Norms Of Appropriate Behavior Research Articles

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

Abstract There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

Governing plastics: The power and importance of activism in the global South

Over the past two decades, civil society advocacy to improve plastics governance has been surging across the global South. This diverse, fragmented, bottom-up advocacy is now a key force, this Perspective article contends, reforming policy and elevating concerns for community justice, social equity, and human rights. A variety of strategies characterize this advocacy. Activists are raising public awareness and diffusing norms of appropriate behaviour. They are organizing cleanups, partnering with local businesses, and modelling social enterprises. And they are shaming transnational corporations, lobbying governments, and participating in multilateral forums. These mutually-reinforcing strategies, the article maintains, are intensifying pressure to transform plastics governance globally, including negotiating an ambitious plastics treaty. Calls are growing louder for governments to impose targets for ending plastic pollution, eliminate harmful plastics, and reduce overall production. Pressure is rising on states to end trade in unrecyclable plastics, phase out incineration, and require manufacturers to redesign plastic products. Demands are mounting for greater producer responsibility for plastic pollution, a stronger precautionary principle when governing plastics, and more investment in waste and recycling infrastructure. States are also facing growing civil society pressure to implement just transitions to waste-free economies that prioritize the rights of communities and marginalized peoples. More research will be necessary in the coming years to fully evaluate the global influence of South-based advocacy to improve plastics governance. Still, the author concludes, this case offers valuable insights into the ability of South-based activism to not only influence, but also take a leading role in strengthening global environmentalism.

Japan’s Normative Power in Central Asia: Norms, Development Cooperation, and the Long-lasting Partnership

The purposes of this research are threefold. First, it revisits the “normative powers in Central Asia” debate, which largely ignores an important stalwart supporter of the rule-based international order—Japan. The traditional exclusion of Japan often appears to be related to the belief that Japan plays second (if not third) fiddle at best and has limited power to influence developments in the region. While this thinking for the most part continues to organize much that is written about Japan–Central Asia relations, this article asserts that Japanese normative power should be taken more seriously than many studies understand. Second, using a combination of document analysis (in Japanese, Kazakh, Russian and English) and key stakeholder interviews, it examines how Japan socializes Kazakhstan into a set of norms of appropriate behavior in the field of foreign aid. Finally, highlighting that Kazakhstan embraces a hybrid identity as an official development assistance provider, this study asserts that Japan’s ODA has become a key reference model for Kazakhstan.

Politic offering behaviour among Saudi females: Is there any place for quantitative analysis in discursive politeness?

Although discursive scholars emphasize that norms of appropriate behaviour play a vital role in politeness evaluations, the relational work framework has yet to provide analytic tools that capture these norms or identify patterns of politic use in corpora. This study explored offering interactions in Saudi female friendship groups and proposed a new means to investigate politeness, in particular, politic behaviour in such encounters. A quantitative analysis of some concepts of discourse, principally the exchange unit, helped detecting politic patterns in spontaneous/naturally occurring offers between ten participants. After careful analysis of three naturally occurring encounters, 143 offer exchanges were identified in the corpus. Results showed that many offers were non-verbal and reoffering may not constitute a dominant practice in Saudi friends’ interactions, which indicated that politeness norms in these friends’ interactions may have deviated from the stereotypes of the Saudi culture. Quantitative analysis may allow researchers to examine the dominant norms and the politic patterns in offers because for a behaviour to be politic, it needs to occur frequently in order for it to be perceived as expected in a given social situation. However, quantitative analysis cannot be used alone because exploring the evaluative reactions is fundamental in discursive approaches.

The godfather provides: Enduring corruption and organizational hierarchy in the Kenyan police service

AbstractDespite government commitments to mitigate corruption and strengthen mechanisms of accountability in state security sectors, reform efforts frequently fail to curb illegal practices by state agents. Scholars offer explanations that range from deeply embedded societal norms of appropriate behavior to rational accounts emphasizing the individualized benefits corruption can offer. Using a case study of the Service Standing Orders in Kenya's National Police Service however, we build on the work of Persson et al.'s analysis to show how corrupt practices on the part of street‐level agents are reinforced within organizational hierarchies, through institutionalized—rather than personalized—incentives and obligations. As a result, policy innovations that do not explicitly identify the countervailing incentives created through internal command structures are likely to miss potentially fruitful avenues for institutional reform.

The changing roles of frontline bureaucrats in the digital welfare state: The case of a data dashboard in Rotterdam’s Work and Income department

AbstractThe welfare state is currently undergoing a transition toward data-driven policies, management, and execution. This has important repercussions for frontline bureaucrats in such a “digital welfare state.” So far, impact of data-driven tools on frontline bureaucrats is primarily described in terms of curtailing or enlarging their discretionary space to make decisions. It is unclear, however, how daily work practices and role identities of frontline bureaucrats change in situ and which norms they develop to work with new data tools. In this article, we present an empirical study about the impact of a data dashboard in the Work and Income department of the municipality of Rotterdam. We answer the following research question: Which role identities, work practices, and norms of appropriate behavior of frontline bureaucrats in the social domain are reshaped by the introduction of a data dashboard? We use a multiple methods design consisting of semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, and document analysis. Our results reveal two role identities among frontline bureaucrats: (a) the client coach, and (b) the caseload manager. We show that the implementation of the dashboard stimulates a shift from a client coach role identity toward a caseload manager role identity. This shift is contested as it leads to role identity conflicts among frontline bureaucrats with a client coach role. Furthermore, we establish that the accommodation of the institutional void in which the introduction of the dashboard takes place, is centered around three themes of contestation: (a) data quality, (b) quality of service provision, and (c) data representations.

“Congratulations! You just won the title for ‘worse Tinder opening line’”

AbstractOften preferred to its face-to-face counterpart, online dating has transformed the way we perceive practices relevant to meeting people, mostly because it offers “a wider pool of potential partners” (Heino, Ellison, and Gibbs 2010, 428). Despite its popularity, however, online dating is an under-researched area in general, crucially in linguistics. Looking at (mostly unsuccessful) naturally occurring initial interactions that have taken place on the popular Tinder application, the aim of this study is to gain some insights into the relationship among language aggression, impoliteness and communication failure in the context of flirting on Tinder. Results show that the most common way that users initiate interaction in this dataset is through sexually loaded language, which seems to be understood as a breach of the norms of appropriateness for first-time contact. Although Tinder has no manual to prescribe what should or should not be said in interaction, it transpires from the data that avoiding overstepping in terms of sexual matters (i.e. refraining from using sexually loaded language and/or innuendos) functions as an unwritten law which sparks impoliteness when not followed. Resulting impoliteness manifests itself mostly through the strategies of sarcasm and ignoring/snubbing the other, used to counteract (perceived) inappropriateness. Tracing this escalation of non-cooperative practices, from inappropriateness to impoliteness, also provides the opportunity to examine the emergence of playfulness and creativity as language behaviours interwoven with aggression. Therefore, online dating seems to lend itself well to the study of impoliteness and violation of norms of appropriate behaviour, providing opportunities for an expansion of contexts for linguistic analysis.

Social capital and the problem of opportunistic leadership: the example of Koreans in Japan

Through webs of cross-cutting ties, groups can build "social capital"—the information and informal collective punishment by which to mitigate collective action problems and enforce on each other norms of appropriate behavior. Yet not all minorities maintain such networks. And minority groups without these cross-cutting ties sometimes find themselves hijacked by opportunistic entrepreneurs who capture private benefits for themselves while generating statistical discrimination against the group as a whole. The problem becomes acute when migration from the minority to the majority group is possible (at a cost). Inevitably, the most talented members of the minority will find the migration easiest and most rewarding. Necessarily, the resulting selective out-migration will reduce the average ability of the minority members who remain and leave the group even more vulnerable to the opportunists. Consider the Korean residents of Japan. Koreans had begun to migrate to Japan in the 1910s. They were poor, single, male, young, uneducated, and did not intend to stay long. As one might expect given those demographics, they maintained low levels of social capital, and generated substantial (statistical) discrimination toward themselves. After the Second World War, most Koreans returned to their homeland. Among those who stayed, the low levels of social capital remained. Plagued by collective action problems, the group could not prevent the communists among them from taking control and manipulating the group toward their private ends. Lacking the dense networks that would let them constrain the opportunists, the resident Koreans could not stop them. Those with the most talent, sophistication, and education simply left the group and migrated into Japanese society.

China’s Diplomacy: Towards ASEAN Way Norms in the South China Sea

Summary China’s approach to the norms of appropriate behaviour among states is being scrutinised by academics and practitioners — and no more so than in the South China Sea dispute where China’s response to the regional set of diplomatic norms, the ASEAN Way, is controversial. This essay asks three questions: Is China changing its diplomatic practices towards ASEAN Way diplomatic norms and, if so, how and why? Examining the issue through the lens of diplomatic tactics, the essay argues that yes China is changing its diplomacy, by adopting a range of diplomatic tactics: originally acknowledging ASEAN Way norms; later challenging and manipulating them; and, throughout, adopting tactics with ambiguous meanings. China’s tactics change in response to its leaders’ evolving perceptions of China’s international and regional contexts and, in turn, China’s tactics impact the contexts. China’s diplomacy, in this case, is adaptive, multifaceted, context dependent and context-changing, reflecting diplomacy’s longue durée.

Social Capital and the Problem of Opportunistic Leadership: The Example of Koreans in Japan

Through webs of cross-cutting ties, groups can build capital—the information and informal collective punishment by which to mitigate collective action problems and enforce on each other norms of appropriate behavior. Yet not all minorities maintain such networks. And minority groups without these cross-cutting ties sometimes find themselves hijacked by opportunistic entrepreneurs who capture private benefits for themselves while generating statistical discrimination against the group as a whole. The problem becomes acute when migration from the minority to the majority group is possible (at a cost). Inevitably, the most talented members of the minority will find the migration easiest and most rewarding. Necessarily, the resulting selective out-migration will reduce the average ability of the minority members who remain and leave the group even more vulnerable to the opportunists. Consider the Korean residents of Japan. Koreans had begun to migrate to Japan in the 1910s. They were poor, single, male, young, uneducated, and did not intend to stay long. As one might expect given those demographics, they maintained low levels of social capital, and generated substantial (statistical) discrimination toward themselves. After the Second World War, most Koreans returned to their homeland. Among those who stayed, the low levels of social capital remained. Plagued by collective action problems, the group could not prevent the communists among them from taking control and manipulating the group toward their private ends. Lacking the dense networks that would let them constrain the opportunists, the resident Koreans could not stop them. Those with the most talent, sophistication, and education simply left the group and migrated into Japanese society.

Expressing what? The stigmatization of the defendant and the ICC’s institutional interests in the Ongwen case

AbstractThe potential of international criminal trials to express the wrongfulness of mass atrocities and instil norms of appropriate behaviour within communities has been subject to a lively theoretical debate. This article makes an important empirical contribution by examining the limitations to the expressivist aspiration of international criminal justice in the context of the message communicated by the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (ICC-OTP) in the Ongwen case. A detailed analysis of the selection of charges, modes of liability, and the overall presentation of the Prosecutor’s arguments at trial suggests that the ICC-OTP’s limited capabilities to apprehend suspects and its dependency on state co-operation risk the excessive stigmatization of the few defendants available for trial for the purpose of demonstrating the Court’s capability of prosecuting notorious criminals. As the only apprehended commander from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Dominic Ongwen has been presented by the ICC-OTP as the ‘cause’ of crimes committed in Northern Uganda without due regard for the degree of his alleged involvement in those crimes compared to other LRA commanders, the role of other actors in the conflict, or the significance of his own victimization as a child. Ongwen’s excessive stigmatization expressed the importance of the Ugandan investigation after a decade of showing no results. Yet, it also produced a simplistic narrative which failed to express the complexity of violence in Northern Uganda.

The Restructuring Imperative: Deviation, Performance and CEO Dismissal in the Shareholder Value Era

This paper proposes that CEO dismissal is a form of penalty that CEOs incur for their record of deviation from historically prevailing norms of appropriate behavior during performance downturns. To verify this argument, I examine CEO dismissal and post-dismissal strategic change in large U.S. companies between 1984 and 2007, when the field in which these firms were embedded was characterized by the prominence of the norms of corporate restructuring for shareholders. My findings are three-fold. First, the effect of performance declines on CEO dismissal was intensified by the extent to which CEOs held a record of deviation from the norms of restructuring–i.e., that of increasing assets, employees, and unrelated diversification. Second, new CEOs were more inclined to engage in restructuring when they took office following the dismissal of predecessors with a record of deviation. Finally, those patterns of CEO dismissal and post-dismissal restructuring became more evident over time as the norms developed. Meanwhile, the findings did not apply prior to the shareholder value era. Consequently, this paper suggests that institutional norms act as interpretive frameworks that enable a board of directors to make sense of performance problems and evaluate managerial competence to resolve those problems. Implications for the literatures on institutional theory and upper echelon research are discussed.

Anonymous shell companies: A global audit study and field experiment in 176 countries

To test whether firms behave consistently with international law prohibiting anonymous incorporation, we conducted a global audit study and field experiment, using data from 1639 incorporation firms in 176 countries. We requested anonymous incorporation and randomly assigned references to international law, threat of penalties, norms of appropriate behavior, or a placebo. We find a substantial number of firms willing to flout international standards and show that those in OECD countries proved significantly less compliant with rules than in developing countries or tax havens. Firms in tax havens displayed significantly greater compliance and were sensitive to experimental interventions invoking international law.

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

Collective Identity, Anglo-Saxon Bond and the Persistence of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

There have been many “end of affair” comments on the Anglo-American special relationship (AASR) in the post-Cold War era. Notwithstanding this, the AASR has managed to persist without losing its vitality up to the present. This article seeks to explain the persistence of the AASR from the perspective of collective identity. It argues that a strong Anglo-American collective identity has been an indispensable positive contributor to the persistence of the AASR after the end of the Cold War. The strong Anglo-American collective identity facilitates Anglo-American common threat perceptions, solidifies embedded trust between the UK and the USA, and prescribes norms of appropriate behaviour for these two countries.

Committing to Doing Good and Doing Well: Fiduciary Duty in Benefit Corporations

Can someone running a business do good while doing well? Can they benefit society and the environment while still making money? Supporters of social enterprises believe the answer is yes, as these companies aim at both making money for shareholders while also pursuing other social benefits. Since 2010, states have begun to enact statutes creating the “benefit corporation” as a new legal form designed to fit social enterprises. Benefit corporations proclaim to the world that they will pursue both social good and profits, and those who run them have a fiduciary duty to consider a broad range of social interests as they make their decisions rather than a duty to focus solely on increasing shareholder value. Does this novel fiduciary duty effectively commit these businesses to doing good? How will courts actually apply this duty in practice? Will this new duty accomplish its goals without unduly high costs?This article is among the first to analyze in detail the fiduciary duty provisions in several versions of these new benefit corporation statutes. It compares duties in benefit corporations to duties in traditional corporations in the leading categories of fiduciary duty cases. It argues that there is likely to be a modest “flattening” in the risk of liability for directors and officers of benefit corporations. That is, as compared to the level of risk in ordinary corporations, the risk of being held personally liable will be bigger for decisions where that risk is weakest in ordinary corporations, while the risk of liability will be smaller for decisions where that risk is highest in ordinary corporations.The article then asks whether the statutes strike the proper balance in holding directors and officers accountable. The statutes could be too strong if they scare off investors and managers. They could be too weak if they allow managers to proclaim their virtue while ignoring their duties with no fear of legal sanctions. Neither possibility can be dismissed, but this paper argues that the statutes have got it just right. They create enough risk of liability that managers must pay attention to their legal duties, allowing courts to help shape norms of appropriate behavior, while not imposing such high risk that this promising new business form becomes unattractive.

Do Norms Reduce Torture?

Abstract One of the most important developments in international political and legal theory over the last 15 years has been the assertion that norms affect state behavior. Scholars have claimed that states are constrained by norms of appropriate behavior and furthermore that norms actually change (“reconstitute”) states’ understandings of their interests, thereby leading states to adapt their behavior in accordance with these new understandings. We test the proposition that norms alter state behavior with respect to the expanding international norm against torture from 1985 through 2003. Unfortunately, we find no evidence that the spreading of the international norm against torture, measured by the percentage of countries in the world that have acceded to the United Nations Convention against Torture, has led to any reduction in torture according to a variety of measures.

Charitable Accountability and Social Norms

This paper examines the use of social norms in influencing nonprofit board behavior. Directors and officers of charities are fiduciaries to their organization. Once a person assumes a fiduciary obligation, a series of moral and legal demands are placed upon her. The generality of fiduciary norms makes application difficult in concrete situations. Fiduciary accountability presents a paradox. Though the number of nonprofit organizations has expanded enormously, at the same time enforcement efforts by regulators have declined, so there is little chance of legal sanction for violations. Yet, most organizations and trustees abide by the rules, adhere to good practices and demonstrate fidelity to the organization's charitable mission. Why do most fiduciaries do what's right? Charitable fiduciaries have internalized the norms of appropriate behavior and that most fiduciary law is the explication of social norms. The paper argues that Section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code, which imposes an intermediate sanction of an excise tax on excessive benefit transactions of insiders or disqualified persons of section 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits other than private foundations, was less important as a sanction or tax than in creating new behavioral norms, because in the years following enactment there was almost no enforcement. The particular change in normative behavior the intermediate sanctions legislation produced, though effective is inefficient, because of the costs incurred by all nonprofit organizations to adhere to the new norm.

Privacy Wrongs in Search of Remedies

The American legal system has generally rejected legal rights for data privacy and relies instead on market self-regulation and the litigation process to establish norms of appropriate behavior in society. Information privacy is protected only through an amalgam of narrowly targeted rules. The aggregation of these specific rights leaves many significant gaps and fewer clear remedies for violations of fair information practices. With an absence of well-established legal rights, privacy wrongs are currently in search of remedies. The American public is beginning to demand that data privacy violators be held accountable. In a recent survey, Internet users overwhelmingly called for sanctions ranging from jail time to blacklisting of organizations that failed to respect privacy policies. Public enforcement actions and private law suits in the United States are just emerging as an important force in the creation of adequate protection for citizens' personal information in American society. This Article first describes privacy rights and wrongs that frame the search for remedies in the United States. In particular, this section focuses on two different types of harm created by the misuse of personal information and the desire to find protective rights: personal or private wrongs and public or societal wrongs. Next this Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General have become important enforcers against personal wrongs, but their efforts fall short of accomplishing systematic change and fail to provide individual victims with any real remedy. The third part of this Article examines private claims for privacy wrongs. This section explores some tortured efforts to obtain redress for privacy violations and offers a few theories for unexploited and unexplored claims. Finally, this Article concludes with an instrumentalist view of the search for remedies. The current mismatch between privacy wrongs and remedies creates a destabilizing force that will ultimately push in favor of enhanced legal rights for data privacy.

Prelude to Gleichschaltung: The University of Heidelberg and the E.J. Gumbel Controversies, 1924 and 1932

This article examines the erosion of academic freedom at the University of Heidelberg on the eve of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. This analysis focuses on the role of informal social norms and academic conventions in the decision to dismiss the radical pacifist and socialist E.J. Gumbel from the Heidelberg faculty in 1932. Despite Heidelberg’s reputation for intellectual tolerance and the public view of the University as a bulwark of liberalism, Gumbel’s colleagues, including pro-republican sympathisers, considered his activities an irresponsible violation of their own norms of appropriate behaviour. By incorporating an analysis of these norms in Gumbel’s dismissal we can enlarge our understanding of how the Heidelberg faculty, which tolerated a wide spectrum of political opinion within its ranks, fell into a pattern of responding to public assaults against academic freedom by expelling its most controversial member.