Vladimir Iowa Lenin,Part 1: A Bolshevik Studies American Agriculture

A busy year for Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1917 also marked the publication of his study of American agriculture. The report reads as more than a historical curiosity, offering insights, however era-bounded, on a variety of topics of substantive and epistemological interest today. Lenin writes of the history of American agriculture, its dynamic regionalism, and its sector-specific class conflicts. Along the way, despite his obvious structural tendencies, we meet an anti-foundational author who, while upbraiding bourgeois economists for their expedient technicism, often in scathing terms, also warns that sweeping conclusions about the sizes of farm and capitalization are problematic in the face of historically dependent and contradictory trends. Here, in the first of the paper’s two parts, we begin to place Lenin’s project in the broader stream of critical agrarian studies, including the classic contrast with agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov, but also the diseconomies of modern agriculture, the biological limits on industrializing food production, and Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign. Our aims here are more than academic. The exploration is framed by the roles the structure of agriculture and its impacts on its participants play in political change, from elections to revolution.     

Mutual and Self Perceptions of Opposing Advocacy Coalitions: Devil Shift and Angel Shift in a German Policy Subsystem

In political conflicts, actors tend to assume that opponents behave maliciously. This phenomena is part of the “devil shift,” which was introduced in advocacy coalition framework research. We present a multivariate analysis of the perceptions of motives and actions of opposing coalitions in a political conflict and thereby analyze a major dimension of the “devil shift” and of its antonym “angel shift.” The conflict concerning the German infrastructure project Stuttgart 21 serves as a case study. We show that the radicalness of policy‐specific beliefs is the most important predictor for the intensity of mutual misperception in the researched conflict. The results further point to a more systematic inclusion of an actor's deep normative core beliefs in future analyses of distorted perception. Another central finding relates to the importance of the personal environment: actors in the subsystem share the same policy core beliefs with the majority of people in their personal environment.     

Power Sector Reforms and Technical Performance: Good News from an Instrumental Variable Analysis

Over the past three decades, various power sector reforms have overhauled the governance of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in almost a hundred countries. Have these reforms produced benefits? Using instrumental variables, we improve upon earlier studies and demonstrate that power sector reforms enacted between 1982 and 2008 have both had large positive effects on the availability of generation capacity and reduced transmission and distribution losses. We also show that the positive effects on generation capacity are pronounced in developing countries and that hybrid reforms falling short of privatization and free competition are effective in improving generation capacity in particular. Overall, the results show that these reforms are an effective tool to remove an important constraint on economic growth.     

The Extent,Nature, and Consequences of School Victimization: A Review of Surveys and Recent Research

ABSTRACT

The authors present a comprehensive overview of the current literature on the extent, correlates, and consequences of school-based incidents of victimization in the United States. The primary sources of data on crime and victimization in schools, including periodic, nationally representative surveys, are reviewed. These data are used to describe the scope and types of victimization most frequently encountered by students while in school, as well as historic shifts in trends. The authors also summarize the main correlates of school victimization both at the individual and school levels; describe the health, psychological, behavioral, and peer-network consequences of school victimization; and discuss the factors that can mitigate its consequences for youths. The discussion concludes by outlining future directions for this important line of research.     

沉默权与中国刑事诉讼

中国现行法之所以没有确认被追诉者的沉默权,有政治、诉讼制度、社会现实和文化传统等多方面的原因;在中国建立沉默权制度。既要从价值判断上明确其必要性,又要充分考虑到可能面临的技术难题;但从社会的宏观背景来看,中国建立沉默权制度的艰巨性远远超过技术设计和价值判断的范围,必须特别注意相关制度的建设和程序规则的完善。     

对美国有组织犯罪情况的考察

由于美国是一个由移民组成的国家,有组织跨国犯罪问题较为突出。近几年,美国通过制定相关的法律,建立专门的调查机构,注重情报的搜集与分析,注重监控银行钱款动向,从而较为有效地控制了这一犯罪的发展。     

英国非法证据的处理规则与我国非法证据取舍的理性思考

在英国,证据本身的非法性对证据的可承认性不存在必然和直接的影响,法官所关注的是证据本身的证明价值和它对诉讼的正面意义,故对非法证据的处理实际倾向于适用或总体上适用为原则。而在这一总的原则之下,又通过设置非法证据应具有真实性和其适用不损害实质意义的程序正义的两个限制性条件,确保非法证据适用的安全性、英国这一非法证据的处理规则对我国具有重要的借鉴和参考价值：一方面其符合我国司法运作的低水平现状,具有较强的实用性和可操作性;另一方面也具有科学性和合理性。因此,我国应在坚持非法证据总体适用的原则下,确立排除非法证据的标准。     

Profiler Plus系统在法医学DNA检验中的问题探讨

以Profiler Plus系统生产厂商提供的检验条件,在实际工作中对大规模样品进行了检验分析.结果显示该系统尚存在等位基因丢失、额外等位基因、同一荧光标记不同基因座等位基因重叠公布、罕见等位基因与亚型等非技术操作性问题.对有关样品应用Power Plex1.2,Power Plex16系统进行了检验验证.     

结果加重犯的刑事责任的演变

本文通过对结果加重犯的刑事责任由结果责任向意思责任的转化,分析了对结果加重犯的加重结果不要求“预见”或“过失”是不合理的,只有行为人对加重结果有“预见”或“过失”才能成为结果加重犯,这样限制结果加重犯的成立范围。     

Being Positive About Positivism

Book reviewed in this article:
Matthew H. Kramer, In Defense of Legal Positivism: Law Without Trimmings