Codes in context: How states,markets, and civil society shape adherence to global labor standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large‐scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.     

Reviews

Ways of Seeing Red

Mary Joannou, ’Ladies, Please Don't Smash These Windows’: Women's Writing, Feminist Consciousness and Social Change 1918–38, Oxford: Berg, 1995, £14.95.

Gen Doy, Seeing and Consciousness: Studies in Women, Class and Representation, Oxford: Berg, 1995, £14.95.

A Fragile Space

Gill Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant‐Garde: Modernism and ‘Feminine’ Art, 1900 to the late 1920s, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, £45, £16.99 (pbk.).

Poetic Dissent

William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft (eds.), The Poems of Anna Letetia Barbauld, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994.

Fictional and Actual Nobodies

Catherine Gallagher, Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670–1820, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, £25.

Edward Copeland, Women Writing about Money: Women's Fiction in England 1790–1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, £35.     

The need for a regulatory response to diagnosis fraud in mesothelioma cases

Australian courts and tribunals allow claimants with pleural plaques to "piggy back" compensation claims for mental health problems. This article contends that Australia is open to an era of diagnosis fraud by psychologists similar to that which has been experienced in the United States with radiologists. The courts will continue to reflect Australia's "compensation culture" unless legislation squarely addresses the compensability of pleural plaques and clarifies when, if at all, the courts should allow mental health claims for asymptomatic "marker" conditions such as pleural plaques.     

The sensitivity and specificity of the RSID™-saliva kit for the detection of human salivary amylase in the Forensic Science Laboratory,Dublin, Ireland

We demonstrate here that the RSID?-saliva test can be used as a test for human salivary α-amylase on samples routinely examined in forensic casework. We show that the RSID?-saliva test detects salivary α-amylase at lower concentrations than the Phadebas^® Quantitative test, that the RSID?-saliva test does not cross-react with forensically important human fluids and that the RSID?-saliva test can be successfully integrated into the whole swab semen extraction method.     

Perceptions of gangs among prosecutors in an emerging gang city

Gangs were a target of widespread political and social attention during the 1990s, and despite a short-lived lull in policy focus, gangs are recently receiving increased attention from policymakers. In spite of political concern about gangs, very little research had examined perceptions of gangs. By conducting face-to-face interviews with thirty of thirty-five county prosecutors, this study was among the first to examine prosecutors' perspectives of gangs in Gainesville, Florida, an area that could be considered an “emerging” gang city. Themes from the interviews were extracted and included prosecutorial perceptions of the: (1) definition and prevalence of gangs in Gainesville, Florida; (2) personal and social characteristics of gang members; (3) reasons people join gangs; and (4) best approaches to stop or eliminate gangs. The ways in which prosecutors' perspectives mirror prior research on gangs is highlighted.     

Young Children’s Competency to Take the Oath: Effects of Task,Maltreatment, and Age

This study examined maltreated and non-maltreated children’s (N = 183) emerging understanding of “truth” and “lie,” terms about which they are quizzed to qualify as competent to testify. Four- to six-year-old children were asked to accept or reject true and false (T/F) statements, label T/F statements as the “truth” or “a lie,” label T/F statements as “good” or “bad,” and label “truth” and “lie” as “good” or “bad.” The youngest children were at ceiling in accepting/rejecting T/F statements. The labeling tasks revealed improvement with age and children performed similarly across the tasks. Most children were better able to evaluate “truth” than “lie.” Maltreated children exhibited somewhat different response patterns, suggesting greater sensitivity to the immorality of lying.