Implementation in International Business Self‐regulation: The Importance of Sequences and their Linkages

Self‐regulation by business is increasingly common internationally, but the effective implementation of international rules often continues to be seen as something that only states can carry out. We argue that more exclusively private forms of effective implementation can be constructed in self‐regulation. Drawing on research in private international law, public policy implementation and self‐regulation, we identify four distinct implementation sequences: monitoring, compliance, adjudication, and sanctioning. These sequences are sometimes constituted in response to deliberate integrated plans, but also come together in a decentralized manner. Many international business actors devise ways to carry out the sequences in order to implement rules that are important for them, reflecting a functional logic of implementation that is creative and pragmatic, and together constitute an important stage in the policy process of self‐regulation.     

The German Facebook case: the law and economics of the relationship between competition and data protection law

European Journal of Law and Economics - Can competition law consider effects on privacy, or should privacy concerns of data-collecting behaviour only be dealt with by data protection law? In this...     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gunnar Folke Schuppert:</Emphasis> Staatswissenschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Politics of History and the “War of Monuments” in Estonia

Early commentators on the newly independent Belarusian state of the 1990s indicated that there was something lacking in Belarusian identity. The people did not seem to respond powerfully to the new symbols of the state, use of the national language intermingled with Russian, and economic concerns appeared to trump popular concerns with promoting Belarusian language or culture. Other former Soviet states were embracing ethnic national ideals, and as such, many assumed that Belarus should follow a similar path. However, as an examination of the history of the Belarusian territory demonstrates, a national ideal based on ethnicity was problematic in Belarusian society, and as such, the ethnic notions of Belarusian identity forwarded by some Belarusian elites failed to appeal to the masses. Instead, Belarus seems better suited to a more inclusive civic identity than an exclusive ethnic one. This research examines the nature of contemporary Belarusian identity, with particular attention to the civic versus ethnic aspects of that identity. We argue that although Belarusian identity is obviously in flux and subject to heavy debate, it is currently demonstrating more civic aspects than ethnic ones. This finding is based on original survey data obtained in Belarus in 2009 and 2010.     

Performance of technology transfer offices in Germany

The aim of this study is to empirically analyze the performance of technology transfer offices (TTO) in Germany. Although being one of the largest and innovative economies in the world, there is only scarce evidence about the role and performance of TTO in university–industry technology transfer. While policy makers and university managers are often quite optimistic about the impact of TTO in fostering technology transfer into the region, consulting firms and research institutes report such institutions in Germany as superfluous and counterproductive. Using the number of invention disclosures as a performance measure, we analyze how variance in performance can be explained by different organizational structures and variables of TTO. Controlling for regional endowment and university specific effects, our results reveal that TTO performance is mainly a function of the kind of labor division within the TTO and the research intensity of the university. Knowing the drivers of TTO performance may help policy makers and university managers to reflect their strategies, mitigate weak points and thus foster performance.     

Mansfield's Missing Link: The Impact of Knowledge Spillovers on Firm Growth

The purpose of this paper is to provide a link between two of the seminal contributions of Edwin Mansfield. The first focuses on the determinants of firm growth and the second is concerned with university-based knowledge spillovers. By linking both firm-specific characteristics as well as access to knowledge spillovers from universities, the empirical evidence found in this paper suggests that knowledge spillovers as well as firm-specific characteristics influence firm growth.     

Self-Regulation as Policy Process: The Multiple and Criss-Crossing Stages of Private Rule-Making

While there are many studies of self-regulation, they have not yet systematically analyzed the very process by which rules are developed and implemented. This article treats self-regulation as a process with sufficient autonomy and functional coherence to display identifiable stages, each of which deserves independent attention in turn. It draws from the literature on the stages of public policy processes and uses this as a template to identify and analyze the unique properties of private rule-making, while acknowledging the criticisms that have been made of excessive determinism and simplicity in some applications of the general idea of stages. The article shows that our understanding of self-regulation is significantly advanced by examining it as a process with stages but it emphasizes that the different stages of the self-regulatory policy process (agenda-setting, problem identification, decision, implementation and evaluation) are criss-crossed in numerous and interesting ways. It also shows that private rule-making often seeks to solve societal problems in domestic and international settings and is an important alternative to public regulation but self-regulation is rarely completely de-coupled from public authority. Instead, public authority is activated to solidify self-regulatory arrangements across the different stages of the policy process.     

Power in Public Implementation: A Complex, but Important Part of Power Studies

Based on data disclosing differential treatment of regulated companies, this article shows that it is important to look at the implementation phase as well as the political decision-making phase when one talks about distribution of power in Western democracies. Doing so gives a more nuanced picture of the distribution of power. However, explaining differential treatment throughout the implementation phase with variation in the possession of different power resources gives a more or less kaleidoscopic picture and calls for a complex theory of power. Local economic strength, networks, knowledge and organizational similarity do lead to more lenient regulatory inspection, but the effect depends on whether the company is public or private. Therefore, to have power and influence, one must possess the right resources, understand how to use them and be able to handle the fact that people might expect something different from you than they expect from others – not because of what you do, but because of who you are.     

新地缘政治时代下的跨大西洋关系

柏林墙的倒塌和"9·11"恐怖袭击事件使全球地缘政治环境发生了重大变化,也改变了德美和欧美关系.本文认为:面对这一变化,如果仍固守冷战时期形成的行为方式和理念,已不利于德、欧、美跨大西洋关系的发展.德国、欧洲和美国应通过跨大西洋政策和跨大西洋机构的改革,构建一种新的跨大西洋关系.