The Seveso Directive: An Italian Pilot Study in Enabling Communication

In 1982 the Council of the European Communities issued a Directive on the Major Accident Hazards of Certain Industrial Activities, commonly known as the Seveso Directive. Besides other requirements, the Directive specifies that members of the public liable to be affected by a major accident from certain industrial activities must be informed of safety measures and how they should behave in the event of an accident. The Directive was subsequently amended in an extensive way. Upon the transposition of the Seveso Directive and its amendments into national legislations, the 12 European Member States are faced with the task of "appropriately and effectively" informing the public about major accident hazards. Delays are observed throughout the community, both in transposing the Directives and implementing public information. A pilot study on "Risk Information Needs" was commissioned and carried out at two Seveso sites in Italy in order to begin to resolve some of the problems involved in the provision of public information and to suggest appropriate guidelines. One hundred subjects answered an experimental protocol designed to assess their "information needs." This article presents the theoretical background, the pragmatic aims, and the design of the study. It also summarizes its most relevant findings and suggests some recommendations for the provision of information to the public.     

Bridging Rhetoric and Practice: New Perspectives on Barriers to Gendered Change

ABSTRACT

This article presents a new methodology, Gender Knowledge Contestation Analysis, and uses it to examine the processes under way when transformative gender equality policies, such as gender mainstreaming are implemented. Drawing on data gathered in the European Commission, the findings show the processes linking high-level rhetorical policy statements, strategic policies, and daily working practices. This analysis enables exploration of the mechanisms through which indifference to and nonawareness of gendered policy problems are collectively constituted and methods through which they can be challenged. Findings thus deepen our understanding of barriers to the implementation of gender mainstreaming and the steps required for its effective implementation.     

Seemingly unrelated systems of econometric equations

A generalization of Zellner's SUR model is derived for sets of seemingly unrelated systems of econometric equations. The resulting structural form – worked out for a set of Cowles Commission-type simultaneous equations systems – is general enough to include any SUR-type or panel-type specification of systems of econometric equations with contemporaneously correlated errors. Maximum estimation efficiency is obtained by treating all the individual subsystems at once rather than in a subsystem-by-subsystem fashion.     

Of bodies captured: the visual representation of the Paarl march and Poqo in apartheid South Africa

This article examines the visual representation of the violent march on the Western Cape town of Paarl in November 1962, and the place of photographs as employed by the media, a state-appointed commission of inquiry, and a series of judicial trials in the making of this event and its subjects. It is particularly concerned with a file of photographs of men accused of participating in the march, as a means to potentially enabling more complex and nuanced readings of the uprising than those provided by the textual archive surrounding the event. It considers the ways in which these photographs were used and why, while seemingly meant to give a face to a united Poqo organisation they never take on an altogether-public life. Clearly photographic occasions which were not as rigidly controlled as one would expect from police photographs, these photographs reference a multiplicity of genres. Yet at the same time, as the products of police surveillance, they remain deeply complicit in discourses of power and subjectification.     

论一般累犯构成的主观条件

我国新旧刑法规定一般累犯构成的主观条件限制为故意犯罪,排斥过失犯罪,笔者认为,该规定与特别刑法相冲突,也存在着诸多明显的不合理性,建议立法机关适时取消新刑法第65条第一款的"但书"规定。     

Civil Society and the Northern Irish Peace Process

Alternative accounts of the Northern Irish peace process are analyzed. It is noted that neither Unionist nor Republican accounts accord a significant or positive role to civil society in the reaching of a political settlement. It is only in what might be called the metropolitan liberal perspective that influence is attributed to the role of civil society in achieving a settlement. Two junctures at which civil society, centered on the third sector, played a prominent role in the peace process are analyzed: the Opsahl Commission before the launch of the peace process in 1993 and the nonparty Yes campaign during the referendum on the Belfast Agreement in May 1998. The paper then goes on to discuss why the influence of civil society has declined since the referendum, and draws attention to the conflict between the top-down implications of the consociational nature of the Belfast Agreement and the bottom-up promotion of political accommodation through civil society.     

华洋义赈会与二十世纪二三十年代的农村信用合作社

20世纪二三十年代,中国农村陷入空前危机,华洋义赈会在合作思潮的影响下应运而生。他们通过与银行联合提供贷款,部分满足了小农对资金的渴求,一定程度上抑制了农村高利贷的盘剥。但是,从这些农村合作社借贷资金的来源和构成状况上,我们可以看到合作社的社内资金极其微小,转而不得不依赖于社外资金,而社外资金对于农村合作社的支撑又极不稳定,从而限制了合作社对农村社会变革所发挥的作用。     

Major Hazard Information Policy in the European Community: Implications for Risk Analysis

The main impetus to the development of information about major industrial hazards in the European Community comes from the so-called Seveso Directive, which defines an information network and requires the generation and transmission of information as the basis for accident prevention and risk management. This important policy development, which calls for the formal identification and analysis of major hazards and the communication of risk information to members of the public, presents new opportunities and challenges to risk analysis and research in Europe. This paper briefly reviews the accidents that gave rise to the Directive and shaped its content, and then summarizes its requirements. The status of its implementation in the EC Member States is discussed, with special emphasis given to the comparison of safety analysis practices, the Major Accident Reporting System (MARS), and risk communication. Some new research directions stimulated by the Directive are identified.     

国有资产管理机构的法律地位研究

从1988年的国有资产管理局到2003年的国有资产监督管理委员会，国有资产管理机构模式在不断创新。尽管我国目前将国资委定位为“出资人”的角色，将管资产、管人和管事相结合，但在法律上却没有一个明确的定位，其自身的性质、工作目标及运作模式等诸多方面还存在不少问题。围绕国有资产管理机构的主体定位，研究国有资产管理机构的设置、法律性质及其权利。