Risk, precaution and science: towards a more constructive policy debate. Talking point on the precautionary principle

Few issues in contemporary risk policy are as momentous or contentious as the precautionary principle. Since it first emerged in German environmental policy, it has been championed by environmentalists and consumer protection groups, and resisted by the industries they oppose (Raffensperger & Tickner, 1999). Various versions of the principle now proliferate across different national and international jurisdictions and policy areas (Fisher, 2002). From a guiding theme in European Commission (EC) environmental policy, it has become a general principle of EC law (CEC, 2000; Vos & Wendler, 2006). Its influence has extended from the regulation of environmental, technological and health risks to the wider governance of science, innovation and trade (O'Riordan & Cameron, 1994)

Contested rules and shifting boundaries: International standard setting in accounting

The paper investigates the emergence and development, since the Second World War, of a transnational field of governance for accounting and financial reporting. Recent decades have seen a proliferation of activities and initiatives to make financial reporting standards comparable across national borders. This process of transnational or international standards setting is shown to be a highly political process where actors with different backgrounds enter the game with specific interests, perceptions, strategies and resources. In fact, it shows how contest and conflict can become driving forces of international standardization if organized within a widely accepted procedural framework. -- In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird das Spannungsfeld der Entstehung und Entwicklung von internationalen Standards für die Wirtschaftsprüfung und Rechnungslegung seit dem 2. Weltkrieg untersucht. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist eine Zunahme von Aktivitäten und Initiativen zur grenzüberschreitenden Harmonisierung von Rechnungslegungsstandards zu beobachten. Die Schaffung von transnationalen bzw. internationalen Standards erweist sich als hochpolitischer Prozess, in den Akteure aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen ihre spezifischen Interessen, Wahrnehmungen, Strategien und Ressourcen einbringen. Tatsächlich verdeutlichen diese Vorgänge, dass Konkurrenz und Konflikt als treibende Kräfte für die internationale Standardsetzung dienen können, sofern der Verfahrensrahmen allgemein anerkannt ist.

Fortress Europe or Pace-Setter? Identity and Values in an Integrating Europe

The article represents a contribution to the discussions about the basis, motives, and goals of European integration, which were stimulated by the recent “normative turn” in EU studies. My aim in this the article is threefold: By addressing the issue of internal legitimacy of EU decision-making, I wish to show that the European Union is in need of a public “story” of European integration; however, a closer analysis suggests that there is much normative disagreement on values and principles that are supposed to define such “Europeanness”. This is also relevant for the role of Europe on the scene of international or global politics, where the EU aspires to become a leading actor, or is supposed to do so by cosmopolitan-minded authors. Lastly, the text defends the usefulness of the traditional conceptual apparatus of political theory, which which has – in relation to the European integration – in recent times come under attack

India and the Patent Wars: Pharmaceuticals in the New Intellectual Property Regime

[Excerpt] India and the Patent Wars contributes to an international debate over the costs of medicine and restrictions on access under stringent patent laws showing how activists and drug companies in low-income countries seize agency and exert influence over these processes. Murphy Halliburton contributes to analyses of globalization within the fields of anthropology, sociology, law, and public health by drawing on interviews and ethnographic work with pharmaceutical producers in India and the United States. India has been at the center of emerging controversies around patent rights related to pharmaceutical production and local medical knowledge. Halliburton shows that Big Pharma is not all-powerful, and that local activists and practitioners of ayurveda, India’s largest indigenous medical system, have been able to undermine the aspirations of multinational companies and the WTO. Halliburton traces how key drug prices have gone down, not up, in low-income countries under the new patent regime through partnerships between US- and India-based companies, but warns us to be aware of access to essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries going forward

The Polythink Syndrome and Elite Group Decision‐Making

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117125/1/pops12319.pd

Justice As Harmony: The Distinct Resonance of Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin\u27s Juridical Genius

Chief Justice McLachlin’s juridical work has earned special praise, but what specifically distinguishes it among the work of other leading jurists has proven elusive for lawyers and social scientists to identify. My experience as a law clerk to McLachlin CJC suggested a distinct approach never comprehensively articulated, but intuitively well-known and widely-emulated among those in her sphere of influence. Drawing on the Chief Justice’s public lectures—where she often explained and offered deeper reflection on the McLachlin Court’s defining jurisprudence—I make the case in this article that at the heart of that approach is a quality best described as the pursuit of harmonious resolution of legal problems. After noting the pervasive association of the concept of harmony with the just order in many cultures across the world and over history, the article explains how harmony can be used, complementarily with legal rules, as an aim in adjudication. As a relationship among elements of a system and the whole that they comprise, it offers a way of leveraging accepted legal principles and their aim of just order in order to address the insufficiencies of the rules that reveal themselves through legal disputes. In search of that relationship, harmony necessarily engages process, committing the judge to working out how to give collective effect to the multiple legitimate considerations invoked by the problem, and thus resolve the legal system-disharmony revealed by a case. Striving for consensus, accommodation, and reconciliation are among such methods often said to be favoured by McLachlin CJC over alternatives that perceive problems through the simplistic lens of either-or-type conflicts. The article surveys how Chief Justice McLachlin’s work characteristically evinces this quality of pursuing justice as harmony. Based on McLachlin CJC’s remarkable success, as well as novel social conditions arising contemporaneously with her career, the article concludes by asking whether this approach may hold wider promise

What Support Does Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Offer to Organizational Improvisation During Crisis Response ?

While evidence of the exceedingly important role of technology in organizational life is commonplace, academics have not fully captured the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on crisis response. A substantive body of knowledge on technology and crisis response already exists and keeps developing. Extensive research is on track to highlight how technology helps to prepare to crisis response and develop service recovery plans. However, some aspects of crisis response remain unknown. Among all the facets of crisis response that have been under investigation for some years, improvisation still challenges academics as a core component of crisis response. In spite of numerous insights on improvisation as a cognitive process and an organizational phenomenon, the question of how improvisers do interact together while improvising remains partly unanswered. As a result, literature falls short of details on whether crisis responders can rely on technology to interact when they have to improvise collectively. This dissertation therefore brings into focus ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response in two steps: We first address this question from a general standpoint by reviewing literature. We then propose an in depth and contextualized analysis of the use of a restricted set of technologies – emails, faxes, the Internet, phones - during the organizational crisis provoked by the 2003 French heat wave. Our findings offer a nuanced view of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response. Our theoretical investigation suggests that ICTs, in a large sense, allow crisis responders to improvise collectively. It reports ICT properties - graphical representation, modularity, calculation, many-to-many communication, data centralization and virtuality – that promote the settling of appropriate conditions for interaction during organizational improvisation in crisis response. In the empirical work, we provide a more integrative picture of ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response by retrospectively observing crisis responders’ interactions during the 2003 French heat wave. Our empirical findings suggest that improvisation enables crisis responders to cope with organizational emptiness that burdens crisis response. However, crisis responders’ participation in organizational improvisation depends on their communicative genres. During the 2003 French heat wave crisis, administrative actors who had developed what we call a “dispassionate” communicative genre in relation to their email use, barely participated in organizational improvisation. Conversely, improvisers mainly communicated in what we call a “fervent” communicative genre. Therefore, our findings reveal that the ICT support to organizational improvisation in crisis response is mediated by the communication practices and strategies that groups of crisis responders develop around ICT tools

A Collaborative Framework For Foreign Aid Projects In Sub-Sahara Africa

This paper highlights the significance of local community participation in foreign aid projects. The focus of the paper is that aid projects in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) need effective project management method. The importance of local communities participation in a collaborative monitoring environment is argued. The aim of the paper is to challenge existing practice, contribute to and discuss the pragmatics of local communities involvement in foreign aid projects. Moreover, the need for local communities’ voice reaching the international arena is necessary. Surveys and interviews from an interpretive perspective were used as data collection methods to support the argument. The intellectual framework of this study suggests that stakeholder collaboration can improve foreign aid project management practices in sub-Sahara Africa

Does the climate need consensus? The politics of climate change revisited

In this paper, I interrogate the relationship between two seemingly separated themes playing an increasingly influential role in climate change related scholarship: a constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) approach to climate science (Wynne, Demeritt, Edwards) on the one hand and the debate in political theory on the depoliticization of the public sphere (Mouffe, Rancière) on the other. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour, I argue how they could be tied together in order to provide an enriched understanding of climate denial: rather than being a cause of dysfunctional climate politics, it constitutes a symptomatic outburst of the political in a completely depoliticised landscape. Moreover, this diagnosis points to what I believe is a fundamental flaw in the science-policy architecture of climate change: in attempting to translate the universal validity of science into the contours of an inclusive, consensual negotiation model, the constitutive role of exclusion in the emergence of scientific objectivity is overlooked. This eventually allows me to argue that the issue of climate change, rather than being a problem of translating scientific matters of fact into political matters of concern, constitutes first and foremost a political struggle over what to be concerned about