Compliance Construction in the Context of Environmental Regulation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12282950
AutoresBettina Lange (0000-0001-8164-2715, Aberystwyth University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1999
Volumen8
Número4
Páginas549-567
Fecha de publicación1999-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial & Legal Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0964-6639 • E-ISSN: 1461-7390
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/a010430
OpenAlexW2395822647
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

This article explores compliance in the context of environmental regulation. It rejects a formal concept of compliance according to which statements about compliance can be made by assessing a self-contained notion of social practices of the regulated in the light of formal legal rules. Linked to this type of analysis is the notion of a 'gap' between formal legal requirements and what the regulated do in practice. In examining this perspective critically the article argues that the concepts of rules and social practices have to be seen not as self-contained categories but as closely linked. These close links are created both on a level of behaviour, through what the regulators and the regulated actually do in practice, and on a level of meaning of rules. Thus the notion of a 'gap' needs to be complemented through a concept of integration between rules and social practices. The article develops this argument by drawing first on literature on enforcement, discretion and creative compliance; and second by relying on qualitative empirical data on the implementation of a waste management site licence by staff at a waste treatment plant and the enforcement activities of waste control officers

Argument (complex analysis · Business · Compliance (psychology · Context (archaeology · Discretion · Enforcement · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Knowledge management · Law and economics · Meaning (existential · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Computer Science · Engineering · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law · Psychology · Regulation and Compliance Studies · Social Psychology · Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses