Learning Democracy Together in School? : Student and Teacher Attitudes in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The principal aim of this study is to examine attitudes and values, through questionnaires, among students and teachers in the last grade of primary school (grade 8) regarding issues related to authoritarianism, democracy, human rights, children rights, conflict resolution and legislation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A second aim is to explore and analyze the role of the international community in the democratization and education processes in the light of globalization in this country through secondary sources of data, site visits and observations. Analysis of the student sample reveals suspicion towards democracy, especially when democracy was associated with politics and politicians. When the issue of democracy was de-contextualized from Bosnia and Herzegovina realities in the questionnaire, students showed more positive attitudes towards it. Students generally agreed with very strong authoritarian statements. High achieving students were more democratic, more socially responsible, more tolerant regarding attitudes towards religion, race and disabilities, and less authoritarian compared to low achievers. High achievers felt that they had influence over daily events, and were positive towards social and civil engagement. High achievers viewed politics negatively, but had high scores on the democracy scale. High achievers also agreed to a larger extent that it is acceptable to break the law. The more authoritarian students were somewhat more prone to respond that it is not acceptable to break the law. The major findings from the teacher sample show that teachers who agreed with non-peaceful mediation, and had a non-forgiving and rigid approach to interpersonal conflicts, also agreed with strong authoritarian statements and were less democratic. In general, teachers valued students who behave respectfully, have a good upbringing and are obedient. They were very concerned about the general status of education in society, which they felt was becoming marginalized. Teachers were not happy with the overloaded curricula and they showed an interest in more knowledge and skills to help children with traumatic war experiences. When asked about positive reforms, teachers were highly critical of, and dissatisfied with, the educational situation. Bosnia and Herzegovina is undergoing a transition from a state-planned economy and one party system to a market economy and a multi party system. During this transition, the country has become more involved in the globalization process than ever. Today the country is a semi-protectorate where international authorities intervene when necessary. The International community is attempting to introduce western democracy and some of the many complexities in this process are discussed in this study. Globalization processes imply contradictory demands and pressures on the education system. On one hand, economic liberalization has affected education policies —a closer alignment between education and economic competitiveness. On the other hand, there is a political and ideological globalization process underlying the importance of human rights, and the inclusiveness of education for all children. Students and teachers are caught between two opposing ideals — competition and cooperation.

Fighting corruption with pyramids: A Law and Economics approach to combating corruption in post-socialist countries

Corruption is, in the last two decades, considered as one of the biggest problems within the international community, which harms not only a particular state or society but the whole world. The discussion on corruption in law and economics approach is mainly run under the veil of Public choice theory and principal-agent model. Based on this approach the strong international initiatives taken by the UN, the OECD and the Council of Europe, provided various measures and tools in order to support and guide countries in their combat against corruption. These anti-corruption policies created a repression -prevention-transparency model for corruption combat. Applying this model, countries around the world adopted anti-corruption strategies as part of their legal rules. Nevertheless, the recent researches on the effects of this move show non impressive results. Critics argue that “one size does not fit all” because the institutional setting of countries around the world varies. Among the countries which experience problems of corruption, even though they follow the dominant anti-corruption trends, are transitional, post-socialist countries. To this group belong the countries which are emerging from centrally planned to an open market economy. The socialist past left traces on institutional setting, mentality of the individuals and their interrelation, particularly in the domain of public administration. If the idiosyncrasy of these countries is taken into account the suggestion in this thesis is that in public administration in post-socialist countries, instead of dominant anti-corruption scheme repression-prevention-transparency, corruption combat should be improved through the implementation of a new one, structure-conduct-performance. The implementation of this model is based on three regulatory pyramids: anti-corruption, disciplinary anti-corruption and criminal anti-corruption pyramid. This approach asks public administration itself to engage in corruption combat, leaving criminal justice system as the ultimate weapon, used only for the very harmful misdeeds.

Communication about standard treatment options and clinical trials: can we teach doctors new skills to improve patient outcomes?

BACKGROUND: The International Breast Cancer Study Group conducted a phase III trial in Australian/New Zealand (ANZ) and Swiss/German/Austrian (SGA) centres on training doctors in clear and ethical information delivery about treatment options and strategies to encourage shared decision making. METHODS: Medical, surgical, gynaecological and radiation oncologists, and their patients for whom adjuvant breast cancer therapy was indicated, were eligible. Doctors were randomised to participate in a workshop with standardised teaching material and role playing. Patients were recruited in the experimental and control groups before and after the workshop. RESULTS: In ANZ centres, 21 eligible doctors recruited a total of 304 assessable patients. In SGA centres, 41 doctors recruited 390 patients. The training was well accepted. There was no overall effect on patient decisional conflict (primary endpoint) 2 weeks after the consultation. Overall, patients were satisfied with their treatment decision, their consultation and their doctors' consultation skills. Considerable variation was observed in patient outcomes between SGA and ANZ centres; the effect sizes of the intervention were marginal (<0.2). CONCLUSIONS: Shared decision making remains a challenge. A sustained training effect may require more intensive training tailored to the local setting. Cross-cultural differences need attention in conducting trials on communication interventions.

The Law Applicable to Online Copyright Infringements int ALI and CLIP Proposals: A Rebalance of Interest Needed?

The article discusses the problems of applicable law to copyright infringements online. It firstly identifies the main problems related to the well established territoriality principle and the lex loci protectionis rules. Then; the discussion focuses on the "ubiquitous infringement" rule recently proposed by the American Law Institute (ALI) and the European Max Planck Group for Conflicts of Law and Intellectual Propoperty (CLIP). The author strongly welcomes a compromise between the territoriality and universality approaches suggested in respect of ubiquitous infringement cases. At the same time; the paper draws the attention that the interests of "good faith" online service providers (such as legal certainty and foreseeability) have been until now underestimated and invites to take these interests into account when merging the projects into a common international proposal.

Internet Intermediaries and the Law Applicable to Intellectual Property Infringements

The coordination between territoriality restricted intellectual property rights and the potential global reach of Internet activities has been the focus of significant attention in recent years. The liability of Internet intermediaries offering potentially global services that may facilitate infringements of intellectual property rights by others in multiple countries poses a particular challenge in that regard. At a substantive law level, significant differences remain between jurisdictions regarding secondary liability for intellectual property rights infringements and safe harbor provisions for Internet intermediaries. The present article discusses the conflict of laws aspects of the liability of Internet intermediaries in light of the recent international efforts to adopt soft law provisions on intellectual property and private international law.

Copyright Exhaustion Rationales and Used Software: A Law and Economics Approach to Oracle v. UsedSoft

This article aims to provide courts and policymakers with an analytical framework that, building upon the traditional rationales of IP exhaustion doctrine, identifies factors which advocate for a modulation or flexibilization of the role of exhaustion in copyright law. Factors include (i) the personal features of acquirers of copies of copyrighted works, distinguishing between consumers and commercial users; (ii) whether post-sale restrictions have been adequately communicated to acquirers and have been agreed in the contract or license; (iii) the degree of complexity of the acquired goods and their prospects of productive uses and interoperability; (iv) the role of other exclusive rights in providing rightholders with indirect control over uses of the copies in the aftermarket; (v) the impact of post-sale restraints in preventing opportunism in long-term contracts and in reducing deadweight losses created by IP pricing; and (vi) the temporal scope of post-sale restraints. After setting out this analytical framework, the ECJ Judgement in Oracle v. UsedSoft is discussed.

Not for Designers: On the Inadequacies of EU Design Law and How to Fix It

Design rights represent an interesting example of how the EU legislature has successfully regulated an otherwise heterogeneous field of law. Yet this type of protection is not for all. The tools created by EU intervention have been drafted paying much more attention to the industry sector rather than to designers themselves. In particular, modern, digitally based, individual or small-sized, 3D printing, open designers and their needs are largely neglected by such legislation. There is obviously nothing wrong in drafting legal tools around the needs of an industrial sector with an important role in the EU economy, on the contrary, this is a legitimate and good decision of industrial policy. However, good legislation should be fair, balanced, and (technologically) neutral in order to offer suitable solutions to all the players in the market, and all the citizens in the society, without discriminating the smallest or the newest: the cost would be to stifle innovation. The use of printing machinery to manufacture physical objects created digitally thanks to computer programs such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software has been in place for quite a few years, and it is actually the standard in many industrial fields, from aeronautics to home furniture. The change in recent years that has the potential to be a paradigm-shifting factor is a combination between the opularization of such technologies (price, size, usability, quality) and the diffusion of a culture based on access to and reuse of knowledge. We will call this blend Open Design. It is probably still too early, however, to say whether 3D printing will be used in the future to refer to a major event in human history, or instead will be relegated to a lonely Wikipedia entry similarly to ³Betamax² (copyright scholars are familiar with it for other reasons). It is not too early, however, to develop a legal analysis that will hopefully contribute to clarifying the major issues found in current EU design law structure, why many modern open designers will probably find better protection in copyright, and whether they can successfully rely on open licenses to achieve their goals. With regard to the latter point, we will use Creative Commons (CC) licenses to test our hypothesis due to their unique characteristic to be modular, i.e. to have different license elements (clauses) that licensors can choose in order to adapt the license to their own needs.”

Predictors of health care professionals' attitudes towards involvement in safety-relevant behaviours

BACKGROUND Patients can make valuable contributions towards promoting the safety of their health care. Health care professionals (HCPs) could play an important role in encouraging patient involvement in safety-relevant behaviours. However, to date factors that determine HCPs' attitudes towards patient participation in this area remain largely unexplored. OBJECTIVE To investigate predictors of HCPs' attitudes towards patient involvement in safety-relevant behaviours. DESIGN A 22-item cross-sectional fractional factorial survey that assessed HCPs' attitudes towards patient involvement in relation to two error scenarios relating to hand hygiene and medication safety. SETTING Four hospitals in London PARTICIPANTS   Two hundred sixteen HCPs (116 doctors; 100 nurses) aged between 21 and 60 years (mean: 32): 129 female. OUTCOME MEASURES Approval of patient's behaviour, HCP response to the patient, anticipated effects on the patient-HCP relationship, support for being asked as a HCP, affective rating response to the vignettes. RESULTS HCPs elicited more favourable attitudes towards patients intervening about a medication error than about hand sanitation. Across vignettes and error scenarios, the strongest predictors of attitudes were how the patient intervened and how the HCP responded to the patient's behaviour. With regard to HCP characteristics, doctors viewed patients intervening less favourably than nurses. CONCLUSIONS HCPs perceive patients intervening about a potential error less favourably if the patient's behaviour is confrontational in nature or if the HCP responds to the patient intervening in a discouraging manner. In particular, if a HCP responds negatively to the patient (irrespective of whether an error actually occurred), this is perceived as having negative effects on the HCP-patient relationship.