Market making via regulation: The role of the state in carbon markets

Proponents as well as critics of carbon trading underestimate the institutional and political underpinnings of evolving carbon markets. Based on institutionalist approaches, this paper argues that the strong embeddedness of carbon markets explains why certain characteristics (positive and negative) materialize. Focusing on the actors who initiate and who influence carbon markets, this article also shows that currently only states and intergovernmental agreements provide the necessary regulation for carbon markets to exist and to work. Today, neither market actors nor NGOs nor public private partnerships have the political power to set up, regulate or capture evolving market structures. Thus, whether or not market‐based instruments bring about the desired results depends on good public regulation, which is – at least up to now – represented by the state. Four instances of the commodification of carbon serve as illustrations: the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS); the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); the voluntary market; and new sectoral approaches, particularly Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).     

Crisis communication during the red sludge spill disaster in Hungary—a media content analysis‐based investigation

The article analyses the media coverage of red sludge spill, one of Hungary's largest crises. The study focuses on the analysis of stakeholder communication through their media representation, including the patterns, frames and messaging of the key stakeholder groups. It is found that stakeholder groups create their own framing and messaging and therefore give impetus to the creation of parallel realities. The scope of the analysis has allowed for the analysis of longitudinal changes and identification of trends in the behaviour of the media. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Meat in the Sandwich: Welfare Labelling and the Governance of Meat‐chicken Production in Australia

This article critically examines the degree to which higher‐animal welfare label claims change animal welfare regulation and governance within intense meat‐chicken ('broiler') production in Australia. It argues that ethical labelling claims on food and other products can be seen as a ‘governance space’ in which various government, industry and civil society actors compete and collaborate for regulatory impact. It concludes that ethical labelling can act as a pathway for re‐embedding social concerns in the market, but only when it prompts changes that become enshrined in standard practice and possibly the law itself. Moreover, the changes wrought by ethical labelling are small and incremental. Nevertheless, labelling may create ongoing productive tension and ‘overflow’ that challenges the market to listen to and accommodate actors (including animals) on the margins to create ongoing incremental changes.     

Reformulation,fortification and functionalization: Big Food corporations’ nutritional engineering and marketing strategies

In response to health concerns arising from the consumption of highly processed foods, the world's largest food and beverage manufacturing corporations (i.e. ‘Big Food’) have responded by modifying their existing products and introducing new products with ‘improved’ nutrient profiles. Three distinct strategies used by food corporations to nutritionally engineer and market their products will be identified: the reformulation of foods to reduce levels of harmful food components, the micronutrient fortification of products to address micronutrient deficiencies, and the functionalization of products that claim to provide optimal nutrition and health benefits. These nutritional strategies gain scientific legitimacy by drawing upon the dominant nutritional ideology of ‘nutritionism’, which is characterized by a reductive focus on nutrients as a way of understanding a food's effects on dietary health. Food and beverage corporations promote these nutritional strategies as an important part of their corporate social responsibility agendas, and as evidence that they are addressing the health issues associated with both over-nutrition and under-nutrition. However, these corporations are also using these nutritional strategies to legitimize and grow the markets for their products in the global North and South.     

Can the hidden hand of the market be an effective and legitimate regulator? The case of animal welfare under a labeling for consumer choice policy approach

In Australia, labeling for consumer choice, rather than higher government regulation, has become an important strand of the policy approach to addressing food animal welfare. This paper illustrates the usefulness of “regulatory network analysis” to uncover the potentials and limitations of market‐based governance to address contentious yet significant issues like animal welfare. We analyzed the content of newspaper articles from major Australian newspapers and official policy documents between 1990 and 2014 to show how the regulatory network influenced the framing of the regulatory problem, and the capacity and legitimacy of different regulatory actors at three “flashpoints” of decisionmaking about layer hen welfare in egg production. We suggest that the government policy of offering consumers the choice to buy cage free in the market allowed large‐scale industry to continue the egg laying business as usual with incremental innovation and adjustment. These incremental improvements only apply to the 20 percent or so of hens producing “free‐range” eggs. We conclude with a discussion of when and how labeling for consumer choice might create markets and public discourses that make possible more effective and legitimate regulation of issues such as layer hen welfare.     

Max Weber in the tropics: How global climate politics facilitates the bureaucratization of forestry in Indonesia

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the most advanced global climate governance arrangements and we show that it contributes to the buildup of autonomous capacities and reliable procedures in areas of rather limited statehood. These partially unintended effects can be conceptualized as an increasing rational–legal bureaucratization, which has been initiated through both external and domestic actors as we illuminate in the case of Indonesia's forestry sector in the period from 2007 until 2017. Our finding is that a bureaucratization of a new kind is increasingly strengthened in Indonesia's forest despite enduring patterns of neopatrimonialism, emerging signs of new public management approaches, and the strengthening of functional equivalents such as community-based forest management. We thus claim that Max Weber's perspective on the prospects and problems of rational–legal bureaucratization is still valuable, even when travelling to the tropics.     

The potential of venous air embolism ascending retrograde to the brain

A bench study was performed to investigate the potential of air bubbles entering a central vein via a central venous catheter to ascend retrograde to the brain. The results support the hypothesis that air bubbles may rise retrograde against the venous blood flow, depending on bubble size, central vein diameter and cardiac output. A review of radiological findings in published case reports indicates that the occurrence of retrograde cerebral air embolism is underestimated.