Alexandra Kollontai and three Swedish female physicians – friendly relationships around the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm 1930–1945

Alexandra Kollontai was the Soviet ambassador to Sweden in the years 1930 to 1945. In Sweden she gained many friends in the peace- and women’s movement and among these were several female physicians. This article describes and investigates the friendships between Swedish female physicians and Alexandra Kollontai. The three physicians focused on are Ada Nilsson (1872–1964), Andrea Andreen (1888–1972) and Nanna Svartz (1890–1986). It is found that Kollontai and the physicians became proper friends, although initial contacts between them had political or medical causes

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Legitimacy in the Multilevel European Polity

In order to be simultaneously effective and liberal, governments must normally be able to count on voluntary compliance – which, in turn, depends on the support of socially shared legitimacy beliefs. In Western constitutional democracies, such beliefs are derived from the distinct but coexistent traditions of “republican” and “liberal” political philosophy. When judged by these criteria, the European Union – if considered by itself – appears as a thoroughly liberal polity which, however, lacks all republican credentials. But this view (which seems to structure the debates about the “European democratic deficit”) ignores the multilevel nature of the European polity, where the compliance of citizens is requested, and needs to be legitimated by member states – whereas the Union appears as a “government of governments” which is entirely dependent on the voluntary compliance of its member states. What matters primarily, therefore, is the compliance-legitimacy relationship between the Union and its member states – which, however, is normatively constrained by the basic compliance-legitimacy relationship between member governments and their constituents. Given the high consensus requirements of European legislation, member governments could and should be able to assume political responsibility for European policies in which they had a voice, and to justify them in “communicative discourses” in the national public space. This is not necessarily true of “non-political” policy choices imposed by the European Court of Justice. By enforcing its “liberal” program of liberalization and deregulation, the ECJ may presently be undermining the “republican” bases of member-state legitimacy. Where this is the case, open non-compliance is a present danger, and political controls of judicial legislation may be called for.Um gleichzeitig effektiv und liberal sein zu können, ist staatliche Herrschaft auf freiwillige Folgebereitschaft angewiesen – die ihrerseits der Unterstützung durch sozial geteilte Legitimitätsüberzeugungen bedarf. In den demokratischen Verfassungsstaaten des Westens werden solche Überzeugungen aus den unterschiedlichen, aber komplementär zusammenwirkenden Traditionen der „republikanischen“ und der „liberalen“ politischen Philosophie hergeleitet. An diesen Kriterien gemessen erscheint die Europäische Union – wenn man sie für sich betrachtet – als eine „liberale“ politische Ordnung, der jedoch alle „republikanischen“ Legitimitätsmerkmale fehlen. Aber eine solche Sichtweise, die auch die derzeitige Diskussion über ein „europäisches Demokratiedefizit“ bestimmt, verkennt den Mehrebenencharakter des europäischen Gemeinwesens. In ihm sind es die Mitgliedstaaten, die Entscheidungen der Union gegenüber den eigenen Bürgern durchsetzen und auch legitimieren müssen, während es für die Union ihrerseits auf die freiwillige Folgebereitschaft ihrer Mitgliedstaaten ankommt. Dabei werden diese jedoch durch die normativen Grundlagen ihrer eigenen Legitimität begrenzt. Politische Entscheidungen auf europäischer Ebene setzen breiten Konsens voraus, und die Regierungen sollten sie deshalb auch gegenüber den eigenen Bürgern in „kommunikativen Diskursen“ vertreten und dafür die politische Verantwortung übernehmen können. Dies gilt jedoch nicht notwendigerweise auch für Entscheidungen der europäischen Politik, die im nichtpolitischen Modus ohne Beteiligung des Rates und des Parlaments vom Europäischen Gerichtshof bestimmt werden. Mit der gegenwärtigen Radikalisierung seines „liberalen“ Programms der Liberalisierung und Deregulierung des nationalen Rechts könnte der Gerichtshof in der Tat die „republikanischen“ Grundlagen der mitgliedstaatlichen Legitimität unterminieren. In diesem Falle könnte die Union sich nicht länger auf die Folgebereitschaft ihrer Mitgliedstaaten verlassen. Um diese Gefahr für die europäische Integration zu vermeiden, sollte eine stärkere politische Kontrolle der richterlichen Rechtsetzung erwogen werden.1 Legitimacy Republican and liberal legitimating discourses Constitutional democracies – and the EU? 2 Legitimacy in multilevel polities 3 Legitimating member state compliance Political modes of policy making Non-political policy making 4 The need for justification 5 The Court is pushing against the limits of justifiability 6 The liberal undermining of republican legitimacy 7 Needed: A political balance of community and autonomy Reference

Inpatient Addiction Medicine Consultation and Post-Hospital Substance Use Disorder Treatment Engagement: a Propensity-Matched Analysis

Background Hospitalizations due to medical and surgical complications of substance use disorder (SUD) are rising. Most hospitals lack systems to treat SUD, and most people with SUD do not engage in treatment after discharge. Objective Determine the effect of a hospital-based addiction medicine consult service, the Improving Addiction Care Team (IMPACT), on post-hospital SUD treatment engagement. Design Cohort study using multivariable analysis of Oregon Medicaid claims comparing IMPACT patients with propensity-matched controls. Participants 18–64-year-old Oregon Medicaid beneficiaries with SUD, hospitalized at an Oregon hospital between July 1, 2015, and September 30, 2016. IMPACT patients (n = 208) were matched to controls (n = 416) using a propensity score that accounted for SUD, gender, age, race, residence region, and diagnoses. Interventions IMPACT included hospital-based consultation care from an interdisciplinary team of addiction medicine physicians, social workers, and peers with lived experience in recovery. IMPACT met patients during hospitalization; offered pharmacotherapy, behavioral treatments, and harm reduction services; and supported linkages to SUD treatment after discharge. Outcomes Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measure of SUD treatment engagement, defined as two or more claims on two separate days for SUD care within 34 days of discharge. Results Only 17.2% of all patients were engaged in SUD treatment before hospitalization. IMPACT patients engaged in SUD treatment following discharge more frequently than controls (38.9% vs. 23.3%, p \u3c 0.01; aOR 2.15, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.29–3.58). IMPACT participation remained associated with SUD treatment engagement when limiting the sample to people who were not engaged in treatment prior to hospitalization (aOR 2.63; 95% CI 1.46–4.72). Conclusions Hospital-based addiction medicine consultation can improve SUD treatment engagement, which is associated with reduced substance use, mortality, and other important clinical outcomes. National expansion of such models represents an opportunity to address an enduring gap in the SUD treatment continuum

Beyond theatre regionalism: when does formal economic integration work in Africa?

For the most part, formal economic integration between African states can be characterised as ‘theatre regionalism’: governments sign regional economic agreements with no intention to implement them. Yet amidst widespread theatre there have been a few instances of actual integration. This thesis sets out to explain this variance: under what conditions do African governments implement – and not just sign – formal agreements on regional economic integration? To answer this question the dominant Eurocentric literature on comparative regionalism is amended with insights from the third worldist literature on African states to develop a new approach for comparative analysis, the ‘Regionalism as Policy Space’ (RPS) framework. This framework models African regionalism as a two-stage game. At the first stage, governments’ interests in regionalism are determined by perceptions of the existence of structural cross-issue linkages connecting implementation of regional agreements with the widening of government policy space. Given such linkages, at the second stage, governments of a region engage in a coordination game to establish the distribution of benefits from integration. Variance in the implementation of regional agreements, then, is explained by variance in the existence of perceived cross-issue linkages (the Benefits Existence Condition) and the ability of participating governments to ease distributional tensions (the Benefits Distribution Condition). Four African customs union case studies - the East African customs union of the 1960s and 70s, the customs union of the East African Community in the 2000s, the customs union of the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern African Customs Union – lend strong empirical support to the RPS framework. The thesis ends with a discussion of the role of hegemons and proposes a series of policy measures aiming to reduce the likelihood of theatre regionalism in Africa.This thesis is not currently available in ORA

Discordant blood flow velocity waveforms in left and right brachial arteries in growth-retarded fetuses

Objective: To determine if the increase in cerebral blood flow (''brain-sparing'' effect) with fetal hypoxemia is associated with discordant hemodynamics in the upper extremities