EU-Russia Strategic Energy Culture: Progressive Convergence or Regressive Dilemma?

This article argues that strategic culture, long consigned to the margins of broader, more substantial IR theories, offers a novel mode by which to explore recent developments in EU-Russia energy relations. Approaching seminal strategic policies from the perspective of institutionalised norms and cultural value-sets, strategic culture explores the power of the past and its ability to produce and influence national attitudes in governments and societies. This enables analyses of strategic energy relations between actors like the EU and Russia to move beyond obvious polarities to nuanced insights about the national value sets by which energy security is itself rendered strategic. Beginning with the individual strategic cultures of both the EU and Russia within the area of contemporary energy security policies, the article then appraises the range of bilateral EU-Russia energy security policies, suggesting that in many ways, these shared policies constitute a sector-specific strategic energy culture that includes both the EU and Russia. Areas of ongoing intransigence and policy convergence in EU-Russia energy security approaches constitute the case studies, illustrating that both sides are essentially motivated toward the same goals of energy security, market prosperity and actor-based prestige, but on the basis of vastly different visions, using widely diverse modes of implementation, and with dissimilar standards of evaluation. The analysis then appraises whether this co-constituted area is progressive or regressive in terms of the cooperation or conflict generated between the two sides, concluding that a basis of acknowleged commonalities – made available through strategic culture perspectives – both sides retain the impetus to cooperate to the point of complete agreement on some areas, whilst simultaneously remaining in conflict to the point of aggression in others.     

Information-Based Principles for Rethinking Consumer Protection Policy

In this paper we review the changes in economic theory that have taken place since current consumer protection regimes were first developed in the 1960s and 70s. We draw from this evolution in economic theory the basic principle that information, and the complex ways in which information works both in the marketplace and in regulatory regimes, should form the core of a set of principles for rethinking consumer protection policy. We go on to propose a number of such information-based principles as a guide for the redesign of consumer protection policy to deal with an increasingly global and complex consumer marketplace.     

A co-evolutionary model of change in environmental management

Environmental problems, and human attempts to manage them, can be conceptualised as evolutionary complex systems, involving interlinked processes of physical, knowledge, technological, institutional, perceptual and behavioural change. A distinction may be made between changes in physical systems (‘physical emergence'), changes in human knowledge about those systems (‘knowledge emergence') and changes in human perceptions (‘perceptual emergence'). While processes of physical and knowledge emergence are important, it is through perceptual emergence that a phenomenon comes to be regarded as a ‘problem' or ‘issue', potentially leading to changes in policy, institutional arrangements or behaviour. The paper proposes a soft complex systems model of the relationships between these processes, illustrated with examples from the history of air quality management in the UK. The model also has wider application in the understanding of other complex issues of environmental management.     

An Information-Based Approach to Labeling Biotechnology Consumer Products

Using an economic framework this paper explores the need for labeling of biotechnological consumer products. In particular, we assess the impact of labeling on information problems faced by consumers and regulators. Using information analysis, we propose an approach to labeling biotechnology products that attempts to respect both the real nature of consumer information-processing capacities and approaches and the environment of uncertainty in which any regulatory policy for biotechnology will operate. We conclude that the fact of uncertainty on the scientific front and the nature of consumer concerns in this area gives rise to a need for some type of labeling. Using labels to convey substantive information, however, is likely to be of limited value to consumers. A comprehensive approach to information policy for consumers in this field should aim instead to use labeling requirements to harness the incentives of producers and other private entities to effectively convey to consumers what they want and need to know. We therefore recommend that governments require a simple alert label on biotechnology consumer goods that will prompt consumers to assess their information needs and producers or others to supply those needs. Government regulation in this scheme would consist of basic health and safety regulation and direct or indirect monitoring and regulation of the content of the information ultimately conveyed to consumers by producers and others.