The iteration deficit in responsive regulation: Are regulatory ambassadors an answer?

One reason that regulation is difficult is that repeated encounters between regulator and regulatee are rare. We suggest diplomacy as a model for reconfiguring regulatory institutions in response. Ambassadors for Regulatory Affairs who would be agents for all state regulatory agencies could be based in most large firms and small and medium enterprises that pose unusual regulatory risks. In rural towns, police would be trained as regulatory ambassadors. Just as a US Secretary of State can launch a “diplomatic surge” in Myanmar from 2009, so regulatory surges are possible in market sectors of high risk or high opportunity. We propose strategies of indirect reciprocity as a way in which reciprocity that is only episodic in these strategic ways can promote more general responsiveness. Indirect reciprocity is reciprocity that we do not personally experience, but learn from the experience of a culture. This means that so long as we sustain regulation as a relational as opposed to a purely technocratic process, indirect reciprocity might civilize regulatory compliance in an historical process informed by the theories of Elias and Putnam.     

Covenant of Mayors: Reasons for Being an Environmentally and Energy Friendly Municipality

The Covenant of Mayors (CM) is the mainstream European movement involving local authorities who voluntarily commit to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources within their territories with the aim of reducing CO₂ emissions and meet the European Union objectives by 2020. One country that has a greater number of signatories of this agreement is Spain. This article analyzes which factors influence the decision of Spanish local authorities to join the ever‐growing movement. An empirical model is formulated to describe the behavior of Spanish local governments, this being a binary choice model which is a function of various political, economic, and technical factors. Among the prominent factors that influence this decision are population, availability of renewable energy, fiscal and environmental stress, citizens’ political preference, the contagion effect of neighboring municipalities, the existence of covenant coordinators, and finally, economic motivations.     

A RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENT TESTING INMATE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS*

Research Summary: In California, incarceration in the state prison system is in part organized by security level. The higher the security level, the more restrictive the setting. Upon arrival at a reception center, new inmates are scored within a classification system that is used to determine the appropriate level of security. In this paper, we report on the development and testing of a new inmate classification scoring system. Over 20,000 inmates took part in a randomized experiment in which half were assigned to their housing using the existing scoring system and half were assigned to their housing using the new scoring system. There were two key outcomes: (1) potential mismatches between the number of inmates assigned to different security levels and the available beds and (2) reports of inmate misconduct. Policy Implications: We conclude there to be some potential crowding problems, but that the new scoring system is much better than the old scoring system in sorting inmates by the likelihood of misconduct. We also conclude that some predictors popular in the past are no longer effective (e.g., marital status), while some new predictors are extremely powerful (e.g., gang activity), and that one can build in a number of mandatory housing placements (e.g., for sex offenders) and not degrade the overall effectiveness of the new classification system. Finally, the new classification system is shown to be more user‐friendly than the existing classification system and well received by the staff responsible for implementing it.     

‘TO BE,BUT NOT TO BE SEEN’: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVANTS

International civil servants (ICS) are largely excluded from the analysis of International Organizations (IOs) because states are assumed to be the determining force in shaping their behaviour. Even principal‐agent and constructivist analyses often treat an IO’s staff as a unit and are concerned primarily with states’ capacities to control IOs. Examining the opportunities of ICS, rather than the choices of states, provides a better means of understanding the capacities of ICS to contribute to the operation of IOs, and especially when they participate in multilateral negotiations. We suggest that structure, competence, legitimacy and culture provide a framework for analysing ICS variable capacity. We use the Secretariat of the WTO, known as a ‘member‐driven organization’, to illustrate how ICS can play a critical role in achieving the IO’s objectives. A word on our title. It comes from Esse, non videri in the original, as quoted by a director at the WTO in an interview in April 2003.