Australian Public Administration in 1997

This is the third in the AJPA s resumed series of administrative chronicles. Earlier administrative chronicles (AJPA 55(1) 1996 and 56(1) 1997) by Jenny Stewart and Scott Prasser have focused on the general principles of administrative change at the Commonwealth and state levels. Judith Homeshaw reviews the year 1997 by evaluating the developments since the milestone machinery of government reforms of 1987. She then reviews the prospects for further reform in New South Wales and Tasmania.     

MEDIATOR STRATEGIES FOR LAWYERS

This article explores the use of a four-way conference by attorneys to effect settlement. The author describes the process, analyzes factors leading to success, and gives a case example.     

Freedom of Speech in Union Representation Elections: Employer Campaigning and Employee Response

In 1977 the National Labor Relations Board announced that it would no longer probe the truth or falsity of statements made in the course of representation campaigns. This decision, Shopping Kart Ford Market, overruled longstanding Board policy and was itself overruled the following year. Now, in August of 1982, the Board has again made a commitment to nonprobing and has reinstated the Shopping Kart standard (Midland National Life Insurance Co.,___ N.L.R.B.____, 110 L.R.R.M. 1489 (1982)). Such seesawing of Board positions suggests the difficulty of attempting to protect freedom of speech while simultaneously supporting other national labor policy goals, including employee freedom of choice and the integrity of representation elections. Critical to determining the appropriate standard for campaign speech is an understanding of how employees respond to misrepresentations or coercion in an employer's campaign rhetoric. This paper investigates the relationship between employer campaigning and employee response. Both employer and labor organization will have incentives to prevent coercive or misrepresentative speech at certain levels of violation severity. But in an intermediate range of speech in which that is not the case, the Board has a unique role to play in protecting the rights of individual employees and the public interest in the integrity of elections.     

Authority in Arctic governance: changing spheres of authority in Greenlandic offshore oil and gas developments

The Arctic has rapidly transformed from a “frozen desert” into a theater for high-level politics. Climate change and socioeconomic interdependencies bring the World more and more to the Arctic and vice versa. Increased geological knowledge, new technologies, and high-energy prices make it possible to develop oil and gas resources in the Arctic; however, the effectiveness of oil spill response techniques remains a key concern. To understand oil and gas exploration in the Arctic governance setting, and especially the authority of Greenland, we combine a multi-level governance framework with the concept sphere of authority from post-international theory. The Arctic sphere of authority on oil and gas consists of many different governance arrangements, of which the most well-known governance arrangement is the Arctic Council. This paper focuses on the authority of Greenland in the changing oil and gas governance arrangements in the Arctic. Crucial is the changing Danish–Greenlandic relationship, in which the development of a Greenlandic oil and gas sector is seen as a tool to become financially independent. It can be concluded that the capacity of the Greenlandic government and civil society actors should be the primary guideline for the pace in which oil and gas activities are being developed. Taking this approach will ensure that the Greenland is retaining its central position and high degree of influence on the governance of oil and gas development in its country. Otherwise, it will lose influence and benefits will flow elsewhere.     

Predictors of Women’s Same-Sex Partner Violence Perpetration

The present study examined family of origin, individual characteristics, and intimate relationship variables as predictors of women’s reports (N?=?209; M?=?29.5 years) of physical aggression toward their current or most recent same-sex partner in the past year. Participants completed measures that assessed a series of family of origin, individual, and intimate relationship variables. Results of a least-squares regression revealed that identifying as heterosexual (as opposed to lesbian), higher levels of relationship fusion, more experiences of psychological aggression victimization, and having more prior physically aggressive relationships were associated with more frequent perpetration of partner violence. Results of exploratory models testing whether internalized homophobia or dominance/accommodation were indirectly related to physical aggression perpetration revealed that fusion (i.e., enmeshment with one’s partner) mediated the relationship between internalized homophobia and perpetration of partner violence. Similarly, fusion mediated the association between dominance/accommodation and the perpetration of partner violence. Findings underscore the importance that individual and relationship characteristics have in predicting partner violence perpetration in women’s same-sex relationships.     

International regime complexes and corporate crime: a research agenda based on the Volkswagen diesel fraud case

Crime, Law and Social Change - Criminological literature has often pointed to the absence or weakness of existing international regulation as important explanatory factors of corporate crime in...