Why join the party in a one-party system?: Popularity versus political exchange

The paper investigates empirically the determinants of political stability in one-party states, taking as an example socialist Yugoslavia. We assume that the number of the Party members is an indicator of the stability of the regime and perform a time series analysis for the six Yugoslav republics in the 1953–1988 period. We find that rents distributed to the population were far more important than the popularity of economic policies and perhaps even more important than repression. These findings provide strong empirical support for economic models of dictatorship based on the notion of political exchange.     

STR data for 11 autosomal STR markers from Costa Rica, Central America

Allele frequencies for 11 STR autosomal loci (F13A01, F13B, FESFPS, LPL, CSF1PO, TH01, TPOX, VWA, D16S539, D7S820 and D13S317) were obtained from a sample of 200 unrelated individuals from Costa Rica, Central America.     

Relations with North Africa: a new priority in Portuguese bilateral foreign policy?

Portugal has remained quite distant from coastal North African states for many centuries. Having recently emerged as a prominent player across North Africa, Portugal’s current relationship with the Maghreb countries is unprecedented in its history. Lisbon has invested in building the Maghreb axis as a ‘new priority’ in the architecture of Portugal’s bilateral foreign policy. This policy already took off, and is now beyond the rhetorical plan, where it stood for many years. Portugal and its partner countries across the Mediterranean have reiterated their willingness to keep up with the positive momentum, especially from the past 10 years, deepening bilateral political dialogue and bolstering trade relations. This article puts Portuguese relations with North Africa into context and offers an up-to-date analysis on recent (and ongoing) developments in Luso?Maghreb relations.     

Three Modes of Thinking and Policy Orientation of Cultural Security

Three types of relations are entangled nowadays in dealing with issues concerning national cultural security on both the theoretical and practical levels: (1) the relation between one’s own culture and that of other ethnic groups; (2) the relation between advanced and underdeveloped parts of culture; (3) the relation between one’s ethnic culture and so-called foreign advanced culture as related to the previous two. Accordingly, three modes of thinking are likely adopted in handling issues concerning national cultural security: to antagonize one’s own culture with that of other ethnic groups, that is, taking the “me or you” attitude; to dualize cultures as the “advanced” and the “underdeveloped”, that is, believing things to be good if not bad, or vice versa; and to assert that the ethnic are the advanced, that is, taking the “only-megood” stance. It is a very demanding job to maintain national culture and to pursue cultural development at the same time. Only when cultures are grouped into those without distinction between the advanced and the underdeveloped and those with such distinction can the relation between the ethnic and the advanced be properly handled. With the former, it is essential to maintain the ethnicity of one’s own culture before the cultural security is safeguarded. With the latter, however, the pursuit of advanced cultures and the advocacy of the advanced part of a particular culture is a key to ensuring and safeguarding the national cultural security. Hence, it is important to enhance the public awareness of cultural security, and more essentially for the government to offer scientifi cally appropriate orientation towards cultural security and to frame related policies.     

On Value Security and the Overall National Security System

The universality of human nature determines the universality of values and its particularity determines the diversity and plurality of values that is the fundamental determinant of security problems among different value systems. In a narrow sense, value security refers to a situation in which value concepts of a state, region, or a nation, social class are not under threat from the external adversaries, which is called conceptual value security. In a broad sense, value security refers to the consistency between the system of realistic value security and that of conceptual value security. National value security encompasses both value security in a nation-state and security of national values, in which the former is featured by the recognition and acceptance of a prevailing value in a nation-state, and the latter is characterized by the sovereignty of national values. Due to the fact that the issue of value system is a meta-theoretical one and the security of conceptual value system is part of cultural security, value security holds a core position in cultural security and is an important component of overall national security system. Additionally, value security embodies the security of value pursuits and value criteria in different spheres of the overall national security system and therefore, it is also an indispensable and flexible support to the overall national security.     

Automated region segmentation on cartridge case base

One of the significant problems encountered in criminology studies is the successful automated matching of fired cartridge cases, on the basis of the characteristic marks left on them by firearms. An intermediate step in the solution of this problem is the segmentation of certain regions that are defined on the cartridge case base. This paper describes a model-based method that performs segmentation of the cartridge case using surface height image of a center fire cartridge case base. The proposed method detects the location of the cartridge case base center and specific circular contours around it iteratively by projecting the problem to a one-dimensional feature space. In addition, the firing pin impression region is determined by utilizing an adaptive threshold that differentiates impression marks form primer region surface. Letters on the cartridge case base are also detected by using surface modeling and adaptive thresholding, in order to render the surface comparison operation robust against irrelevant surface features. Promising experimental results indicate the eligibility of the proposed method to be used for automated cartridge case base region segmentation process.     

Childhood Trauma,Type of Marriage and Self-Esteem as Correlates of Domestic Violence in Married Women in Turkey

The aim of this study is to determine childhood trauma, the type of marriage, and level of self-esteem as correlates of domestic violence in married women in Turkey. The study sample consisted of 750 women aged 20 and over, selected through face to face interviews. Results More than half the women were exposed to domestic violence, which increases with factors like lower economic status, teenage and arranged marriages and a large number of children. According to the logistic regression model, arranged marriages, sexual problems and physical abuse during childhood lead to an increase in the occurrence of domestic violence, while this decreases as the partners age. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale scores were significantly lower in women subjected to domestic violence and this decrease became statistically significant as the level of abuse experienced during childhood increased.     

Beyond silence and voice: gender,sexuality and antimilitarism in Turkey and Israel

Turkey and Israel project two distinct military regimes which construct gender and sexuality in specific ways as part of their respective security agendas. Despite the differences, however, both entitle women and LGBTQs to certain exemptions from the military service, and in doing so silence their antimilitarist activism. Women and LGBTQs counter this process through their acts of conscientious objection, through which they claim a voice in matters of militarism, security and war. While doing so, however, they reproduce a dichotomous conceptualisation of silence and voice, which falls short of explaining their agency as well as its outcomes. Drawing on a comparative analysis, I argue that a more nuanced understanding of agency necessitates deconstructing the dichotomy between silence and voice, each of which may have multiple meanings, connotations and consequences. Whereas silent acts of grey objection do not always point to a lack of agency and resistance, or domination, and may indeed create change; voice and visibility that follow their declared acts of objection may entail costs and loss of agency, in that not only does it come at the expense of the masculinisation/militarisation of their acts but may also result in the immediate deterioration of their rights to refuse.     

Die sozialen Konsequenzen der Restitution von Grundeigentum in Deutschland und Polen

Der Artikel vergleicht die Restitution von Immobilieneigentum in Polen und Deutschland. In Polen gibt es bisher keine gesetzliche Regelung, aber über Verwaltungsentscheidungen wird dennoch Privateigentum restituiert; in Deutschland ist der Restitutionsprozess weitgehend abgeschlossen. Die Analyse geht der Frage nach, ob die moralisch und funktional begründete Privatisierung ihre vorgegebenen Ziele erreicht hat. Die Privatisierung von Häusern und Grundstücken greift in einen sensiblen, mit persönlichen Emotionen verquickten Bereich der Sozialordnung ein, so dass die doppelte Zielsetzung der Restitution, sowohl historische Gerechtigkeit als auch kapitalistische Marktverhältnisse herzustellen, besonderen Schwierigkeiten begegnet. Die Analyse der sozialen und ökonomischen Konsequenzen der sehr unterschiedlich gestalteten Prozesse zeigt, dass in beiden Gesellschaften das anspruchsvolle Ziel einer Herstellung historischer Gerechtigkeit nicht ohne die Entstehung neuer sozialer Ungleichheiten und Ungerechtigkeiten umgesetzt werden konnte. An den Beispielen Prenzlauer Berg und Kleinmachnow in der Region Berlin werden große Unterschiede in der Akzeptanz der Rückgabe durch die Betroffenen deutlich.