Acting small in a large state's world: Russia and the Baltic states

The interest in small states ebbs and flows as important international affairs include small states. Russia's actions and policies vis-à-vis Ukraine, and the resultant intensified apprehension among Russia's smaller neighbours, aim the proverbial microscope at the size and power discrepancies between states. Russia, by most metrics, is a large state and the Baltic states, by those same metrics, are small states. Small-state scholars expect large and small states to act differently. However, the case of Russia and the Baltic states indicates that large and small states do not, in fact, act all that different. This being the case, this article calls into question many of the assumptions made by small-state scholars about the difference between large- and small-state action and argues for changes within small-state studies as a subdiscipline of the larger international relations discipline.     

Legal Regime and Contractual Flexibility: A Comparison of Business's Organizational Choices in France and the United States during the Era of Industrialization

We compare the law governing business organizational forms inFrance and the United States during the nineteenth century andfind that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the contractingenvironment in the U.S. was neither freer nor more flexiblethan in France. U.S. businesses had a more limited menu of organizationalchoices and also much less ability to adapt the basic formsto meet their needs. Moreover, American law did not evolve anymore readily in response to economic change than French law.In both nations, major changes in the rules governing organizationalforms required the passage of new statutes.     

An epidemic of cocaine associated deaths in Utah

This article describes 15 cocaine associated deaths in Utah in a 3 1/2-month period in early 1984, compared to 6 cocaine associated deaths for all of 1983. Brief case histories of the 15 cases are presented along with data on age, sex, county of death, cause of death, association of the cocaine with the death, cocaine analytical methodology, and a summary of cocaine concentrations in blood and urine. In four of the cases, cocaine by injection was the cause of death, whereas the other cases had cocaine or metabolite detected incidentally. The epidemiology of a single, well-defined cocaine source is described and related to this transient, remarkable increase in cocaine associated deaths.