Compulsory treatment with clozapine: a retrospective long-term cohort study

BACKGROUND: Clozapine is the gold standard in treatment of treatment-resistant psychotic patients. We know little about the effects of compulsory treatment in patients unwilling to accept the necessary treatment. AIMS: To assess the effectiveness, tolerability and safety of compulsory treatment with clozapine (CTC). METHOD: A cohort of 17 consecutive patients given compulsory treatment with clozapine were rated retrospectively by their treating psychiatrists on the basis of their case notes. RESULTS: CGI-S decreased significantly over time until last observation after a mean of more than 15 months. No patient deteriorated as measured by CGI-I. At last observation as many as ten of the 11 patients still on clozapine were classified as much to very much improved. The degree of custodial restriction at last observation showed improvement in 11 patients and no change in six. No serious adverse events were observed. CONCLUSION: A trial of compulsory treatment with clozapine showed this treatment to be feasible, effective, safe and well tolerated.     

Allies at War in Afghanistan: Anglo–American Friction over Aerial Poppy Eradication, 2004–2007

From 2004 to 2007, the Anglo–American alliance was at the heart of counter-narcotics policy-making in Afghanistan. Despite agreement on the broader direction of strategy, one issue generated significant diplomatic conflict: aerial eradication. The debate over its introduction was extremely controversial within both the Anglo–American alliance and the wider George W. Bush Administration, pitting the State Department and its Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs against the Pentagon and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Both the Pentagon and British bitterly opposed its introduction fearing it would alienate the rural community and ultimately damage the coalition’s hearts and minds campaign. This analysis provides unique coverage of the fraught policy-making process, paying particular attention to how the British opposed aerial eradication, which included conspiring with the Pentagon in an attempt to defeat the policy. This area of the debate is particularly under-researched, yet is significant as Britain was, after all, the G8 lead nation on counter-narcotics.     

Political deadlocks and distributional information: The value of the veil

Contractarian normative theory relies on the veil of ignorance construct to generate the political consensus required for its theories of justice. By eliminating distributional information, the veil is presumed to facilite consensus building by reducing conflict over the distributional effects of proposed constitutional rules or institutions. This paper explores the extent to which excessive distributional information might also impede the ordinary day-to-day decision making of democratic institutions. Our analysis suggests that distributive information makes political deadlocks under majority rule more likely. Statistical evidence suggests that the efficacy of the U.S. Congress has been reduced by the dramatic increase in distributional information made available to it over the past twenty five years.The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee and the participants of the Center for Study of Public Choice Luncheon Work Shop for helpful comments and suggestions. Helpful comments were also provided by Bruce Benson and Z.A. Spindler at the 1988 meeting of the Public Choice Society. We also wish to thank Jack Triplett for providing us with a pre-publication copy of the page proofs of his piece on computer price indices.     

Review

Timothy J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996, xvi + 939 pp., £28.50.

Reiner Weichhardt (ed.), Status of Economic Reforms in Cooperation Partner Countries in the mid‐1990s: Opportunities, Constraints, Security Implications. Brussels: NATO, 1996, 293 pp.

Pal Gáspár (ed.), Changes and Challenges: Economic Transformation in East‐Central Europe. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1995, 146 pp.

Ian Jeffries, A Guide to Economies in Transition. London: Routledge, 1996, ix + 816 pp.

Rumen Dobrinsky & Michael Landesmann (eds), Transforming Economies and European Integration. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, xvi + 331 pp. £59.95.

John P. Hardt & Richard F. Kaufman (eds), East‐Central European Economies in Transition. New York: M. E. Sharp, 1995, xv + 709 pp., $39.95.

Eckhard J. Dittrich, Gert Schmidt & Richard Whitley (eds), Industrial Transformation in Europe. Process and Contexts. London: Sage, 1995, x + 290 pp., £35.00.

Gary McMahon (ed.), Lessons in Economic Policy for Eastern Europe from Latin America. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, xxii + 256 pp., $40.00.

Sergei Sinel'nikov‐Murylev, Byudzhetnyi krizis v Rossii: 1985–1995 gody. Moscow: Evraziya, 1995, 316 pp.

Sue Bridger, Rebecca Kay & Kathryn Pinnick, No More Heroines? Russia, Women and the Market. London: Routledge, 1996, ix + 220 pp., £12.99.

Simon Clarke (ed.), Labour Relations in Transition: Wages, Employment and Industrial Conflict in Russia. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1996, x + 282 pp., £49.95.

Oksana Dmitrieva, Regional Development: The USSR and After. London: UCL Press, 1996, xi + 211 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Richard Pomfret, The Economies of Central Asia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, 205 pp., £27.50.

Mehrdad Haghayeghi, Islam and Politics in Central Asia. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995, xxiv + 264 pp., £30.00.

Revaz Gachechiladze, The New Georgia: Space, Society, Politics. London: UCL Press, 1995, xxi + 205 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Uri Ra'anan & Kate Martin (eds), Russia: A Return to Imperialism? Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, viii + 216 pp., £29.50.

Thomas Carothers, Assessing Democracy Assistance: The Case of Romania. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996, vi+ 144 pp., $12.95.

Peter Lentini (ed.), Elections and Political Order in Russia: The Implications of the 1993 Elections to the Federal Assembly. London: Oxford University Press/Central European University Press, 1995, xii + 292 pp., £30.00 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Stephen White, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xiii + 250 pp., £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.

Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin: The First In‐depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives. Translated by H. T. Willetts. New York, Doubleday, 1996, xii + 607 pp.

Robert F. Byrnes, V. O. Kliuchevskii, Historian of Russia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xxi + 301 pp., £31.50.     

Changing legal standards for proof of causation in hazardous waste tort cases. Plaintiffs' problems and congressional responses

Increasing public awareness and concern over the possible dangers of exposure to toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes has resulted in a variety of lawsuits brought by plaintiffs claiming injury resulting from chemical exposure. The legal system and its traditional approach to tort cases demands that a plaintiff demonstrate that a particular chemical substance was the "cause in fact" of his injury. However, a plaintiff's inability to present credible scientific evidence sufficient to pinpoint conclusively the specific cause of his injury or disease, particularly in cancer cases, leads to defeat in courts of law. This article discusses the existing barriers to plaintiffs' recovery in toxic tort cases and reviews congressional proposals designed to ease plaintiffs' evidentiary burden and increase their chances of prevailing.     

Microwards at postcode level

Much has been made of declining turnout in elections. This is due to a number of factors, and several remedies have been proposed. Voting behaviour seems to depend largely on socioeconomic factors. Partly due to the inordinate expense of household‐level statistics, however, little is known of the demographic breakdown of voting and non‐voting. An effective way of overcoming this would be to crudely estimate the demographics involved by allocating households to consistent voting groupings. Large geographic groups are unwieldy and probably not sufficiently accurate; however, postcode‐level definitions can allow similar but non‐adjacent households in the same general area to be treated as a unit for statistical purposes. This allows consistent trends in voting over the last four general elections in Scotland to be demonstrated. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Recent Data Trends Show Welfare Reform to Be a Mixed Success: Significant Policy Changes Should Accompany Reauthorization

The conventional wisdom is that the 1996 federal welfare reform law has been a stunning success. Welfare caseloads have declined significantly and employment among disadvantaged single mothers has increased more than anticipated. Also, more low‐income children were living with married couples in the late 1990s. However, welfare reform was enacted in the midst of exceptional economic, demographic, and other policy changes and it is impossible to disentangle the impact of federal welfare reform from these other factors. This article describes these factors and puts the income gains and losses among families with children between 1996 and 2000 into the historical context of the past twenty‐five years. This analysis provides substantial evidence that welfare reform may have “worked” for many low‐income families with children while failing other low‐income families. Furthermore, despite recent increases in poverty following the 2001 recession, welfare caseloads continued to decline, indicating a fundamental flaw in what has traditionally been a countercyclical program. Data also suggest that the significant increase over the 1990s in the share of low‐income children living with married couples has been reversed following the recent recession. These findings suggest that the 1996 welfare law needs to be considerably retooled.