'RATIONAL'SOCIAL REGULATION AND COMPLIANCE COST ASSESSMENT

Since 1985 the UK government has promoted the use of compliance cost assessment (CCA) in order to quantify the impact on business of proposed new regulations. The strategy has arisen in response to a perception that there has been a tendency to overregulate, and it currently forms part of a wider deregulation initiative. The paper reviews this development, contrasting it with the use of regulatory impact assessment in the US and examining the extent to which it encourages'rational'social regulation. The authors conclude that, while the process of regulation may have become more informed as a result of the production of cca s, the exercise is narrowly focused. As a consequence, its role in improving the rationality of the legislative process is likely to be limited.     

TANGLED WEBS? MANAGING LOCAL MIXED ECONOMIES OF CARE

This article addresses two main issues about the emergent forms of social care provision in the development of a more mixed economy of welfare in Britain in the 1990s. The first concerns patterns of inter-organizational relationship within local mixed economies of care, paying particular attention to the inter-section of competitive and collaborative models of such relationships. The second concerns the emergence of a'managerial mode of co-ordination'as the dominant force in ordering intra- and inter-organizational relationships in such mixed economies. The article draws on research conducted in two such local mixed economies of care and addresses some of the theoretical problems involved in trying to analyse these new patterns of relationship.     

THE INFLUENCE OF BLAME AND BELIEVABILITY FACTORS ON THE PROCESSING OF SIMPLE VERSUS AGGRAVATED RAPE CASES*

In this study we test two hypotheses concerning the processing of simple and aggravated rape cases. First, we test the hypothesis that aggravated rape cases are taken more seriously than simple rape cases by decision makers in the criminal justice system and, thus, aggravated cases will result in more serious outcomes. Second, we test the hypothesis that the influence of factors relating to the blame and believability of a victim on case processing is greater in simple than in aggravated rape cases. Our results indicate that the characteristics and outcomes of aggravated and simple rape cases are surprisingly similar, and that there is little evidence of an interaction between type of case and victim characteristics.