Absence of a market in the Dutch balancing mechanism: European rules versus specific investments

The European directives for the electricity industry prescribe the creation of a market for balancing electricity supply and demand. In this paper, we demonstrate that a market for balancing has not emerged in the Dutch electricity industry, and that, instead, the balancing transactions are governed by regulated, long-term contracts and a bidding mechanism. We explain the absence of a balancing market by using the framework of transaction cost economics, in which the efficiency of a market decreases with increasing investments in specific assets. The results of a questionnaire among the energy firms that supply balancing power in the Dutch setting show that these firms have invested in specific physical, temporal and dedicated balancing assets. The need for these specific investments to balance supply and demand does not only explain the absence of a market, but also the lack of participation by small firms in the balancing mechanism. We recommend several policies, such as stimulating technological developments for the storage of electricity and demand side management, which reduce these specific investments in balancing assets, and thereby stimulate the creation of a market and the participation of small firms.     

The strange world of Roland Barthes: some points of criticism

SUMMARY

Against the background of Mary Wisemen, Sándor Hervey and Vincent Leitch's discussion of Roland Barthes' work, the author discusses some of the important points of criticism against Barthes as a semiologist and as a social critic. In spite of this criticism he comes to the conclusion that Barthes opens new perspectives for communication science concerning meaning and in particular meaning created in and through media such as photography.     

Hostile Media Perceptions: Partisan Assessments of Press and Public during the 1997 United Parcel Service Strike

This study investigated partisan perceptions of hostile bias in news coverage of the 1997 Teamsters Union strike against United Parcel Service (UPS), and the processes by which Teamster and UPS partisans formed impressions of public opinion regarding the strike. As predicted, both partisan groups perceived neutral news coverage as biased against their respective sides. However, perceptions of hostile media bias did not produce corresponding perceptions of hostile public opinion; instead, partisans appeared to rely on their personal opinions when estimating the opinions of others. Nonpartisan control-group subjects, however, did infer public opinion in part from their subjective assessments of news content. Findings suggest that level of involvement is crucial in predicting the effect that perceived media coverage of social issues will have on perceptions of public opinion regarding those issues.     

Comparable worth in the united states legal and administrative developments in the 1980's

During the 1980's, the concept of comparable worth has become closely identified with women's rights and sex discrimination concerns, and is now recognized by advocates and critics alike as one of the major affirmative action issues of the decade. Simply put, comparable worth refers to the idea of equal pay for dissimilar jobs of equal value to an organization.

According to comparable worth proponents, jobs traditionally associated with women have been systematically undervalued in the marketplace. The net result is a disparity in pay for women when compared with that for jobs largely held by men. It is also argued that this compensatory bias against women can be revealed and eliminated by assessing the economic value of disparate occupations through the use of objective standards of evaluation. For example, although secretarial and janitorial jobs are dissimilar in function, it is argued that pay equity can be achieved by assessing such factors as working conditions and the amount of training, responsibility and effort required for each job.

Critics of comparable worth take strong exception to these assertions. They argue that the wage differential between men and women is more the result of career choice and market forces than sex discrimination. Moreover, they contend that employers must often pay a higher wage for some occupations than others in order to remain competitive and to attract the best qualified personnel. Finally, critics of comparable worth maintain that job evaluation systems are inherently subjective. Therefore, any comparison of dissimilar jobs is at best arbitrary.

These conflicting points of view have formed the crux of the comparable worth debate during the past 10 years. The purpose of this review is to assess some of the outcomes and trends established by this debate as well as what those trends appear to indicate for the coming decade. To do so, we shall examine the comparable worth issue from legal, legislative and administrative perspectives.     

Civic implications of restorative justice theory: Citizen participation and criminal justice policy

Restorative justice, a normative theory and reform movement emphasizing dialogue and reconciliation between victim, offender, and community, is a widespread, if experimental, part of the practice of criminal justice in the United States. This essay argues that restorative justice draws connections between civic engagement and punishment practices that distinguish it as a normative theory of criminal justice. Advocates of restorative justice expect the growth of non-punitive attitudes and the weakening of support for incarceration to emerge from a public and lay-oriented context of adjudication. The role of lay participation in achieving social change, although prominent in restorative justice critiques of mainstream criminal justice norms and practices, has not been clearly articulated in practical terms. Significant ambiguities remain regarding the degree of lay participation, scope of authority, and the focus of restorative justice forums. The essay argues that an adequate assessment of restorative justice experiments should include an analysis of their impact on public attitudes towards crime and crime control policy and not simply on their impact on the specific victims and offenders involved. The link between less incarceration and restorative justice forums is public willingness to grant them the authority to hear and sanction offenses that would ordinarily receive incarceration. Whether and how they can influence broader public attitudes, then, is a critical test of restorative justice effectiveness.     

Democratizing the hospital: deliberative-democratic bioethics

The increased presence of moral consultants, or bioethicists, within hospitals and clinics in the last two decades has begun to raise questions about their sources of authority and norms of practice. Under pressure from critics in the social sciences, a number of bioethicists have recently raised the ideal of democratic deliberation to defend and reconstruct their place in the medical field. This article sheds light on these developments by placing bioethics in a historical context that shows an early tension between bioethicists as whistle-blowers and bioethicists as incremental reformers of medical practice. This article also develops a conceptual framework for analysis that indicates how such tensions have grown more complicated for contemporary bioethicists because they occupy a fluid and structurally ambiguous role in which there are multiple sources of normative expectations and little guidance for meeting these expectations. The liminality of the role and the overload of expectations have made bioethics vulnerable to methodological criticisms from social scientists. This article concludes that such methodological criticisms cannot address the more systemic problems of liminality and overload. The ideal of democratic deliberation, though imperfect, does address these systemic problems because it shows bioethicists how to gain guidance and share responsibility for moral consultation.