The spatial determinants of the prevalence of anti-elite rhetoric across parties

Abstract

The article investigates whether there are specific spatial conditions that make a party more likely to pay closer attention to anti-elite rhetoric than to alternative issues in its political confrontation with other parties. The article first treats anti-elitism as a non-policy vote-winning strategy that could be valued positively by a broad class of voters across ideological lines (its ‘quasi-valence’ attribute). It is then shown that the incentive of a party to embrace such a strategy grows as the ideological space separating that party from the other(s) shrinks. This hypothesis receives empirical support from the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data.     

Resistant to Change? The European Commission and Expert Group Reform

This article examines how the European Commission has responded to external criticism and demands for the democratisation and reform of the way it uses expert groups in EU policy making. The article analyses the nature and character of the Commission’s dialogue with its critics and the degree and extent to which it was prepared to adapt its existing internal processes and procedures to the reform agenda. Recent theories inform us that organisations respond in different ways to external criticism and demands for reform, including full adaptation, evasion, institutional decoupling and reinterpretation. The main findings suggest that the Commission was not completely resistant to changing its approach to the use of expertise. The Commission reinterpreted its critics’ demands by introducing reforms that defused this external pressure, while protecting the effectiveness of its existing internal ideology and processes. These findings serve to enhance the Commission’s image as an increasingly normalised bureaucracy and reinforce the importance of knowledge and expertise as a key source of Commission legitimacy.     

An Approach to Speaker Identification

This presentation will provide standards upon which any attempts to meet the challenge of identifying speakers by voice should be based. It is organized into a model based on (i) application of a rigorous research program validating the system, (ii) an upgrading of the organization of the SI area, and (iii) exploitation of new technology. The second part of the presentation will describe an illustrative speech/voice approach to SI development. This effort is also based on an extensive corpus of research. It is suggested that application of the cited standards, plus the illustrative model, will permit reasonable progress to be made. Finally, a number of procedural recommendations are made; they should enhance the efficacy of the proposed approach.     

United we stand: Constituency homogeneity and comparative party polarization

We argue that party polarization is a function of parties' distances, their internal homogeneity, and their relative sizes. While existing measures in political science incorporate the first and last feature, party homogeneity is typically neglected. Since virtually all polarization measures in one way or another incorporate distance, we suggest a simple way to adjust distance measures for party homogeneity. We then examine levels and trends of polarization in nine OECD countries using a newly collected data-set which includes left–right party positions based on both expert and mass surveys.     

鉴定结论和勘验笔录作为证据种类的困境与未来

鉴定结论和勘验笔录作为独立证据在现行法律框架内存在种种困惑与悖论 ,文章认为在未来证据立法中应取消二者的证据资格 ,鉴定人、勘验人纳入证人范畴 ,鉴定、勘验为证据调查手段     

Validating TrueAllele® DNA mixture interpretation

Abstract: DNA mixtures with two or more contributors are a prevalent form of biological evidence. Mixture interpretation is complicated by the possibility of different genotype combinations that can explain the short tandem repeat (STR) data. Current human review simplifies this interpretation by applying thresholds to qualitatively treat STR data peaks as all‐or‐none events and assigning allele pairs equal likelihood. Computer review, however, can work instead with all the quantitative data to preserve more identification information. The present study examined the extent to which quantitative computer interpretation could elicit more identification information than human review from the same adjudicated two‐person mixture data. The base 10 logarithm of a DNA match statistic is a standard information measure that permits such a comparison. On eight mixtures having two unknown contributors, we found that quantitative computer interpretation gave an average information increase of 6.24 log units (min = 2.32, max = 10.49) over qualitative human review. On eight other mixtures with a known victim reference and one unknown contributor, quantitative interpretation averaged a 4.67 log factor increase (min = 1.00, max = 11.31) over qualitative review. This study provides a general treatment of DNA interpretation methods (including mixtures) that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative review. Validation methods are introduced that can assess the efficacy and reproducibility of any DNA interpretation method. An in‐depth case example highlights 10 reasons (at 10 different loci) why quantitative probability modeling preserves more identification information than qualitative threshold methods. The results validate TrueAllele^® DNA mixture interpretation and establish a significant information improvement over human review.     

《死刑案件证据规定》第23条的诠释与解读——以鉴定意见审查判断为视角

2010年7月1日《关于办理死刑案件审查判断证据若干问题的规定》已正式实施,该规定第23条明确规定了鉴定意见审查判断时应当着重考察的若干事项。鉴定意见作为现代诉讼活动中的“证据之王”,在案件事实认定中具有极为重要的地位,甚至在死刑案件中扮演着“一纸定生死”的角色。通过对《死刑案件证据规定））第23条的诠释与解读,进一步明确刑事案件,尤其是死刑案件中的鉴定意见证据能力及证明力,有助于切实保障案件裁判的司法公正、维护案件当事各方的合法权益。     

Probabilistic expert systems for handling artifacts in complex DNA mixtures

This paper presents a coherent probabilistic framework for taking account of allelic dropout, stutter bands and silent alleles when interpreting STR DNA profiles from a mixture sample using peak size information arising from a PCR analysis. This information can be exploited for evaluating the evidential strength for a hypothesis that DNA from a particular person is present in the mixture. It extends an earlier Bayesian network approach that ignored such artifacts. We illustrate the use of the extended network on a published casework example.     

Identification and separation of DNA mixtures using peak area information

We introduce a new methodology, based upon probabilistic expert systems, for analysing forensic identification problems involving DNA mixture traces using quantitative peak area information. Peak area is modelled with conditional Gaussian distributions. The expert system can be used for ascertaining whether individuals, whose profiles have been measured, have contributed to the mixture. It can also be used to predict DNA profiles of unknown contributors by separating the mixture into its individual components. The potential of our probabilistic methodology is illustrated on case data examples and compared with alternative approaches. The advantages are that identification and separation issues can be handled in a unified way within a single probabilistic model and the uncertainty associated with the analysis is quantified. Further work, required to bring the methodology to a point where it could be applied to the routine analysis of casework, is discussed.     

刑事诉讼专家辅助人制度的解读与完善

2012年新修正的《刑事诉讼法》中规定的专家辅助人制度,与两大法系国家的专家证人及技术顾问存在着明显差异,其基本功能在于协助控辩双方质证鉴定意见,因而在庭审中专家辅助人是当事人的助手,表现为诉讼地位的非中立性。为保障专家辅助人制度的贯彻实施,应当通过法律的进一步细化对专家辅助人的出庭申请、决定以及救济等相关程序加以明确和完善。