Civil society has been regard as a prerequisite for democracy, and social networks and interpersonal trust are two important elements of civil society. By using data from the Asian Barometer Survey, this study investigates the effects of social networks and interpersonal trust on public support for democracy in three East Asian democracies – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The results of statis...

The mobile revolution is a watershed event across many fields, including health care. Now, electronic data storage, digital photography, smart phones and tablet devices present new opportunities for educators, researchers, and health care providers. Mobile technologies allow for new possibilities for physician collaboration as well as patient diagnosis, treatment and study. However, while it pr...

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large-scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, ...

Ever since individual locus standi before the Cartel Court was introduced in 1993, private enforcement of competition rules has played an important role in Austria. To a considerable extent, actions by private parties, or by public institutions such as the Chamber of Labour, have compensated for the lack of a public prosecutor in competition matters. However, in most cases these private enforce...

War and civil strife no longer affect only the combatants. Entire societies are victimized, civil institutions are destroyed, and the social fabric severely undermined. Dealing with the aftermath of such conflict demands strategies of social transformation aimed at rebuilding the shattered political, economic, and social relationship characteristic of prolonged conflict. Recently, processes suc...

Thirteen years ago the authoritarian regime in Brazil came to an end and the civilian transition government was installed. Three years later the Constitution of 1988 was promulgated with the most comprehensive and specific bill of rights in Brazilian political history. Today, despite the democratic guarantees in effect since then, the country is still ravaged by systemic violence in which the a...

In United States v. Loughner the Ninth Circuit will soon address the constitutionality of involuntarily medicating an incompetent pretrial defendant through a Harper order that could serve to render him competent to stand trial without the added procedural protection of a judicial hearing. Judicial support for applying Harper orders to pretrial defendants is likely to be used to justify Harper ...