Institutional Imprinting Research Articles

Special Courts, Political Violence and the Law: Empirical Research in the State of Exception

Exploration of law’s role in the ‘war on terror’ frequently focuses on normative problems of lawlessness (‘anomie’). By contrast, empirically driven socio-legal analyses offer the possibility of charting degrees of juridification of the exception. But if exception is defined largely by departure from quotidian legal standards, juridification raises problematic issues for the norm-exception relationship.Analysis of this relationship invariably focuses on initial trajectory: from norm to exception. This paper examines the opposite trajectory, from exception to norm, mapping this shift using original empirical data from Northern Ireland’s jury-less ‘Diplock courts’ (whose functions bears comparison with the US Military Commissions established post 9/11). Exploring this trajectory challenges projections of a sealed norm-exception antinomy. Rather, processes of osmosis resulted in the ‘norm’ partly mirroring the exception’s legal contours and increasingly conforming to legal (albeit modified) expectations. Eventually, the exception hybridized with the new norm. The longitudinal dimension of the dataset (circa 400 cases spanning a twelve-year period, analyzed using SPSS) points to increasing juridification of the exception over time, suggesting a centripetal effect for law, supporting claims for a ‘compulsion of legality’. The contemporary special court increasingly provides a site of interaction of the secret and open states. That interaction is visible not only in the trial proper, but also in the interrogation room’s legal drama. Here the data support the juridification hypothesis, even if they also point to ‘pull-push’ battles over lawyers’ presence and the Northern Ireland/United Kingdom equivalent of Miranda rights – the ‘right to silence’.Analyzing detainees’ capacity to resist interrogation suggests critical time-lines, with confession unlikely once the line to exceptionality is crossed. Towards exception’s end, the data depict a counter-intuitive prolongation of interrogation. This suggests institutional imprinting or a substitution of extensive for earlier, possibly abusive, intensive interrogation. Overall, analysis exemplifies strategic use of empirical methodologies to explore otherwise inaccessible aspects of law’s role in conflicted state- and non-state interaction.

The impact of socialist imprinting and search on resource change: a study of firms in lithuania

AbstractFirms in transition economies experienced a large exogenous shock in their external business environment in the late 1980s when these economies moved from a socialist‐oriented economic environment to a more market‐oriented economic environment. This paper examines the following research question in the context of this change: What are some factors that influence transition economy firms to successfully change their operating know‐how or knowledge sets to reflect the demands of their new environment? Building on some core ideas from literature on organizational imprinting, knowledge‐based view of the firm, and firm search, we suggest that two factors have a profound impact on a firm's ability to change. The imprinting effect of firms' prior socialist institutional and market environment adversely impacts their ability to change their operating knowledge. At the same time, firms that search for new knowledge from distant sources (located in mainly non‐socialist countries) are able to successfully change their knowledge to meet the demands of the new market‐oriented economy. Both of these aspects also have joint interdependent effects on the success of change; distant search mitigates some of the adverse impact of socialist market imprinting, but that is not the case for the impact of socialist institutional imprinting. These findings have interesting implications for both researchers and practitioners involved in transition economy settings. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Lenin State Library: The National Library of the USSR

The Lenin State Library (LSL) was built on foundations laid in the mid-19th century, and received large and valuable additions after the 1917 Revolution. Its status, principles and organizational basis were confirmed by a government decree of 1984. Among its functions were that of a public library serving the population at large, and as the centre for the national retrospective, scholarly and ‘recommendatory bibliography’. The collections contain c.40 million units, but acquisitions are now substantially reduced because of the economic crisis and the political changes. Some expensive institutional and private national imprints do not come within the framework of the present legal deposit system, and the LSL now has little money to buy foreign materials. Space shortage and poor conservation conditions inhibit its work in the field of preservation. It is heavily used, each year receiving 2.6 visits and issuing 30 million volumes. The catalogue of the former restricted collection has been incorporated in the public catalogues and the materials are now available. A ‘Concept’ recently developed for the period up to 2010 distinguishes two groups of functions – main functions, which follow from the library's social purpose, and additional functions which emerge at certain stages of development. Other important functions already being performed are specialized information support of government bodies, the Book Museum and the Central Scientific-Military Library. The scale of activities of the LSL, which is not limited by geographical or departmental borders, is expressed in the definition of it as the Ail-Union national library; this together with the national libraries of the republics makes up the aggregate system of national libraries of the country.