The Law of the Network Society and the Problem of Hybridity Management

The network society, which is relevant to the social landscape of the 21st century, determines the building of a new architecture of law. The current legal map of the world is extremely heterogeneous and often does not coincide with the political map of the world. It is full of a variety of normative arrays that collide with each other, layered on top of each other, while the traditional legal methodology is not always able to resolve conflicts that arise. The problem of controversy between law and not law is gaining considerable potential due to the rapid growth of non-legal matter and the emergence of legitimizing institutions. The situation is complicated by the simultaneous existence of several institutional dispute resolution systems (state, non-state, alternative, platform-based) that refer to completely different, relatively autonomous subsystems of norms as applicable law. Such material and institutional fragmentation, the emergence of hybrid regulatory and institutional regimes has provoked an active search for new principles of building a legal architecture that is adequate to such a rapidly changing society. Globalization is transforming into networking, which redefines the geography of the world, the well-known and traditional principles of affiliation of legal entities, and then exacerbates the debates about legal taxonomy. The marked evolution of the legal superstructure also generates new types of conflicts, prompting the search for a new or adaptation of the known methodology in order to overcome them.The paper attempts to explore the new normativity in the context of a new sociality, to identify key trends in the development of the law of a network society, to predict the development of individual legal and sub-legal institutions, and to model legal ways of managing hybridity.

Impact, theory of change, and the horizons of scientific practice

Demands for research to generate impact, along with proliferating institutional regimes for evaluating impact, are a ubiquitous aspect of contemporary scientific practice. Based on participant observation at an agro-environmental research institute in southwest China, this article explores three iterations of a tool for planning and evaluating impactful science called ‘theory of change’ (TOC). Despite their ostensible common grounding in TOC, I show how an impact scientist’s framework, a donor’s monitoring and evaluation regime, and a communication consultant’s branding strategy each suggest very different normative structures for scientific practice. These structures entail: particular horizons towards which scientific research is to be practiced, precise points in time at which the future effects of research are to be anticipated, and specific assumptions about how scientists’ agency should play out across time. Taking the peculiar sensibilities of TOC as a comparative framework, I illuminate IFF scientists’ implicit imaginations of how contemporary science does and should generate effects in the world.

Labour market outcomes of different institutional regimes: evidence from the OECD countries

The rise of populism has been widely ascribed, at least in part, to an inability of national systems to generate decent employment or, indeed, stem its decline. This article explores the basis and nature of variations in labour market outcomes of different institutional regimes. For this comparative institutional analysis, we build indexes of labour market outcomes in the OECD countries, measuring actual cross-country variations and encompassing a much wider range of evidence in terms of countries and time periods covered than previous studies. We show that in terms of job availability and wages, the liberal market economies (LMEs) have advantages, but once involuntary part-time employment and wage inequality are considered, labour market outcomes appear superior in the continental European countries and the Scandinavia social democracies. However, any advantages of the LMEs appear to be diminishing since the global financial crisis. Compared with other regimes, Southern European and transitional economies have lower level of job availability and wage rates but are comparable in other aspects of the labour market.

Ethnographic Upscaling: Exploring and Testing Hypotheses Drawn from In-depth Ethnographic Findings in Spatially Continuous Cases

This article introduces ethnographic upscaling, an innovative procedure to explore and test hypotheses drawn from in-depth ethnographic findings in spatially continuous cases. The approach combines the strength of localized ethnographic descriptions with questionnaire-based regional surveys to study the distribution of ethnographic findings across social groups by comparison. The approach was designed in the Local Institutions in Globalized Societies project. This anthropological long-term research project ran from 2010 to 2019 to explore institutional regimes for managing water in arid Namibia. The article describes how the ethnographic upscaling approach was developed and implemented, discusses some exemplary results, and offers a critical reflection on its shortcomings and potentials.

Dynamics of Spatial Differentiation of Prices in the Cities of the FEFD on the Background of Development of New Institutional Regimes

In order to determine the dynamics of price volatility in the Far Eastern Federal District against the background of new institutional regimes, a comparative assessment of the levels of spatial differentiation of prices for 20 products in the municipal markets of the macroregion was carried out. It was revealed that in 2014–2019 the dynamics of the average level of volatility in prices for products was ambiguous, while a completely downward trend was not revealed for any of the products under consideration. Nevertheless, the average value of the difference in the levels of spatial differentiation in 2014 and 2019 for most of the surveyed goods in cities with a special legal regime, it is lower than the value of this indicator calculated for cities in which this regime is not in effect

Результаты деятельности фирмы в контексте специальных экономических зон: роль предпринимательской ориентации

В статье представлены результаты исследования фирм малого и среднего бизнеса, функционирующих в условиях особых институциональных режимов на Дальнем Востоке России. Эмпирическая проверка гипотез исследования проводилась на базе данных 128 компаний-резидентов специальных институциональных режимов, действующих на Дальнем Востоке России. Полученные количественные оценки свидетельствуют о том, что в условиях особых экономических зон наблюдается положительная связь между предпринимательской ориентацией фирмы и результатов ее деятельности, обусловленной в большей степени инновационностью и проактивностью фирм. The article presents the results of the study of small and medium- sized business firms operating under special institutional regimes in the Russian Far East. The objective of this study was to identify the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (i.e. risk taking, innovativeness and proactivity) on the firm performance in the context of special institutional regimes in the Far East of Russia. This theoretically derived research model is empirically validated by the survey data of 128 small and medium-sized enterprises-residents of special institutional regimes operating in the Russian Far East. The results obtained clearly indicate that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences upon the business performance.

Marine spatial planning for Bangladesh: a critical analysis of the legal and institutional regimes

The current arrangements for the management of the marine resources of Bangladesh are not adequate for sustainable management. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) may be a tool to achieve sustainable management of marine resources. The Government of Bangladesh is planning for the development of MSP for sustainable management of the marine resources in the Bay of Bengal. However, a clear understanding of the current and required legal and institutional arrangements for the development of MSP in Bangladesh is essential for sustainable management of the marine resources. This article analyzes the current legal and institutional arrangements concerning the management of marine resources and explores potential inadequacies for the development of MSP for sustainable management. The article refers to the legal and institutional arrangements of other coastal states which have already developed MSP to find out the required arrangements for the development of MSP in Bangladesh.