Campaign‐Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance

This article examines the recoupling mechanism of campaign‐style enforcement and its effects on environmental regulatory compliance. Drawing on the policy implementation literature and institutional theory, the authors develop a conceptual model of campaign‐style enforcement in which both resource mobilization and power redistribution are theorized to address decoupling problems in regulatory compliance. The two‐pathway recoupling mechanism is evidenced by an empirical investigation of the implementation of China's energy conservation and emission reduction policy as part of that country's 11th Five‐Year Plan. Findings suggest that campaign‐style enforcement can effectively improve regulatory compliance when it addresses the efficiency/legitimacy conflict by providing policy incentives and reorganizing a clear hierarchy of political authority. The article concludes with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of campaign‐style enforcement.     

Climate Change and the US Security Sector: the Securitization of Climate Change

This preliminary study traces how climate change came to be viewed as a security issue in the United States through a review of policy documents and reports prepared for and by the US security sector. The paper draws upon the ideas of constructivist schools of security studies to provide an analytical framework for understanding the meaning of the securitization process as it has occurred in the United States. It then refl ects upon the adequacy of those frameworks to interpret the securitization of climate change. In the US, new knowledge of the phenomenon of climate change was fi rst constructed in the research sector, in the fi elds of meteorology and atmospheric science. Environmental and Earth sciences then became a locus of research, and climate change fi rst entered security discourse as a topic of environmental protection. As the implications of climate change and its potential impact on water resources, food production, diseases, infrastructure, and human migration came to the attention of the security sector, this knowledge stimulated an internal discourse, where each new document functioned both as a new securitization statement and as a policy response to prior documents in a chain of discourse. Actors in this securitization process included not only “speakers” making a securitization claim (knowledge claim) and “audiences” that accept or reject a claim. Importantly, it also included actors who were instrumental in translating knowledge between research and security sectors. This brief consideration suggests that social science theories that center on practice are more robust than those that center on discourse for interpreting the securitization of climate change. Improved analytic frameworks need to better account for actors whose role is to transfer and translate knowledge from one sector to another.     

Victims,sex workers and perpetrators: gray areas in the trafficking of nigerian women

Some Nigerian women entrepreneurs of the Italian sex market were trafficked women in the past who made a career in the trafficking hierarchy and its organized crime groups. The female mobility towards the organizational side of the trafficking offense represents the most striking characteristic of the Nigerian trade industry: in fact, the trafficking victims are driven by their persecutors to take an active part in the trafficking offenses over time. This criminal modus operandi explains why several difficulties arise in defining sharp dividing lines between trafficking victims and trafficking perpetrators. Facing such a distinctive issue, this paper wants to highlight the multiple roles that women hold in the trafficking industry by focusing on: a) the gray areas in the Nigerian trade industry; b) the intermediate roles that individuals hold within the victim/offender model; c) the female vertical mobility in the trafficking hierarchy. Thanks to such an analysis, the author wants to overcome dominant binary approaches (mostly based on the victim/perpetrator dichotomy) in the analysis of Nigerian trade industry.     

Environmental management by law in China: The Guangzhou experience∗

Taking enviornmental management in Guangzhou as an example, this article explores the theory and practice of Communist China's idea of “environmental management by law.” Based on the Guangzhou experience, it argues that environmental management by law in China is mainly an administrative system of environmental management which takes law strictly as a tool for efficient and effective environmental protection. This system is operated on the principle of ‘rule by law’, and is the antithesis of the Maoist practice of “rule by person.” Contrary to its Western counterpart, China's environmental management system is built on a state‐centered conception of administrative law instead of a ‘right‐centered’ one which is the core of the ‘rule of law’ tradition.     

Cost and benefit of a new instruction for the cognitive interview: the open depth instruction

The quality and the quantity of information recalled by eyewitnesses during a criminal investigation is of crucial importance. To increase the volume of details recalled during an interview, the cognitive interview recommends using various retrieval strategies to enhance recall. We tested a new retrieval instruction, the open depth (OD) instruction. The efficacy of this new instruction was assessed with the number of unit of information and the accuracy rate. We also assessed the cost-and-benefit of this new instruction with measures of repetition. Students watched a video of a simulated robbery and participated later in face-to-face interviews. In Study 1 (N=60), the cognitive interview using the OD instruction increased recall compared to the interview using the change of perspective (CP) instruction, without affecting the accuracy rate. The redundancy rate was higher with the OD instruction than with the CP instruction. In Study 2 (N=40), the OD instruction generated more new information without affecting the accuracy rate than the interview using motivated recall (MR) instruction. The repeated information to new information ratio was lower with the OD instruction than with the MR instruction. The advantages of the OD instruction for investigative interviewing purposes are discussed.     

Anti-triad legislations in Hong Kong: issues, problems and development

One way to tackle triad societies is through effective legislation. The present article first describes and reviews the legislation dealing with triad activities in Hong Kong – The Societies Ordinance – and highlights the main issues and problems. Four issues are discussed, namely ambiguity in the definition of triad membership, doubtful neutrality of triad experts, outdated triad-related literature cited in the court, and the contradiction with human rights and freedom of expression. The article further examines the effect of the ordinance in suppressing triad activities and argues that the law is not very effective in penalizing senior triad members, thus justifying the need for a new legislation to contain the growth of triad activities and organized crime.     

From support to pressure: The dynamics of social and governmental influences on environmental law enforcement in Guangzhou City,China

This paper examines how changes in governmental and social influences affect environmental enforcement in Guangzhou city, China, between 2000 and 2006. The paper finds that a form of “decentered regulation” has developed. Regulatory enforcement is no longer the sole affair of the government and the regulatory bureaucracy, but has been increasingly influenced by societal forces. The transformation over time shows the promises and limits of decentered regulation in Guangzhou's dynamic authoritarian setting. Analyzing a set of longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews, the paper finds that by 2006, the rise of civil society and its increased support for protecting the environment had a double‐edged impact on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, by 2006, when government support for enforcement was low, societal forces developed an ability to counterbalance such lack of governmental support and positively influence enforcement. However, it also shows that when government support was high, a concurrent rise in societal support created a negative effect on enforcement. Thus too much societal support can become an enforcement burden.