On the dark side of the code: organizational challenges to an effective anti-corruption strategy

Corporations have been fighting for decades to eliminate corruption. However, despite the proliferation of compliance programs and a recurrent surge of interest in business ethics, commercial bribery prevails as a “rational choice strategy” for economic success and thus is widely regarded as the result of immoral choices of greedy individuals. This article reports on a modus operandi study concerning corruption within a large industrial corporation (Siemens AG). Results highlight the fact that neither consistent anti-corruption norms nor severe formal sanctions were able to deter certain employees from deviant behavior in this landmark case of structural corruption. Sociologists and business economists have both pointed to the organizational culture that provides an explanation for this paradox. The author compares three diverging hypotheses: (1) private gain, (2) cognitive normalization, and (3) organizational cultures, and concludes that the structural causes of corrupt practices fit the definition of ‘useful illegality’ (Luhmann). To a large extent, this old sociological concept resembles the criminological idea of corporate crime, but it emphasizes the cultural factors that undermine management’s preventive strategies, and thus holds the promise of theoretical progress. Implications that emerge from the case analysis for the social control of corporate bribe payers are discussed. The discussion reveals why challenges to successful anti-corruption efforts persist at the organizational level.     

D11S4463基因座等位基因分型标准物制备及应用

目的制备D11S4463基因座等位基因分型标准物,并调查该基因座在中国汉族人群中的遗传多态性。方法设计引物,用荧光引物PCR扩增和ABI 3130XL遗传分析仪电泳的方法,对中国汉族520份无关个体血斑样本D11S4463基因座遗传多态性进行调查,用分子克隆的方法构建其等位基因分型标准物。结果 D11S4463基因座在中国汉族人群中共检测出9个等位基因,杂合度、匹配概率、个体识别能力、多态性信息含量及非父排除概率分别为0.735、0.089、0.911、0.73、0.485。应用分子克隆的方法成功构建其等位基因分型标准物,按国际法庭血液遗传学学会推荐的原则命名。结论 D11S4463基因座具有较高的遗传多态性,应用分子克隆的方法构建其等位基因分型标准物,在法医科学实践中具有较高的应用价值。     

Bringing Principles and Fairness to the Sentencing of Murder

The authors take a closer look at the current sentencing laws for murder and argue the need to change them. Expanding on the proposals described in the recently published book, Exploring the Mandatory Life Sentence for Murder, the authors provide a more detailed explanation for the new framework. The proposals suggest a new method of sentencing, and discuss how primary and secondary mitigating and aggravating favors can play a role in forming the suggested scheme. This article suggests that this method would constitute a more principled approach compared to mandatory life sentencing, by achieving higher levels of proportionality, greater consistency and restraint in the use of custody. While these proposals focus on the sentencing regime in England and Wales, the authors argue their relevance for other countries that also impose a mandatory life sentence framework.     

The Revolution in Security Affairs: Hard and Soft Security Dynamics in the 21st Century

The neat dividing lines between hard and soft, civil and military security are rapidly dissolving, requiring far more flexibility and causing much confusion as allies and partners have disagreed significantly about how to manage such complexity. Many Europeans continue to recognize only as much threat as they can afford. For them “soft” security often means no security commitment at all. Whilst America needs the European allies for its excessively “hard” security policy to work effectively, it refuses to recognize the extent of that need because of the implications such a recognition would have for control over security outcomes. Therein lies a dilemma, brought to public attention in the fight against catastrophic terror and the war in Iraq. This article explores how both sides of the transatlantic divide might begin to cope with this new set of problems, with a new set of relationships in a new set of ways.     

CITES as Global Governance: Paths to Consensus and Defining Nature Through Uncertainty

Abstract

As concern over various environmental issues has risen at the international level, questions regarding what constitutes “nature” and how it should be portrayed and treated have gained a greater sense of urgency. This paper explores varying concepts and attributes of nature articulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (“CITES”). Much of the research on CITES comes from the fields of policy and ecology, exploring matters of biodiversity, sustainability, enforcement, functionality, and evaluation of CITES as a “success” or “failure” of policy, with little focus on issues of cultural context and ambiguities. In contrast, within the social sciences, the contemporary literature is broadly dedicated to critiquing the static, dualistic ideas of nature upon which environmental regulations are based. However, what is often missing from this discourse is how environmental policies often have an implicit understanding that these static conceptions of nature are not accurate – that within the environmental legislation process, there is “an awareness, for example, of the messy, improvised character of knowledges about nature”. This paper explores CITES’s understanding of nature, how it characterizes nature, and how these conceptions become implemented in legislative practice. It illustrates CITES as a manifestation of what Krueger calls a regulatory process of “coded and recoded text with material implications” (p. 880), wherein a relatively unchanging set of legislation can create “multiple, even contradictory, outcomes coexisting simultaneously in the same system” (p. 872).     

Political support through representation by the government. Evidence from Dutch panel data

Research on political support demonstrates that satisfaction with democracy is higher among electoral winners than losers, and that it is higher for citizens who are ideologically more congruent with the government. In this paper, I analyze how support for the political system is affected by representation by the government. Expanding on previous studies, I leverage long-run panel data from the Dutch LISS panel spanning over several electoral cycles. Drawing on various measures that go beyond the distinction between election winners and losers and also measure how close citizens are to the government coalition as a whole, I show that being well represented by the government has a wide-ranging positive relationship with satisfaction with democracy, external efficacy and trust in political institutions. While this relationship is mostly short-run, political support can decline substantially if non-representation persists in the long-run. This highlights the relevance of long-run panel data for studying the consequences of representation.     

论空间权

随着现代科学技术的发展,土地资源的稀缺性与社会发展需求之间的矛盾日益扩大,世界各国对土地的利用从地表向地下和地上空间延伸.空间权制度得以在一些国家和地区建立.空间权是一种独立的物权,我国《物权法》第136条规定了建设用地使用权可以在立体空间上分别设立,这是我国关于空间权的突破性规定.     

判后语之体裁分析

判后语已然成为裁判文书改革中有争议的话题，文章通过体裁分析的方法探讨了判后语的特点，并指出判后语作为裁判文书附属性的可选语步的性质，从而确定了其存在的合理性。当然，任何一种文体都须加以规范，这就有赖于有关部门文书制作相应规范的出台。     

司法行为及其选择的文化注释——以转型司法中的中国法官为例

转型司法中的中国法官,其司法行为不仅会受当下中国特定的社会--文化情境的影响,而且还更多地要受到一种"清官文化"的因素制约;也即在公共的法律生活中,其任何司法行为的做出,除了回应特定的社会--文化情境系统的要求之外,也更反映出了法官对自身名誉的特别爱惜以及对社会评价的特别注意,同时也是为了尽可能好地完成司法任务并尽可能少的给自己惹麻烦.正是在"清官文化"这一文化容器中,不仅社会--文化的情境性因素作用到了法官的身上,而且,也正是在这一文化的信仰网络里,达致了纠纷中的民众以及其他社会力量对于法官角色期待的均衡.