British Labour Relations in the 1980s: Learning to Live with the Law

Labour Law and Industrial Relations: Building on Kahn-Freund. Edited by Wedderburn, Lewis and Clark Kahn-Freund's Labour and the Law. 3rd edition by Davies and Freedland. Labour Law: Text and Materials. 2nd edition. By Davies and Freedland.     

Voluntary Greenhouse Gas Reporting—Not an Option for Much Longer

Based on the worldwide movement toward climate change, voluntary reporting of greenhouse gases is something every business—large and small—should consider doing now. Reporting makes sound business sense and will become mandatory in the US within the next few years. It provides a competitive advantage, baseline protection, input to new regulations, and preparation for emissions trading.

This article suggests that corporate officers have a fiduciary duty to voluntarily report. Not reporting could cost their companies money, unnecessary time catching up, reputation damage, and potential lawsuits from shareholders who believe that the corporate officers knew or should have known to investigate the issue and react.     

Conceptual Issues in Inter-Agency Collaboration

Inter-agency collaboration – or partnership as it now commonly termed – is central to New Labour's agenda, but the general support for a partnership approach conceals disputes about definitions and approaches. This article begins by examining the shift to more complex and ambitious partnerships in health, social care and regeneration, which require new modes of governance. The three main modes – market, hierarchy and network – are briefly described and contrasted, and located within the recent history of public service development. It is argued that they are best seen as overlain and co-existing, resulting in a hybrid mode of governance which is characterised by tension and contradiction. The article goes on to discuss the issues this raises for real partnerships in trying to understand the collaborative imperative and the barriers to its effective achievement. Although the network mode has its attractions, there are complex issues of membership, management and culture which need to be addressed. It is concluded that hierarchy, markets and networks will co-exist better where each acknowledges its own limits and the strengths of others.     

Nationalism and its discontents

The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate by Jürgen Habermas; edited and translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen; introduced by Richard Wolin. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1989; Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, .1994, Pp.270. £39.50 (hardback); £13.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 7456 067 92 and 1411 6     

Designing and Using Simulations in the International Relations Classroom

The value of simulations in the classroom is well established, and there are numerous publications that feature specific role-play exercises that can readily be introduced into the classroom. Frequently, however, instructors would like to design their own simulations to fit their specific learning objectives for a class, but don’t know where to start. This article lays out a series of structural and design questions for instructors to consider in order to craft their own simulations. We recognize that there is no singularly “best” way to design simulations, so this article focuses on the key components of simulations and explores different possibilities for each of these components depending on the desired goals of the instructor. We begin with the basics of class size, topic selection, learning objectives, length, and timing. Next, we discuss the design parameters—including the nature of student interaction, desired output, background information, role-specific instructions, and a timeline for the phases of the simulation. We move on to considerations about the actual running of the simulation, and wrap up with reflections on debriefing, grading, and assessment. By stepping through the design questions that are summarized in the Appendix, any instructor, experienced or new to role-playing, can develop a custom simulation to help meet the learning objectives for their courses.     

When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context‐Bound Relationship

We analyze the main rationale for public administrations and political institutions for supplying transparency, namely, that it generates legitimacy for these institutions. First, we discuss different theories of decision making from which plausible causal mechanisms that may drive a link between transparency and legitimacy may be derived. We find that the common notion of a straightforward positive correlation is naïve and that transparency reforms are rather unpredictable phenomena. Second, we test the effect of transparency on procedure acceptance using vignette experiments of representative decision making in schools. We find that transparency can indeed generate legitimacy. Interestingly, however, the form need not be “fishbowl transparency,” with full openness of the decision‐making process. Decision makers may improve their legitimacy simply by justifying carefully afterward the decisions taken behind closed doors. Only when behavior close to a deliberative democratic ideal was displayed did openness of the process generate more legitimacy than closed‐door decision making with postdecisional justifications.