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.     

The Independence Case in Comparative Perspective

Scotland is not the only sub‐state unit in Europe where relevant political actors make claims for independence. To generate insights on these independence demands, we compare the drivers, arguments and popular support for secession in Scotland, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Flanders. We argue that national identity, party politics and the economy are behind the independence requests, and the exact articulation of these elements varies from case to case. Currently, the most salient of these demands are the ones from Catalonia; Basque demands for self‐determination are less prominent than in the past, whereas the demand for a vote on independence is much less articulated in Flanders. Although the Scottish independence referendum has set a precedent for solving independence disputes, we argue that the possibilities of exporting the Scottish referendum experience to other realities are limited.     

Innovation in the Public Sector

Why does the public sector innovate, how should the public sector innovate, and, even more basically, should the public sector innovate? These are some of the questions that these contributions explore and to which they provide some salutary answers. Martin Stewart‐Weeks, an independent consultant working at the intersection of government, innovation, and technology, draws some lessons from his direct experience and advisory work about how the public sector catches the innovation ‘bug’ and turns it into in‐ spired action. From infection to inspiration to implementation, the public sector needs to lower its defences and put itself ‘in harm's way’ to engage with innovators and new ideas. Tim Kastelle, one of Australia's leading innovation scholars and practitioners, sets out some practical ways that the public sector can extend and entrench its innovation practice. These include managing innovation as a process, shifting the risk equation, and experimenting.     

Response to Lindsay,Mansour, Beaudry,Leach and Bertrand's Sequential lineup presentation: Patterns and policy

This paper is a response to the earlier paper by Lindsay, Mansour, Beaudry, Leach and Bertrand (2009). We argue that eyewitness research is an important public good and that high‐quality in research and policy formulations offered to the public interest is required to maintain our standing of trust. We argue that even though sequential lineups have been successfully codified in some jurisdictions as the exclusive eyewitness identification procedure, the claim of sequential superiority is built upon errors in the research process and that the evidence of reduced false identification with sequential lineups is completely offset by reductions in correct identifications. We reject the idea that the loss of correct identifications can be dismissed as guessing on the basis that this is speculative and that there is no published empirical support for the idea. We reject the idea that false identifications are necessarily more valuable for society to reduce than are correct identifications to achieve. Improvements in eyewitness identification are important, and interesting lines of investigation are available. It is questionable whether the sequential lineup is important among them.     

WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN CHINESE TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN SMUGGLING: A GENDERED MARKET PERSPECTIVE*

Despite extensive sociological research on gender and organizations, criminologists have paid insufficient attention to how organizational context and market demands may shape the extent and nature of women's participation in illicit enterprises. This study uses an organizational framework to examine the case of Chinese human smuggling to the United States. Drawing from interviews with 129 human smugglers, we propose a gendered market perspective for understanding the place of women in the human smuggling enterprise. We argue that the limited place of violence and turf as organizing features of human smuggling, the importance of interpersonal networks in defining and facilitating smuggling operations, gender ideologies about work and caregiving, and the impact of safety as an overriding concern for clients combine to create a more meaningful niche for women in human smuggling operations than is found in other criminal endeavors. Our research suggests that organizational and market contexts are significant explanations for gender stratification in illicit enterprises.