International Law and Its Others

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Explanation of nonspecific serologic reactions in decomposed bone tissue

Bone fragments were stored in water for 2 years at room temperature and investigated serologically using the following methods: Absorption-elution, extraction of blood group substances and immunohistochemistry (PAP). All 3 methods gave essentially specific results for fresh bone tissue but with putrid bone tissue unspecific reactions were found predominantly with the absorption-elution and PAP techniques. In contrast, more specific reactions were obtained from the extracts although they were much weaker. From this it can be concluded that pure physical binding plays a substantial role in the unspecific reaction between antibodies and bone material. It is suggested that the relevant physical properties are altered by putrification.     

State, administration and governance in Germany: competing traditions and dominant narratives

The article explores the evolution of competing views on state, administration and governance in Germany from an historical perspective, with an emphasis on the last five decades. To understand the governance discourse in Germany one has to start from different notions of the state. The first part therefore offers a brief, somewhat polemic, overview about different state traditions in Germany in the twentieth and twenty–first centuries. The second part looks at how discourses about the proper role, the appropriate structures and processes of the public sector and its interactions with its environment have changed during the history of the Federal Republic. The analytic focus is on the different narratives about administrative policies, understood as the various scenarios, assumptions and arguments on which competing policy–suggestions for the public sector have been based. The article argues that it is not sufficient to interpret the ups and downs of different discourses and Leitbilder as more or less erratic, post–modern fashions and fads. Instead, the line up of the central catch–phrases, from democratic via active and lean to the activating state, reflect learning processes, driven above all by the political competition creating a continuous demand for 'better', more appropriate narratives to guide and explain current policies.     

Incentives for pollution abatement: Regulation,regulatory threats,and non‐governmental pressures

In the last decade, voluntary efforts by firms to reduce their environmental impacts have received increasing attention from both policymakers and scholars. This article discusses polluters' incentives to reduce their releases. In particular, using data from Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory, it examines the impacts of conventional regulation, threats of regulation, and non‐governmental pressures facilitated by public dissemination of information about pollutant releases. The vast majority of reductions reported to the inventory to date were found not to be voluntary, as has often been assumed, but are, rather, the result of direct regulation of a relatively small number of polluters. Strong effects of federal regulation were found among other sources, as well, with much weaker responses to the mere threat of regulation. However, of concern are the growth of less visible waste streams—such as land disposal and underground injection—as well as transfers of wastes to other communities. Finally, evidence is reported that some waste streams are increasing in toxicity, an effect that may outweigh the benefits of reductions in releases. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Violence,agrarian radicalism and electoral politics: Reflections on the Indian people's front

I am concerned here with the political responses of peasants on the social and economic margin and of agricultural labourers. The argument is that there is in India a vital and dynamic peasant activism happening at many levels of social and economic interest including among the rural poor. I want to understand these phenomena in Indian terms and in local terms, in other words, what is happening in the fields and villages where most Indians live. This raises the fundamental issue of the language or idiom in which agrarian politics, that is the politics of dissent, is expressed and the equally important question of who is listening and what is or is not being done in response. I develop these ideas around the experience of the Indian People's Front in the last decade, specifically in Bihar, while focussing on the arena of electoral politics which the IPF entered seriously in 1989.     

Combined Collection and Analysis of Inorganic and Organic Gunshot Residues

Gunshot residue (GSR) analysis and their interpretation provide crucial information on a criminal investigation involving the use of firearms. To date, several approaches have been proposed for the implementation of a combined sampling and analysis of inorganic (IGSR) and organic GSR (OGSR). However, it is not clear at this stage if concurrent analyses of both types of residue might be detrimental to the analysis of IGSR currently applied in forensic laboratories. Thus, this work aims to compare and evaluate three different protocols for the combined collection and analysis of IGSR and OGSR. These methods, respectively, involve the use of a modified stub (with two halves, one for the detection of IGSR and the other for the analysis of OGSR); the sequential recovery of GSR with two stubs mounted with different adhesives (double-sided carbon tape and Tesa® TACK) and the sequential analysis of IGSR and OGSR from a single carbon stub following carbon deposition. The detection of IGSR was carried out using SEM-EDX, while OGSR analysis was performed using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). Obtained results for experiments performed using Geco Sinoxid^® ammunition indicated that sequential analysis was the most suitable protocol for the combined collection and analysis of both IGSR and OGSR. A higher number of inorganic (characteristic and consistent) particles and higher concentrations of ethylcentralite, N-nitrosodiphenylamine, diphenylamine, and nitroglycerin were recovered with this method.     

Involvement in Internet Aggression During Early Adolescence

The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal predictors of early adolescents’ involvement in Internet aggression. Cross-sectional results (N = 330; 57% female) showed that the likelihood of reporting Internet aggression was higher among youth who spent more time using Internet-based technologies to communicate with friends and who were themselves targets of Internet aggression. Offline relational aggression and beliefs supportive of relational and physical aggression also predicted concurrent involvement in Internet aggression. We used longitudinal data (N = 150; 51% female) to distinguish between youth who were aggressive in traditional contexts only (i.e., school) from those who were aggressive both online and offline. These results indicated that youth who were aggressive both online and offline were older at the initial assessment, were targets of Internet aggression, and held beliefs more supportive of relational aggression than youth who were aggressive offline only. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Praktische Fragen und theoretische Antworten: 50 Jahre Policy-Analyse und Verwaltungsforschung

The article provides an inventory of key issues and results in Policy Analysis and Public Administration research in Germany in the last fifty years. It outlines main trends (planning, implementation, networks, management, ideas and institutions), discusses relations to the international debate, to other areas of political science and theoretical developments, other disciplines, and to political and administrative practice, and it illustrates the central importance of this area for German political science.     

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.