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Preliminary examinations are an important part of the criminal procedure of the International Criminal Court, as they allow for the determination of the situations that will be investigated and prosecuted. They are conducted discreetly by the Office of the Prosecutor. The Prosecutor may initiate preliminary examinations on her own initiative or on the basis of a referral from a State party or the United Nations Security Council. Preliminary examinations deal with a situation and lead, after the test of jurisdiction, admissibility and the interests of Justice, on a decision of the Prosecutor on whether or not to open an investigation. Depending on the type of referral and the nature of its decision, the Prosecutor will be compelled or not to seek the pre-trial Chamber's authorization before proceeding with the investigation. The Pre-Trial Chamber exercises two types of control over the Prosecutor's decision: absolute control when the Prosecutor decides to proceed to the investigative stage on her own initiative or refuses to investigate because the interests of justice would not be served, and flexible control when the Prosecutor decides not to investigate after a referral. The Office of the Prosecutor is faced with difficult choices and criticism in the way it conducts preliminary examinations, particularly in relation to their duration, their publicization, their role, their control and their treatment.

AbstractAbout Positions in Religious Alliance Relationship : " Husband " of a Spirit, " Wife " of a GodThe author develops reflections about " marriage alliance " as used to metaphorically designate a widespread type of relationship between humans and supernatural entities. Her argument is rooted in her analysis of data from shamanistic societies living on hunting in thé Siberian forest. The main purpose of thé shamanistic function is to make thé spirits of wild animais into partners " allied " by marriage, so as to turn hunting into an exchange relationship with them. The human partner, represented by the shaman, stands in the " husband's " position in the alliance relation, the game-giving spirit partner, in that of the " wife ".The Siberian case is stated as a reference for a short comparative survey focused on the orientation of the alliance relationship in different religious Systems. In this perspective, it appears that the alliance relation between a " possessed " person and a deity is conceived of as a wife-to-husband relation, and so is the Alliance with God in Abrahamic religions : it is the human partner who is in the " wife's " position (at either individual or collective level), while the divine partner is in that of the " husband's ".Some typical features associated with these two polar positions are mentioned.Key words : Hamayon, alliance, marriage, husband, wife, shamanism, possession, metaphor, good luck, Siberia

AbstractAfter fifty years of catching up to the U. S. level of productivity, since 1995 Europe has been falling behind. The growth rate in output per hour over 1995-2003 in Europe was just half that in the United States, and this annual growth shortfall caused the level of European productivity to fall back from 94 percent of the U. S. level to 85 percent. Fully one-fifth of the European catch-up (from 44 to 94 percent) over the previous half-century has been lost over the period since 1995.Disaggregated studies of industrial sectors suggest that the main difference between Europe and the U. S. is in ICT-using industries like wholesale and retail trade and in securities trading. The contrast in retailing calls attention to regulatory barriers and land-use regulations in Europe that inhibit the development of the ‘big box' retailing formats that have created many of the productivity gains in the U. S. For many decades, the U. S. and Europe have gone in opposite directions in the public policies relevant for metropolitan growth. The U. S. has promoted highly dispersed low-density metropolitan areas through its policies of building intra-urban highways, starving public transit, providing tax subsidies to home ownership, and allowing local governments to maintain low density by maintaining minimum residential lot sizes. Europeans have chosen different policies that encourage high-density residential living and retail precincts in the central city while inhibiting the exploitation of ‘greenfield' suburban and exurban sites suitable for modern ‘big box' retail developments.The middle part of the paper draws on recent writing by Phelps: economic dynamism is promoted by policies that promote competition and flexible equity finance and is retarded by corporatist institutions designed to protect incumbent producers and inhibit new entry. European cultural attributes inhibit the development of ambition and independence by teenagers and young adults, in contrast to their encouragement in the U. S. While competition, corporatism, and culture may help to explain the differing transatlantic evolution of productivity growth, they reveal institutional flaws in both continents that are inbred and likely to persist. The final section of the paper identifies the roots of the favorable environment for innovation in the U.S. compared to Europe. Elements include an openly competitive system of private and public universities, government subsidies to universities through peer-reviewed research grants rather than unconditional subsidies for free undergraduate tuition, the world dominance of U.S. business schools and management consulting firms, strong U.S. patent protection, a flexible financial infrastructure making available venture capital finance to promising innovations, the benefits of a common language and free internal migration, and a welcoming environment for highly-skilled immigrants.

In South Korea, many struggles of non-regular workers, who attempted to organize their unions and engage in militant action to protest against employers' inhumane discrimination and illegal exclusion, have failed to achieve the desired outcomes, due to their vulnerable employment status and their lack of action resources. In this light, our study examines the conditions that lead to victory in precarious workers' struggles, by focusing on three attributes: internal solidarity with regular workers, external solidarity from labour and civil society groups outside the workplace, and mobilized protest repertoires. Specifically, this study seeks to identify the configurations of these three conditions that produce successful outcomes in precarious workers' struggles, in terms of bargaining gains and organizational sustainability. We do this by employing fs/QCA modelling to examine 30 major cases of non-regular worker struggles occurring over a 16-year period from 1998 to 2013.Our analysis presents the finding that the conditional configuration of strong external solidarity, strong internal solidarity, and fewer struggle repertoires constitutes a significant causal path to successful outcomes. This reaffirms the idea that strong solidarity bridging, whether with regular workers that have a different employment status in the segmented workplace, or with labour and civil society groups outside the workplace, is the crucial causal condition for precarious workers to achieve their desired outcomes from struggle. An unexpected finding, however, is that when precarious worker struggles mobilize fewer struggle repertoires, they are likely to achieve the successful outcomes of bargaining and organizational gains. Our study contributes to the theoretical elaboration of labour movement revitalization for the precariat class, by shedding light on the activism of precarious workers, considering that the English-language literature that pays attention to the active role of such atypical workers in staging protests against employers' inhumane treatments and the neoliberal labour regime is limited.

Keywords: precarious labour, non-regular workers, labour solidarity, protest repertoire, industrial relations, fuzzy-set/Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA), travail précaire, travailleurs atypiques, solidarité ouvrière, répertoire de contestation, relations industrielles, analyse comparative qualitative par ensemble flou, trabajo precario, trabajadores atípicos, solidaridad obrera, repertorio de protesta, relaciones industriales, análisis comparativo cualitativo de tipo “fuzzy set » (fs/QCA)