WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH SEA OIL POLICY

New policies had to be developed as Britain emerged a major producer of North Sea gas in the 1960's and oil in the 1970s. In the first phase, from 1964 to 1972, policy was directed at establishing the legal framework, an offshore licensing regime and a fast build-up of production. Policies in the second phase, from 1972 onwards, ensured a high share of the profits for the Exchequer, regulated development more strictly, exercised some control of oil supplies, and encouraged the offshore supplies industry in Britain. The Labour Government set up the British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) in 1976 with a majority share in new licences and an interest in existing licences secured through the participation negotiations. The Conservative Government of 1979 maintained these policies, apart from reducing the role of, and planning to introduce private capital into, BNOC.     

A SENSE OF INJUSTICE?:

The literature on the impact of processing a defendant through the criminal justice system has long assumed that this experience created a “sense of injustice” for defendants which militated against rehabilitative efforts within correctional settings. The current research examined this assumption with data collected from a sample of inmates in a medium and a maximum security institution within a midwestern state. The findings serve to question the assumption of the development of a sense of injustice, as most inmates perceive themselves as having been treated fairly by the criminal justice system. It is also found that there is little relationship between attitudes toward the preprison criminal justice system and measures of prisonization. The results are discussed in reference to their relevance to the functional and importation models of prisonization.     

PLAYING THE TRANSPARENCY GAME: CONSULTATION AND POLICY-MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The recent unveiling of a package of measures designed to make the work of the European Commission more‘transparent’is part of a wider effort to make EU decision-making more open and accessible. Yet, the Commission's transparency package was designed above all to cope with its chronic management problems. These include rigid lines of division between different spheres of the Commission, the strong loyalties of policy-concerned Directorates-General (dg s) to their specific‘clientele’, unclear rules governing access to information, and intense rivalries between dg s and the private offices of individual Commissioners. This article dissects the transparency package and uses case study material to highlight ways in which the transparency initiative seeks to provide antidotes to the Commission's management problems. It offers an early assessment of the transparency package's impact and examines the prospects for reform of the Commission under Jacques Santer.