Bringing Social Norms Back In

This article gives a rationalistic, individualistic explanation of social norms. Two different explanatory models for aggregate social phenomena are presented. It is argued that the emergence of such norms can be given a kind of socio-cultural evolutionary explanation, with boundedly rational actors, in social interaction situations having the characteristics of community. Their maintenance in larger settings, however, require that they are internalized into behavioral habits. These results, it is argued, are relevant for several fields of political science.     

Comparison of dental maturity in children of different ethnic origins: international maturity curves for clinicians

Dental maturity was studied with 9577 dental panoramic tomograms of healthy subjects from 8 countries, aged between 2 and 25 years of age. Demirjian's method based on 7 teeth was used for determining dental maturity scores, establishing gender-specific tables of maturity scores and development graphs. The aim of this study was to give dental maturity standards when the ethnic origin is unknown and to compare the efficiency and applicability of this method to forensic sciences and dental clinicians. The second aim was to compare the dental maturity of these different populations. We noted an high efficiency for International Demirjian's method at 99% CI (0.85% of misclassified and a mean accuracy between 2 to 18 years +/- 2.15 years), which makes it useful for forensic purposes. Nevertheless, this international method is less accurate than Demirjian's method developed for a specific country, because of the inter-ethnic variability obtained by the addition of 8 countries in the dental database. There are inter-ethnic differences classified in three major groups. Australians have the fastest dental maturation and Koreans have the slowest.     

Assessment of violence risk in youth for juvenile court: relevant factors for clinical judgment

BACKGROUND: Assessment of violence risk in youth for juvenile court needs to be improved. AIM: To determine which items of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) are recorded in pre-trial mental health evaluations and which of these items are associated with the clinical judgment of the risk of violent recidivism. METHOD: A total of one hundred forensic diagnostic juvenile court files were rated with regard to the presence or absence of the thirty SAVRY risk items: ten historical, six contextual and eight individual items, and six protective items. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to examine the relationship between SAVRY risk items and the clinical judgment of violence risk. RESULTS: Most SAVRY-items had been recorded in the files. However, five historical items and the contextual item 'rejection by peers' did not appear in 25-62% of the files. Especially SAVRY items like 'negative-attitudes' and 'psychopathic traits' were the most powerful predictors for clinical judgment of high violence risk. Unexpectedly, historical items played a minor role in clinical judgment. CONCLUSION: Prospective research is needed with the use of SAVRY-items to improve evidence based violence risk assessment in court ordered mental health evaluations of youngsters.     

Safeguarding Common-Pool Resources in Transition Economies: Experimental Evidence from Central Asia

Empirical evidence suggests that the propensity to cooperate in common pool resource dilemmas is higher for small, homogeneous groups with efficacious monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms. Given that transition from socialist to market economies is associated with larger, more heterogeneous groups with diluted opportunities for monitoring and sanctioning, individuals in later-stage transition economies may be expected to be less cooperative than their early-stage counterparts. However, evidence from experiments conducted with subjects in two economies at different stages of transition suggests that this may not be the case. These findings have implications for both theorists and practitioners alike.     

Do Nasty and Pleasant Surprises Regarding Tax Revenue Explain Spending Drifts? The Case of the Swiss Cantons

This article aims to explain the difference between the expenditure reported in governmental end-of-the-year budgets and the amounts previously forecasted in the approved beginning-of-the-year budgets. We measure how political, financial, and institutional variables affect this spending drift. We focus on two much-debated factors, namely, tax revenue budgeting errors and the stringency of fiscal rules. Our econometric approach uses a panel based on the 26 Swiss cantons covering the period of 1980 to 2011. Results suggest that stringent fiscal rules discourage budget overruns, whereas underestimating tax revenue—i.e., a budgetary “pleasant surprise”—offers the opportunity for some overspending.     

Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries

This article employs Peirce's triadic concept of the sign, and Deleuze's theory of the image-movement to propose a social semiotic account of the ways in which visual signs in British and US natural history anthropomorphicise 'nature'. Peirce's semiotic is employed to critique both realist and relativist accounts of anthropomorphism. Although there may be a causally indexical relation between photographic signs and object, the fact that all signs are constituted by a three-way relationship between sign, object, and interpretant means that natural history documentaries, like the scientific texts that purportedly inform them, are ineluctably anthropomorphic. Deleuze's account of the image-movement is employed to explain why, far from being a dispassionate capturing of 'any-instants-whatsoevers', natural history image-movements organise movement in ways that are mediated by the semiotics of the natural history genre. As such, image-movements also constitute a form of anthropomorphism.