ communion, apocalyptic prophecies. In the climate of renewed Catholic sensibility for extraordinary supernatural phenomena Palma’s fame soon extended abroad. The Docteur A. Imbert-Gourbeyre visited Palma in 1871, and dedicated the second volume of Les stigmatisées to her. Palma’s celebrity was undermined by the hostility of the local church authorities, and an inquisitorial examination of her which ended in 1872 with a negative judgement, ranging her cause in the frame of ‘afettata santità’. Imbert-Gourbeyre was advised not to republish his successful book on her. Yet, the extraordinary phenomena kept on recurring around her till her death in 1888.     

Homicidal hanging

We report a case of homicide by hanging of a 29-year-old woman that was committed by her husband, who nearly escaped from justice. We offer some reflections on the rarity of this method of mechanical asphyxia in cases of homicide, and on the difficulties in the diagnosis of the medico-legal etiology of these situations. We also offer a short review of similar cases in the medico-legal literature.     

Growth,control and tensions in an open socialist economy

Persistent contradictions among growth, efficiency and equilibrium in East European countries are analysed in our theoretical model. Internal and external tensions are distinguished. Both types of tension diminish the efficiency of investment and of foreign trade, moreover, they modify macrodistributional shares. Competing growth strategies are compared achieving constant internal and/or external tensions. A simple numberical macromodel is constructed to be used in computer simulations.     

Reforming war's administrative rubble in Lebanon

After 17 years of civil strife in Lebanon, an Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) was established in 1993 to plan for short‐term rehabilitation and long‐term institutional development within the public sector. Since external technical assistance to public administration was delivered through OMSAR, its role as a host agency for international aid donors' efforts in reform policy‐making and implementation is critical. The article discusses OMSAR's approach to channelling foreign aid for administrative development in post‐war Lebanon. Lessons from the Lebanese experience in post‐war institutional development may interest countries emerging from conflicts and trying to rebuild administrative infrastructure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.