Technology Innovation as a Response to Climate Change: The Case of the Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta

Innovation is the central element of climate change policy in many jurisdictions. Reduced to technology development and linked to market‐driven priorities, innovation accommodates the interests of large emitters in the energy sector and underpins a sustainable development discourse that denies ecological limits to economic growth. This study examines the use of innovation as a key component of climate change policy in the case of Alberta's Climate Change Emissions Management Corporation, utilizing a political economy approach to explain the drivers of government funding priorities. An analysis of this technology fund's investments over nine years, under two different governments, revealed that nearly half of the revenue has been used to subsidize R&D in the fossil fuels industry in the name of clean energy development, and that this priority has continued despite recent government commitments under the Paris CoP agreement. The carbon levy system that generates revenue for the fund has been unsuccessful in incentivizing facility reductions, pointing to the need for more stringent regulation. Innovation as a framework for transition to a post‐carbon economy is severely limited by its exclusion of the roles of social knowledge and citizen participation in envisaging and designing paths for change.     

Second‐Order Devolution or Local Activism? Local Air Agencies Revisited

In response to calls from previous scholarship for further bottom‐up examination of local government roles in environmental policy, the authors revisit local air agencies to examine two separate phenomena occurring in environmental federalism: one from the top down (second‐order devolution) and one from the bottom up (local activism). Using survey data from local air agencies on devolved authorities to set air quality standards and to enforce federal and/or state standards, the authors identify three different types of local agencies: state administrative subunits (only enforcement authority), fully devolved agencies (authority to both set and enforce standards), and activist agencies (neither authority). Further findings indicate that state administrative subunits and fully devolved agencies are likely functions of second‐order devolution, while activist agencies are likely functions of local activism. Conclusions suggest that both top‐down and bottom‐up approaches to environmental federalism are shaping local government roles in environmental management.     

Betrug durch Abschluss eines Kreditkartenvertrages mit vorgefasstem Schädigungsvorsatz

Betrug kommt in F?llen missbr?uchlicher Verwendung der eigenen Kreditkarte dann in Betracht, wenn bereits bei Abschluss eines Kreditkartenvertrages der Vorsatz besteht, das Institut sp?ter durch Verwendung der Kreditkarte ohne Kontodeckung zu sch?digen; der T?ter erschleicht dann schon die Dispositionsbefugnis durch T?uschung.     

Die Erneuerung des Strafverfahrens ohne vorheriges Erkenntnis des EGMR

Eine vor kurzem ergangene Entscheidung des OGH (1. 8. 2007, 13 Os 135/06m) erm?glicht einen gegenüber der bisherigen Praxis stark erweiterten Grundrechtsschutz im Strafverfahren. Der OGH bejahte mit Blick auf Art 13 MRK und die ?nderung der Rsp des EGMR dazu seine Kompetenz zur Erneuerung des Strafverfahrens auch dann, wenn in der Sache noch kein verurteilendes Erkenntnis des EGMR vorliegt. Der folgende Beitrag versucht, das ma?gebliche inhaltliche Argument wie auch die methodische Vorgangsweise des OGH n?her zu beleuchten und einen Ausblick auf die m?gliche Handhabung in der Praxis zu geben.     

Grenzen der Spezialität im internationalen Rechtsverkehr

Der Grundsatz der Spezialit?t der Auslieferung steht der Zul?ssigkeit einer Probezeitverl?ngerung nicht entgegen.     

Determinants and Evaluation of Local Energy‐Efficiency Initiatives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

This article examines variation in local‐level energy‐efficiency grants and corresponding initiatives from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) in the United States. The analysis is based upon a hurdle model of counts of energy‐efficiency grants received by 348 local governments that received these grants from 2009 to 2013, as well as 348 matched local governments that did not receive such funds. City‐level characteristics including amount of federal financial support, per capita income, signaling of preferences for sustainability policies, manufacturing, and political influences are shown to be empirically important determinants of variation in local energy‐efficiency initiatives. The evidence suggests that all else held equal, the $21.8 billion in ARRA funds expended with the intent of increasing local energy‐efficiency programs and policies successfully led to this end.     

Governance Arrangements for Transboundary Issues: Lessons from the Food Waste Programs of Italian Regions

Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration.     

Entsicherte Verhältnisse – (Un)Möglichkeiten fürsorglicher Praxis

Starting point of the article are the upheavals of employment relationships in modern, post-Fordist societies. These are characterised by the increasing relevance of efficiency in social lives because of blurring boundaries between paid work and private life or growing processes of precariousness through uncertainties of social regulation. The author argues that these processes are accompanied by shifting conflicts between paid work and private care responsibilities, which are still oriented at the Fordist gendered division of work and gender classification but should not be seen as a simple repetition of those. By presenting three case studies from an empirical research project on the retail trade in Brandenburg and Berlin, specific problems of the reconciliation between paid work and private care as well as ways to solve these are analysed. The article ends with a discussion whether (often forced) changes in life style open some (often precarious) capabilities for questioning the gendered division of labour which has been formerly taken for granted.