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AbstractRegulatory studies assume that citizens can act as regulators to complement or correct failing state and market forms of regulation. Yet, there is a growing literature that shows that in reality citizens may fail to be effective regulators. This paper systematically analyses how power inequalities obstruct citizens in their regulatory roles. It compares four case studies with highly different social and political contexts but with similar outcomes of citizens failing to regulate risk. The case studies are analyzed by operationalizing sociological and political science ideas about manifestations of enabling and controlling forms of power in order to understand the way power inequalities obstruct citizens in their regulatory roles across diverse contexts. The article shows how citizens, from farmers and manual workers in both authoritarian developing and democratic developed contexts to even highly trained medical professionals from the US, have limited agency and are disempowered to act as regulators. Our analysis reveals that five patterns of disempowerment play a crucial role in obstructing successful society‐based regulation: (i) dependency, (ii) capacity, (iii) social hierarchy, (iv) discursive framing, and (v) perverse effects of legal rights.

A 2015 investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) into the involvement of Enbridge Inc. at the University of Calgary drew widespread media attention in Canada on issues of academic integrity and legitimacy as well as renewed attention to the increasing centrality of corporate dollars in public institutions. All of this was further embedded in a public consideration of climate change and the contested legitimacy of carbon corporate interests. A qualitative content media analysis of 70 published stories from Canadian news sources reveals a stark contrast between corporate and non-corporate media frames. Our analysis shows the parallel efforts of the University of Calgary, Enbridge, and corporate media to frame out the central issues of corporate obstructionism in public institutions and, equally, institutional corruption around the mandate, purpose, and intention of those public institutions.

The concept of frontline safety encapsulates an approach to occupational health and safety that emphasizes the "other side of the regulatory relationship"—the ways in which safety culture, individual responsibility, organizational citizenship, trust, and compliance are interpreted and experienced at the local level. By exploring theoretical tensions concerning the most appropriate way of conceptualizing and framing frontline regulatory engagement, we can better identify the ways in which conceptions of individuals (as rational, responsible, economic actors) are constructed and maintained through workplace interactions and decision making as part of the fulfillment of the ideological and constitutive needs of neoliberal labor markets.

In 2010, the narrative policy framework was introduced as a positivist, quantitative, and structuralist approach to the study of policy narratives. Deviating from this central tenet of the narrative policy framework, in this article we show that the framework is quite compatible with qualitative methods—and the various epistemologies associated with them. To demonstrate compatibility between qualitative methods and the Narrative Policy Framework, we apply classic qualitative criteria to an illustrative case examining policy narratives in US campaign finance reform. Drawing on elite interviews, we illuminate competing policy narratives rooted in distinct democratic values that exhibit variation in how victims and harm are defined, how blame is attributed to villains, what policy solutions are put forth, and policy narrative communication strategies. Our incorporation of qualitative methods within the narrative policy framework is critical for the framework's overall development as it provides opportunities for more detailed description, inductive forms of inquiry, and grounded theory development in policy areas where sample sizes, access, and salience may limit quantitative approaches.

Social scientific perspectives on occupational safety largely characterize it as a disembodied, tangible, and easily quantifiable phenomenon. Recent research efforts have focused on exploring organizational conditions that predict occupational safety outcomes, resulting in top-down, often de-contextualized prescriptions about how to control safety in the workplace (e.g. 'management should promote a culture of safety'). There is growing interest in how social processes of organizing, wider socio-cultural considerations, and the situated production of safety can contribute to the appreciation of the 'lived experience' of life and death at work. This Special Issue focuses on the socially constructed nature of occupational safety and the insight it provides in understanding broader social and organizational processes. In this article, we first describe how various social scientific disciplines share an interest in occupational safety and organizational behavior, yet rarely speak to another. We provide an overview of the five articles that comprise the Special Issue, and briefly highlight some ways forward for studying safety in organizations.

RésuméL'industrie du jeu vidéo et d'ordinateur récolte des bénéfices supérieurs aux films d'Hollywood et à la l'industrie de la pornographie—seul l'industrie de la musique excède ses revenus. Les jeux les plus célèbres emploient des représentations encore plus explicites de la criminalité, des drogues, du sexe, et de la violence extrême. En outre, grâce au progrès technologique, le contenu violent et sexuel des jeux vidèo devient de plus en plus réaliste et interactif. En conséquence, des discussions nationales indépendantes ont eu lieu globalement afin de déterminer si les jeux vidéo modernes constituent un nouveau problème social. Dans cette étude, nous effectuons une analyse du contenu interactif des jeux vidéo les plus célèbres, et nous démontrons que le contenu socialement contestable est aussi prévalent que le contenu violent. En plus, nous examinons de quelle manière les jeux vidéo sont côtés par l'Agence américaine d'évaluation des logiciels, ainsi que certaines questions entourant la réglementation volontaire.

La dépendance croissante du secteur privé envers la commandite a eu des conséquences sur la gouvernance des organismes sans but lucratif (OSBL). La recherche traditionnelle sur le financement a pris un angle d'observation essentiellement positif, montrant que les OSBL peuvent trouver des occasions d'influencer les intérêts de leurs bailleurs de fonds de manière à ce qu'ils deviennent plus compatibles avec la mission de l'OSBL. Dans cet article, les auteurs s'inspirent de ce travail en fournissant un examen plus nuancé de l'intermédiaire dans l'OSBL. Plus précisément, les auteurs introduisent une forme négative d'intermédiaire connue sous le nom d'autocensure organisationnelle. En examinant l'autocensure, ils montrent que les OSBL devraient plutôt redéfinir leurs propres buts de manière à attirer les bailleurs de fonds du secteur privé.Increasing reliance on corporate sponsorship has impacted the governance of nonprofit organizations. Traditional research on funding has taken a predominately positive vantage point, expressing that nonprofit organizations may find opportunities to influence their funder's interests such that they become more compatible with the nonprofit organization's mission. In this article, we build upon this work by providing a more nuanced examination of agency in the nonprofit organization. Specifically, we introduce a negative form of agency known as organizational self‐censorship. By examining self‐censorship, we reveal that nonprofit organizations may instead redefine their own goals in order to appeal to private sector funders.

The impact of rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) on free-ranging rabbit populations, their immunological response, and the abundance of insect vectors, were monitored in detail in the southern agricultural region of Western Australia. Further, a broad-scale rabbit monitoring program was also established at nine locations across a rainfall gradient in the southern half of Western Australia to monitor the natural arrival, or controlled release, of rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV). Changes in rabbit populations and the immune status of RHDV antibodies were monitored in these areas to enable further understanding of the epidemiology of RHD, and its impact on rabbit numbers.RHDV had the greatest impact on rabbit populations in the arid and semi-arid areas (<360 mm per annum), where rabbit numbers were reduced to, and maintained at, 10% of pre-RHD levels. Conversely, the effects of RHD on rabbit numbers in higher-rainfall areas (360–700 mm per annum) were highly variable and patchy, and in some instances RHD had little apparent impact. In higher-rainfall areas where RHD was effective, rabbit numbers were reduced by 50–78%. RHDV was first confirmed in the southern agricultural region of Western Australia in early September 1996, ~1 year after its escape from Wardang Island, South Australia. At the detailed monitoring site (485 mm rainfall per annum), rabbit numbers declined by 65% within 2 weeks of RHDV being detected. However, ~70% of the remaining rabbits had antibodies against RHDV, indicating that they had survived the disease. There was also a demographic shift towards young rabbits (<1 year old) at this time. Further, even though there was no clinical evidence of RHD recurring in this population during the 3-year study, the presence of IgM antibodies in some rabbits well after the initial epizootic suggests that low-level transient outbreaks of RHDV had occurred at this site. Although the impact of these low-level outbreaks on population dynamics were uncertain, rabbit numbers at this site had recovered to pre-RHD levels within two breeding seasons.The abundance of insect vectors on the detailed monitoring site was similar between years with and without RHD outbreaks. Thus, the failure of RHDV to develop clinical disease on this site after the initial epizootic was unlikely to have been caused by the lack of suitable transmission vectors. The apparent lack of disease recurrence at the detailed monitoring site may have been caused by the presence of a non-pathogenic form of RHDV, which seemed to impart at least some cross-immunity to RHDV in these rabbits. The presence of RHDV also caused a shift in the timing of natural epizootics of myxomatosis at this site.

Regardless of their sex and age, the persistence of 76 rabbits
(Oryctolagus cuniculus) translocated onto 5 different
sites with relatively low rabbit densities was identical to that of resident
rabbits. Emigration and exploratory movements by rabbits from 12 discrete
populations were positively correlated with rabbit density and mainly
undertaken by adult rabbits. Adult males moved significantly more often and
further than adult females. Two peaks in immigration were observed; a large
peak (usually in January) immediately following the breeding season, and a
second but smaller peak in March which preceded the start of the next breeding
season. Again, significantly more adult males than females immigrated. The
proportion of rabbits seen in spotlight counts was positively correlated with
rabbit density, which suggests that biases in population estimates could
result in some situations. No clear patterns on the effects of a variety of
weather variables on spotlight counts could be established, but increasing
rainfall, wind speed and moonlight may have reduced rabbit activity.

The acceptability of four different bait station designs (drum, slab, tyre,
corrugated iron) to rabbits was tested in the field using unpoisoned oat bait.
The drum (200 L, cut longitudinally) and the raised concrete slab (60
× 60 cm) designs were the most acceptable to rabbits. The raised
tyre design was unacceptable, and this was supported by later field efficacy
trials that compared the drum and tyre designs using 1080 One-shot oats. The
efficacy of three of these designs (drum, slab, tyre) against
'urban' rabbits was assessed more fully using pindone oat bait.
The tyre stations were again found to have little impact on rabbit numbers.
With the exception of one drum site where pindone bait stations were totally
ineffective, the proportional reductions in rabbit numbers for the remaining
sites were similar between the drum (69%, n
= 3) and slab (70%, n = 5)
designs. However, the slab design provided much easier access to bait by
non-target species (particularly birds), and we therefore recommend that the
drum design would be the best bait station for controlling rabbits.
The overall proportional reduction in rabbit numbers achieved with pindone
bait stations was 48% (range 0–80%,
n = 13), which is less than that usually
achieved during broadacre control programs with pindone
(60–90+%). In addition, these kills took 30–60
days to achieve, and as rabbit damage still occurred over this period, the use
of pindone bait stations did not always result in damage mitigation or,
ultimately, an economic benefit. Some potential problems associated with the
use of pindone bait stations, such as the possibility of the development of
'resistance' to pindone bait and the risk to non-target species,
are also discussed. The combined use of track counts and a 'digs'
index proved a reliable indicator of changes in rabbit abundance.

Demographic changes in three free-ranging rabbit
(Oryctolagus cuniculus) populations were monitored over
4 years in southern Western Australia. Peak densities followed periods of high
rainfall and pasture biomass. The breeding season was prolonged, often
extending from at least April to November, with some pregnancies occurring
outside this period. Fecundity, determined by the autopsy of pregnant offsite
rabbits and the known length of each breeding season, appeared to be
relatively high, with the potential for 34–39 kittens
doe-1 year-1; however, because not
all females are pregnant in all months, the overall productivity of these
populations was estimated at 25–30 kittens adult
female-1 year-1. Exponential rates
of increase varied from 0.13 to 0.30 during the breeding periods and
–0.05 to –0.14 during the nonbreeding season. Kitten survival was
generally low whereas some adults lived for more than 5 years. Two patterns of
myxomatosis were observed: annual epizootics of the disease (3 of 4 years) and
an epidemic that slowly spread over many months. European rabbit fleas were
most abundant during winter–spring and attained highest densities on
adult female rabbits.