A Strategic Approach to Regulating Unacceptable Forms of Work

Upgrading low‐waged and insecure work is central to contemporary labour and development initiatives, from the UN Sustainable Development Goals to the United Kingdom ‘Taylor Review’. The International Labour Organization's notion of unacceptable forms of work (UFW) is a crucial contribution. Yet the regulatory frameworks that can effectively address UFW are unclear. This article builds on a novel framework ‐ the Multidimensional Model of UFW. Drawing on theoretical literatures at the frontline of regulation scholarship, it proposes a strategic approach to UFW regulation that supports development, acknowledges the constrained resources of low‐income countries, and targets expansive and sustainable effects. Two key concepts are identified: points of leverage and institutional dynamism. Globally‐prominent regulatory frameworks are assessed as a starting point for mapping the strategic approach: the Mathadi Act of Maharashtra, India; Uruguayan domestic work legislation; minimum wages in the global North and South; and United Kingdom regulation of ‘zero‐hours contracts’.     

The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicines and European Regulation of Pharmaceuticals

Abstract: The new European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products is the focus of the EC's new regulatory framework for approval of pharmaceuticals for human and veterinary use. This article considers past efforts at European pharmaceutical regulation, discusses the new 'centralised' and 'decentralised' procedures, and offers a functional analysis of the new system. It addresses European regulation of biotechnology, including Parliament's 1995 rejection of the proposed biotechnology directive using its codecision powers. It also reviews European case law and suggests that the Court of Justice's decision in Keck provides a useful way to analyse pharmaceuticals' place in the free movement of goods. While the new framework will likely improve approval of pharmaceuticals and over time lead to greater centralisation of the process, Member States will still retain some autonomy over the actual use of approved drugs, particularly through their continued control of conditions of reimbursement in national health systems.     

Gaps, inexperience, inconsistencies, and overlaps: crisis in the regulation of genetically modified plants and animals

The regulation of genetically modified products pursuant to statutes enacted decades prior to the advent of biotechnology has created a regulatory system that is passive rather than proactive about risks, has difficulty adapting to biotechnology advances, and is highly fractured and inefficient--transgenic plants and animals are governed by at least twelve different statutes and five different agencies or services. The deficiencies resulting from this piecemeal approach to regulation unnecessarily expose society and the environment to adverse risks of biotechnology and introduce numerous inefficiencies into the regulatory system. These risks and inefficiencies include gaps in regulation, duplicative and inconsistent regulation, unnecessary increases in the cost of and delay in the development and commercialization of new biotechnology products. These deficiencies also increase the risk of further unnecessary biotechnology scares, which may cause public overreaction against biotechnology products, preventing the maximization of social welfare. With science and society poised to soar from first-generation biotechnology (focused on crops modified for agricultural benefit), to next-generation developments (including transgenic fish, insects, and livestock, and pharmaceutical-producing and industrial compound-producing plants and animals), it is necessary to establish a comprehensive, efficient, and scientifically rigorous regulatory system. This Article details how to achieve such a result through fixing the deficiencies in, and risks created by, the current regulatory structure. Ignoring many details, the solutions can be summarized in two categories. First, statutory and regulatory gaps that are identified must be closed with new legislation and regulation. Second, regulation of genetically modified products must be shifted from a haphazard model based on statutes not intended to cover biotechnology to a system based upon agency expertise in handling particular types of risks.     

Issues in the regulation of cable TV

The purpose of this paper is first to examine some key concepts in the economic theory of regulation, then to apply these to the issue of a regulatory framework for cable TV in the United Kingdom. The proposals arising from the Hunt Committee and the Government White Paper on the subject are evaluated theoretically alongside two other suggestions—a completely free market and a potentially attractive alternative regulatory scheme involving “common carrier” status for cable providers.     

'Immunity', 'Privilege', and 'Right': British Trade Unions and the Language of Labour Law Reform

A continuing debate exists among labour lawyers in the United Kingdom as to the most appropriate legal framework for the regulation of collective industrial action. Many have argued that a change in legal form will not in itself afford greater protection to union activity. Through an analysis of the changing approach of the trade union movement to the issue of 'immunities' and 'rights' during the Thatcher period, this article seeks to demonstrate that adoption of the 'rights' discourse in fact offered considerable strategic advantages. In consequence, any analysis of this question should not overlook the significant political role played by language.     

The legal landscape for advanced therapies: material and institutional implementation of European Union rules in France and the United Kingdom

In 2007, the European Union adopted a lex specialis, Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007 on advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), a new legal category of medical product in regenerative medicine. The regulation applies to ATMPs prepared industrially or manufactured by a method involving an industrial process. It also provides a hospital exemption, which means that medicinal products not regulated by EU law do not benefit from a harmonized regime across the European Union but have to respect national laws. This article describes the recent EU laws, and contrasts two national regimes, asking how France and the United Kingdom regulate ATMPs which do and do not fall under the scope of Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007. What are the different legal categories and their enforceable regimes, and how does the evolution of these highly complex regimes interact with the material world of regenerative medicine and the regulatory bodies and socioeconomic actors participating in it?     

Online child exploitation: Challenges and future research directions

Given the relatively new phenomenon of online child exploitation – an important area of criminological and policy concern – it is difficult to obtain long term trend data on reported convictions. Existing legislative and prosecution-based approaches, while important, are unlikely to be adequate. This analysis of the legislative and prosecution-based responses in five Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and United Kingdom), highlights the need for clear national and international definitions as the lack of consistency in the international legislative environment creates opportunities for sexual exploitation of children. To provide a multi-faceted and non-prosecutorial approach to address online child exploitation including the commercial exploitation of children, this paper identifies five potential research questions.     

Enforcing the Minimum Wage

The introduction of the national minimum wage in the United Kingdom poses a new challenge for labour law because of its novel enforcement methods. This article examines carefully the possibilities for enforcing the new statutory minimum wage in the light of regulatory theory and the government's desire to make the wage 'self-enforcing'. It offers policy suggestions as to how the different enforcement strands can be best made to work together and highlights some of the dangers the government needs to be aware of in this area.     

Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Taking a feminist cultural criminological analysis to the regulation of sex work in the United Kingdom, this paper argues against the dominant deviancy and the increasingly abolitionist criminal justice model for regulating sex work. The paper begins by offering a critique of the dominant regulatory regimes which have operated since the Victorian era, amended in part in the 1950s with Wolfenden, and currently being reinscribed with the Home Office strategy on prostitution and various pieces of legislation. The focus is specifically upon research with female sex workers and the usefulness of using Participatory Action research methodologies (PAR) with sex workers, agencies, and policy makers in order to foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work, drawing upon the work of Nancy Fraser.     

Birds Behaving Badly: The Regulation of Seagulls and the Construction of Public Space

This article is about the socio‐legal construction of one of the least‐loved birds in the United Kingdom: the ‘seagull'. In particular, it is about how the gull has been brought within the realm of the ‘anti‐social', in a context in which urban‐nesting gulls (of which there are many in the United Kingdom) are cast as causing a great deal of public nuisance, ranging from noise, aggression, and mess, to attacks, injuries, and stress. The article examines the measures adopted by local authorities to regulate the gull population – and to regulate people, in the name of regulating gulls – and shows how a construction of the ‘seagull’ underpins and justifies this regulatory framework. It argues that the story of the regulation of seagulls in the United Kingdom is also a story about the construction of public space, to the point that the measures adopted here challenge the very idea of public space.     

Protecting the privacy and security of sensitive customer data in the cloud

The global ubiquity of cloud computing may expose consumers' sensitive personal data to significant privacy and security threats. A critical challenge for the cloud computing industry is to earn consumers' trust by ensuring adequate privacy and security for sensitive consumer data. Regulating consumer privacy and security also challenges government enforcement of data protection laws that were designed with national borders in mind. From an information privacy perspective, this article analyses how well the regulatory frameworks in place in Europe and the United States help protect the privacy and security of sensitive consumer data in the cloud. It makes suggestions for regulatory reform to protect sensitive information in cloud computing environments and to remove regulatory constraints that limit the growth of this vibrant new industry.     

On Explaining the Development of 'Emissions Trading' in U.S. Air Pollution Regulation

Over the past decade the legal-administrative framework of United States air pollution regulation has changed from one based almost entirely on "command control" mechanisms to one allowing considerable use of "transferrable pollution permits." This article traces the process of that change, suggests why it may be a very significant one, and proposes a social explanation for it. Perhaps its most important explanatory proposition is that market mechanism regulation may reflect the formation and rise of a new "regulatory culture" likely to affect the form and substance of regulation more generally.     

The Treaty of Amsterdam: Challenges of Flexibility and Legitimacy

The paper reviews key aspects of the new constitutional framework for the European Union, once the Treaty of Amsterdam has been ratified, in the light of the core challenges of managing flexible integration in an enlarged Union and securing adequate legitimacy for the integration project. Reviewing briefly the general debates on flexibility, and its relationship to different constitutional and political futures for the Union which are suggested by those involved in the debates, the paper examines the principal provisions governing what is termed 'closer cooperation' within the new Union treaties. The emphasis is placed on the framework provisions of the TEU, and those in the First Pillar. It is noticeable that the Treaty takes a 'non-ideological' approach to flexibility, eschewing direct support for those who interpret flexibility as meaning more or less integration in the future. It provides a framework for future cooperation which is likely to be too restrictive to be workable, except in very limited circumstances. However, particular instances of flexibility are provided in the Treaty, in the form of the opt-outs from the new free movement title and the communitarisation of Schengen for the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark, and some might even describe these as 'pick-and-choose'. The paper concludes by reviewing the flexibility debate against the background of the ongoing legitimacy challenge for the Union, arguing that, as currently conceived, flexibility is more to do with balancing political interests than with securing or enhancing legitimacy.     

Differences in Regulatory Frameworks Governing Genetic Laboratories in Four Countries

The purpose of this article is to determine how the heterogeneity of the different regulatory frameworks governing genetic laboratories in Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States hinder the international availability of genetic tests. We conclude that a better understanding of the various national standards governing genetic laboratories may help health professionals choose laboratories for referral in an evidence based manner in order to protect the patient's best interests.     

Globalization and regulatory change: The interplay of laws and technologies in E-commerce in Southeast Asia

Electronic commerce has brought about business and technological changes globally, and these global changes have given rise to major legal reforms across nations. In the fast-changing global digital economy, states need strategies to maintain competitiveness of their markets while simultaneously ensuring the secure and effective use of technologies involved in conducting electronic transactions. This paper examines how the use and recognition of electronic signatures are regulated in Southeast Asia – the region that has shown the most significant growth in global e-commerce in past few years. Based on a comparative analysis of the laws of four representative ASEAN member states – namely Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, this paper argues that there is a regional trend towards adopting more liberal and technology-neutral standards for electronic signatures. Electronic signature regulation in Southeast Asia is now built upon limited technological neutrality (or the so-called “two-tiered” approach) as a shared regulatory understanding, but this approach is operationalized differently in each state due to distinctive national contexts. Within the common legal framework, each state has developed its own system of control and management with respect to higher-level signatures (using advanced technologies). The principle of technological neutrality, a concept originally developed for the regulation of technologies in response to the liberalization of telecommunications market, has been the central theme of discussions on the e-transactions policy-making scene. As the author shows, in the process through which states localize the global standards of technological neutrality, ASEAN as a vehicle of regulatory change has played an essential role in translating this principle to the national context.     

Regulating Science and Technology: The Case of the UK Biotechnology Industry*

This paper considers the current performance and future prospects of the UK biotech industry, particularly the biomedical sector. The central argument is that the performance of the UK biotech industry cannot be understood in isolation from the European system of regulation and, increasingly, the international regulatory environment, and from what is happening elsewhere in the regulation of science – particularly in the U.S. To develop this argument, it adopts as its conceptual framework Kim and von Tunzelmann's network alignment approach following Radosevic. It explores the link between regulatory policies and the biotechnology production system – networks between academic research, biotech firms, and large pharmaceutical companies.     

Regulating‐for‐Welfare: A Comparative Study of “Regulatory Welfare Regimes” in the Israeli,British, and Swedish Electricity Sectors

The regulatory state and the welfare state are two institutions that are central to the analysis of the characteristics of capitalist democracies. The regulatory state is seen as focused on market failures and trust‐busting, while the welfare state is said to shield citizens from the negative redistributive effects and externalities of the market. This article explores the relations and boundaries between the welfare state and the regulatory state in the electricity sectors in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Israel. It demonstrates the emergence of social policy within the context of liberalized, privatized, and (de)regulated electricity sectors. This article finds that the boundaries between the regulatory state and the welfare state are blurred in Israel and the United Kingdom but not in Sweden. These findings may imply a connection between the welfare state and the regulatory state, suggesting that a strong welfare state is needed in order to maintain regulation‐for‐competition.     

Infectious disease surveillance in the United States and the United Kingdom: from public goods to the challenges of new technologies

Infectious diseases are a long-standing and continuing threat to health and welfare, with their containment dependent on national disease surveillance and response capacities. This article discusses infectious disease surveillance in the United States and the United Kingdom, examining historical national traditions for identifying and controlling infectious disease risks and how globalization and technical advances have influenced the evolution of their respective approaches. The two systems developed in different but parallel ways. In the United States, surveillance remained quite localized at the state level until the early twentieth century and still retains many of those features. The U.K. approach became centralized from the latter part of the nineteenth century and has principally remained so. In both cases, disease surveillance was traditionally conceived as a public good, where national or local authorities held sovereign rights and power to protect public health. With the increasing globalized nature of infectious disease, such notions shifted toward surveillance as a global public good, with countries responding in turn by creating new global health governance arrangements and regulations. However, the limitations of current surveillance systems and the strong hold of national interests place into question the provision of surveillance as a global public good. These issues are further highlighted with the introduction of new surveillance technologies, which offer opportunities for improved disease detection and identification but also create potential tensions between individual rights, corporate profit, equitable access to technology, and national and global public goods.     

美国金融监管的法律与政策困局之反思——兼及对我国金融监管之启示

对美国金融监管困局的反思表明,多年来"做大"金融市场份额即等同于提升市场竞争力的迷思,使美国陷入了监管失效的困境。同时,美国现行联邦和州多重监管的体制,导致监管成本高企、效率低下、监管重叠与监管真空并存、"监管竞次"和"监管套利"等重重积弊。此外,过于陈旧落后而不适应虚拟经济形态的的金融法规、以及金融监管部门屡被特殊利益集团俘获,更直接导致了监管灾难。鉴此,我国必须走出金融法"唯美(美国)主义"之陷阱,信守金融监管保护投资者之基础价值,彻底反思并重构不适应虚拟经济形态的金融法规,并运用"分期治理"之政治智慧推动金融监管框架之完善,将金融监管规则真正还原为市场和技术规则,而不是人际和政治之术。