China in the Asia–Pacific Partnership: consequences for UN climate change mitigation efforts?

This article discusses China’s motives for participation in the Asia–Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), and whether this has or will have consequences for its participation and efforts in the UN track of international climate governance. In order to discuss these issues, it also provides an outline of key national priorities and explains the nature of China’s involvement in both the UN track and the APP. It suggests that the APP is a complement to the UN process, not a competitor, in the case of China. APP participation represents a win–win situation in terms of the transfer of technology and know-how for solving challenges related to energy security and greenhouse gas emissions. For the Chinese leadership, this seems preferable to taking on UN commitments which it fears would impede economic development. The APP’s projects also seem to complement the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism project in China. This article argues that there is little indication that China would make less of an effort under the UN track.

Researching the use of force: the background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in seven countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology.

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Regional Arrangements as Agents of the UN Security Council: Some African and European Organisations Contrasted

The increased burden placed upon the UN Security Council in the post-Cold War era in respect of its discharge of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security has fuelled calls for the greater use of regional arrangements as agents of the Council, to relieve its burden. However, the various agendas and capabilities of different arrangements make it difficult to adopt a uniform template of the role which regional arrangements can play as conductors of peace support operations authorised by the Security Council. This article attempts to provide a framework against which the potential role of different arrangements as viable agents to which the Security Council can entrust military enforcement operations, before going on to assess how selected African and European organisations fare against this framework. It will be demonstrated that when assessed against this framework, the organisations selected for comparison are remarkably similar.

Japan’s position in international climate policy: navigating between Kyoto and the APP

The emergence of technology-oriented agreements such as the 2005 Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) may have significant implications for the future of global climate governance, as these agreements could be perceived as an alternative for the existing international climate regime. It is, therefore, important to examine what has moved countries to be involved in these agreements alongside the UN climate regime. This article seeks to identify possible factors contributing to Japan’s participation in both the UN climate regime and the APP, looking at the position of domestic interest groups, the distribution of climate policy-making at the government level and varying international pressures. It concludes that Japan’s participation in both the APP and the UN climate regime flows from a policy-making process that tries to accommodate conflicting viewpoints at the domestic and international levels. To what extent Japan’s participation in both fora can be regarded as constructive will depend on the partnership’s ability to support the implementation of a future climate regime.

EU Fraud: institutional and legal competence

This paper will focus on frauds committed against the budget of the European Union. It will consider the role of OLAF (the European Fraud Prevention Office) which is the lead agency in the fight against fraud. It will consider its powers and its capacity to co-ordinate the activities of anti-fraud agencies in twenty seven member states and the constraints which prevent it from operating in a more effective manner. The paper will also consider the role of other transnational bodies such as Eurojust and Europol and will seek to highlight the degree of fragmentation which exists with a multiplicity of actors involved in policing fraud, a fragmented legal approach and the difficulties this presents in policing sophisticated transnational frauds. The effect of EU expansion on this situation will also be examined and the EU anti-fraud efforts of the Czech Republic will be considered in some detail. The paper concludes that the legal system and the institutions are not yet in place to enable such frauds to be adequately policed.

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Singing the same tune? International continuities and discontinuities in how police talk about using force

This article focuses on a research project conducted in six jurisdictions: England, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, and Brazil. These societies are very different ethnically, socially, politically, economically, historically and have wildly different levels of crime. Their policing arrangements also differ significantly: how they are organised; how their officers are equipped and trained; what routine operating procedures they employ; whether they are armed; and much else besides. Most relevant for this research, they represent policing systems with wildly different levels of police shootings, Police in the two Latin American countries represented here have a justified reputation for the frequency with which they shoot people, whereas at the other extreme the police in England do not routinely carry firearms and rarely shoot anyone. To probe whether these differences are reflected in the way that officers talk about the use of force, police officers in these different jurisdictions were invited to discuss in focus groups a scenario in which police are thwarted in their attempt to arrest two youths (one of whom is a known local criminal) by the youths driving off with the police in pursuit, and concludes with the youths crashing their car and escaping in apparent possession of a gun, It might be expected that focus groups would prove starkly different, and indeed they were, but not in the way that might be expected. There was little difference in affirmation of normative and legal standards regarding the use of force. It was in how officers in different jurisdictions envisaged the circumstances in which the scenario took place that led Latin American officers to anticipate that they would shoot the suspects, whereas officers in the other jurisdictions had little expectation that they would open fire in the conditions as they imagined them to be.

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Discovering sources of inequality in transition economies: a case study of rural Vietnam

Applying the recently developed inequality accounting framework, we quantify contributions of fundamental variables to consumption inequality in rural Vietnam. It is found that major determinants of the inequality include location, education, infrastructures. From 1993 to 1998, the contributions of education, physical capital, labour and community infrastructure to total inequality increased while those of land and credit access declined. Ethnicity is found to play a decreasing role in composing total inequality. Policy implications are discussed.

Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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Introduction: exploring and explaining the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

This introduction lays the groundwork for this Special Issue by providing an overview of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), and by introducing three main analytical themes. The first theme concerns the emergence and continuation of the APP. The contributions show that the emergence of the APP can be attributed to international factors, including the United States’ rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, and its search for an alternative arena for global climate governance, and other countries’ wish to maintain good relations with the US; as well as domestic factors, such as the presence of bureaucratic actors in favour of the Partnership, alignment with domestic priorities, and the potential for reaping economic benefits through participation. The second theme examines the nature of the Partnership, concluding that it falls on the very soft side of the hard–soft law continuum and that while being branded as a public–private partnership, governments remain in charge. Under the third theme, the influence which the APP exerts on the post-2012 United Nations (UN) climate change negotiations is scrutinised. The contributions show that at the very least, the APP is exerting some cognitive influence on the UN discussions through its promotion of a sectoral approach. The introduction concludes with outlining areas for future research.

War as an Institutional Fact: Semiotics and Institutional Legal Theory

In institutional legal theory, norms and facts are reciprocally operating elements: an interplay in which meaning construction is closely connected with acting: the pragmatic understanding of legal language in terms of its uses. With the semiotic elements of institutional theory, extended by the notion of ‘semiotic groups’, an analytical framework can be constructed to analyze a case study on the shifts in the concept of war which have taken place since the 1945 UN Charter and in the aftermath of 9/11. The semiotic aspects of the institutional approach can offer insight into the complexity of the processes of meaning attribution in the field of law and war.

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Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Key actors in UN environmental governance: influence,reform and leadership

In the introductory article it was concluded that the effectiveness of the UN environmental institutions studied was quite low. Key actors, especially the US and the EU, play a considerable role in explaining the course of development in these institutions. However, this does not mean that these processes are mainly state-driven as a number of other factors matter. The potential for reform and increased effectiveness is limited as the main actors, the US the EU and G-77/China have very different interests and perceptions as to the future directions of these institutions.

An Examination of the Outcomes of Various Components of a Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence by Male Offenders

With recognition that police intervention by itself is not entirely effective, in recent years there has been a shift in public policies towards the implementation of a coordinated community response to domestic violence incidents. This article examines the impact of participation in several aspects of a coordinated community response (CCR) in a mid-sized city in the Midwest. Specifically, recidivism was examined using information on officially recorded re-arrests for 131 male domestic violence offenders involved in a CCR type intervention. In addition, exploratory analyses attempt to determine if certain offender characteristics are related to their likely of progressing through each of several post-conviction components of this CCR-type intervention. Limitations of the research and suggestions for policy responses to domestic violence are discussed.

The effectiveness of UN environmental institutions

This is a study of the effectiveness of key UN institutions focussing on environment and sustainable development: the global conferences on development and the environment, the CSD and UNEP, primarily its co-ordinating functions. According to the indicators used to measure effectiveness here, it is concluded that the overall effectiveness of these institutions is quite low. This particularly applies to the CSD. UNEP has been quite effective in creating new institutions but has been less effective in co-ordinating them. As to the global conferences, their significance has been reduced over time.

Institutionalized corruption: power overconcentration of the First-in-Command in China

Among various kinds of corruption in China, corruption of the First-in-Command (FIC) is most pernicious, threatening the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the stability of the state. This paper examines several specific institutional arrangements under China’s current political structure, including the people’s congress, the ruling party system, and the collective leadership team system, to see how they have contributed to power overconcentration in the hands of FICs. This is done in a two-round process: first through the collective leadership team and then by the gestating decision-making rule. The paper also assesses four institutional innovations designed to prevent FIC corruption.

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The entrepreneurial society

This paper explains why and how entrepreneurship has emerged as an engine of economic growth, employment creation and competitiveness in global markets. The entrepreneurial society reflects the emergence as entrepreneurship as an important source of economic growth.

Community Support and Diversionary Measures for Juvenile Offenders in Hong Kong: Old Legacy, New Age

This paper begins by examining the arguments that led to the change of emphasis from residential training and detention to community-based measures in Hong Kong. Police cautioning and community support services are introduced. An evaluation of the services provided found that the majority of respondents reported high levels of satisfaction with them. It is likely that the services exerted positive influences on the respondents’ deviant behaviour, family values and sense of social responsibility, but one-fifth of them continued to commit deviant acts. Parents’ participation was not high. Young offenders rarely took responsibility for the offence they committed or understood the harm they had done to victims, and victims were not involved in deciding the intervention plan. The conclusions raise issues about the future for Hong Kong. They consider new diversionary strategies for responding to young people and debate the values that should underpin them.

Old wine in new bottles: a county-level case study of anti-corruption reform in the People’s Republic of China

This paper examines the role of the target-based responsibility system for building upright Party style and clean government in combating corruption in local China. It argues that the effectiveness of the target-based responsibility system in corruption control is compromised by a number of implementation hurdles in practice. Based on a close examination of one county, Shaanxi Province in the northwest China, this study shows that low measurability of the targets, the conflict between anti-corruption work and other evaluation targets, and the impact of patronage politics account for the implementation failure of the target-based responsibility system. The fundamental problem lies in that under China’s unified cadre personnel management system, political will can interfere with the handling of corruption on a case-by-case basis, no matter what kind of anti-corruption mechanism is employed. Under this context, the adoption of the target-based responsibility system in fighting corruption results in nothing more than “pouring old wine into new bottles.”

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The impact of the US legislation on company measures of control and prevention

The spectacular business scandals in recent years have led both the legislative and business companies to rethink and redesign their strategies. This article analyzes the worldwide impact of reforms in economic crime legislation emanating from the USA. Empirical data are reported showing that the US regulations are generating a spillover effect spreading beyond its sphere of operation. It is particularly notable that international stock-exchange-listed companies are orienting themselves increasingly toward the legal standards of the USA. Translated from the German by Jonathan Harrow, Bielefeld.

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Interviewing retired cigarette smugglers

Based on my experience of conducting an ethnographic study with the Kurdish community in a town in the North East of England I offer a reflection on interviewing three retired cigarette smugglers, who operated in Greece in 2002 and 2003. A reflection on my experiences in this research process is provided with a reference to the absolute and relative value of the (data from the) interviews conducted.