Initiatives within RegNet focus on thematic issues that cut across Centres. They draw together RegNet scholars (both within and outside of centres) in projects of various sorts to explore key themes. What gives RegNet intellectual vitality is an aspiration not so much to be expert on a number of specific regulatory topics but to use these topics as vehicles to explore cross-cutting intellectual themes. At any time there are many initiatives being discussed, developed, implemented and concluded in RegNet. The Compliance workshop being organized by Colin Scott (see notice in this newsletter) is an example of a small initiative. Some current initiatives underway are listed below. Ideas on how to move these forward and suggestions for new initiatives are welcome.

1. Nodal Governance (led by Clifford Shearing, Sasha Courville and Nicola Piper). This initiative locates regulation within a context of nodal networked governance, governance as distributed across nodes within state and non-state sectors. The Nodal Governance Initiative will map how nodes (governments, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, businesses, social movements and so on) contest, form alliances and collaborate as they seek to influence the way regulation takes place. It will examine issues of regulation both at the nodal and at the meta-nodal level.

2. Audit (led by Sasha Courville, Helen Watchirs, Christine Parker, Marian Sawer, John Uhr and Peter Drahos) This encompasses the idea of the "Audit Society", "Social Audit", globalization of audit, audit and the open corporation and audit as a tool for the regulation of government.

3. General Theories of Regulation (led by Peter Grabosky). This initiative, among other things, aspires to catalogue a list of testable propositions about regulation, including strategies of regulation, that might be relevant to explanatory theory development.

4. Meta-Regulation (led by Colin Scott, Christine Parker, John Braithwaite and Nicola Lacey). This initiative builds on Peter Grabosky's ideas of meta-regulation and meta risk management - the risk management of risk management systems. It is possible that we have become less a "risk society" than a "risk management society" and more fundamentally than that we are becoming a meta-regulatory society. A major sub-initiative will be a collaborative book with 18 authors entitled "Regulating Law".

5. Hope and Governance (led by Valerie Braithwaite and John Braithwaite). This initiative follows in the footsteps on another completed micro-macro initiative on the emotions, cognition, regulation and democratic governance entitled "Trust and Governance".

6. Procedural, Distributive and Restorative Justice (led by Brenda Morrison and Michael Wenzel). RegNet member Tom Tyler's work has been an important impetus to this second current micro-macro initiative. Explanatory theories of the efficacy of regulation can be based on perceptions of procedural or distributive justice in regulatory practice. Integration of explanatory and normative theories of justice is also an ambition, especially with restorative justice.

7. Regulatory Intent and Statutes (led by Suzanne Corcoran) A large number of scholars are collaborating on the distinctive importance of statutes and approaches to statutory interpretation in framing contemporary regulation in common law jurisdictions, particularly Australia.

Imelda Maher is Director of the Centre on Competition and Consumer Policy. A leading scholar in competition law and European Union law, the innovative aspect of her work is to recast competition law, not as a sui generis form of commercial law, but rather as being at the heart of the regulatory functions and power of the state. Her work concerns three interrelated aspects. Her European work explores the interplay of national and transnational competition norms, and the development of different competition models, as can be seen in her book, Competition Law: Alignment and Reform (Round Hall Sweet & Maxwell, 1999) and in her paper exploring the challenges of the European network of competition authorities presented at the 2002 Annual Competition Law and Policy Conference in the European University Institute, Florence. She analyses the Australian competition regime as an alternative but related model to that found in Europe. She has teamed up with Christine Parker, one of the key international compliance scholars, to undertake policy analysis and qualitative and quantitative research on compliance with the Australian Trade Practices Act. The work aims to strengthen the responsive regulation model by explaining under what conditions compliance works more effectively than deterrence, and when deterrence works better than incapacitation as a regulatory strategy. The internationalization of competition norms, on which she is writing a monograph, is the third strand to her work. In 2002 she published 'Competition Law in the International Domain: Networks as a New Form of Governance' as part of a special issue of the Journal of Law and Society. As part of this international work and her compliance research she works closely with and is a Director of, the Foundation for Effective Markets and Governance that provides technical assistance to developing economies and NGOs.

Clifford Shearing, with Philip Stenning, was instrumental in establishing private security as a major field in the 1980's through work such as that on regulation at Disney World. He has spent much of the past decade exploring and developing concepts that comprehend developments in governance globally through the window of the governance of security. This work has been instrumental in developing concepts of networked or nodal governance that make sense of the new centers of power and influence that have developed below, within, between and above nation states.

This empirical and conceptual and explanatory theory building has been complemented by normative theory as well as an active engagement with communities and governments. Shearing has been particularly active in this interventionist role in Argentina, Canada, Northern Ireland and South Africa. His work in South Africa began with restructuring the South African police as a member of the South African Interim Police Board in the early 1990s. Following this he contributed to the development of a framework for the policing of the South African elections. This framework placed much of the responsibility for policing mass events with those who were involved in them. It played a crucial role in ensuring safe and free elections within South Africa and has recently been exported to Northern Ireland. In the mid-1990's Shearing's work in South Africa focused on police and community education program. Most recently he has worked closely with poor communities, living in shantytowns in South Africa, to develop a model for local capacity governance. During the late 1990s he was active in Northern Ireland as a member of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern. For the past year and a half he has been extending the program of local capacity governance to Argentina. Currently Shearing is shifting his focus to Australia.

Eliza Ahmed's major contribution is about understanding rule violation (especially school bullying, workplace bullying, tax evasion) in terms of shame management, interpersonal relationships, and the process of regulation. Eliza has co-authored a book Shame Management through Reintegration (Ahmed, E., Harris, N., Braithwaite, J., and Braithwaite, V. 2001. Cambridge University Press, 392 pp.) demonstrating the implications of shame management for different kinds of wrongdoing, such as drink-driving and school bullying.

Eliza has been engaged in the "Life at School Project" (Australia, Bangladesh, Canada and South Korea), the "Cross-national School Behavior Research Project" (Australia, Bangladesh, India, Israel, Italy and South Africa) and the "Organizational Culture Project" (Australia and Bangladesh). She has also been a member of the Advisory Committee of the Bullying project, jointly run by Family Planning and Healthpact (ACT).

A current project is on tax evasion among self-employed business taxpayers and the Graduate population, with a particular emphasis on HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) liability. The main argument of her tax research is: if people are to pay taxes, they must believe that requests from the Tax Office are reasonable, that the tax system is fair and legitimate, and they must have confidence that others believe in the system.

Eliza conducts workshops on "Emotions in organizations" as a part of the course "Psychological processes in organizations and the workplace" at the Division of Psychology, Australian National University. These workshops provide students with a wide range of opportunities to explore, work and research in the area of emotions in organizations. How individuals ought to manage emotions to achieve organizational goals and to prevent discomfort is also discussed.

Tina Murphy has research experience working in both the academic and public sector. She recently graduated with a PhD in psychology and is now currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Tax System Integrity at the Australian National University. Her major research interests focus on issues related to Aggressive Tax Planning and what motivates taxpayers to become engaged in various forms of tax avoidance. She is particularly interested in the situation surrounding the mass marketed tax scheme issue in Australia as it provides the perfect opportunity to investigate why people sometimes resist decisions made by regulatory authorities. It is her hope that by better understanding some of the reasons for taxpayer disobedience, the Australian Taxation Office will be able to develop more effective strategies aimed at promoting voluntary taxpayer compliance in the future.

Tina is also interested in researching the use of persuasion and trust-as opposed to threat and coercion-as a regulatory tool for gaining compliance. Her research shows that, in the context of taxation, peoples' attitudes towards the tax system, rather than (or in addition to) purely economic calculations or fear of punishment, are important in explaining taxpayer non-compliance. Currently, Tina is conducting a study which shows that psychological factors such as trust can go on to influence taxpayers' compliance with rules and their obligation to accept ATO decisions. Her research is particularly important to both the ATO and other regulatory agencies as it has implications for the way that regulatory agencies deal with non-compliance.

In addition to her aggressive tax planning research, Tina has assisted the ATO in improving its communication strategies with disgruntled taxpayers, and she has also presented introductory statistical workshops to staff of Government Departments.

Sasha Courville has been successful in securing funds to the value of 1 million Euro for a project on Social Accountability In Sustainable Agriculture which is soon to be launched. The project is a joint initiative of four main social and environmental certification and labelling systems in agriculture and includes 12 pilot audits worldwide in the next two years. Funds have been received from the Biodiversity Fund of Hivos and Novib in the Netherlands, Sida in Sweden and GTZ in Germany.

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Regulatory Institutions Network - Compliance Workshop: "What Does It Mean to Comply?"
Monday, 17 June, Venue to be advised

This is the first of a series of Regnet Workshops that will explore cross-cutting themes in regulatory research. Underlying this topic is research evidence from a number of regulatory and enforcement domains, which suggests that simple measures of compliance, defined as behaviour corresponding to published rules or standards, are problematic.

Further information including a program and registration form can be found at http://regnet.anu.edu.au/compliance.html or by emailing regent@anu.edu.au

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Regulatory Institutions Network and the History Program, RSSS - Cycles of Regulation
27 -28 June 2002, Ross Hohnen Room, Chancelry 10, ANU, Canberra

A conference on long-term trends in patterns of labour regulation will be held at the ANU 27-28 June 2002, sponsored by the Regulatory Institutions Network and the History Program of the Research School of Social Sciences.

The scope of the conference is Australian and international, with papers covering the very long term and recent historical periods, as well as the contemporary situation. The broad thrust of the conference is directed at these secular patterns of change in regulation, with a working hypothesis derived from the notion that regulation may contain cyclical elements associated with changes in the structure of labour markets and governance. An interesting question is how far modes of regulation change independent of state systems (nationalism versus global regulation, for example) and the legal status of workers. Thus, the objective is to see whether it makes sense to talk in terms of long-term cycles in labour regulation and, if such cycles exist, how we might explain their dynamics.

Further information including a program and registration form can be found at http://regnet.anu.edu.au/cycles.html or by emailing regent@anu.edu.au

Centre for Restorative Justice (CRJ)

Centre for Tax System Integrity (CTSI)

Centre for Competition and Consumer Policy (CCP)

National Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Research (OHSR)

Security 21: National Centre for Security and Justice

Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet),
Research School of Social Sciences,
1st Floor Garden Wing,
University House,
Australian National University,
Canberra ACT 0200,
Australia.

Email regnet@anu.edu.au
Web http://regnet.anu.edu.au
Phone: +61 (0)2 6243 8500.
Fax +61 (0)2 6423 8507.