论医疗纠纷诉讼中的证据协力义务

由于医疗活动的高度专业性,因而在医疗纠纷诉讼中存在证据偏在、医患武器不平等严重问题。证据协力义务是居于准确、公正、和谐、效率等的价值基础,其在医疗纠纷诉讼中的适用具有正当性。建议通过医疗机构的阐明病历义务,对证人、鉴定人违反证据协力义务的制裁,证人拒绝提供证言权等规范来弥补医疗纠纷诉讼中证据协力义务的结构性缺失,以增加医疗纠纷诉讼中证据协力义务规范的可预测性。     

Are there Emerging West African Criminal Networks? The Case of Ghana

This paper situates discussions about emerging African Criminal Networks (ACN) within Ghana specifically, and West Africa generally, and seeks to present the initial results of an empirically based study on the activities of transnational organised criminal (TOCs) groups in Ghana. The paper argues that the nature of state and statehood in Africa and its inability to establish effective regulatory mechanisms contributes to the rise of these particular types of criminal groups. It begins by conceptualising the place of Ghanaian and West African criminal groups within the framework of international crime. Furthermore, it undertakes an in-depth analysis of three types of crimes; namely computer and internet crime, drug trafficking and (artisanal) small arms manufacture and smuggling in Ghana. By applying a set of standard variables and criteria, the paper evaluates the growth of TNCs in these three issue-areas and how such activities potentially undermine public institutions like the Ghana Police Service (GPS), customs, excise and preventive services (CEPS), judiciary, banking and political parties and political institutions in Ghana. Finally, it seeks to offer an explanatory framework for the growth and acceptance by local communities of the activities of organised crime in Ghana by situating this within a cultural ethos and the social welfare roles played by those involved in such crimes.     

Assessing the reset: successes and failures in the Obama administration's Russia policy, 2009–2012

Critics of the Obama administration's ‘reset’ with Russia claim that it has failed to improve bilateral relations and has conceded too much to Russia at the expense of American interests. In fact, the reset has delivered significant improvements in key areas and established the institutional basis for continued cooperation in the future, benefiting both states. Although disagreements remain on several important issues including missile defence, humanitarian intervention, and democracy, the reset has been broadly successful on its own terms, which were always limited in scope and based on a pragmatic recognition of the limits of possible cooperation. Future progress is uncertain, however – obstacles include differences of national interest; the complicating effects of relations with third party states and the impact of domestic politics. A continuation of the pragmatic approach underpinning the reset represents the best chance for stability in the US–Russia relationship.     

Negotiating from strength: Arms control and the rhetoric of denial

This essay examines the argument strategy of the Reagan administration and its supporters in response to the INF treaty. By attempting to define the successful completion of the treaty as proof of the validity of “negotiating from strength,” the administration sought to deny the existence of real change within the Soviet Union. This strategy left the administration unable to cope with dramatic arms control proposals later made by the Soviets, trapping the United States in a purely reactive posture.     

Exports and terms of trade in Argentina, 1811–1870

Abstract — This research note analyses the evolution of the Argentine external sector between 1811 and 1870. New series of exports and terms of trade are presented. These show the vulnerability of the economy to external and internal shocks, but also the continuous growth of total exports and per capita exports along the period.     

Fear,greed, or garage sale? The analysis of military expenditure in East Asia

This paper examines the determinants of military expenditures in eight East Asian countries from 1983 to 1993. In a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis, it finds that the security threats (either external or internal) have not been a factor in determining the governments' defence burdens. Instead, economic and bureaucratic budgetary factors are better predictors of their defence decision-making. Military corruption and subsidized defence industries are the main domestic elements driving up the budgets; but this bureaucratic 'irrationality' is checked and balanced by economic rationality, for the defence burdens generally correlate with the availability of economic resources.     

俄越防务合作的现状、动向与影响

近年来俄越防务合作发展迅速,规模和层次都达到了较高水平,在海军和空军领域尤其明显。俄越防务合作是俄罗斯重塑大国地位,实现国家复兴过程中,扩大政治影响,拓展安全空间,获取经济实利的重要战略手段,也是越南实施大国平衡外交,不断扩充国防力量,尤其为开发海洋经济提供安全保障的重要措施。尽管不断加强和深化防务合作关系是俄越两国的基本共识,但也面临着俄罗斯武器价格波动较大、越南的防务合作伙伴日趋多元化等现实问题。俄越防务合作关系的迅速发展和不断深化,将不可避免地影响到地区安全局势,加大东南亚乃至东亚地区军备竞赛的风险,不利于东盟集体安全机制的建立,对于和平解决南海问题也有消极作用,对中俄关系是一种潜在的不稳定因素。     

Identification of gunshot residues in fabric targets using sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry technique and ternary graphs

During criminal investigations involving firearms, the detection of gunshot residues (GSRs) is one of the most important evidences. In the present study, a new method to identify trace evidences of GSRs, deposited around the bullet entrance hole, in different types of fabrics used as targets, is described. The experiments were carried out using a 0.38-inch caliber revolver, and 9-mm and 0.40-inch caliber pistols. Testimonies of 2.25 cm(2) of the fabrics were cut around the bullet entrance and digested with 10% nitric acid. Antimony, barium, and lead were analyzed in the remaining solution using a sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. The concentrations of the elements were detected at levels up to few microgram per square centimeter. The use of ternary graphics allowed us to identify specific patterns of distribution for blank samples and the clear distinction between the revolver and pistols used.     

Prevail or perish: Anglo-German naval competition at the beginning of the twentieth century

Abstract

British politicians often argued that Britain maintained its navy only in order to secure its own survival by keeping sea communications open, while Germany in no real need of a powerful navy, threatened this legitimate British policy-goal by pursuing expansionist politics. German leaders, emboldened and a little dazzled by the tremendous industrial and economic success of the newly unified Reich, held that Britain was maintaining its economic dominance in the Empire by military means and thus blocking the progress Germany hoped to make in its aspiration to parity status and economic prosperity, with all that that entailed. This paper will explore the underlying rationale of the arms race between Britain and Germany shining through in those different positions on legitimate (military) policy aims. It will go beyond the visible symbols, as it were, of the Dreadnought and the Two-Power standard. These very concrete matters will also be dealt with here but, more importantly, this essay is meant to give some answer as to whether an archetypal differentiation between survival on the one hand and domination on the other can be made out as the predominant logic that led the two countries to embark on the road to the Great War.     

From ‘voluntary’ to a ‘binding’ process: towards the securitisation of small arms

This article analyses the issue of small arms and light weapons (SALW) proliferation in both Ghana and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Specifically, it assesses the extent to which both Ghana and ECOWAS have ‘securitised’ this particular issue through an initial ‘voluntary’ instrument first in 1998 and extended in 2001 until the signing in June 2006 of a legally and politically binding ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons, their Ammunition and Other Related Materials. To do so, the article begins by setting out the scope and a brief history of the SALW problem in West Africa. It then focuses specifically on Ghana in order to illustrate some the challenges and dilemmas in dealing with this threat. The following section deals with ECOWAS and the challenges of SALW. It analyses and traces the discourses and processes of transforming the availability of SALW into a ‘security problem’ by providing some of the official language used to discuss this issue. Subsequently, an examination is undertaken of Ghana and the challenge of SALW as an illustrative case, especially given the extent of indigenous manufacture. Such recognition of the dangers of SALW proliferation has resulted in a raft of legislation criminalising both the manufacture and possession of small arms but with minimal impact. The article explains the resilience of SALW manufacture and trafficking through a social capital approach. In the concluding section, it explores the differing perceptions of SALW and security and points to the apparent schism between state and community perceptions of the level of threat posed by SALW.