Industry Self-Regulation: An Institutional Perspective

Throughout the advanced countries of the world self-regulatory regimes are being introduced. This article suggests that, at least in some contexts, industry self-regulation can be an effective and efficient means of social control that has been largely ignored by economics (which has a focus on individual rather than group behavior) and prematurely discounted by mainstream regulatory theory. The article examines the strengths and to a lesser extent the weaknesses of industry self-regulation from five closely related yet distinct vantage points: mediating institutions; industrial morality; institutionalizing responsibility; institutions responding to external pressure; and the roles of the state and third parties.     

Private Ordering,Self-Regulation and Futures Markets: A Comparative Study of Informal Social Control*

This paper describes an empirical study of futures market regulation in three jurisdictions: Chicago, Hong Kong, and Sydney. It focuses on private ordering and argues that informal mechanisms of social control have been crucial in maintaining market “order” and curbing trading abuses. Peer group pressure, fear of being ostracized, the leverage of large institutional clients, the transparency of certain market dealings and the opportunities this provides for “pay back” between “repeat players”, have been far more important in ordering behavior than the remote and often unenforced rules imposed either by government or the exchanges themselves. It is suggested that to understand “crime in the pits” we should focus on criminogenic structures which facilitate fraud through specific combinations of opportunity and risk. It is also structural factors which substantially account for the relative success or failure of private ordering in constraining trading abuses in different markets.     

The Dynamic of Corporate Self-Regulation: ISO 14001, Environmental Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

This article examines the institutional impact of environmental management systems (EMSs), focusing on ISO 14001. It develops a pluralistic framework for thinking about the dynamic of corporate self-regulation that we term the polyphonic model. It argues that the adoption of ISO 14001 can move the firm into a new equilibrium trajectory, which enmeshes together environmental and economic goals and reflects greater sensitivity to ecological concerns. There is a positive reciprocal cycle between the pro-environmental structural changes induced by ISO 14001 and the employees' attitudes toward the firm and the environment. In order to examine ISO 14001 institutional impact, we conducted a series of interviews with managers and administered questionnaires to employees in 24 Israeli firms with and without certification. The findings indicate that the perceived environmental commitment of certified firms was higher than that of noncertified firms and was higher among employees that perceived the EMS as more highly integrated in the firm. Perceptions of the standard's integration were also found to be positively correlated with personal environmental commitment. The results also indicate that the increase in the firm's environmental commitment was positively associated with employees' organizational citizenship behavior within certified firms. Further indications of the pro-environmental dynamic induced by ISO 14001 were found in the in-depth interviews.     

Development of Communitarian Regulation in the Chemical Industry

This study explores the development of communitarian regulation in the American chemical industry by focusing on the history and challenges facing Responsible Care, the leading example of regulation by an industry association on the environmental scene today.     

Privatization in Poland: Politics,Society, and the Law*

The paper presents the beginning and the initial results of the process of privatization in Poland. Starting from the summer of 1990 it examines the political debate on the Privatization Act and corresponding social reaction. It shows how the society answers such important questions as: who, and on what principles, is to take over the hitherto state-owned property? The next question is on the content of the “social contract on privatization”: the legal starting point and the first empirical results. It appears that the most visible social effect was the growth in the inequalities between workers and the elites of the society. The role of workers in the process of transformation is also of special interest. Finally, the paper examines the role of privatization law, which on the one hand presents a compromise between the ruling class and the society and on the other hand has been replaced by current privatization policy.     

The Responsible Migrant,Reading the Global Compact on Migration

Law and Critique - In 2016, the international community, in reaction to the growing number of ‘tragedies’ occurring as people attempted to move across borders, met to discuss large...     

Between Self-Regulation and the Alien Tort Claims Act: On the Contested Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility

Using Alien Tort Claims Act suits against multinational corporations as an immediate context for discussion, this article explores the emerging field of corporate social responsibility. The article argues for an understanding of concrete legal struggles as part of broader competing strategies for regulating corporate obligations to a multitude of stakeholders. By identifying and analyzing the positions of concrete actors who operate in the field, the main thesis of this article is that the field strongly tilts in the direction of voluntary and self-reliant models of corporate responsibility. The article identifies this process as consistent with the privatization of regulative structures in general and with extant modeling of corporate governance in particular, and points at the correlation between these trends and the interests of multinational corporations.     

In Search of the Responsible Subject: History, Philosophy and Social Sciences in Criminal Law Theory

This paper examines the way in which English criminal law's conception of responsibility has changed since the eighteenth century, and explores the relationship between changes in legal framework, changes in processes of criminalisation and punishment, and broader social, political and economic changes. It argues that the development of ideas of individual responsibility for crime are responses to problems of co-ordination and legitimation faced by systems of criminal law, and that these problems can be expected to change according to the environment in which the system operates, with important factors including the distribution of political interests and economic power; the prevailing cultural and intellectual environment; the organisation and status of relevant professional groups and the vigour of alternative means of social ordering. Substantively, the paper explores the hypothesis that criminal responsibility has shifted from a conception founded in ideas of character to a capacity-based conception over the relevant period. Methodologically, the aim is to historicise the structure as well as the content of criminal law within a socio-theoretic framework, constructing a dialogue between criminal law theory of a doctrinal and philosophical temper and socio-historical studies of criminal justice.     

Crime,cash, and limited options: Explaining the prison boom*

Research Summary An analysis of a state panel of prison populations from 1977 to 2005 shows that the best predictors of prison populations are crime, sentencing policy, prison crowding, and state spending. Prison populations grew at roughly the same rate and during the same periods as spending on education, welfare, health and hospitals, highways, parks, and natural resources. Current and lagged values of state spending on prison construction also accounted for a substantial amount of variation in subsequent prison populations. Public opinion, partisan politics, the electoral cycle, and social threats seem to have had little effect on the number of prisoners. Policy Implications The availability of publicly acceptable alternatives to incarceration may not be sufficient to reverse course. Federal funding of alternatives—but not prisons—would provide states with the financial incentive to reduce prison populations.     

Above the Boundaries: Ozone Depletion,Equity, and Climate Change*

This introduction examines the global legislative process as it applies to environmental agreements. It argues that this process should be seen as consisting of at least two phases. Phase one seeks to create a broad legislative framework designed to facilitate debate emanating from three different perspectives: science, equity, and economics. Phase one also seeks to attract as many countries as possible to the negotiating process. Phase two then tries to reconcile at least some of the conflicts inherent in these three different starting points.     

Self-Control,Violent Offending,and Homicide Victimization: Assessing the General Theory of Crime

Criminologists have long recognized that offending and victimization share common ground. Using Gottfredson and Hirschis general theory of crime, with its emphasis on self-control as a theoretical backdrop, we examine the extent to which self-control is related to both violent offending and homicide victimization. To examine this issue, we use 5-year post-parole data on violent offending and homicide victimization from a sample of parolees from the California Youth Authority. Using rare-events logistic regression models, results indicate that self-control is related to each outcome, but that other risk factors are also uniquely related to each outcome. The implications of this study for theory and future research are addressed.To whom correspondence should be addressed: Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of Florida, P.O. Box 115950, 201 Walker Hall, Gainesville, FL 32611-5950; Phone: +1-352-392-1025, ext. 213; E-mail: apiquero@ufl.edu