Bureaucrats’ corruption and competition in public administration

Competition in public administration is often advocated as a solution to bureaucrats’ corruption. However, there are no well developed analyses of how competition could succeed and the issue of its detailed design has not been carefully addressed so far. In this paper, we put forward a series of models that help understand what competition in public administration can actually accomplish. We distinguish two different shapes that corruption may take: bribery and extortion, and we demonstrate, under the usual assumption of asymmetric information as to the honesty of the bureaucrats, that while competition is effective in fighting extortion it exacerbates bribery. Given that corruption normally manifests itself simultaneously under the two different shapes, an anti-corruption policy based upon competition is bound to face a serious trade-off: trying to curb one of them through competition implies making the other worse. This result holds, with some differences, under exogenous and endogenous bureaucrats’ “honesty”. The dual aspect of corruption is probably one of the most serious—and so far largely neglected—obstacles to any effective anti-corruption policy.     

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

This essay articulates the contributions of Mitra Sharafi's study of Parsi legal culture to colonial legal studies. Situated at the intersection of the literature on legal pluralism and legal institutions, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947 (2014) uses a range of new legal sources and case law to recover a remarkable history of collective identity that emerged via the medium and infrastructure of law. The Parsis' active participation in colonial legal institutions not only reshaped their normative worlds but also de‐anglicized imperial law.     

Power and Criminal Law: Criminalization of Conduct Norms in a Colonial Regime

A content analysis of the published materials in the Journal of Criminal Justice: An International Journal (JCJ), and the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice (IJCACJ) was undertaken to evaluate if the international functional agenda of the journals to fill the present need for dissemination of new information, ideas and methods (to both practitioners and academicians in the criminal justice area) has been achieved. It was found that there is very limited international discourse currently going on in the Journal of Criminal Justice and that the bulk of the discussion in print in the journal is virtually inter- and intra-American. On the other hand, it was found that a substantial number of materials published in the International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice emanated from outside the United States, were written by non-U.S. practitioners and academicians, and focused on non-American criminal justice systems. It was concluded that in terms of regional composition of both journals' editorial staff, regional distribution of articles by source of origin and regional distribution of articles by subject content, the IJCACJ is more global in scope than the JCJ. The net result is that this journal is more “international” because it is seen to be more likely to generate and promote cross-cultural dialogue in the criminology/criminal justice enterprise.     

Interpreters of International Economic Law: Corporations and Bureaucrats in Contest over Chile's Nutrition Label

This article analyzes the everyday interpretive practices of corporations and bureaucrats that shape the meaning and force of international economic law. To understand how common practices such as public consultation submissions, corporate threat letters, and external legal assistance influence regulators' understanding of their “legally available” policy space, we study the contested introduction of a pioneering nutrition labeling regulation in Chile. The transnational food industry powerfully challenged the regulation's legality under World Trade Organization law. But Chilean health bureaucrats, in coordination with segments of the country's legally highly competent economic bureaucracy, effectively defended the legality of their proposed regulatory measure. Drawing on data from freedom-of-information requests and in-depth interviews, the article argues that the outcomes of such interpretive contests are substantially shaped by participants' knowledge of the entitlements created by international economic law and thus by the international legal expertise they have access to. This often but not always puts transnational corporations at an advantage over national regulators in the strategic interpretation of international economic law.     

Cape Legal Idioms and the Colonial Sovereign

A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. Referring to primary texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate.     

从青岛看德国殖民统治与中德文化交流

一、德国青岛殖民史的新观察点把德国在山东与青岛的殖民史列入这次会议的范围之内 ,即把德国占领胶州湾当作中德文化的碰撞 ,把青岛看成是中德文化的一个交汇点 ,会给熟悉这段历史及其研究史的人们一种异样的感觉。可以说 ,这是对这段历史的观察点的又一次转移。 80年代以来 ,德国在山东的殖民史 ,特别是在青岛的经营史的研究 ,已经经历了一个大转折。多数学者已经不再仅仅从殖民侵略的角度来观察与评论这段历史 ,而是同时肯定了德国殖民者在青岛的城市与现代化方面所作出的成就。而 90年代以来 ,随着文化史的兴起 ,中外学术界对殖民史中东…     

Freedom, Law, and the Colonial Project

In this essay I develop a Marxist-informed anticolonialist position, and from this position I assess the role of law in the early Canadian settler-state. I claim that the flexibility of law is a measure of its restitutive and exploitative facets, such facets that operate dialectically as a means of moderating between the settler-state’s liberal democratic ideals (e.g. individual freedom and enfranchisement) and its capitalist imperatives (e.g. privatization of land, expansion, and profit). Law plays an integral role in this context because, by performing this moderating function, it stabilizes the socio-economic order of the emergent settler-state. In the second half of this essay, I enrich my theoretical analysis by examining the variable legal subjectivity of early Ukrainian immigrants to Canada. This historical perspective allows me to illuminate the intricacies of the logic that informs law’s flexibility, and to show how the liberal democratic principle of freedom was—and continues to be—both extolled and compromised by the law’s moderating function.     

Laboratories of Statehood: Legal Intervention in Colonial Africa and Today

The immense body of contemporary work aimed at ‘promoting the rule of law’ is often accused of ‘neo‐imperialism’. Yet, despite many points of contiguity between past and present legal interventions, the charge is overbroad and rarely illuminating. This article attempts to move beyond polemic to track concrete historical and structural forerunners of today's rule of law work. Focusing mainly (though not exclusively) on late imperial British endeavours, it traces colonial legal interventions over time, the techniques adopted (and rejected), the shifting normative bases of legitimacy, and moments of strategic recalibration in the face of resistance. Three broad attitudes towards law across the period are (provisionally) characterised as ‘regulative’, ‘constitutive’ and ‘institutive’ moments. In each phase, the Powers treat colonial territories as laboratories of statehood, within which experiments are conducted to locate the optimal configuration of law. In conclusion some counterparts to these moments in today's ‘rule of law’ activities are identified.     

评《春帆楼下晚涛急--日本对台湾的殖民统治及其影响》

~~评《春帆楼下晚涛急——日本对台湾的殖民统治及其影响》@李贵连$北京大学法学院!教授~~     

Coronial Inquests,Indigenous Suicide and the Colonial Narrative

Critical Criminology - This article explores the over-representation of Indigenous people in suicide statistics internationally as indicative of the broader impacts of colonialism. The purpose of...     

Colonial origins of land acquisition law in New South Wales and Queensland

F.W. Maitland. G.R. Elton. London. 1985. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. vii &; 118 pp. (incl. Index). £12.95.

Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography (1830–1914). Philip Priest‐ley. London and New York. 1985. Methuen. xiii &; 311 pp. (incl. index). £25.00.

Christopher St German on Chancery and Statute. J.A. Guy. London. 1985. Selden Society Supplementary series vol. 6. x &; 149 pp. (incl. index). £15.

Imprisonment in England and Wales: A Concise History, Christopher Harding, Bill Hines, Richard Ireland and Philip Rawlings, Beck‐enham. Croom Helm. 1985. xiii &; 308 pp. £25.00.

The Evolution of Law. Alan Watson. Oxford. 1985. Basil Blackwell. xi &; 156 pp. (incl. index). £17.50.

Unequal Access: Women Lawyers in a Changing America. Ronald Chester. Massachusetts. 1985. Bergin &; Garvey Publishers, Inc. viii &; 135 pp.(incl. index). £24.95.

Unequal Laws unto a Savage Race: European Legal Traditions in Arkansas, 1686–1836. Morris S. Arnold. Fayetteville. 1985. University of Arkansas Press, xviii &; 234 pp.

Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis 1593, 1627, 1635, 1639: A Study of an Active Minority. Ed. Irene Scouloudi. London. 1985. The Huguenot Society.

’Without the Law’: Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth Century England. H.W. Arthurs. Toronto. 1985. University of Toronto Press, xvi + 312 pp. (incl. index). £20.00.     

Hegemony, Discipline and Control in the Administration of Police in Colonial India

The Indian subcontinent was under British colonial rule for over two centuries until 1947. To administer the large country and its diverse population, the British designed a criminal justice administrative system which played a key role in maintaining their dominance and hegemony. In particular, the police organization, largely composed of natives, furthered the goals of colonial dominance through its functions of order maintenance, crime control, and surveillance. This paper, using Gramsci’s conception of hegemony and Foucault’s study of disciplining and control, analyzes the important role that the police played in maintaining British rule in India.

Environmental Crime and Contemporary Criminology: Making a Difference

American Journal of Criminal Justice - The current body of literature on the topic of environmental crime is bigger and better than ever, but the question of whether criminology/criminal justice...     

American Indians and sentencing disparity: An Arizona test

Although a proliferation of research exists examining the extent to which African American criminal defendants receive more harsh sentences relative to Caucasians, comparatively little research has examined the issue of discrimination in relation to other minority groups. This article examines disparities in sentence length received between American Indian and Caucasian inmates incarcerated in Arizona state correctional facilities. Regression analyses were used to predict the sentences received by American Indian and Caucasian inmates convicted of six crimes (homicide, sexual assault, robbery, assault, burglary, and larceny). After prior felony record and other demographic variables were controlled in these crime-specific models, the crimes of robbery and burglary were the only crimes in which American Indians received longer sentences than Caucasians convicted of the same offense. Caucasian defendants received significantly longer sentences than American Indians for cases of homicide. A defendant's prior felony record was the only variable that consistently increased the length of sentence received by defendants across all types of crime. These findings are discussed and interpreted using various theoretical arguments.     

Across Islands and Oceans: Re-imagining Colonial Violence in the Past and the Present

Law and Critique - The three texts addressed in this review essay challenge us to question and creatively re-imagine the representation of material spaces at the centre of the colonial project:...     

Predicting perceptions of crime seriousness among Native American Indians: a research note

Strongly held cultural values may lead to development of pro-social behaviors and subsequently values against committing crime among people belonging to targeted racial or ethnic groups. In this study, the author examines measures of Native American Indian cultural values and measures of collective efficacy to determine which set of values best predict perceptions of crime seriousness from within a population of Native American Indians. The author uses data collected from 312 Indians and 355 non-Indians during the Southern Ute Indian Community Safety Survey to determine which set of values are more closely aligned with perceptions of crime seriousness. This study found that those who held stronger Native American Indian cultural values also had stronger perceptions of crime seriousness. In the past, little scientific work has been done to associate specific cultural values to those held by cultural groups other than Euro-Americans. Findings from this work suggest that strengthening cultural values specific to a targeted group may be a promising method in the effort to reduce victimization among minority group members if said members view crime as serious and report it as such.     

一种尴尬的际遇——现代语境下乡村德育课程的境遇与可能路径

在现代性的浪潮中,传统意义上的乡村日益成为一个消逝了的概念。在现代人的生活中,乡土更是一种乡愁,是一个在现代性的孤岛安放灵魂的精神想象。农村德育在这样的现代性的遭遇中,也呈现出一种尴尬的际遇,必须在现代性背景下的农村语境中,重新定位课程所处的外部环境和时代境遇,重新建构课程的对象、资源、目的等基本问题。