Operational oceanography in Indonesia

In 2005 Indonesian and European institutes joined to start the first step for the implementation of an Ocean Operational System in the Indonesian archipelago. The system will support the decision making process for the sustainable use of marine resources, providing useful information and added value products as well as a service for an improved management of the sea with high business impact to targeted groups as public authorities and commercial operators (coastal managers, fishermen, shipping companies). In this paper the System is shortly described with its potential benefits and economic and social impacts.

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Family (Law) Assemblages: New Modes of Being (Legal)

This article advances a new model for family law to address emerging non‐conventional family formations, particularly between parents and children. We contend that the conventional model of kinship categories as static, predefined statuses should be replaced with a model whereby the state accommodates kinship categories the law users themselves produce within their fluid and nomadic family assemblages and that they actively revise when negotiating state recognition. We claim that this model would better reflect and govern the emerging kinship system. We corroborate this by drawing on insights from family research that takes issue with the fragmentation of kinship, particularly the fragmentation of motherhood. We then elaborate on a conception of state recognition as the capacity to trace connections and identify normative frameworks, one that valorizes the self‐organizing force of social practices but at the same time holds onto the filtering role of the state.     

The Individual-Level Determinants of German Party Membership

Why do citizens join German parties? Do specific attributes and abilities play a determinant role in participation in political parties? The German Party Membership Study of 2009 enables us to answer these questions. On the basis of the telephone survey, we will address these issues by way of a systematic comparison of current party members with fellow citizens who never joined a party. For the purpose of analysing the individual-level determinants of joining a party, we use fundamental explanatory approaches to political participation: The socioeconomic standard model, the social-psychological approach, and the general incentives model. The results of our analyses clearly show that social-psychological attributes best explain the decision to join a party. Nevertheless, the findings for the determinants in both the socioeconomic standard model and the general incentives model complete the picture of citizens who are party members.     

How to Manage a Party Brand: Empirical Perspectives on Electoral Probability and Internal Conflict

What happens when political party branding is modeled according to the preferences of either voters or party members? Employing the concept of brand identity and the analytical GAP model, this empirical study details the consequences of brand management decisions by political parties using the example of the two biggest parties in Germany. Strategic branding decisions have an impact not only on voting probabilities but also on their internal conflict potential, such as when a branding decision conflicts with the internal image a party maintains among its members. It thus can be highly beneficial for a political party to encourage its members to communicate their image of the party to other voters.     

Policing organized crime

Conclusions Recent criminological research in the Netherlands underscores the fact that organized crime is embedded in society and the overall picture makes it clear that police emphasis on a crime fighting model of the police, based solely on criminal law will not be entirely effective. Therefore, the Twente police force developed a new strategy of policing organized crime in their region. This strategy is based on criminological knowledge and on the approach of community policing: preventive, pro-active and integrated actions taken by various partners of the police in order to reduce illegal activities of organized crime groups. This strategy, however, can only succeed when two conditions are satisfied. First, this approach can only function in an open democratic society in which numerous public and private organizations and the public feel responsible for the emergence of organized crime in their environment. Secondly, the police force and their partners must be (relatively) free of corruption. This implies that this strategy can only be effective in societies in which organized crime has not deeply penetrated democratic institutions and business organizations. Respectively Commissioner of Police and head of the Division Organized Crime of the Twente Police force and Professor of criminology and director of the International Police Institute (IPIT) at the University of Twente. PO Box 217, 7500 EA Enschede, The Netherlands. We would like to thank Alexis Aronowitz of the IPIT for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for her grammatical corrections, as well as the members of the editorial committee for their suggestions for improvements.     

Go West: Georgia's European identity and its role in domestic politics and foreign policy objectives

This article sheds light on the Euro-Atlantic discourse in Georgia by situating it in a wider frame. It provides an analysis of its Euro-Atlantic orientation by presenting it as a continuation of past efforts to involve European powers in Georgian affairs and highlights changing trends in this aspect of contemporary foreign policy. Far from determining whether or not the Georgians are European, the different arguments that have been used to support Georgian “Europeanness” are evaluated to assess its role in the national identity construction process. Focusing primarily on the United National Movement government led by Mikheil Saakashvili, we demonstrate how the Euro-Atlantic discourse has been employed domestically by the political elite as a legitimacy management strategy and explore its function in seeking Western patronage, a key foreign policy goal.     

Towards a Theory of Institutionalized Judicial Exceptionalism

What happens when the exception becomes the norm, what happens when the law becomes a form for that which cannot have a legal form, that is, the political? The focus of this article is a form of power politics that is institutionalised and set up to work side by side with the existing legal system as a sort of normalized, co‐ordinated court procedure, initiated with the aim of subjecting specific groups (terrorists, criminals) to extended regulatory control and enforcement. These strategic bureaucratic mechanisms of exclusion appear as security enforced measures, which side by side with the existing ‘normal’ legal system govern a specific judicial‐political area. The normalised (or rooted, if one wishes) incorporation of extra‐judicial authority within the legal system will in the article be refered to as institutionalised judicial exceptionalism. The purpose of the article is to theorise and conceptualise the in many ways murky or indistinct phenomenon of institutionalised judicial exceptionalism.This task includes suggesting a model capable of assimilating within its theory the displacement in the relationship between the state, the law and the citizen that stems from the fact that the ever more securitized discourses on terrorism and crime increasingly take priority over the ordinarily non‐derogable principle of equality before the law.     

Foie gras: animal cruelty or tasty delicacy? An exploration of firm responses to restrictive regulatory change

The authors propose a conceptual framework that highlights the process firms pursue in response to externally imposed changes in the regulatory environment. The study adapts three theories to better understand this phenomenon: sensemaking, the affect infusion model, and cognitive appraisal theory. Using the context of bans on the production and sale of foie gras, the authors present a series of propositions that delineate the process through which firms innovate in response to changes in their regulatory environment. The authors suggest that cognitive processes utilized to make sense of restrictive regulation represent strategic responses, resulting in innovations that expand an existing market, or create a new one. Alternatively, affectively infused reactions result in less innovative responses, or even non‐compliance. The authors present examples of firms' innovations as support for the conceptual model. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A note on antitrust damages and leniency programs

The European Commission has in recent years initiated an effort to facilitate private actions for damages in cartel cases. This paper demonstrates in a stylized game-theoretic framework that an increase in antitrust damages can be pro-collusive when a leniency program is already in place. The result holds true even if antitrust authorities are allowed to re-shape their leniency program in reaction to the higher damage level. Larger damage payments imply lower incentives to self-report if damages are not fully encompassed by the leniency program; in effect, the program has to be more generous to enforce self-reporting. But if antitrust authorities are not allowed to offer cash rewards to whistle-blowers, the sufficient level of generosity might be unattainable.