Reason‐Giving in Administrative Law: Where are We and Why have the Courts not Embraced the ‘General Common Law Duty to Give Reasons’?

This article has two aims. Firstly, it explores a body of modern challenges to administrative reason‐giving, decided in the five‐year period 2014–2018. Three main themes are drawn out: outright failures to give reasons now seem to be a rare occurrence; a number of considerations help to ensure that at least an outline of reasons is usually offered by decision‐makers; common law fairness plays a limited role in testing the adequacy of reasons. Secondly, it addresses the question of why the courts have not embraced a ‘general common law duty to give reasons.’ Four factors are discussed: doubts that introducing a general duty would add something of substance to the law; difficulties inherent in developing a general formulation of the reasons required; weaknesses in the ‘hortatory’ case for a general duty and weaker commitment on the part of judges than academics to generality as a central feature of administrative law doctrine.     

Conditions making for success and failure of denial and deception: Nonstate and illicit actors

Conclusion Deception is integral to illicit organizations. Cover is a strategic necessity that, at a great cost in efficiency, allows illicit organizations the opportunity to achieve their objectives. The revolutionary organization is, in fact, an alternative reality that seeks to be invisible except when it needs to propagate a version of the truth and to bolster the impact of its armed operations. In the case of the truth, remarkably little deception is deployed. The revolutionaries consider their faith to be inviolate and convincing, without need of apology or equivocation. Reality is often visible. Islamic Jihad preached the truth, the IRA hid it for two years and the Sicilian Mafia makes the hidden truth yield public respect. In operational matters, much that takes place underground is focused on maintenance, supply and distribution, command and control, and communication that needs to be hidden but need not otherwise be duplicitous. Secrecy apart, most operations focus on obvious targets. Strategic deception is rare.     

Young Adult Offending: Intersectionality of Gender and Race

It is an accepted criminological fact that gender and race affect involvement in crime. What has been examined less frequently is the effect of intersectionality of gender and race across the early life course. This research uses Delinquency in a Birth Cohort II: Philadelphia, 1958 to examine the longer term effects on crime of intersectionality during the adolescent and young adult portions of the life course. Findings indicate that intersectionality of gender and race is fundamental for young adults. It is argued that multiracial feminism can best explain why intersectionality must be taken into consideration when looking at offending across the early life course.     

The Asian Economic Crisis and Capitalist Restructuring: Two Approaches

ABSTRACT

The global capitalist system is at a particular historical juncture with a dilution of the capitalist core away from Western (and Japanese) centers of accumulation to China and India, among other countries. What is the nature of capitalism in these countries? Are China and India going along the same development trajectories that advanced capitalist countries followed earlier? Is their accumulation model the same as that of the OECD economies or is accumulation different under late capitalism? The author argues that capitalism in India and China is “compressed,” meaning that the phases of capitalism do not follow one another in sequential order. Instead, some phases, such as primitive accumulation, may be delayed or be experienced at the same time as advanced accumulation under the corporate sector, thereby producing a mode of development that does not generate widespread employment. The author contends that capitalism in India and China is compressed and he demonstrates empirically that primitive accumulation, petty commodity producing sectors, and mature capitalism in late-industrializing countries reinforce each other, creating precarious forms of employment in the process.     

Alternative theories of sharecropping: Some tests using evidence from northeast India

The recent debate concerning the efficiency of sharecropping contracts yields a number of testable hypotheses, four of which can be examined in the light of some primary data for a group of sharecroppers in northeast Bihar. The salient feature of the empirical analysis is the comparison of the resource allocation patterns on owned and rented land cultivated by the same farmer, which provides a more powerful test of inefficiency than those advocated previously. Broadly speaking, the findings support the ‘Marshallian’ position that such contracts do involve inefficiency—in the Bihar context, at least.     

The governance of public affairs

• Government and governance are frequently treated as synonyms. Governing is what governments do in formulating and implementing policies. A burgeoning political science literature uses the term governance in a different way to describe the growing tendency of governments to govern in partnership with a range of non‐state actors and, as a purported consequence, the marginalization of governments within policy‐making processes. Here, some writers go so far as to talk about ‘governance without government’. In a forthcoming book, Rethinking Governance: Bringing the State Back In, Stephen Bell and I argue that this dominant ‘society‐centred’ perspective on governance is flawed. In our view whilst governments are indeed now more likely to forge relationships with a larger range of non‐state actors, they nevertheless remain the central players in governance arrangements. Indeed we argue that governments have been strengthened through the relationships they have developed. This article reviews some of the extant literature on governance and specifies the basic terms of our ‘state‐centric relational’ approach.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.