The impact of agency context, policies, and practices on violence against police

This study examined agency-level factors that impact the level of violence against police. The independent variables represented both agency context (e.g., violent crime rate, population characteristics) and agency policies and practices (e.g., backup and body armor policies) and were linked to constructs within routine activities theory. Information on agency policies and practices came from an agency survey. Data for the dependent variable―agency counts of officer killings and assaults over a three-year period―came from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Negative binomial regression was used to assess the impact of the independent variables on the dependent measure. Three of the independent variables—measuring body armor policies, agency accountability, and violent crime—had statistically significant relationships with violence against police.     

Meeting common environmental challenges: the co-evolution of policies and practices

This article proposes an analytical framework for exploring policy responses to common challenges of environmental governance. Observing that governance involves multiple processes, I begin by identifying a conceptual platform for studying unilateral learning and adaptation as well as international cooperation as integral and interacting components of a complex governance system. I propose the concept of co-evolution as the cornerstone of this platform and distinguish between two modes of co-evolution: diffusion and cooperation. The article draws findings and propositions from recent literature to identify the mechanisms at work and the conditions under which they foster mutually beneficial solutions. Indicating how important governance challenges differ with respect to these conditions, I build the case for a diagnostic and differential approach that matches capacity-building and policy strategies with the challenge in focus.     

Towards a common framework for assessing the activity and associations of groups who sexually abuse children

Abstract

Extensive social psychological research emphasises the importance of groups in shaping individuals' thoughts and actions. Within the child sexual abuse (CSA) literature criminal organisation has been largely overlooked, with some key exceptions. This research was a novel collaboration between academia and the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). Starting from the premise that the group is, in itself, a form of social situation affecting abuse, it offers the first systematic situational analysis of CSA groups. In-depth behavioural data from a small sample of convicted CSA group-offenders (n =3) were analysed qualitatively to identify factors and processes underpinning CSA groups' activities and associations: group formation, evolution, identity and resources. The results emphasise CSA groups' variability, fluidity and dynamism. The foundations of a general framework are proposed for researching and assessing CSA groups and designing effective interventions. It is hoped that this work will stimulate discussion and development in this long-neglected area of CSA, helping to build a coherent knowledge-base.     

Mathematical theory for a multilateral trade clearing agency

In connection with the article by Professor Ragnar Frisch in this issue of Economics of Planning, we will here present a mathematical formulation of multilateral clearing. The formulation is to a large extent built upon a presentation given by Professor Frisch in Norwegian.¹ But we will also utilize experiences gained from experimentation with some numerical examples.²     

Women's agency in Australia's first fertility transition: a debate revisited

The place of women's agency in the fertility transition of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century is a contested one. Some argue that the transition was achieved mainly through male methods of contraception. Others, including many arguing from an Australian perspective, contend that women's agency in fertility decline was significant. In this article, the authors revisit the issue of women's agency in Australia. Drawing on a range of archival sources and scholarship, they seek to demonstrate that women in Australia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had access to contraception, albeit limited, and, where that failed, to abortion. The authors argue that the changing political and educational climate, which saw women gaining the vote in 1894 in South Australia and admission to secondary and higher education and paid work, provided the setting for women's changing status. Their increasing agency – an agency many women worked to secure – encouraged women to challenge many traditional practices.     

Competing Narratives in a Case Biography: A Tale of Two Citadels

This article is the fourth in a series introducing the reader to methods and theories relevant to advancing socio-legal research. They are written for the curious rather than the expert reader and provide illustrations of how the theories, methods, and frameworks have been employed and might be used in your work. This article explores the use of case biography methods for socio-legal studies. Drawing on ‘paths to justice’ studies, network analysis, and legal archaeology, we develop a case study of AC v.Berkshire West Primary Care Trust. We show how the judicial determination of the case suppressed a transgender rights narrative construction of the dispute in favour of one about health care law. Our case biography analysis explores how competing narratives can be traced not only through legal argument and literature, but also through the personnel involved, in ways that are obscured by formal records. Paying attention to biographical features leads to a richer understanding of cases, including the importance of pre- and post-judicial decision-making aspects.     

The GE/Honeywell merger controversy and the path to analytical convergence in international merger assessment: A critical commentary

Globalisation, with its concomitant rise in international merger activity, allied to the proliferation of merger control regimes vetting such activity, increases the likelihood of two or more competition authorities reaching divergent decisions in the same case. This article reveals that this situation arose in the proposed merger between two US-based companies, General Electric (GE) and Honeywell, with the EU prohibiting the merger, and the US Department of Justice approving it. Further, it discusses the analytical and interpretational differences which led to those divergent outcomes. The analytical debate centres on the appropriateness of the two theoretical approaches used to assess proposed mergers, with the EU using the range effects of competitive harm approach and the US giving greater weight to an economic efficiencies merger defence. The fallout from the GE/Honeywell case has given added impetus to progress analytical convergence in relation to the vetting of international mergers. This has found expression at the multilateral level, which links to EU initiatives. The article predicts that the EU is highly likely to incorporate an economic efficiencies defence into its merger control law, bringing it into line with other key players. Of course, analytical convergence cannot guarantee that interpretational differences will not arise, as was evident in aspects of the GE/Honeywell case. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Error minimization and deterrence in agency control

In the presented oversight model, in which a regulatory agency may collude with regulatees, a watchdog organization may scrutinize the agency’s decision-making and find evidence speaking for collusive behavior. Found evidence is of a specific, stochastic quality. Courts will overturn the administrative decision when the evidence presented in court exceeds a minimum quality standard set by the political principal. Lowering the quality standard increases the odds of finding evidence of sufficient quality and, hence, leads to increasing collusion deterrence and to a lower probability of acquitting collusive administrators (type I error), but also to a higher probability of convicting an innocent administrator (type II error). It is shown that, when welfare-maximization gives rise to an interior solution, the welfare-maximizing standard of evidence is lower than the one that merely minimizes the costs of legal errors without taking deterrence costs into account, but will imply incomplete deterrence. However, conditions can and will be identified under which both error cost minimization and complete deterrence coincide with welfare-maximization.     

论董事竞业在司法中的认定

董事负有竞业禁止义务.以<公司法>第149条的规定为准,董事竞业表现为董事谋取了公司的商业机会和从事了与公司同类的业务两大类型.公司业务边界是判断董事竞业的形式标尺,董事行为与公司利益存在冲突的可能性,才是判断董事竞业的实质准则.     

Eu merger control and the compatibility test:a review of recent developments

The compatibility test contained in Article 2 of the Merger Control Regulation (MCR) is at the very heart of EU merger control, for it determines whether a concentration with a community dimension is deemed compatible or incompatible with the common market. Incompatibility can lead to prohibition of a concentration, although this is rare. The paper reviews the recent developments to the conditions of the test itself as well as the analytical methods employed to determine compatibility. Concerning the former, the new foreseeable dominance interpretation, put forward by the European Commission and made law by the Court of First Instance (CFI), is explored. This new variant of the dominance condition is important on its own right but it is also of major interest because of the explicit legal requirement placed on the Commission to assess the future likelihood of abusive behaviour by the merging parties in its prospective analysis. This is not the case with the original dominance compatibility condition. The unexpected but important clarification by the CFI of the notion of substantial part of the common market, as contained in the express wording of the compatibility test, is also commented upon. Concerning the determination of compatibility, the Commission's controversial employment in certain conglomerate concentrations of the range effects of competitive harm theory is examined, as is the need to take cognisance of merger specific efficiencies when determining if a merger increases societal welfare. The EU is making progress toward such an efficiencies assessment as part of the compatibility determination. EU merger control – and hence the compatibility test – do not exist in a vacuum. The EU has played a major role in shaping the new multilateral architecture and its goal of increasing international convergence in competition matters. This in turn has led the EU to rethink the nature of the compatibility test. For example, it has sought to evaluate the dominance condition of the compatibility test with the substantial lessening of competition (SLC) approach used by some other regulators, like the US. The paper concludes by looking at a fundamental issue that has arisen from recent CFI judgements and the GE/Honeywell merger: the competence of the Commission, or more accurately the Merger Task Force (MTF), to carry out the compatibility determination. Proposals are outlined so as to ensure that the Commission's prospective analysis in a concentration case meets the requisite legal standard. It is essential for this standard to be met if EU merger control is to remain credible. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

由一则案例评析表见代理的适用

表见代理制度的建立,必须以善意为基础,是以牺牲本人的利益为代价而维护交易安全。表见代理是无权代理的例外,是一种特殊的有权代理。表见代理不能够轻率地被认定成立,否则,将会破坏交易安全。表见代理的成立不以本人有过失为要件。适用表见代理制度,关键是确定相对人相信行为人有代理权之理由是否成立、理由是否充分。法官如何判断相对人有理由,应当综合考虑当事人订立合同的目的、合同基础、交易对价、交易规则和交易习惯、相对人的审查义务等多种因素予以分析认定。必须要衡量相对人订立合同时的主观状态,有没有过失,是不是善意。     

Establishing a joint agency response to the threat of lone-actor grievance-fuelled violence

The past year has seen a global upsurge of violent attacks by lone, mentally unstable individuals. The motivations for these attacks have varied and extremist ideological drivers are rarely ‘pure’, but mental health problems and personal grievances are common themes. Mentally ill and disenfranchised individuals may be vulnerable to extremist messages and propaganda because such beliefs can be a means of interpreting their social difficulties. Terrorist messages can also be adopted by psychotic people who are seeking to make sense of their symptoms. Most lone-actor attacks are preventable, if there is a system in place for identifying and intervening with antecedent behaviours, which include mental disturbances and the social problems that frequently accompany these conditions. Joint police-mental health models developed to assess and manage fixated persons can be applied to other forms of grievance-fuelled, lone-actor violence. This paper describes the establishment of such a service in Australia, and provides some preliminary data. It also discusses the role of mental health in the current security environment.     

Foreign investment innovation: a review of selected policies

Whereas foreign investment innovation (FII) has become increasingly common, after decades of debate it is still unclear whether it is desirable for the home country or for the company’s host country. This paper reviews articles from three complementary economic and business traditions which investigate this phenomenon and propose policies based on facts: the economics of technological change tradition, the international business (IB) tradition, and the line of research on international technology transfers. Articles in line with these strands of theory complement each other because they approach different aspects of complex events while explaining FII and its effects on host and home countries. Host countries obtain maximum benefits from FII when affiliates import foreign technology, purchase their inputs in the host country and enjoy product and technological autonomy vis-à-vis the parent. Different types of MNEs, affiliates and foreign R&D units have different potentials for transferring technology to host countries and provide different scope for policies. The authors recommend that governments encourage direct vertical linkages between MNEs and domestic suppliers who could reap the benefits from foreign knowledge. However, some important success factors remain exogenous to governments. As for indigenous MNEs, it is a matter of controversy whether governments should always stimulate them to conduct research in foreign locations or, alternatively, incentive them to stay at home. The need for additional evidence is still considerable in many respects.

Competing Risks, Persistence, and Desistance in Analyzing Recidivism

A statistical procedure is developed to analyze recidivism in samples whichare subject to the presence of desisters and to multiple modes ofreconviction. This allows for a more accurate study of individuals'transition and hazard in the type and timing of offenses following aspecific type of conviction. The use of a nonparametric approach forinvestigating failure in the presence of other acting causes is shown;initial estimators of the probabilities of reconviction for different typesof offenses are obtained, and the method can be used both to display thedata and to choose an appropriate parametric family for the survivaltimes. An exponential mixture model for competing risks is presented insuch a way that it allows us to adjust for concomitant variables and toassess their effects on the probabilities both of reconviction forpredetermined types of offenses and desistance and of the hazards ofreconviction; a method for assessing calibration of predicted survivalprobabilities is suggested. A 21-year follow-up of persons convicted ofindecent assault on a female in 1973 illustrates the methods; we find ahigh probability of sexual reconviction for individuals with previoussexual convictions and evidence of diversity and a raised hazard ofreconviction for young chronic offenders.     

Earth system governance: a research framework

The Earth System Science Partnership, which unites all major global change research programmes, declared in 2001 an urgent need to develop “strategies for Earth System management”. Yet what such strategies might be, how they could be developed, and how effective, efficient and equitable such strategies would be, remains unspecified. It is apparent that the institutions, organizations and mechanisms by which humans currently govern their relationship with the natural environment and global biochemical systems are not only insufficient—they are also poorly understood. This article presents the science programme of the Earth System Governance Project, a new 10-year global research effort endorsed by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). It outlines the concept of earth system governance as a challenge for the social sciences, and it elaborates on the interlinked analytical problems and research questions of earth system governance as an object of study. These analytical problems concern the overall architecture of earth system governance, agency beyond the state and of the state, the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and processes as well as their accountability and legitimacy, and modes of allocation and access in earth system governance. The article also outlines four crosscutting research themes that are crucial for the study of each analytical problem as well as for the integrated understanding of earth system governance: the role of power, knowledge, norms and scale.