The European regulation of corporate social responsibility: The role of beneficiaries' intermediaries

Intended beneficiaries have an undeniable relevance to regulation. However, current research has focused mainly on the two‐party relationship between rulemaking and rule‐taking. We attempt to fill this gap by exploring the formal and informal roles that beneficiaries’ intermediaries played in co‐creating European Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rules and associated practices between 2000 and 2017. By linking recent conceptualizations of regulatory intermediaries with the literature on critical political CSR, we offer a more dynamic and contextualized understanding of the roles of beneficiaries’ intermediaries. Specifically, we identify six micro‐dynamics through which they influenced the regulatory process. Notably, our findings highlight how the convergence of interests between three groups of beneficiaries’ intermediaries – the Non‐governmental organization–Investor–Union nexus – had a key role in reshaping CSR rules. We conclude that, in the European context, stronger and better‐coordinated beneficiaries’ intermediaries are crucial in order to achieve more effective corporate conduct regulation.     

Industrious rebels and captains of deterrence: defiance interpreted through a Veblenian reformulation of strain theory

Strain and Defiance are criminological theories that lay ambivalent emphasis on the notion of “rebellion,” which is to say that they both regard mutinous behavior as being motivated by positive or negative ends alike. Individuals rebel, say, by stealing in order to achieve higher status (economic strain); or they may violently antagonize authority as a way to “salvage dignity” in an environment in which they have no social stake whatsoever (defiance). Conversely, they may responsibly protest to oppose blind consumerism (strain); or they may civilly disobey racist laws (political defiance). It is here argued that both theories may be construed as special cases of a general problem, which Thorstein Veblen had already diagnosed in 1899. Veblen depicted social dynamics as a battle between the deterring forces of conservatism, which are animated by an overpowering predatory-pecuniary instinct, and those of progressivism, which rely, on the other hand, on an (ever more enfeebled) instinct of cooperation and workmanship. In this Veblenian model, civil defiance represents a challenge of the peaceable middle-class to the rule of the elite, whereas economically-strained defiance is the expression of the attempt of (middle to low) classes possessed by a pecuniary drive to emulate the status of the elite itself.     

Ultra-trace analysis of illicit drugs from transfer of an electrostatic lift

This article introduces a method of collecting and analysing drug residues that integrates both electrostatic lifting and nanomanipulation-coupled to nanospray ionization mass spectrometry. The application of this hyphenated technique exhibits a useful means of collection and extraction of drug residues with ease and efficiency along with decreased limits of detection. From this method, it will be shown how increased sensitivity of analysis and lower limits of detection for drug analysis can be achieved. The same principles that allow lifting of dust prints by electrostatic lifting can be applied to lifting drug residues. Probing of the drug residues by nanomanipulation occurs directly from the lift, which provides a great platform for extraction. Nanomanipulation-coupled to nanospray ionization-mass spectrometry has been used for the extraction of trace analytes in previous experiments and is known as a very sensitive technique for the detection of ultra-trace residue. This method will demonstrate the electrostatic lifting of drug residue particles from a surface followed by extraction and ionization with nanomanipulation-nanospray ionization. The utility of this novel methodology allows for a more productive analysis when presented with ultra-trace amounts of sample.     

Histological diagnosis of myocardial sarcoidosis in a fatal fall from a height

The major issues of medico-legal relevance in fatal falls from a height are the manner of death and the reconstruction of the event. We present a peculiar case of a fatal fall from a height of about 9 m, involving a 27-year-old woman. At the death scene investigation, no suicide notes, housebreaking marks, or signs of fight were found, thus weakening both the suicide and homicide hypotheses. Combining circumstantial, autopsy and toxicology data, the kinematic analysis of the jump/fall, and the histological evidence of a myocardial sarcoidosis involving the left ventricle, we hypothesized that the young woman might have accidentally fallen from the window because of a sudden loss of consciousness related to cardiac disease undiagnosed during life. We believe that our brief report is a good example of the powerful additional information that histological investigations can offer for reconstructing the dynamics of the event in falls from a height and other traumatic fatalities.     

Local Districts,National Contexts,and the Number of Parties

To date, electoral systems are conceptualised as setting an ‘upper bound’ to, or defining a ‘carrying capacity’ for, the number of parties or lists, and their effect is assessed at the district level. This article adds to the empirical study of electoral systems by analysing a vast database of district-level electoral returns. The argument focuses on the demand and supply of viable electoral candidates, which are conditioned by the interplay of strategic entry (by the party rank and file) and strategic voting (by the electorate). Drawing on a database of almost 18,000 electoral districts taken from 15 West European countries, the empirical analysis yields a number of insights: most specifically, (1) district magnitude only becomes binding and effective when a higher social demand meets a lower carrying capacity of the electoral district; (2) the provision of upper tiers undermines the emergence of Duvergerian equilibria within the primary electoral districts.     

Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo-Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership.The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes.     

Determination of drugs of abuse in hair: evaluation of external heroin contamination and risk of false positives

One of the most controversial point regarding the validity of hair testing is the risk of false positive due to external contamination. The aim of our experience is to verify if a 5 consecutive days contamination with a small amount of a powdered mixture of heroin hydrochloride and acetylcodeine hydrochloride (10:1 w/w) will last sufficiently long to make a contaminated subject indistinguishable from active users, and if normal washing practices together with the decontamination procedure are sufficient to completely remove the external contamination.Our results suggest that decontamination procedures are not sufficient to remove drugs penetrated into hair from external source. In fact, all contaminated subjects were positive for opiates (heroin, 6-MAM, morphine, acetylcodeine and codeine) for at least 3 months.Significant 6-MAM concentrations (>0.5 ng/mg) were found in each subject until 6th week. Further, 6-MAM/morphine ratio were always above 1.3.