Domestic elites and external actors in post-conflict democratisation: mapping interactions and their impact

Following the end of the Cold War, post-conflict democratisation has rarely occurred without a significant international involvement. This contribution argues that an explanation of the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation requires more than an examination of external actors, their mission mandates or their capabilities and deficiencies. In addition, there is a need to study domestic elites, their preferences and motivations, as well as their perceptions of and their reactions to external interference. Moreover, the patterns of external–internal interactions may explain the trajectory of state-building and democracy promotion efforts. These issues deserve more attention from both scholars and practitioners in the fields of peace- and state-building, democracy promotion, regime transition and elite research. Analyses of external actors and domestic elites in post-conflict democratisation should therefore address three principal issues: (1) the identification of relevant domestic elites in externally induced or monitored state-building and democratisation processes, (2) the dynamics of external–domestic interactions and (3) the impact of these interactions on the outcomes of post-conflict democratisation

Psychosoziale Risikofaktoren für chronischen Rückenschmerz in der Allgemeingesellschaft und im Leistungssport: Von der Modellbildung zum klinischen Screening – ein Review aus dem MiSpEx-Netzwerk

Background: Lumbar back pain and the high risk of chronic complaints is not only an important health concern in the general population but also in high performance athletes. In contrast to non-athletes, there is a\ua0lack of research into psychosocial risk factors in athletes. Moreover, the development of psychosocial screening questionnaires that would be qualified to detect athletes with a\ua0high risk of chronicity is in the early stages. The purpose of this review is to give an overview of research into psychosocial risk factors in both populations and to evaluate the performance of screening instruments in non-athletes. Methods: The databases MEDLINE, PubMed, and PsycINFO were searched from March to June 2016 using the keywords “psychosocial screening”, “low back pain”, “sciatica” and “prognosis”, “athletes”. We included prospective studies conducted in patients with low back pain with and without radiation to the legs, aged ≥18 years and a\ua0follow-up of at least 3\ua0months. Results: We identified 16\ua0eligible studies, all of them conducted in samples of non-athletes. Among the most frequently published screening questionnaires, the Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire (ÖMPSQ) demonstrated a\ua0sufficient early prediction of return to work and the STarT Back Screening Tool (SBT) revealed acceptable performance predicting pain-related impairment. The prediction of future pain was sufficient with the Risk Analysis of Back Pain Chronification (RISC-BP) and the Heidelberg Short Questionnaire (HKF). Conclusion: Psychosocial risk factors of chronic back pain, such as chronic stress, depressive mood, and maladaptive pain processing are becoming increasingly more recognized in competitive sports. Screening instruments that have been shown to be predictive in the general population are currently being tested for suitability in the German MiSpEx research consortium

Latin America’s new regional architecture : a cooperative or segmented regional governance complex?

In Latin America the repercussions of the proliferation and overlapping of regional organizations are discussed widely. This article examines the opposing views on this process. Some authors postulate that an exhaustion of integration in Latin America will end up in segmented regionalism and hemispheric disintegration. Others endorse a variable geometry of integration that facilitates intraregional cooperation and minimizes the risk of veto players and zero-sum politics. The article takes Latin America as a vantage point to analyse the topic of interacting and overlapping regional organizations from a more general perspective. It asks about the conditions under which the proliferation and overlapping of regional organizations might have positive or negative effects (on regional integration and cooperation). Additionally, it advocates broadening the analytical focus and replacing the analytical concepts of regional integration and cooperation with the analytical concept of regional governance. Regional governance more adequately captures and integrates different patterns of regional cooperation and different regional projects that result in overlapping regional organizations. Instead of looking at the proliferation of regional organizations from a perspective of fragmentation, this article contends that the focus should be redirected to analysing how different regional organizations interact. Regional interaction patterns can vary between synergistic, cooperative, conflictive, or segmented regional governance (complexes). In an initial application of this analytical scheme, the article summarizes the changing regional cooperation patterns in South America since 1990. In the conclusions it outlines some preliminary ideas for a future research agenda on regional governance (complexes)