Federalism with a Russian face: regional inequality, administrative capacity and regional budgets in Russia

The paper reviews fiscal federalism in Russian practice. Central control over sub-national budgets has tended to increase. In the classic literature on fiscal federalism such centralisation is potentially damaging to both static efficiency and growth. The paper reviews the propositions in that literature and the assumptions made in it, and notes that weak administrative capacity at sub-regional level, weak electoral competition and extreme unevenness of economic development across regions may provide grounds for greater central control than is treated as desirable in the established literature. The patterns of budgetary transfers from national to regional level are analysed and conclusions drawn about the effectiveness of the evolving fiscal-federal system in Russia.     

Can evaluations influence programs? The case of compensatory education

Evaluators have often had trouble providing analyses that are of practical use to policymakers. A major reason for this is that evaluators characteristically pay little attention to variables that are politically relevant. The National Institute of Education's evaluation of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education act, used extensively by Congress in 1977–1978, provides a clear example of how attention to political concerns can pay off for evaluators in increased utilization of their products.     

Hoebel's crucible

The study of subgroup law through recorded and reconstructed cases presents several analytic problems for the relationship between case content and subgroup practices. The greater the relative structural strength of a social system the greater the mythical content of its communications related to “outside” worlds. Constructing structural models of legal systems in contact, and typifying the information content of cases in structural situations, can inform analysis of case content as mythical, politically normative, or representative of subgroup behavior outside of legal forums. Anthropologists and French structural historians can work together to examine structural indicators which signify analytic boundaries for case analysis.     

Erewhon: A manifesto of the rehabilitative ideal

Samuel Butler's novel, Erewhon (1872) is well known as a minor literary classic. This article proposes that it is also important in criminological history, in epitomizing a generation of debate about the nature of criminal responsibility. Butler wished to illustrate a paradox: contemporary social and medical sciences showed the role of determinism in causing crime, yet the courts still acted on the myth of free will, individual choice, and responsibility. Butler satirized this by depicting an imaginary world where sick people were stigmatized and punished for a condition they could not help—just as real criminals were blamed for factors beyond their control. The novel is a call for the replacement of deterrent or retributive punishment by rehabilitation and a medical model. It was especially important in the early twentieth century in helping to popularize the attack on free will and deterrence, and in propagandizing for the new discretionary penology.     

Death associated with nitrite ingestion: report of a case

The tissue concentrations of nitrite and nitrate found at autopsy of a case of intentional ingestion of nitrite salts have been reported. The percentage of methemoglobin and the serum nitrite concentrations are consistent with those reported for acute overdoses. We conclude that noth nitrite and nitrate salts may be identified in tissues from persons ingesting only nitrite salts and that a significant conversion to nitrate may result from oxidation of nitrite during the conversion of heme iron to Fe3+.