Securing the Homelands: Transatlantic Co-operation after Bush

Since 9/11, internal security co-operation has grown into a major feature of transatlantic relations. This article seeks to appraise both the achievements of the Bush administration in this field and the prospects for President Obama's period of office. Homeland security has been a new and difficult area of co-operation to foster, yet both sides of the Atlantic have come to recognise their shared interests in working together. The article cautions those European policy-makers who are hoping for a major change in homeland security co-operation under the new president. It is likely that the policies of the new administration will be characterised more by continuity than by change.     

Development of Communitarian Regulation in the Chemical Industry

This study explores the development of communitarian regulation in the American chemical industry by focusing on the history and challenges facing Responsible Care, the leading example of regulation by an industry association on the environmental scene today.     

Vindictive but vulnerable: Paradoxical representations of women as demonstrated in internet discourse surrounding an anti-rape technology

Much media interest surrounded a campaign to raise funds to distribute 30,000 Rape-aXe condoms to women during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The barbed device is worn inside the vagina and attaches to a penis upon penetration. This paper presents an analysis of popular attitudes towards women and rape as identified from comments made upon online news websites and popular blogs in response to this technology. Two over-arching representations emerged; first, that the Rape-aXe would be employed as a weapon for vengeance and deceit, and second, that it was a means of helping women negotiate risk. We argue that such paradoxical representations of women as simultaneously vindictive and vulnerable make problematic the utility of such an anti-rape device. We suggest that the cultural entrenchment of stereotypical and negative attitudes towards women needs to be recognized and counter-acted upon before rape intervention measures, like the Rape-aXe, can have any positive effect.     

Who owns our data?

The layman's answer to the question posted in the title to this paper lies in the question itself. The common understanding of people when they talk about information about themselves is that it is indeed “theirs”. Until relatively recently, the law has been content to remain agnostic on the subject. The Common Law in general and English Courts in particular have traditionally avoided philosophical debates about the nature of things, preferring to develop concepts and principles from the results of cases decided on specific facts and circumstances. This approach has been acceptable while we have been winding our way gently up the foothills of the Information Age, but now that we see the towering peak of Big Data standing before us, covered by the ubiquitous Cloud, it is necessary to make a critical examination of some of the basic assumptions which we have hitherto carried with us about the way in which the law should treat rights over personal information. This paper will argue that the correct approach which the law should adopt is a proprietary one. That is to say that the protection of the economic value inherent in personal information should be grounded in property rights acknowledged by the law.     

One Bad Apple May Not Spoil the Whole Bunch: Best Friends and Adolescent Delinquency

This study compared the association of adolescent delinquency with that of their best friend and remaining social network. Findings are reported from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a multi-wave nationally representative panel study of adolescents who were in grades 7–12 in 1994. Four delinquent outcomes were examined: Smoking, getting drunk, fighting, and a variety index of general delinquency. All analyses were replicated for three distinct criteria for identifying a “best friend.” We also examined several moderating factors and potential interrelationships between the best friend and remaining friendship group. Relative to the influence of the best friend, the influence of the remaining friendship group increased with group size, and with larger absolute disparities in delinquency levels between best and remaining friends. Our findings extend knowledge on the influence of best friends, and further underscore the importance of whether peer behaviors are measured directly (from the peers themselves) or indirectly (when focal respondents estimate the delinquent behavior of their peers).     

Economic change and political development in China: findings from a public opinion survey

More than 20 years of economic reforms and opening up to the outside world have produced meaningful social, economic and political transformations in China. Have there been corresponding changes in the political–cultural orientations1 ‘Orientations’ here and thereafter refer to a broad range of beliefs, values, and assumptions that people hold about social and political life. Such orientations may be cognitive, affective, or evaluative. They are general in the sense that they may structure more specific attitudes or opinions. *?Yanlai Wang is a research associate at the Euro–Asia Centre; Nicholas Rees is Jean Monnet Professor of European Institutions and External Relations; and Bernadette Andreosso‐O'Callaghan is Jean Monnet Professor of Economics and Director, Euro–Asia Centre, all at the University of Limerick, Ireland. We would like to thank the University of Limerick for funding the 2000 survey. We would also like to thank Professor Andrew J. Nathan and Professor Tianjian Shi for the use of their survey questionnaire, Gary O'Brien and the two anonymous referees for their comments on the paper. View all notes of the Chinese public? This article examines some changes in orientations, based on the preliminary findings of an opinion survey conducted in China in 2000. The 2000 survey used an adapted form of a questionnaire used in a survey conducted in 1990 by Nathan and Shi. The evidence of the 2000 survey data suggests that the political–cultural orientations of the Chinese public are becoming more liberal and pro‐democratic as China's economy continues to grow, possibly providing the basis for a transition to some form of popular democracy.