PUBLIC ACCIDENT INQUIRIES: THE CASE OF THE RAILWAY INSPECTORATE

For over a century the public investigation of railway accidents has been an important part of the Railway Inspectorate's regulatory activity. This article examines the circumstances and conduct of these inquiries, paying particular attention to their purpose and how this is influenced by wider social and political concerns. It also traces the Inspectorate's efforts to maintain the inquisitorial rather than accusatorial style of these inquiries and discusses their possible demise as a result of a growing tendency towards a legalistic approach to accident investigation.     

What's in a Name? The Nature of the Individual in Refugee Studies

The category of refugee has been problematic for both practitionersand social scientists because it is difficult to define an objectivecategory that satisfactorily brings the real world, ethics,and theory into harmony. In recent years many critiques havebeen made of the assumptions built into the legal refugee frameworkand efforts have been made to refine the concept from multipledisciplinary perspectives. This paper examines several underlyingassumptions of these discussions, including the category offorced migration, through a discussion of the example of Salvadoransin the United States in the 1980s. One assumption has been notedbut insufficiently theorized: the centrality of the individual.The person assumed by both the refugee and human rights regimesof the United Nations is a culturally-specific construct definingthe relationship between the individual and society in a waythat precludes an adequate understanding of refugees.     

The Contexts of Regulation: The Impact Upon Health and Safety Inspectorates in Britain

It is argued that the systematic study of regulation should include an analysis of the structural contexts within which agencies with enforcement authority are embedded. At least four contexts affect indirectly and directly the process of regulation: the political, the economic, the scholarly and the media. The period of the mid- 'eighties in Britain is characterized and trends in that period are described. The decline in resources, a political and scholarly environment of "de-regulation" and increased media interests in aspects of regulation in general, it is argued, shape regulation in Great Britain. The authors use records, field and interview data from an on-going research program on health and safety regulation in England and the structure and operations of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) at the Centre for Socio-legal Studies, Oxford, to a) examine structural changes in the organization(s) of which the HSE is constituted b) identify stresses and conflicts within the HSE c) record resultant patterns of morale and performance and d) describe efforts at achieving rationalization and formalization. It is concluded that in the context of declining resources and pressures to appear efficient, potentially divisive stresses and conflicts in regulatory bodies, if the HSE is at all representative, will continue and will underlie changes and developments that can be expected to emerge.     

Is Enforced Self-regulation a Form of Risk Taking?: The Case of Railway Health and Safety

Enforced self-regulation exemplifies a number of regulatory trends, in particular the co-existence of public and private forms of regulation, state moves to harness other sources of regulation and the growing attempt of the state to penetrate deep into corporate life. This paper explores the limits of enforced self-regulation through discussion of corporate responses to occupational health and safety regulation in Britain. It takes the example of the railway industry where a particularly extreme version of enforced-self regulation eventually led to tragic consequences.