Putting the Regulated Back into Regulation
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| Author | Richard Johnstone |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00131 |
CORPORATE REGULATION: BEYOND ‘PUNISH OR PERSUADE’
BY FIONA HAINES
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, x and 269 pp., £35.00)
INTRODUCTION
Past research in corporate regulation has tended to focus largely upon the
behaviour of regulatory agencies and, in particular, the way in which agen-
cies have approached the complex task of enforcing statutory duties
imposed upon business organizations. Occupational health and safety regu-
lation, for example, has been blessed with a rich literature on the history of
the nineteenth-century British Factory Acts, and the way in which the fac-
tory inspectorates grappled to find a viable method of inspecting and enforc-
ing the obligations set down by those Acts.1Since the late 1960s there have
been further studies of occupational health and safety regulatory regimes,
with similar themes.2One of the debates canvassed in these studies is
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© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999
Putting the Regulated Back into Regulation
RICHARD JOHNSTONE*
1For example, B.L. Hutchins and A.A. Harrison, A History of the Factory Legislation (1926);
M.W. Thomas, The Early Factory Legislation: A Study in Legislative and Administrative
Evolution (1948); P.W.J. Bartrip and P.T. Fenn ‘The administration of safety: the enforce-
ment policy of the early Factory Inspectorate 1844–1864’ (1980) 58 Public Administration
87; P.W.J. Bartrip and P.T. Fenn, ‘The evolution of regulatory style in the nineteenth cen-
tury British Factory Inspectorate’ (1983) 10 J. of Law and Society 201; W.G. Carson, ‘The
Conventionalisation of Early Factory Crime’ (1979) 7 International J. of the Sociology of
Law 37; W. G. Carson, ‘The Institutionalization of Ambiguity: Early British Factory Acts’
in White Collar Crime: Theory and Research, eds G. Geis and E. Stotland (1980); S. Field,
‘Without the Law? Professor Arthurs and the Early Factory Inspectorate’ (1990) 17 J. of
Law and Society 445.
2See, for example, W.G. Carson, ‘White Collar Crime and the Enforcement of Factory
Legislation’ (1970) 10 British J. of Criminology 383; W.G. Carson, ‘Some Sociological Aspects
of Strict Liability and the Enforcement of Factory Legislation’ (1970) 33 Modern Law Rev.
396; R. Baldwin, Government and Rules (1995); B.M. Hutter, Compliance: Regulation and
Environment (1997). In Australia, see J. Braithwaite and P. Grabosky, Occupational Health
and Safety Enforcement in Australia (1985); N. Gunningham, ‘Negotiated Compliance –
A Case of Regulatory Failure’ (1987) 9 Law and Policy 69; W.G. Carson, W.B. Creighton,
C. Hennenberg, and R. Johnstone, Victorian Occupational Health and Safety – An Assessment
of Law in Transition (1989); and R. Johnstone, The Court and the Factory: The Legal
Construction of Occupational Health and Safety Offences in Victoria (1994).
* Reader, T.C. Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia
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