Obligation-based bribes in Vietnam: A view from the norm of reciprocity

Crime, Law and Social Change - Studies of bribery have been heavily influenced by the cost/benefit calculation, leaving social relationship of the involved parties under-explored. We propose the...     

Lessons learnt from two decades of international environmental agreements: law

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - As Patricia Birnie cautiously and prophetically put it in the inaugural issue of this journal (INEA 1, January 2001, p. 74),...     

Unravelling the ‘devolution paradox’: Citizen preferences for self-rule and for shared rule

Recent survey research has revealed a ‘devolution paradox’: some citizens who favour stronger regional governments inconsistently desire policy uniformity across regions and state-wide intervention in policy provision. It is argued and empirically shown that preferences for regional authority can be broken down into preferences for self-rule – that is, for autonomy for the region – and for shared rule – that is, for collaboration between regional and national governments. Drawing upon the International Constitutional Values Survey, which includes 4,930 respondents from 142 regions in eight countries, it is also shown that preferences for self-rule and shared rule have different impacts. Preferences for self-rule translate into a preference for regional reform that strengthens regional autonomy, whereas preferences for shared rule drive preferences for fiscal transfers from richer to poorer regions. These results are important because they can explain why citizens who are in favour of more regional authority may support an apparently ‘paradoxical’ set of policy outcomes.     

Development Finance: Debates,Dogmas and New Directions

Intense controversy surrounds the interpretation of national survey and census data on employment trends in rural Java. The analysis of exclusionary labour arrangements developed in this paper helps resolve this controversy. It also sheds light on the mechanisms that underlie different labour arrangements, and the ways in which these mechanisms are connected with wider political and economic forces.     

Russia,the West and the 2007–2008 Electoral Cycle: Did the Kremlin Really Fear a ‘Coloured Revolution’?

In the period before the 2007–2008 elections, there was much talk from the regime about the danger of a ‘coloured revolution’ in Russia. The article considers whether the fear of revolution was genuine or artificially created to discredit opposition and strengthen support for the regime. It seems that tensions inside the regime and the unexpected occurrence of the previous coloured revolutions led to real fears of revolution in Russia, although this was in fact unlikely. Russian policy towards the West and the rival election programmes are examined to investigate whether the regime was creating an ‘enemy image’ of the West.     

The economics of pre-crime interventions

Several observers suggest that we may have undergone a shift from a post-crime to a pre-crime society in which the principal focus has become the pursuit of security by anticipating and forestalling future harms, rather than responding retrospectively to harms that have actually happened. This paper is about the economics of pre-crime interventions. It investigates the welfare consequences of risk assessment and early interventions to prevent individuals from engaging in criminal activities. Furthermore, it deals with the question of what constitutes an optimal application of risk assessment and early intervention. Finally, it presents three rules of thumb to identify conditions where pre-crime intervention may be welfare enhancing.     

Post-revolutionary State Building in Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua: Lessons from Terror

This paper focuses on an earlier theorized critical stage of revolution, the Reign of Terror which is redefined with summary justice as its essence and employed in a comparative analysis of three modern revolutions, Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua. The analysis demonstrates the importance of national factors over international factors in explaining post-revolutionary state construction. A reign of terror is an extemporized state; it is not an inevitable stage of revolution. Comparison of Ethiopia and Iran, where terrors occurred, is contrasted with Nicaragua, where a reign of terror was avoided. This reveals the significance for post-revolutionary state construction of the timing and outcome of civil war, of domestic policy choices constrained by circumstances directly encountered and of state control over new, revolutionary, means of coercion.