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The complement of political consumerism: Political producerism in the German organic food sector
Get PDFIn this chapter we will show that there is a direct link between political producerism and political consumerism, meaning that labels and especially the networks behind them enable consumers to make informed choices and to voice their political opinion. So far,academics often assessed labels from an economic point of view, for example adopting a game theoretic approach or dealing with the problem of asymmetric information in the food market (Golan, Kuchler, Mitchell, 2009; McCluskey, 2000; Guthman, 2006). Other academics such as Hébert (2010) argue that food labels are mainly established to cater to the economy of qualities, referring to the creation of luxury niche-market goods. In contrast to these accounts and to other accounts of authors such as Vogl, Kilcher & Schmidt (2005) and McMahon (2005), we believe that producers and retailers indeed are important agents in politics of food labelling. Rather than merely following the demands of the market, we will show that producers and retailers who engage in political producerism mainly act according to their own beliefs and standards
Corrupt Conduct – Transparency, Norms and Trust
Get PDFDemocratic systems are unable to operate without the active engagement of the population. According to Robert Dahl, an ideal democracy fulfils several criteria7. Interestingly, all stress the importance of civil engagement. Elected politicians rely on active citizenship. Dahl’s interpretation makes clear why transparency is an important institutional design (Hood & Heald, 2006, p.211). It engages society in the democratic process, as accessible information gives them the opportunity to have a say. Democracy can not only be discussed as a political system, but also as a cultural space. Democratic cultures rely on certain types of behaviours which are guided by ‘positive’ norms, for example a sense of responsibility. Transparency supposedly helps endorse these norms. It has also been advocated as a way to fight against undemocratic cultures, such as corruption8. It is argued that it replaces ‘negative’ undemocratic norms with ‘positive’ ones. This chapter focuses on the question as to whether, and to what extent, transparency promotes ‘positive’ norms and trust in one country, Mozambique, which is affected by a high degree of corruption. Corruption is understood as the abuse of public office for private gain (Kolstad & Wiig, 2009, p.522). The question engages with two points of view. Dominique Bessire stipulates that transparency undermines norms and trust as it depicts individuals as calculating and opportunistic (Bessire, 2005, p.428). For her, transparency constrains individual freedoms, and is thus essentially amoral and unethical (p.430). For Ivar Kolstad and Arne Wiig (2009), transparency introduces ‘positive’ norms as it fosters cooperation and trust (p.529). It establishes a sense of responsibility and a willingness to be open
Prozac Politics: How a Drug Helps Us to Understand Transparency in the Health Sector
Get PDFWhile Prozac initially came to be termed the ‘wonder-drug’ for adults suffering from depression, the trend inevitably spread to the treatment of the pediatric population – that is, to children and adolescents aged 8 to 17 years. In 2003, however, America’s main drug regulator – the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) – was the first to approve Prozac for this age group. But reports of the scientific community followed soon, claiming that patients under the age of 18 should not be given antidepressants. There had been disturbing evidence that Prozac’s risks outweighed its benefits and that it led to severe adverse effects, most notably aggressive and suicidal behavior. Unfortunately, their voice was only partly heard: later that same year, the British Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a ban on new-generation antidepressants for the treatment of the pediatric population. But while it excluded Prozac from the ban, the European Medicine Agency (EMA) thought differently: it did not only decide to join the bandwagon of prohibiting the prescription of antidepressants for children two years later, but to extend the ban to Prozac as well. Eventually, the decisions by different European drug regulators – and their clashes with the American FDA – unleashed a heated debate about secretive proceedings in the health sector that affected the industry, its regulators, the scientific community, and the patient population. Only three years later, in 2006, the EMA suddenly approved Prozac for the treatment of children and adolescents under the condition that further clinical research was done – notwithstanding previous skepticism. And the debate continues until today. As such, it illustrates the thin line between economic benefit, consumer protection, and scientific progress, together with its mediating factor: disclosure of information or transparency. Furthermore, the case-study mentioned above serves well to highlight the shallow proceedings in the pharmaceutical industry, which, to date, remain corrupt and secretive
Modality-specific encoding of conceptual person identity in the Fusiform Face Area
No full textI employed multi-voxel pattern analysis to fMRI data from two functionally defined clusters in the Fusiform Face Area (FFA); mFus and pFus. Stimulus information was decoded from hemodynamic response patterns evoked by three fictional identities. These were comprised of sets of semantic person information and corresponding faces. By presenting identities with overlapping visual and semantic features we could attribute successful decoding to the differentiating feature. Our data suggest a functional differentiation between pFus and mFus. Analysis of response patterns in pFus indicated that this cluster is engaged in perceptual analysis during face presentation and in retrieval of the corresponding face representation during presentation of semantic stimuli. In mFus semantic items appear to evoke a single corresponding face representation whereas during face perception this cluster is likely to be engaged in retrieval of semantic features by activation of a collection of corresponding visual representations. I propose that mFus supports conceptual knowledge of people by activating visual features that correspond to semantic categories
Legal transparency through multi-layered drafting. Having your cake and eating it too?
Get PDFLaw is often left out of discussions about transparency. Huge amounts are said and written about transparency in business, government and even social interactions (Hood 2006 p.6-7); but law is usually ignored. Why is that? Perhaps the answer is that we assume that law is already transparent, because transparency is the core formal principle of law. Law has strong formal transparency: statutes, regulations and important caselaw are always published; if they are not published, according to the principle of legality, they are not law. Individuals, in certain situations, have non-derogable rights to legal information. The rule that ignorance of the law is no excuse for illegal activity is premised on the idea that ignorance of the law is a choice, and that any person who wishes to educate themselves about their rights and obligations can do so. Despite this, law often fails to create effective transparency; that is, transparency which actually communicates information from a source to a receptor, with the information then being processed and understood by the receptor (Heald 2006 p.35). It is safe to say that noone – not even lawyers – are actually aware of more than a fraction of the rights and duties they possess.. To some degree, this is an inevitable result of the size and complexity of law: it is also in part a result of the inherently uncertain nature of law – legislative, jurisprudential, implementation and social changes constantly alter the meaning of laws
Introduction
Get PDFThe term ‘transparency’ seems to be omnipresent in today’s debate on governments’ organization and practice of the relation with its citizens. There are several definitions available provided by various sources. For instance, the Encyclopaedia of Democratic Thought states that transparency “denotes government according to fixed and published rules, on the basis of information and procedures that are accessible to the public, and […] within clearly demarcated fields of activity” (in Hood & Heald, 2006, p. 4). However, the availability of different strains of definition gives a blurry impression of the concept of transparency. This book focuses on the difficulties revolving around the realization of transparency. Each chapter approaches implementation techniques from diverse angles and various practical contexts. In this, the volume adds to the current debate by identifying key challenges with regard to the design of transparency related policies. It is important to note that due to the theoretical complexity of transparency, the concept in itself contains key challenges which shall be briefly illustrated. Although ultimately transparency is considered to improve efficiency, the process of building transparency can take significant time and resources. Very often, the more effective forms of transparency can require more work to implement, creating the need for a balance. Types of transparency which increase public participation in decision-making can create particular efficiency losses, due to the necessity of long consultation processes and compromise
Enhancing Participation and Transparency in the EU Interactive Policy Making Initiative
Get PDFThe potential that information- and communication technologies have to promote democracy and improve transparency increasingly attracts the interest of researchers and policy-makers. Both social media and mobile connectivity are linked to the idea of providing channels “not just for mass dissemination but also for mass production and collaboration” in the political sphere (Linders, 2012, p.1). These new means may alter how the government and the public interact, develop solutions for perceived democratic deficits and improve the delivery of public services (ibid). Because of the relatively limited costs of Internet communication in terms of time, material- and human resources and its decentralized as well as interactive features, ICTs are believed to lead to a more open and democratic exchange of information and political participation. In consideration of the decreasing trust in EU institutions and EU’s supposed democratic deficit, the Internet might provide a new way of improving the relationship between European citizens and Brussels. However, from a normative perspective, concerns have been voiced about the gap between “technology haves and have-nots”, pointing to the potential digital divide (West, 2000, p.3). Next to the lack of both access to new technologies and the necessary skills to work with software and hardware, the promotion of these new instruments to the wider public remains another obstacle to complete democratic participation
Kaempfers Lessons from Japan – Using Tokugawa Regulation for Educating Europe
Get PDFDuring the “Age of Discovery”, Europeans came into contact with a variety of different cultures from all over the globe. In Asia, they stumbled upon China and Japan, two welldeveloped countries, which were considered as civilized as those of Europe (Rietbergen, 2002, p. 64). The Dutch were the only European allowed into Japan, where from 1641 onwards, they were confined on the little artificial island of Deshima in the bay of Nagasaki (Rietbergen, 2003, p. 176). Here a company of approximately 20 men lived for a year or longer, under strict supervision of the guards, often without any proficiency in the Japanese language, with professional translators controlling all contacts of these foreigners with Japan (ibid, p. 181). Consequently, these Europeans had a monopoly on the representation of Japan. One of the most notable works on Japan of this era was The History of Japan by Engelbert Kaempfer. Although the work contains ‘Othering’, neither of Thompson’s definitions would be encompassing. In line with the European realisation that these cultures were equally civilized, I argue that Kaempfer’s work notes the differences between Japan and Europe to highlight the faults of Europe. Constrained by both time and space, this chapter mainly discusses Kaempfer’s writing on the regulation of Japan, more specifically, the regulation as it was imposed by the shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty. That subject is chosen because Japan’s isolation and generally harsh laws, which were the result of Tokugawa rule, were of particular interest to his European readership (Michel, 2000, p. 111). Regulation here refers to the manner in which the Japanese government sought to exert control; it encompasses law-making, regulation of foreigners and the actions of the Japanese people under regulation. Thus, this chapter addresses the way in which Kaempfer used Tokugawa regulation as a lens for describing the Other, and how this Other was used to express Kaempfer’s personal beliefs
A neuroscientific perspective on cognitive and volitional impairment in criminal irresponsibility assessments: a case for a capacity-based approach
Get PDFThe law remains reluctant of joining forces with neuroscience to better understand human behaviour despite the fact that “preliminary biological explanations” exist for a number of relevant phenomena (Garland & Glimcher, 2006, p. 131). Contemporary brain imaging techniques have enabled the study of law-related notions such as consciousness, morality and intent, to name a few (Gazzaniga, 2008, p. 412). Others argue that neuroscience is not advanced enough to uncover mental content that is pertinent to the law (Morse, 2011, pp. 849-850). It has also been suggested that even if it were possible to prove a precise correlation between the requirements for criminal responsibility and certain neural patterns, these patterns could only amount to “evidentiary support for the assertion that the criterion in question was in fact satisfied at the time of the crime” (Morse, 2006, p. 399). Plausibly, these claims do not warrant ignorance towards existing neuroscientific research, which is not insignificant in volume. Moreover, it is hard to see why the society as a whole would not benefit from legal determinations which are as rigorous and precise as possible. It could be argued that every insight – whether neuroscientific, sociological or evolutionary, for example – provides a “reality” of human behaviour from a distinct, but complementary point of view
To what extent is the taking and use of neuroscientific evidence compatible with the rights enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights?
Get PDFCriminal law is arguably among the most important parts of any system of law as its purpose is to counter serious forms of socially undesired behavior such as assault on one’s property, physical integrity and life. Therefore in order to fulfill the high expectations society has of it, it should be equipped with the best tools to find out the truth, determine who is guilty and either punish or send them to rehabilitation. To achieve these goals it has the power to gather all kinds of evidence and invade people’s liberties and private lives. These extensive prerogatives are controlled to a large extent, but not only, by the protection from the state’s intrusion into private life enshrined in human rights documents such as the right to fair trial and the right to privacy in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The protection granted to individuals in this way, however, is far from absolute and it is often reduced in the process of solving particularly important cases. Thus the answer to whether human rights are infringed can often be ambiguous, policy-driven and depend on the balancing of interests in the particular case.This paper endeavors to discuss whether the compulsory taking and use of neuroscientific evidence in the form of fMRI lie-detection and Guilty Knowledge Tests (‘GKT’ from now on) as well as Brain Fingerprinting (‘BF’ from now on) detection of existing knowledge from the defendant in criminal proceedings complies with the right to fair trial and particularly the right to silence which is part of it; and the right to privacy as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.