How Does Institutional Change Coincide with Changes in the Quality of Life? An Exemplary Case Study

This paper provides a framework to assess correlations between the change of institutional functions (political centralization, plurality, rule of law, security of property, economic liberty, measured by 12 indicators) and improvements in human development (income, education, health) and violence limitations (conflict-related death tolls) to separate effective from ineffective institutional change. We apply this framework to a low-end institutional environment and provide a century case study of todays Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Major results are threefold: first, we provide a thick description of institutional development in the Congo in a colonial and post-colonial and hence long-run setting; secondly, we identify periods of institutional change with distinctly different degrees of effectiveness; and thirdly, we are able to provide qualitative information on the questions of perspective (we follow a non-elitist approach), institutional connections, and timing of effects. Finally we propose extension of the framework, especially with respect to in-depth studies of critical transition periods, and its application to comparative case studies

Selection of MDT strategies through epidemiometric modeling.

The epidemiometric model of leprosy, built on Polambakkam, India, data, is used to compare the impact on incidence of dapsone and different multidrug therapy (MDT) strategies. The simulations show that generalization of MDT could have a dramatic impact on transmission of the disease. Relapses after MDT, although important from an individual point of view, have a negligible influence on the incidence. Introduction of MDT requires investments that, during the first few years of the program, are much greater than for dapsone monotherapy. These are, however, rapidly absorbed due to the rapidly declining number of new cases, particularly when MDT is not limited to multibacillary cases but is administered to all patients

Rate and time distribution of relapses in multibacillary leprosy.

Of the 47,068 patients registered in the Polambakkam Leprosy Center between 1955 and 1982, we selected 1886 cases having shown bacteriological positivity at any time during this period, whatever their classifications at registration, and subsequently found bacteriologically negative. After an average follow-up period of 10 years, 243 relapses were observed, giving a crude relapse rate of 12.8 per person-years of observation and a cumulative probability of relapse of 18.9%. Relapse rates were found to be dependent on regularity during smear-positive and -negative periods; a regularity greater than 75% in the smear-positive period proved to be particularly important. The results show no evidence that relapses occurring after 3 years of negativity could be reinfections, and that the relapse rate was still affected by regularity 7 years after negativation. The median delay of relapses was found to be 4.4 years and was not affected by the regularity of treatment

Pathology seen in French "Hikikomori"

Young people who meet the definition of "Hikikomori" have come to be seen in France since around 2008. However, simply "fitting the definition" does not necessarily mean that they are the same as "Hikikomori" in Japan. Rather, it is important to ask what kind of young people "fit the definition of Hikikomori in France" and what kind of pathology they have. With these questions, our Japanese-French joint research team comprising specialists in various fields conducted a survey of "Hikikomori" in French youth, with support from a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B (overseas research), and started a comparative joint study on "Hikikomori" in Japan and "Hikikomori" in France. In that study it was found that whereas one aspect of "Hikikomori" in Japan is described by the word deraillement (coming off the "rails"), "Hikikomori" in France is a state closer to dropping out and is accompanied by a type of "sense of insufficiency". This "sense of insufficiency" is above all related to something in the society and culture of France, and an investigation of how it is linked to "Hikikomori" is an issue for the future

Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo, 1885-1908

The present article provides an up-to-date scholarly introduction to mass violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State, EIC). Its aims are twofold: to offer a point of access to the extensive literature and historical debates on the subject, and to make the case for exchanging the currently prevalent top-down narrative, with its excessive focus on King Leopold's character and motives, for one which considers the EIC's culture of violence as a multicausal, broadly based and deeply engrained social phenomenon. The argument is divided into five sections. Following a general outline of the EIC's violent system of administration, I discuss its social and demographic impact (and the controversy which surrounds it) to bring out the need for more regionally focused and context sensitive studies. The dispute surrounding demographics demonstrates that what is fundamentally at stake is the place the EIC's extreme violence should occupy in the history of European ‘modernity’. Since approaches which hinge on Leopoldian exceptionalism are particularly unhelpful in clarifying this issue, I pause to reflect on how such approaches came to dominate the distinct historiographical traditions which emerged in Belgium and abroad before moving on to a more detailed exploration of a selection of causes underlying the EIC's violent nature. While state actors remain in the limelight, I shift the focus from the state as a singular, normative agent, towards the existence of an extremely violent society in which various individuals and social groups within and outside of the state apparatus committed violent acts for multiple reasons. As this argument is pitched at a high level of abstraction, I conclude with a discussion of available source material with which it can be further refined and updated