Environmental dispute resolution and hazardous waste cleanups: A cautionary tale of policy implementation

New York State experimented with replacing their litigation-oriented system for achieving toxic dump site cleanup with one promising to lower transaction costs through alternative dispute resolution. Our analysis of outcomes is informed by three generations of implementation work focusing on (1) the motivations and incentives shaping individual behavior, (2) the larger organizational and political factors associated with variation across cases, and (3) the generic properties of policy implements. This mosaic approach to explanation produces, we believe, a more lifelike picture of use to policy makers for understanding the dynamic and interrelated nature of their choices.     

Fatal accidents on glaciers: forensic, criminological, and glaciological conclusions

The rare event of a corpse immersed in glacier ice becoming exposed on a glacier surface is closely connected with the glaciological conditions at the scene and the site of the accident. Provided that the time since death is known, certain questions relative to the circumstances of a mountain accident can only be answered by considering glaciological aspects. How the scene of an accident can be reconstructed by inference from the site of discovery is discussed by means of three exemplary cases that occurred on Tyrolean glaciers (Austria) during the past 40 years: (1) Two corpses were discovered close above the equilibrium line in the accumulation area after 25 years. The two victims had fallen down a rock face after the breaking off of a cornice and had come to rest in the uppermost part of the accumulation area. (2) A victim was discovered in the lower ablation area 8 years after falling down a crevasse in the middle part of the ablation area. (3) A female alpinist was discovered at the very end of the glacier after 29 years; it was concluded that the accident must have happened in the accumulation area.     

Bureaupreneurs in China: we did it our way

This article explores the different and sometimes conflicting explanations of the success of the collective enterprises (town–village-enterprise) in China during the first phase of transition (1979–1995). It is argued that explanations, relying on cultural variables are not sustainable and this for two reasons. First, the importance of the collective enterprise is shrinking while the private sector is clearly on the rise. Second, other factors, referring to characteristics of the local and central political, administrative and economic environment, in which the Chinese enterprise has to (had to?) operate, provide for a sufficient explanation of the peculiar structure of the Chinese collective enterprises. These enterprises are seen as the result of ?bureau-preneurship’ because local bureaucrats were integrated in their management in order to pre-empt predatory behaviour and to facilitate the relationships with the central institutions. The article contributes to the property rights’ theory of the firm as it analyses an empirically very important case in which firms with unclear property rights and structures, apparently not conducive for incentives, might still be the most efficient option.     

Meanings of terrorism

Terrorism is a notoriously plastic word, depending on user, audience, and political context. This paper focuses on shifts in its meanings since the early 1970s. As federal statutes made terrorism a criminal offense, common usage changed from a broad meaning to one that specified terrorism as a political crime. The argument is that the state shapes meaning and public discourse through law. Peircean semiotics and the semiotic philosophy of Russian linguist Vološinov provide a framework to explore relationships among politics, law, and civil life. Applied to the events of September 11, 2001 such an analysis further allows better understanding of certain interpreters of the September 11 attacks, notably Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas.     

Trial and Error – Failing and Learning in Criminal Proceedings

This paper addresses the selective mechanisms by which criminal proceedings produce strong arguments. It does so by focusing on the failing of argument themes (topoi) in the course of criminal proceedings, rather than on their career. In a further step, the notion of failing is bound to learning: different forms of failing point at different ways and places of learning. The study is comparative, relating cases from four different legal regimes (England, USA, Italy and Germany) that are taken from four extensive ethnographic studies in defense lawyer’s firms. We will track down the failures of topoi at three different stages (pre-trial, trial, and deliberation) in our different legal regimes. Failing occurs in all proceedings in various modes and at different stages. We argue that those modes as well as the different stages at which they occur point at the spots in the respective procedures that allow for learning about the inherent conceptions of “good reasons.”     

Literatur

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