Rule-making, rule-breaking? Law breaking by government in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

This article concerns a relatively novel issue: rule breaking and unlawful conduct by government bodies; to which degree does it occur, what is the nature of this misconduct, what are the underlying motives, and what are the consequences and possible solutions? Rule and law breaking is harmful for the credibility and integrity of a state and its law enforcement system. However, very little empirical research has been carried out into this issue, in comparison to research into state crime. There is little clarity about how public actors deal with criminal and administrative laws and rules in areas like environmental protection, safety regulations and working conditions. Do government bodies set a good example? Is their behaviour better or worse than the public and businesses? An analytical framework for research will be presented and also the results of an extensive research project in the Netherlands; the main themes of which have been benchmarked against data from the United Kingdom. The article will conclude with a summary of the main findings and a number of suggestions for further research and policy development.     

Perceived justice of ecological policy and proenvironmental commitments

A model was outlined (i) to explain readiness to proenvironmental commitments and decisions in everyday life by six categories of predictor variables, including justice appraisals of pollution control, basic rights, appraisals of pollution, of pollution causation, of the efficacy of pollution control measures, and of ecological responsibility, and (ii) to generate hypotheses on the relationships between the predictor variables. Model variables were assessed by a questionnaire study (N=518) referring to the problem of air pollution. Proenvironmental commitments and decisions could be well predicted by morally relevant appraisals, especially by justice appraisals (e.g., approving proenvirommental laws, taxes, and subsidies, rejecting the justice of the current environmental policy and of mere appeals), whereas predictors representing self-protective motivations remained insignificant. Justice appraisals are in line with the “causation principle of justice”: Those who caused the pollution are made responsible for its reduction and should pay the costs for the pollution control. Results demonstrate that justice appraisals are essential determinants of people's ecologically relevant emotions, cognitions, and engagements. Moreover, they reveal that the responsibility for pollution control is not left with state and economy but is also regarded as a matter that concerns the citizens.     

Injustice in harm and loss

The major topics of this overview article are as follow: (i) A distinction is made between justice and deservedness. Suffered harm and loss may be judged undeserved with respect to the victim's prior behavior, prior life, and personality without the implication that a victimizer is identified who acted unjustly. (ii) The perception of injustice is outlined as a subjective construction that has two major components: The subject selects and applies one of several rules or principles of justice applicable to the case and the subject is attributing responsibility to an agent or agency who is not the victim himself or herself. It is argued that in every case there are several options for the selection of a rule of justice and for the attribution of responsibility. (iii) Several so-called risk factors of critical life events as unforeseeability, uncontrollability of events, and nonnormativeness of events are reinterpreted as factors relevant in the subjective construction of injustice. (iv) Several coping strategies reported in the literature on critical life events such as palliative comparisons, self-blame, or search for meaning are interpreted as efforts to avoid feelings of injustice. (v) On the basis of empirical data a closer look is taken on self-blame which, psychologically, is a heterogeneous construct. The effects of self-blame depend on its function: When used strategically as a means to avoid feelings of uncontrollability of one's fate or to reduce feelings of hostility toward a victimizer, it may have adaptive functions. When imposed by the subjective view of the facts it may result in feelings of guilt, shame, or anger about an avoidable mistake, feelings that are not adaptive but rather add to the negative balance caused by the primary loss or harm. (vi) Concerning search for meaning, a distinction is proposed between (a) grasping the meaning in the sense of understanding motives, goals, and reasons of the victimizer and (b) discovering and construing some gains in the consequences of a victimization, gains which may be material, social, experiential, self- and personality-related, or developmental. While finding meaning of the second kind improves the loss-gain balance and tends to reduce the perceived injustice the first kind of grasping meaning may sometimes result in intensifying feelings of injustice, especially when motives, goals, and reasons of the victimizer are considered as selfish, malevolent, or uncaring. The article ends with a discussion of the ambivalence of a victim's status which establishes some entitlements for compensation and care but also bears the risk of secondary victimization by negative social reactions.     

Captains of erudition

Abstract

W. A. Nielsen's book The Big Foundations is an informed survey of the American foundation scene. Writing from a vantage point within the citadels of big-time philanthropy, Nielsen takes a chatty and discursive approach to a subject that in fact deserves much more. It seems that the insider's privilege of access can be a handicap as well as an asset, and that a subject of this importance needs critical scrutiny from independent researchers.     

Escalation and Mindfulness

Escalation of conflict, the use of progressively more contentious tactics, is not always intended. It may occur when parties become preoccupied with ideas or feelings that impair their ability to comprehend the situation and focus on the conflict issues. Action springing from such preoccupation can initiate a set of feedback loops that are self-amplifying. In this article, I suggest that by raising their present moment awareness through formal meditation and informal day-to-day mindfulness practice, parties may reduce preoccupation and thereby amplification. Drawing on Friedrich Glasl's stages of escalation and Magorah Maruyama's work on change-amplifying feedback loops, this article examines how mindfulness might contribute to a greater awareness of psychological and systemic factors that predispose disputants to escalation of their conflict.     

Reflections on a coy field: Methodology,criticism and careerism

This essay works on the assumption that while scholars are historicizing (unevenly) and giving academic standing to the study of queer materials, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the status of these same disciplines is in question, at least in the North American university. The first section examines problematic positionings of the ‘critical object’ for queer study and theorizing. The second profiles that critique against two influential commentaries on the ‘transnational university’ and the place of the humanities, Bill Readings's melancholic assessment of ‘the university in ruins’ and John Guillory's pragmatic conclusion that curricula in the humanities generate ‘cultural capital’.     

Delay of clinical manifestation and medical malpractice in a serious vascular complication of proximal locked tibial nailing

We are reporting on a case of complex lesion of the popliteal neurovascular bundle in a young woman, resulting from an operation for reduction and synthesis of a closed spiroid fracture of the mid-distal third of the left tibia by means of a Grosse-Kempf nail, with significant delay of clinical manifestation. Determining whether this is an "unavoidable complication" or "medical malpractice" is the target of the forensic investigation. In this case, the investigation leads to the conclusion that medical malpractice was the only explanation of the damage.     

Methodological issues in community surveys of suicide ideators and attempters

There have been quite a number of community studies in recent years, with surveys being conducted among the general population, in schools, and among the elderly. While all of these studies have greatly contributed to our understanding of suicidal behavior, because of different approaches toward methodology and definitions, they also have some limitations. These limitations spring mainly from the fact that definitions of suicidal ideation and behavior vary widely across studies, which makes comparisons between studies unreliable. The different utilization of methodology is another problem that can impact the comparability of the community studies.